October 7, 2018

This past week the kids had a 5 day weekend.   I’ve been toying with the idea that our kids were old enough to leave alone overnight so I decided this would be a good time to try an experiment.  Additionally John and I never seem to do much to celebrate our anniversary. December anniversaries are the worst.  I  had the idea to celebrate our anniversary a little early this year with a stay-cation downtown. So after discussing it with the kids and getting their ok, I booked a hotel for our little get away. I’m happy to report it was a success!  John and I pretended we were tourists and wandered around parts of downtown and the north end.  We wandered around downtown for “First Thursday”. Basically a bunch of local businesses have special events to attract people.  It was just ok. We tried a new restaurant, Bitter creek Alehouse.  Which I though was delicious…hello yummy poutine! On Saturday we walked the greenbelt and went to a bagel shop for breakfast. We checked out of our hotel (which we ended up getting for free because of an issue with a broken toilet) and then went to Cash and Carry (a local restaurant supply store).  Which I guess is technically an errand.  But I love going to cash and carry and  I rarely go because it’s not near me. We spent the rest of the day doing odds and ends with the kids. It ended up being a great and relaxing couple of days.

Our 5 day weekend also coincided with General Conference and a soccer tournament that Emmie got invited to participate in.  They essentially took the best players from the best two teams in her league and formed a team to compete in a big tournament.  We told them she could only play on Saturday and they still wanted her so we missed bits of conference on Saturday but were able to watch most of it between her games.  John went to her first game and said she played amazing.  Their team won 5-1.  Ains, my mom, and I took her to her second game because we were going to go to the Women’s conference right afterwards. They played hard but unfortunately the other team just outplayed them.  They ended up losing 4-0.  I was proud of how well Emmie’s newly formed team played together. They had only had one practice before their first game.  Emmie made a couple of fast friends on the team and had fun.  So when all was said and done I think it was a good experience for her.  Plus she got a pin…so Emmie is thrilled.

Speaking of general conference, what an exciting conference this was!  After years and years of rumors of 2 hour church it finally happened! The rumors have been crazy this time around and I wanted to believe it but didn’t want to get my hopes up.  And then somehow it actually happened!  I only have 4 more sharing times to prepare! Ever! But if I’m being honest I think I’d rather give up all of my other primary president responsibilities and keep teaching sharing time.  I actually enjoy teaching, but sometimes finding the time to prepare can be stressful.  I’ve been pondering combining our junior and senior primaries for a while now, but the difficulty of teaching an engaging lesson to a 3 year old and an 11 year old at the same time always made me think it just wouldn’t work.  But with this new change I think it might be perfect for our primary.  If I can find enough classrooms for primary in our building I’m going to make some big changes to our primary next year as well. I’m excited!
Owen has been our neglected child lately. He isn’t involved in any extra curricular a right now and so our time in the evenings is often spent running the girls around and Owen is left behind.  I wish Owen was the kind of person that handled being bored well.  He is not.  Down time for Owen often means Owen is in front of a device or the TV or pestering anyone around him.  I desperately need for him to be busy.  It’s killing me. John was feeling bad about Owen’s current state of being the kid always left behind and decided to take him out for dinner and a movie while the girls and I watched women’s conference.  My dad went along with them and it sounds like they had a great time.  Owen recently got a gift card to a fancy Japanese steakhouse for watching a neighbors’ cat.  So they headed there.  By all accounts the highlight of the night was when the waiter asked John if he wanted soup or salad in a thick accent and John asked, “what’s the difference?” I’m sure that will be something we laugh at for years.

Ainsley has been working hard on a video for their upcoming Young Women in Excellence. I’m sure it will turn out great.  Right now she is busy collecting pictures from members of our ward.  This is completely out of Ainsley’s comfort zone.  I think it’s good for her to be forced to interact with others, but based on the way she is acting she thinks it might kill her. Hopefully when the video finished and she see’s how amazing it turns out she will realize contacting people for pictures wasn’t so bad.