Weekend bits

- Maddie had her first big-girl sleepover last night. At her Mémère and Pépère’s house (Marcel’s parents). Her first time alone. No sisters to keep her company. She was so excited when we left – grinning broadly at her independence. I think it was harder on the rest of the family than it was on her. When we got home, and her big sisters were getting ready for bed, Julie came downstairs crying because she missed her little sister. Sweet :-)

- We went skating on Sunday. For a Canadian family, we’ve been sadly remiss at not getting our kids on skates earlier in their lives. Nikki and Julie can barely skate. Julie started taking lessons last week, because she thinks she wants to play hockey next year (it’s all part of her “wear black, play drums, don’t give a hoot about fashion” attempt at establishing her identity). Unfortunately, though Julie’s been taking lessons for a couple of weeks, Nikki was still more natural on the ice. Though she’s not a sports nut, Nikki has a more natural tendency for athletics than Julie.

- We rented “March of the Penguins” this week. Nikki’s homework over the weekend was to write a movie review, and that’s what she picked. Not a bad pick, I’d say! We’d seen most of it at Christmas time, but missed the last 15 minutes. It’s an incredible movie. And the extra documentary (about the filming of it) on the disc is almost as good as the main movie.

- I finished reading “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt” last night. I got it for Christmas (okay, so I bought it for myself, wrapped it, and put it under the tree to convince the girls Marcel bought it for me). Anne Rice took a dramatic departure from vampires and wrote a fictional account of Jesus Christ’s life as a seven year old (after her own conversion experience). It’s not riveting, but it’s certainly interesting enough to make it worth the effort. If nothing else, it was a mind-expanding experience trying to comprehend what Jesus went through as he grew up and discovered the incredible mission he had in life.

- Sometimes I hate Saturdays. I usually have so many expectations of getting all kinds of things accomplished on Saturdays, and more often than not, I go to bed exhausted because I’ve been going non-stop, and yet I’m disappointed because I have so little to show for it. This Saturday was no exception. All day, my goal was to sew the cushion covers for the chair in Nikki’s room. But I had to clean the bathrooms, do the laundry, feed the kids, make sure the girls did their chores, take Julie to skating, etc., etc. first. At 8:00 at night, I finally sat down to sew. I got one cushion cover done before I was too exhausted to sew any more. Maybe next Saturday…(BUT at least my bathrooms are both clean. Or they WERE until last night when the girls brushed their teeth and neglected to clean up the toothpaste spots.)

- NO MORE ELECTION CAMPAIGNS!! Yay! Today is the election and so we no longer need to listen to the election promises, the attack ads, the political pundits, the predictions, etc., etc.

- I find myself strangely happy that we’ve finally returned to more normal weather around here. It’s SUPPOSED to be cold and sunny in January. Mild, cloudy weather was starting to feel just a little too strange for me. Bundling up in long underwear, head bands, hoods, and mitts just feels more natural. And Maddie’s rosy cheeks after an hour playing in the snow just looked the way a Canadian kid is SUPPOSED to look in the middle of January. (That’s not to say I want to settle into a deepfreeze of minus 30 for the next 3 months!) Of course, it’s supposed to be plus 3 today, so it doesn’t seem we’ve entirely normalized yet.