They get 7cts per house and there are 49 houses on our route and so they make less than $3.50 a week, divided by 2.  I think this is pretty good considering how old they are.  More money to add to their money jars.  This is their third week and we have a system going and it takes about 20-25 minutes.  One child delivering on each side of the road.

The weather has been great so it has been pretty easy.  The company delivers the flyers to the house for us to distribute.  We load it all into my “granny” cart, I pull it along and they pick it up from my cart to deliver to the houses.  In this way, I am still able to keep an eye on them.  They really enjoy running around and it gets us all out together for a little outing.  The route is mainly on our street and it is a pretty quiet street in terms of traffic so it is pretty safe, as long as Andrew doesn’t trip while running up and down people’s driveways. In time, they will be able to go out on their own.  I really like going out with them though, like I said, it gets me out of the house for a little stroll.  The boys have so much energy and it is fun to see them just bouncing along.

This is the beginning…..

He had 2 cakes, one on his birthday,

and one at his birthday party with his friends(I made this one but he decorated it).

For his party, Matthew had 7 boys come over.  I was thinking what am I going to do with 9 children for 3 hours.  Now that they are older, I had to find something more challenging.  So I decided on a scavenger hunt, indoors and out.  I am glad the weather worked out well.  Last year, it rained.

We paired the kids off and they got their clues.  It is amazing what the kids behave and do when they are excited.  We had some ground rules, when they came in to the house, they had to remove their shoes, many of them would forget and had points deducted.  They had to stay in the perimeter of the yard and no tampering with clues.  Here is a copy of what they had to do.

1. What is the house number across the street?
2. There are some coupons on the counter by the window, how much savings do you get with the Huggies diapers?
3. In the Wagon, there are a couple of eggs, how much money is in the orange egg?
4. How many pieces of Lego were used to make the tower?
5. On the back deck, if you walk down 3 steps, how many steps are you from the bottom?
6. What is the license plate of the Honda Odyessy on the street.
7. If our house faces North east, what fruit is south west?
8. There is a sculpture of dolphins by the window, if you look carefully from the top, how many dolphins do you see?
9. There is a bird in the kitchen, what kind of bird is it?
10. In the hallway, there are fishes on the wall, how many red fishes are there?
11. Find the washing machine, next to it is a bottle of laundry soap, what brand is it?
12.What vegetable do you cook in the barbecue?
13. Somewhere in the yard, there is a blue pail, take a duck.
14. The house faces North East, what fruit is on the most northern part of the house.
15. Where is the piece of cake with pink icing?
16. Look for the longest stick in the yard.
17. Bring 5 dried intact leaves.
18. Outside the front door, there is something black, take a penny inside it.
19. In the Oxford dictionary, what is the 3rd word before biscuit?
20. where is the pink pony?
21. What country is south of Botswana?
22. There is a pink basket on the deck, bring a black something from it.
23.  Bring a dead bug.

We also played a game of Scattergories.  Some of them were so creative with their words.  They really had to think under pressure!!

All in all, I think the birthday party was a success.  There wasn’t too much to clean either, except under the dinning table!!

Matthew my sous-chef

It was really nice, we worked well together, he wasn’t in the way and dinner preparation time was reduced. There wasn’t a big mess, he cleaned up as he was doing the preparation. I am so proud of my big guy, he is growing up so fast.

I made a short video of Kyle’s “Big Event”.
Enjoy….

As in Matthew case, it was really crazy in the beginning… now he seems to have develop some sort of sense of style, most days his t-shirt is on backwards but he doesn’t really care!! There are more important things to worry about. Natalie wears her fancy dresses to school.  Why not.  There are not enough parties or Christmases to wear all those fancy dresses to before she grows out of them. That is her decision.

One of the main things I remember about last night is this example.  We tell them how to dress, what to eat, how to behave and we have kids that listen and behave well.  Unfortunately when they grow up, they do not learn to think for themselves.  So when they get older, they still let other people, like peers tell to them what to do, how they dress, what they eat etc.  So if their friends are more aggressive and bully, the could follow suit.  If kids think for themselves, they would make their own decisions and know right from wrong and do what they believe in.

Today has been a fun day in terms of the kids putting what I learned into practice.  I know the kids can think for themselves, sometime I feel I have to guide them along in the mornings especially.  Reminding them about brushing their teeth and packing their lunches.  It can get quite stressful in the mornings…  So this morning I put the timer on the oven so that the kids know when they had to finish their breakfast so that they had enough time to get.  Since Matthew always finishes his breakfast really fast, he gets to play in his room before school.  So I put the timer on in their bedroom for 7:50am, so they know when they have to start getting ready to go out the door.  Unfortunately I forgot the tell the other 2 and so they all totally ignored the alarm.  So I went in to remind them 5 minutes later, I though perhaps the alarm didn’t go off.  That is all I had to do, they packed their lunch, got ready and guess what, we all got to school on time…  I did not have to do the constant reminders so there was less tension in the house.  Somehow along the way, I forgot that they are very capable individuals and can think for themselves.  I was very thankful for the reminder.

