Our Poet

Faith's last Language Arts unit in school was Poetry. She worked really hard on her poems and they turned out amazing. Her teachers were so impressed with them that they wrote a comment about it in her report card (if you see report cards these days the teachers pretty much just fill in the letter grade blank and that's it!) It said "Faith's passion in poetry was evident as her poems were written with eloquence and creativity." That's our Faith - creative to her very core - could care less about time management or organization! Her teacher also organized a Poetry Cafe where the entire class read 2 of their poems and parents were invited to attend. It thought I would type out the 2 poems Faith read aloud:

Spring is here let's go and play, let's have some fun outside today.
Plants and flowers are sprouting out of the ground look at the trees from town to town.
Roses, daisies, tulips and more, I look at the garden and see more and more.
I run, jump, swing and play and have fun outside all day.
Nature is beautiful take a look around, don't you see it sprouting out of the ground?
Gardens are growing in my front yard and down my street you can see them from far.
By Faith

Nature is all around us we see it all the time trees grass flowers animals
If you sit in a meadow or a field you will see all the things Nature can do
Bumblebees suck the sweet golden honey out of the beautiful colourful flowers
Butterflies flutter in the bright blue sky
On a mountain you see beautiful sights and that's a part of Nature
Fish, oh the colourful fish, swim in the ocean blue
Sitting here thinking seeing birds flowers trees and more is a wonderful thing
The peaceful wonderful Nature grows among us, it's a wonderful thing
Without it the world would be hard to live in, the world would not be the same!
By Faith

The Willow Tree

It's kinda funny that Gabe took this picture the other day of the willow tree in our backyard that was chopped down yesterday. I thought I should preserve some memory of it for Faith by writing about it here. She has a hard time with change (possibly a McLeod trait?!?) and when we cut half the branches off last summer it took days for her to recover. We decided that we would get rid of it because it had grown quite large and VERY messy for our small backyard. We warned Faith in advance and she seems to be okay so far. I was a little sad too because it was one of the reasons we bought the house, although it was half the size back then. We will miss the shade it provided but definitely not the mess!

Crabbing on the North Shore

So a couple of Sundays ago we went with our friends to Cate's Park on the Northshore to do some crabbing. It was a beautiful day and the tide was out for most of the afternoon and it is a really big park with a huge playground. The kids had a great day at the beach and we caught 32 crabs. I got a lot of exercise walking kids back and forth from our spot on the beach to the dock to get in the boat. Next time I think we will pick a closer spot to the wharf!

That's a 100 quart cooler Declan (or as his father refers to him lately "hippy dude" - he won't let us cut his hair) is standing next too with all 32 crabs.

This is the crab feast at the end of the day. Yummy!

Our Track Star

Faith was at her very first track meet today and it was very exciting. Her events were the 4x100 relay and long jump. Her relay team came in 10th overall and she was 2nd for all the Grade 4 girls ( I don't have an exact number but there had to be at least 40 girls). I'm pretty sure she has wings! We are so proud of her for even participating because if you knew how much she hates running ... Her relay team did awesome - because they are only grade 4's they didn't get alot of attention from the teachers but they practiced themselves after school for the event. It's a good introduction for them for the next intermediate years.

Guess who discovered my camera???

He figured out how to turn it on and take pictures.

The little red car

So on Monday Raph brought home a little red car and asked me who had been the best kid that day and he was going to given that kid the car. Of course it was Faith who was not the least bit interested. The boys were then told that if they were really good (cuz I was about to adopt them out on Monday) that one would get the red car. WOW, what a change in a couple of boys! Declan was even sitting at the table making up his own math questions and answering them for "extra homework". I just have to mention the car and Gabe stops whatever bad behaviour he is currently involved in (please take note that this happens frequently throughout a day). So far I have not given out the car because that would ruin all my fun!

Easter Weekend

So, I realize that I have now been "blogging" for more than a year now because I think I started with Easter pics last year. I have not been as consistent as I had planned but I don't seem to be carrying my camera around as much as I normally do.

These are pics from what seems to be becoming our annual Easter camping weekend. We are pretty much guaranteed that it will be a little bit sunny but mostly rainy. We go with our neighbours and the French's and play bocci ball and walk down to the lake. It is never really warm but that does not slow down the boys from taking a dip in the lake. This lake is very large and usually pretty cold in the summer time so you can imagine how cold it was. The sun was out so Gabe figured he would dry out on a rock because it did not even cross my mind to pack beach towels! Easter Sunday was an absolute downpour so the kids got pretty wet hunting eggs and Raph and I were soaked from packing up. At least we have the trailer and not a tent!