This and That

After Christmas was prime working time to get packed up and get our house ready to sell.  Nana is the best packer ever.  She had most things all packed up in a week, which would have taken me a month!  We packed up everything except our most essentials so that we could have the house clean and organized and ready for sale.  Also so that when it sold we would be that much more ready to be moving.  So it worked out really well.

 I volunteered to make dessert for a family gathering.  I love to make desserts!  After planning on a cake to make we realized that all of our cake pans were packed!  So this was Paul's great solution!

 We polished up the floors and this was the kids response to the big empty room.  They ran in circles and spun around for a very long time!

 Dawsyn lost her first tooth.  She didn't want to touch it even though it was barely hanging in there.  She was so cute and excited when it did finally come out.  She was different with her next 3 teeth.  She was determined to get them out and yanked them out when some were not even quite ready.  She wanted the payout for the tooth and pulled it out when she was ready for the money rather than waiting until her tooth was ready to come out!

 We watched and laughed at this penguin at the zoo for so long!  He was so huge!  I think the zoo keeper said that this baby king penguin "Nero" was 17 kg and his parents were about 12 kg.  While watching him I had the best laugh as we saw him throw a big temper tantrum.  He was squawking and asking his parents for food and they were not responsive quick enough, so he started this seemingly screaming type of squawk, throwing his head up and down, stomping his little feet and flapping his flippers!  It went on like this for a good minute or more.  The best thing about watching this is that at the time our sweet Baylor had become to throw similar tantrums, even hitting his face down on the floor, couch or anything around, and hitting himself in the head.  This made it very entertaining to think about these penguin parents dealing with similar tantrums from their huge penguin toddler.

We made a last minute trip up to Edmonton to say goodbye to Paul's wonderful Uncle Ken.  It was a great experience for him and we had a fun time as a family having some time at a hotel, playing at the waterpark and visiting with Auntie Ashley.  It was a success overall!  Here is our van full of small ready travelers!

Grandpa and Grandma had been on a trip to South America for a month.  We were excited to welcome them home!  Here are some of the Gainor Rugrats waiting nicely at the airport!

 We love going to the zoo!  Here we are at the hippo's and komodo dragons exhibit, playing on the models of them.

 The kids love to play at the park at the zoo but I usually resist and insist that we see animals instead.  This day we spent a bunch of time at the park.  Baylor was happy for a very long time crawling back and forth through this big long tunnel.  I would walk back and forth and peek at him and he would laugh and run the other way.  It was a fun game and so cute to see his boy feeling independent and playing by himself through this big tunnel!

 For Valentines Day we celebrated with heart shaped pizza's!  We love pizza and this was a fun way to customize it!

 We explored a new place this windy Saturday.  We went up on top of Tom Campbell's hill.  Overlooking the zoo on one side and downtown Calgary on the other.  It was a beautiful view and a great place to have a nice walk!

 When we were packing up to move we let the kids only pack one small box of their own toys and books that they would want to keep and the rest was put into storage.  Here is some of the creative play that followed the next few months.  The kids built couch cushion forts everyday.  They had a lot of fun playing in these and building creative different ones all of the time!

 Sculpting with tin foil was a very loved activity.  The girls are here with Elliette in her full armor. They also had an outfit for Kyndal and Dawsyn, with shields and swords.  Elliette's had the most dramatic body armor though.  One day they were testing out some of their creations in the snow.  They make shoes with tin foil, paper towels and plastic wrap.  They tested these out in the snow to see how waterproof or warm they were.  It was after the first testing that they added in the paper towels for insulation as foil and plastic feet in snow in very cold.  Very smart playtime!

 This was a crazy, entertaining mask that they made on Dawsyn's face.  I love that she was left just enough room for her little nose to breathe.  Also the crazy eye location made me laugh pretty hard!

 The girls making their own laptops.  I love the mouse connected to the side.  Made with plastic wrap and electrical tape for the cord.  They play pretend computer games on these.  Same as their frequent pretend cell phones that they make and play pretend games on. They are allowed all of this pretend screen time that they would like!

I love all of the kids trying to get a spot to cuddle with grandpa in his chair!  It is a pretty good fit to have 5 people in this chair at once.  It is great that they all get to have this time with Grandpa!