Thankful Thursday - Celebration of Learning/Family/Snow/Me 'N' Ed's/Van Troubles

Today it's like 12 degrees, beautiful, sunny and feels like Spring. It's hard to believe there is snow in this post from a week ago! 

This week I am thankful for...

1. Celebration of Learning. First of all, here is a link to Dom's Expert Sharing video he shared in school. Secondly, we had our first Celebration of Learning evening which is similar to student-led conferences. Dom showed us around his classroom and shared some of his work with us. Loved seeing it and he was so proud!

Wheels and I got there early just to get a parking spot while Dom and Dave were at basketball

"The best part of me is eyeballs to see cars"

Where are my Too Hot to Handle fans at? Anyone else think Dom's self portrait resembles Harry Jowsey? Haha! (Ashleigh, I'm looking at you!)

Speaking of celebrating learning, this guy's reading took off all of a sudden! Something clicked. He sat down and read this whole book to Eva the other day. Like read read.
Also why does he look so old and tall?

Meanwhile Eva had a jolly time at Opa & Oma's

Dom's hockey video.

2. Jeff & Marta living so close by. Lots of spontaneous get togethers with these peeps! Jeff & O came over last Tuesday for a playdate when it was a surprise snow day for the kids and for daycare. Marta and I grabbed a glass of wine last week. Jeff and Owen came over for a sunny Sunday walk and park playdate. 

Very focused on picking dog hair off his fingers haha...

Uncle Daff!

Uncle Jeff came to the rescue after I sent a very pathetic video of Dom trying to play hockey on his own as both goalie and player, all decked out in his goalie gear. Just a quick 30 minute hockey playdate in the middle of the morning!

3. Getting out with the neighbours. Now that it's a bit warmer and nicer out, we're outside almost every day with Jesse, Kirstin and Wren again! We also had dinner together for the first time in months since every single time we planned something at least one kid would end up sick so we'd have to cancel!

Throwback to these girls last spring

Eva siezed her opportunity to try out Wren's ATV :)

4. Tot Romp. Dave was filming at tot romp yesterday for a church children's ministries video (hooray for work!), so I made a special effort to be there. Scott, Phoebe, Jeff and Owen joined as well! Eva is just so different from Dom & Emilia at this age. So outgoing, adventurous and fun. I'm excited to see what Dave puts together for a little video.

I love this photo.
Owen peeking over the top of the slide with the sweetest smile. (This was before he got headbutted and ended up with a bloody nose. Poor guy)

Eva crawling into the bouncy castle.

Phoebe and Eva locking eyes with a very excited knowing look <3.

I tried to get pics of Phoebe too, but they turned out as a blur haha! She never stopped moving. This was the closest I could get haha! 

5. $1.49 days at Save On. Yesterday I ran by Save On to grab a couple things for $1.49 day. I got all these grapes and cucumbers for $7! The grapes alone would have cost just over $20 on any other day!

6. Mom's Birthday at Me N Ed's. Me N Ed's is the place to go when you have lots of kids. Pick a weeknight when it's not busy, and let the kids run! We got a whole section of the restaurant to ourselves so the 5 kids could run, climb and be loud. The pizza is excellent too which is a plus!

7. Our van is fixed. What? It was broken? Yes... in fact it lost power about one block from home on Monday and I barely made it home. Turns out our alternator was toast. We couldn't get it going for long enough to get to a shop, so we had to have it towed. Lucky for us, Dave has a childhood friend who drives a tow truck and happened to have a time slot available right at a time of day that worked for us, and Mom was able to help out with picking Dom up from school and let us borrow their car. The next day all the timing of everything worked out incredibly well again and we feel very lucky that we weren't left in a complete lurch with the complications. 
However, we were a little (a lot) frustrated to arrive at Me N Ed's immediately after picking up the van from the shop and then having the van die right when we get there. Umm... excuse me?! After dinner it wouldn't even start with a jump initially. We got it, brought it home and Dave investigated it. It turns out the shop forgot to connect the part back to the negative terminal on the battery *face palm*. So it seems to be fixed now, and fingers crossed we can avoid any more large surprise expenses... 

Thanks Riyadh!

At this point all I could do was laugh or cry. I chose laugh. Sort of... haha. Just a great big FML moment.

And here are some other less FML moments from the last week and a bit!

Dave snuck some Proof of Mom photos while I practiced some yoga moves with the girls. This was just to see how far we could all squat

Then trying to show them a plank and I got a cling on

She is such a joy

Two sommeliers at Everything Wine suggested this wine to me. It was $4 off, on sale for $10.99 and they both said it drinks like a $25 bottle. I can confirm it is very good, especially for $10.99!

Took the girls to the library and Eva quickly made a new friend at the Lego wall

I got to play bass in church with Dad again. Now there's 6 weeks off which is great. It's nice to be up there, but it also makes for a long Sunday! (Also I missed most of the first F1 race of the season so that was a bummer haha!)

The girls wanted their beautiful dresses on. <3

Dom giving Emilia a piggy back ride for the first time haha

This turned into a dog pile party. Eva's face says it all

People always think she's much older than she is

I had a truly horrible sleep on Tuesday night, but I was booked for spin and didn't want to get charged the cancellation fee, so at 5am I was up and at 'em before work. This sunrise afterwards made it almost worth it. 
I do not recommend trying spin after 4.5 hours of broken sleep and the day after doing legs/booty day in Barre Blend though! Zoiks.

A little work excitement when the fire alarm went off. 

They've both been loving the melting beads this week!

"I want to look serious."