Ben & Alex

When we adopted Ben, we traveled with another family that adopted a little boy from the same orphanage group. They have experienced all the trials & tribulations, highs & lows of adoption that we have. Our adoption was so difficult that they would be the only people that could truly understand what we went through. We have not seen them for almost 8 years, but they came to visit us last weekend. I thought this was an ideal opportunity for "before and after pictures", so here is a picture of them when they were 6 months old in Ukraine and from last weekend, when they are 8 years old. They are 9 days apart in age. It is amazing how alike they are, they even had the same SpongeBob slippers!!!! They took a lot of delight in finding things they had in common and they got along together really well. Alex even slept on Ben's bedroom floor rather than with his Mum & then of course Ben had to sleep on the floor too.

A very busy day

We had a very long day on Saturday with Yvonne and Alex. The kids were definitely running on empty by the end of the day. We went to the botanical gardens in the morning. I was hoping that I could actually show Yvonne some of the highlights of the gardens, but of course we spent most of our time in the Children's Garden. However, we did go in the Climatron for a while. The theme of the day appeared to be to take the money out of the fountains and throw it back in again. They spent a long time just doing that. They had a lot of fun in the Children's Garden. Ben did lose us for a while, I think it's the first time he has ever been lost. He is so good about running off and then finding me wherever we are. However, he had seen me walking over to the cave with Maggie and did not see us walk back, so he spent ages looking for us in the opposite part of the garden to where we actually were. However, he used his scout skills very well. He said he stayed where he was for a while, but we did not turn up. Then, he looked around for a while and was going to ask an adult to help him when he found us. Eventually they found the water fountain and ran around in it for ages. Their favourite thing to do was to get wet and then belly slide across the platform in the middle!!!We stayed at the botanical gardens for 3 hours and then went down to the City Museum. We were there for our usual 5 hours. It was the busiest I have ever seen it, probably because the rooftop water park opened this weekend. We did not make it to the water park, I thought it would be really crowded, plus there is an extra charge to do it and then entrance fee there is expensive enough. they had fun anyway. Alex wanted to play outside in MonstroCity. Maggie was upset because they said she was too small to go in the large ball pit, so she had to go with the little kids. Ben & Alex spent a lot of time jumping into the balls though.Maggie and Ben went on the train, Alex was too tall to ride it (there are some advantages to being small!!). They played in the skateboard park for a while. The boys had fun on the rope swings while Maggie was running up & down the ramps. At the end of the day, we went to the art room for a while to be creative and slow down a little bit. Alex decided he had to take all his art work home with him. After we got home, the kids played with Maggie's bubble machine for ages. Then they decided that they had to get the sparklers out.Both Ben & Alex found out that it's NOT a good idea to stand on a sparkler when it's just gone out!!!!

First lemonade stand of the season

We had a quiet day on Sunday after our busy weekend. Ben decided he wanted to set up a lemonade stand. Unfortunately, he just missed the church crowd but was quite successful at getting visitors from the open house 2 doors down from us. He set everything up at the bottom of the driveway and used Sam's money box to store his takings. Maggie helped him by waving to all the cars that went by. They had a pretty successful day and made $13. I'm trying to persuade him that he needs to set up a stand at the end of our street to raise funds for the boy scout troop, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears right now.

Day at the Zoo

We took Yvonne and Alex to the Zoo on Friday. We beat our 5 hour record for being anywhere and were there for over 8 hours. We don't often go with people from out of town, so it was a little different as we were trying to let them see everything the zoo had to offer. However, we didn't make it through half of it, but we did get to see a lot of things. We had to go to the stingrays first. Ben cannot get enough of them. We spent about an hour just petting the stingrays and watching them swim around. They seem to be used to people petting them now & it's funny to watch how they will gather in the middle of the pool where they know no-one can get to them!!! After the stingrays, we went on the train around to Big Cat Country to take a look at the baby tigers. They had their first birthday in April and they are not babies any more, in size anyway. We found this puma enjoying the sunshine on a perfect Spring day. We had time to take in a sea lion show, it has changed a little since we last watched it. The boys rode on the 3D motion movie ride and on the carousel. Finally, they spent about 2 hours in the children's zoo before we managed to get them out of there and to go and get something to eat.

Shakespeare in the Park

We went to see Shakespeare in the Park last Thursday. They were doing the Merry Wives of Windsor this year. It is always a great event and well attended. The weather turned really cold after we got there and we watched the play huddled under the blankets we brought for the kids to sit on the ground. The kids did very well watching the play. I did not think it was the best one they have put on. They always set the plays in a different era to what they were written for and that is not my preference most of the time. This was set probably at the beginning of the 20th Century (as far as I could tell) and was way too overacted and campy for my tastes. They did say that they were doing Hamlet in space next year, not sure if they were joking or not, but that could be interesting!!!! We went with Jan & Julie and for some reason the kids decided they were going to jump around in the chair carrier and be jumping beans. They had a lot of fun doing that, they never run out of ideas.....

Changes around the house

We have changed a few things in our house in the past few days. We do this so rarely that I thought it was worthy of note. When I was looking for a birthday present for Maggie, I found some new sheets for Ben's bed, he badly needed them. Then, I found a cover set & cushion to match the sheets that had 50% off. Even though his old cover was fine (if you ignore all the marker on it), I could not resist it. I thought it fitted in well with him being a cub scout, although none of us are that keen on camping. We are always looking for people for Ben to camp out with, so feel free to volunteer......
We finally got the new dining chairs, they are quarter sawn oak and quite spectacular. They are Amish made, so they should last a long time. They will work better for the kids too because they are all wood and can be wiped easily. We don't use the dining room much right now as it's so much easier to eat in the kitchen, but hopefully one day that will change. To be quite honest, most of the time, I forget we have the part of the house that consists of the dining room & Sam's office, because I hardly ever go down there!!!!
Finally, we got a new picture for the wall, it's hanging above our TV. We have been looking for something to go on the wall & had almost bought something at the last Clayton Art Fair. This one isn't quite big enough, but it will do until we get something larger at a later date. The artist (remaining nameless) modeled the picture on Vincent's sunflowers. Since Vincent is one of my favourite artists, he couldn't really go wrong....

The best laid plans.....

Well, as we all know, things rarely go according to plan. I had my whole day mapped out today and was going to have a relaxing day to myself after taking Ben to the doctor and dropping him off at scout camp. However, we had a huge storm first thing in the morning and scout camp was canceled. This made Ben very happy & also freed Sam up for the day as he had been going to the camp with Ben. Sam cleaned all of our hardwood floors while we went to the doctors. Then, we went to St Charles to pick up my two new dining room chairs that I had ordered when Mum & Dad were here. I absolutely love them & they look great in our dining room. We ate lunch at the Trailhead Brewery, which is always a hit. I had pretty decent fish & chips for lunch (still nowhere as good as from the local chip shop back home though!!). Ben had to have a hamburger (not on the kid's menu) and ate his usual three bites before he was done-I suspect it will be a future lunch for Sam. I had been planning to go & get my feet done as a birthday treat and Ben insisted on coming with me. He loved sitting in the chair and getting his back massaged. He had his nails painted and sat with his hands under the dryer for ages. He picked this fluorescent yellow, you have to wonder if they keep these colours just for kids or if adults ever pick them!!!! We picked Maggie up on the way home and then we ate pizza and ice cream for dinner while watching Harry Potter. It was a great day!!!!