Day 4 Christmas Note

It was my day to take a note from the 12 days calendar Ella brought home from school. Reading these are making me feel pretty good, but also giving me some things to think about. From this note I think I need to do a better job showing that I enjoy spending time with them no matter where we are or go.

Yeah McDonald’s might not be my choice of a restaurant to go to, but we eat out so little that if they want to go there I’m OK with it.

Dad. Thank you for fixing everything thats broken in the house (for example the TV) and thank your for taking us out I love spending time with you and I also love that when we get in the car to go home after school you ask us whats the best part about our day. I love being able to tell you what was wonderfull, silly and sad about my day.

Thank you for everything that you do cause I know some places that you take us you don’t do and you take us there because of us you wouldn’t be there if you went somewhere with me, Caile or Noah. So I think you for taking us to those places even if you don’t enjoy them or get to play where ever we are. So I’m thanking you as much as I can.

Day 4 Note

Christmas Notes

Yesterday our youngest daughter Ella came home from school with a twelve days of Christmas calendar. Each day has a note in it whose recipient alternates between Jen and I. Yesterday was Day 1 and had a note for Jen. Today was a note for me. Jen warned me hers made her cry so I was at least a bit prepared.

My family is pretty sweet and I’m very lucky to have them. Here’s a transcription of the note she gave me today, just as it was hand written. ❤️

Dad I wanted to tell you how glad I am that your my dad. I don’t know what I would do without you. I’m so thankfull that I get this time to tell you that your the best dad I could ever have your the best dad in the world.

I don’t know if I ever told you how much I miss you when you leave for work and I hope you know that how ever long you leave for we’ll always be glad that your coming home. If I could wish for something it would be to have more wish’s but one of my wish’s would be for everyone to have the same sense of humor as you. I love when you tease me and I want you to know that how ever far away you are when you go for work I’ll always love you the same amount.

Thank you for always being there for me. I love you so much dad xoxo

Day 2 Note

Friends Christmas Party

Last night we had our annual friends gift exchange party. We have an awesome group of close friends and there are a lot of kids in the mix. We decided a number of years back we’d draw names so each kid bought one small gift for one of the other kids.

The best part of this though isn’t the gifts it’s the time we get together with each other to celebrate, eat to much food and treats, and watch the kids open all the gifts.

Ella received the game Pie in the Face Showdown so her and Noah tested it out today. She was pretty thrilled getting to pie her brother!

 

 

Christmas Decorating

We went hunting for Christmas tree this morning and found a really great one. We tried a new tree farm this year and had a wonderful experience. Stomping through the trees with family and friends, watching a rabbit hop past us looking for cover.There were many to choose from but we finally found just the right one.

Once we had the tree the kids all had some hot chocolate and a home made cookie. If you’re from the Annapolis Valley I would certainly recommend checking out Shepherd Family Christmas Trees.

This afternoon Jen rushed around getting the house lit up, then this evening getting the lights and sinamay on the tree. One of my favourite things to sit and take in the glowing light and smell of spruce filling the room.

Decorated house at night

Stop Motion Homework

Tonight for homework Caile worked on creating a stop motion video. It shows the destruction of an ecosystem by fire, and then the growth of it back up again.

I thought it turned out pretty well so I wanted to share it.

Happy Birthday Tiffany!

Today is my oldest sisters birthday! I’d make fun of her for getting old, but seeing as I’m her older brother that probably wouldn’t work very good.

We had a fun time celebrating her with her tonight and trying to recreate her first birthday. Here she is at age 1 and then some years after that 😉

tiffany-now-then-3tiffany-now-then-2tiffany-now-then-1

Noah and Daddy Time

The past few days Noah and I have been able to spend quite a bit of time together. We started the weekend out with Saturday morning basketball. This is his second year in basketball but we switched this year to a new program. This one is part of Jr NBA which includes each kid getting their own smaller basketball and NBA team T-Shirt. Noah got to choose between OKC Thunder, San Antonio Spurs, and Golden State Warriors, he choose the Spurs. There were also the Toronto Raptors to choose from, but they were gone by the time Noah choose. The parents don’t always get involved but this time I did. We practised chest passing back and forth and had a fun game where we had to pass our way across the gym.