Her talk also talked about consequences, last night we came home past their bedtime.  Of course they were fooling around before getting into bed.  I asked the kids what the consequences would be if they didn’t go to sleep right away.  Andrew said that he would get grounded.  (oops I think we have over used that a little, we should not be raising them out of fear, something to take note of).  Natalie figured it out, they would be tired the next day.  Very logical and after that little discussion, they got ready for bed and no arguments.  Somehow, when we get a little busy, we just forget the common sense things, the kids are so logical and they just need real answers.

Last night’s talk was worth it’s weight in gold.  Kid are worth it, I love the little reminders, as parents we are the biggest influence on the children.  How we behave and what we say to them or let them do will help them think for themselves and bring out the best in them.  Thanks Babara.

The school encourage us to pick the apples to enjoy instead of letting them go to waste.  So that is what we did.  Every day after school, we stopped to pick apples on the way home.  The kids loved climbing the tree and picking and eating those apples straight from the tree.

There are still tons of apples on the tree.  Unfortunately they are now too high to climb to pick.  So yesterday we took the ladder and we picked more apples.  Made juice yesterday and will make another apple crisp today!  The super easy recipe is at the bottom of the blog.

The big surprise was when Kyle came home from one of his customers this week who is a farmer.  Check out the size of that apple.  Kyle is not sure whether to eat it or not.  I remember seeing apples that size in Australia….

The apple is as big as her head

His favourite fruit!

Guess which one is from the farm and which one is from the school

Apple Oatmeal Crisp

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup butter melted
Mixed the above ingredient together and line the pan with half the mixture.

4 cups sliced apples
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
Mix the apples together with the sugar and cinnamon and place on top of the oatmeal mixture.
Top off the apples with the remaining half of the oatmeal mixture.

Place it in the oven for 350F for 45minutes.
Enjoy!
The kids like it with ice-cream.

I was talking to a friend and she was telling me about a craft she did with her daughter.  She was telling me how hard it was for her to find bangles.  I thought wow what a cute idea.  I had a tons of bangles, so I went on line to find a design.  I found a pattern online and am so proud to say that it only took me about half an hour to make this little purse.  I had fun and the results were better than I expected.

I havn’t had too much time to work on my crafts and it felt so nice to be able to do a craft and complete and be able to give it away right away.  I was so proud of myself.

Andrew has a party to go to tomorrow so I made one for him to give too.  Being such an easy craft, I thought it would be really nice for him to help me make it.  He help sew the sides on the sewing machine and help stitch the bangles on too.

A couple of months ago, JAZZ Solar Solutions, the company Kyle works at had an information booth at the Green Expo here in Ottawa. I decided to go out help out with making contacts and meeting potential customers. In preparation of that, I decided that I better brush up on my technical knowledge and learn everything about Photo Voltaics also know as Solar Panels. The design and multiple and applications. Having the engineering background helped a lot with understanding the workings of the system. It was so much fun to learn again, it has been so long since I did any sort of technical application. What I didn’t know, I had an in-house teacher in Kyle and I figured I would learn on the job.

So I spent 2 days at the Green Expo and met so many cool people from different walks of life with different needs and ideas. I really enjoyed that. After that I was hooked, I did another show the weekend after and now I am back in the work force, doing sales for JAZZ Solar Solutions.

It has been a challenging couple of months. Learning about all this new stuff, talking to and teaching potential customers. Working on fitting in the sales calls and meetings into my already busy schedule. Like they said if you want anything done, give it to a busy person.

My main priority in life is still the kids and family so I only work in between school, activities and meals. Sometimes I think I am crazy adding work into my life but it is quite exciting to be back working.  I have the idea job, working around my schedule, working when I can and if I can.

While I was home full time, I would be visit my friends at their work place, I would sometimes wonder what it would be like to be back working outside the home, and knew I wouldn’t be able to do a 9-5 and be home for the children. Now I am in an ideal situation. I am back in the workforce and work around the family’s schedule.

Sometime, I do information seminars at night and if Kyle is working late, I take the kids with me on the bus. They occupy themselves with their books and crafts and on his way home, Kyle comes and picks them up. One Saturday Kyle even took them on a job site with him. I had sales training and he had to finish a ground mount installation. The property was really sandy so we bought them some sand toys at a garage sale and they spent the afternoon hanging out with daddy. They had a blast. They also came to one of the trade shows with us. Hung around the booth and did their own thing.

I am fortunate that the kids are so flexible, they are learning to respect my time when I am working. They understand when I am working at home, they cannot bother unless it is really pressing.  They have to solve their own issues which mostly involves each other….

My life is never dull, sometimes I think I am crazy for taking on more.  I realize I am doing what I believe in and it is all worth it!