An update

It's been an awfully long time since I wrote a proper update so I'll try to catch up on everything that happened this fall that I can remember.

Alexandra
I guess the biggest thing that happened was that Alex switched schools this September to go to the French Immersion school with Austin. She's in SK and now, 4 months in, doing very well. In fact, her teacher says she's one of the top in her class. She comes home singing French songs almost daily and always has new words to teach us.

We're very happy that she's doing well, because as most of you know, we had a lot of trouble with the transition when we started out. Because the French Immersion school is only half day Kindergarten (instead of all-day Kindergarten like her JK school), we enrolled her in a nearby Montessori school for the other half day. To make a long story short, she hated it at the Montessori school and after 7 weeks of misery, we withdrew her. She now comes home and spends her afternoons with me every day. Although it's a lot more work for me (it's hard to fit a full day of work into 2.5 hours!), it's definitely worth it because she's much happier.

Aside from school, Alex took ballet again this fall. And once again she loved it. She's registered to continue in the winter and she'll be doing gymnastics and skating lessons once week as well.

Back in September both kids ran in a duathlon. It was pouring rain that day but that didn't deter them. Alex is determined when she puts her mind to it and she came in first in her age group (3 to 5 year olds)! Austin had a little trouble with his bike on the wet course, but still placed 24th

Austin
Austin is in Grade 2 now and is doing very well. He has a great teacher this year who is big into hands on teaching and doing experiments which is right up Austin's alley. He's getting good at reading -- in fact his reading abilities in French now exceed his abilities in English.

He started hockey again in October and this year he's playing on a house league team. He loves it! He plays every Saturday morning (at either 7:30 or 8:30) and has a practice every Wednesday evening. Every week he's improving and has had a couple of good scoring chances already (although no goals yet.). Although, intuitively, he's a defenceman and does quite well when he's in that position. And he was goalie for one game -- letting in only one goal! (Although he found it rather lonely in net as the opposing team only took 5 shots the entire game.)

His team also won the Parkwoods Cup hockey tournament for their age division...which he was thrilled about!

Both Austin and Alex also took swimming lessons this fall, and they both passed their levels.

Mom and dad
There isn't as much to report about mom and dad. Ryan is now working at a site at Humber College and will be there until mid-2015. I am working quite a lot and have built a very steady little business. As I said, it's challenging now that Alex comes home every day at 11:30 but it's more or less manageable. And it's only 6 more months plus the summer, and then I'll go back to working full-time.

In November, Ryan and I escaped for 4 nights to New York City for a belated 10-year anniversary trip.
We rented an apartment that was about a 10 minute walk from Times Square and we had a fabulous time. We wandered around Times Square (several times), saw two shows (Spider-man: Turn off the Dark and Stomp (which was amazing!)), went to a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, saw the World Trade Center memorial, wandered through Central Park and along the Highline Park, went to the top of the Rockefeller Center at night, went to MOMA and on a Radio City Music Hall tour and saw the Enterprise Space Shuttle at the Intrepid Museum.

And to do all this, we walked and walked and walked! It's funny how at home, we would take the subway or car to get somewhere, but in New York, it doesn't seem out of the ordinary to walk several dozen blocks to get where you want to go.

Thankfully the weather was beautiful the entire time we were there.  The coldest day was the day we arrived (Wed. Nov. 13) where it was only about 3C. But by Saturday afternoon it was 15C and perfect wandering around weather.

In all, a wonderful, and much-needed vacation.

Christmas
Well now it's Christmas holidays, so I might as well update on what we've been up to. Ali, Billy, Teddy and Julian arrived in Canada on the 20th and the kids and I headed out to Brampton to see them on Saturday the 21st. We had a great visit but when it was time to head home, the weather was getting bad so we decided to stay over. That night was the ice storm and it was 3 days until we went home because our house was without power for 54 hours. But unfortunately, 54 hours is long enough to have to throw out a heck of a lot of fridge and freezer food. But it could be worse...we got to go home for Christmas morning and we have friends who were without power for twice that amount of time.

It was stressful but the silver-lining is I got to spend a lot of time with both of my sisters (Suzie was there too) and the kids got a lot of cousin time!

Gardner family Christmas was on the 22nd and we all had a great time. Austin got a rod hockey game from grandma and granddad, of which he declared 'I wanted this and now I'm so glad I didn't ask Santa for it!'.

We were able to go home on the afternoon of the 24th and it was so nice to get to spend Christmas at home. Christmas morning was a whirlwind of excitement (Santa brought Alex a nail polish kit and a crafting kit and brought Austin Skylanders video game system and a Leafs jersey) and then we drove to London to Grandpa's for Christmas dinner. After 2 days there, we moved to Nana's for Christmas number 3.

That's about all the news from us.

A few links for you to enjoy:

Our year in review flipbook

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Video of Alex at ballet

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