November Fest

Wow! Time flies and I haven't blogged about so much! Here is our November in a nutshell.


CANADA:

Paul had all of Thanksgiving week off. We took a 2 day vacation to Montreal, Canada. And it was COLD!! We had fun but unfortunately we didn't stay long enough. One place we went to was the Biodome de Montreal. Caleb enjoyed the fish, porcupines, birds, and alligators. It was neat because it had different environments from around the world: the Amazon, Canada, Arctic Ocean, and then a child's hands on area.





Tip #1: Make sure your GPS knows Canadian roads. Ours didn't. And we didn't think about how Canadians speak French, not English so we didn't know if we asked for directions if they could tell us in English. It was amazing that we even found our hotel. We stopped at a Metro station that had a million maps of a million roads and we happened to see the street we needed on the very edge of one of the maps.

Tip #2: Practice driving beforehand. Driving was nuts! In Canada their stop lights are only on the sides of the road (not hanging over the road like the U.S.) so Paul ran at least 2 red lights. Oops! Plus all the signs are in French. We got the hang of it, but it was pretty scary at first.

Tip #3: Must eat crepes. We had these gigantic crepes for breakfast. They were full of fruit and custard. So good!


Tip #4: Don't ever NOT wear your coat in Canada. We had this stupid idea to not wear our coats from our car to the entrance at the Biodome and I would never suggest doing that.





We also did some shopping in an underground shopping center. It was neat to think about being in this underground mall. I guess they ran out of room above ground. But this shopping center was blocks and blocks of stores just sitting underground. Cool!

LIVE NATIVITY:

In Sharon, VT (the birth place of Joseph Smith) they had a live nativity program after thanksgiving. We invited our Landlords (the Walkers) but they weren't able to come, we'll keep working our missionary magic on them ;)
we stayed warm, pet the animals after the program and enjoyed some family time together thinking about how thankful we are for the great prophet Joseph Smith and his family.






They had a room with an older Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert playing. Caleb watched for at least 20 minutes without moving. It was incredible. The kid loves T.V. and he loves music. Great combo.

RANDOM:
Poor little Caleb is stuck sleeping in a Pack 'n Play. It's getting a bit small for him and I can't imagine that it's comfortable with the hard bottom it has. A few days ago I went in his room after he'd been asleep for a couple hours (We always check on him before going to bed). He usually plays in bed for about 20 minutes before falling asleep and this is how I found him.

Can you see the bottom of the Pack 'n Play is folded in half (it's the part with the green blanket on it), he's not even sleeping on the mattress part. He's sleeping on the hard poles and half of his back is arched upward. Poor kid! Time for a 'big' bed?

I love being a mom!

Yucky!

We got these Llama Llama books from the library. Caleb LOVES them! This one is called "Llama Llama Home with Mama" I suggest you look them up at your library. They are so great. I've read the same ones over and over for Caleb and I still like them.



I love how he thinks saying "yucky" is SOOO funny! He giggles every time we read the book. And he quickly learned the word "achoo" while we had this book.

Excuse his hand down his diaper...no comment.

Back off!

Today I witnessed, for the first time, Caleb being picked on.
Ouch!
I didn't know I'd could be offended/hurt by a 3 year old, but I was. Caleb was just minding is own business playing near 2 active three year old kids when they began telling Caleb "get away! We don't want you here, go away!" Caleb didn't even know what was going on, he kept staring at them while they got in his face. He did however know by the way they were yelling that they must not have been saying nice things.
I wanted to yell back at the kids to "go away!" but because they are my friend's children I held my tongue.
Poor Caleb just walked nervously away and came to get comfort from me. I felt so bad for him! It hurt me much more than it hurt him...what am I going to do when he gets older and actually understands what the kids are saying??

And counting

Caleb can say (attempt) 56 words! And today I heard 3 more new ones, 56+3=59 (yes I really had to do that math).
Although Paul and I are the only ones who can understand them, he attempts at saying them. It's great to be able to communicate a little now. Whining is getting on my nerves!
I'll just list a few of the words he can say:
shake, bird, bubbles, uh oh!, Oh No!, night night, apple, outside, balloon, remote (we really don't watch that much T.V.), dark, moon, star...and Paul swears Caleb said Yellow today as they read a book with a sun in it, I have yet to hear that one.
Just wanted to brag, thanks for reading. :)

They say it's an "early" winter

Saturday we got at least a foot of snow maybe even 1 1/2 feet. I was expecting a long winter here in New Hampshire, but I wasn't looking forward to it. Everyone tells me this is an "early" winter though. And that they often don't see snow until Christmas or later but that it does get bitter cold with or without snow.
Well welcome snow, luckily it hasn't been too cold. We can still have playgroup at the park and go for walks to the library in the evening with Paul. But my guess is it won't last much longer.
On Sunday we only had sacrament meeting, the rest of church was cancelled. Just becuase we have a little snow?! Come on! This is New England we're talking about, we're in the most Northern East part of the U.S. of course we're going to have snow. shouldn't these people just deal with it and have church like normal??
These were my first thoughts. Until later Sunday evening we had dinner with the Stake President and his family. He then explained that some people had to travel 45 minutes to church and to get there by 9:00 am is more difficult. If those members can't make it to church (also due to power outage) then we don't have enough people to carry out primary, relief society, young mens/womens and other duties.
Oh yeah, duh Amelia. I'm not in Utah anymore. Church isn't a block away for everyone in the ward. I'm learning everyday.
With cancelled church. We played in the snow!





Caleb giggled and giggled every time Paul threw a snowball, especially if he threw it at mommy...not funny to me.

Sesame Street

Happy Haloween...two days ago.





Whinnie the Pooh and Elmo are friends.