We spent most of the rest of Saturday painting Noah’s room. We swapped rooms with Alexandria and let Noah choose a new wall colour. The room was previously pink and blue, two walls of each, Noah kept the blue and choose a green, clean n crisp, for the other two walls. I’m not a fan of painting and for some reason it took us four coats to cover the pink over. In the end he was very happy though so it makes it worth it.

Sunday afternoon he and I went out together on a bit of a shopping date. Each year we take the kids out to pick out Christmas presents for their siblings. It’s pretty early this year to get started but we had an afternoon free and the weeks seem to fly by, so we decided to just do it. When we were done shopping we stopped for a treat of his choice at Tim Hortons.

Noah seems to be really liking math and numbers lately, especially number patterns. The one he really likes is the power of twos. He doesn’t really know what that is but he starts out with 2 + 2, then 4 + 4, then 8 + 8 etc. Tonight he went on sticky notes up to 2^13 (4096 + 4096 = 8192). It seemed to be the perfect opportunity to teach him my cell phone number which ends in 2^10. He was pretty impressed with that and it’s one of the reasons it’s my favourite number I’ve ever had.

Treat at Tim Hortons
New Basketball and Shirt
Celebrating painting done with a coffee

Fast Forward 20 Years

Today my colleague Jeremey DuVall wrote a post called Highs & Lows of Leading a Team, if you’re not following him already you certainly should. The feelings he wrote about are certainly ones I’ve been feeling recently at work. Like many business / leadership books and articles I’ve read there are many comparisons I can make to parenting.

Parenting is certainly a series of ups and downs as well, except recently I’ve been stuck in the completely incompetent area. Some would say I had it coming as 20 years ago I was making my mother feel the same way that I am right now. At the age of 17 I left home and moved in with friends. For years I barely spoke to her. Spent my time blaming her for what I perceived as a rough childhood, thinking I was so much smarter than her. How arrogant.

Now fast forward 20 years I’m going through essentially the same thing with my oldest. As much as I tried to protect her from making the same mistakes and wrong choices I made it doesn’t seem to have worked. She’s at least doing better than I was at that age, she’s at least living with her mother instead of staying with friends and spending some nights sleeping in 24 hour Tim Hortons. The choices I made back then caused me to take two years more than it should have to complete high school and come very close to getting myself into some real trouble. It was the news of my daughter coming a long that finally caused me to straighten myself out. That makes this all the more painful.

She was able to help me through a dangerous period of my life and I wasn’t able to protect her from seeming to head down a similar road to the one that I was once on. She’s not there yet though and I’m hoping she can change course before it really effects her life in ways that are difficult to come back from. While I can learn to live with her not talking to me as long as she is happy and safe, I’m hopeful that she will have a change of heart, and sooner than I did at that age.

To my Mother, even though I’ve done it in the past I want to apologize again for the trouble that I gave you and the heart ache I must have caused. Having some experience being a parent now it’s obvious to me you make the best decisions you can. I’m far from perfect so my decisions won’t always be the right ones, but I know, like you, I’ve made them all with the best intensions.

To my Daughter, hopefully some day you will see this as well and we can have a good relationship again. I will always love you no matter what and can be patient.

 

My boy makes me happy at the end of a day!

And then there was one

Just to pile things on I guess, today I got to play grave digger. One of our rabbits passed away. That makes two out of three. I feel bad for the last one. I’m sure it will be lonely by itself.

This morning my oldest went to feed them and was worried one wasn’t looking well. By the time she was home from school it turns out she was right  🙁

Two of our Three Bunnies