Celebrations

This weekend we celebrated Amy's Mom's birthday, along with Heather C and Rob D's birthdays.  We also had a very belated Christmas gift exchange for the kids!  Zachary was counting down the days for this weekend as he knew that he was getting more gifts - oh the excitement! :)

We started off the celebration with Mom and Aunt Louise coming over for lunch - Amy tried out two new recipes - veggie burger roast (yum) and crockpot scalloped potatoes (very yummy when made properly!).  Unfortunately she went awry somewhere in the scalloped potatoes, so that was a little less than she had hoped for, but at least edible! :)

 After naps, the kids headed off to the park with the men and the ladies headed to Deiningers to put dinner together.  We had the pleasure of the Oliver family visiting from Sebring, so it was fun to be able to catch up with them as well.  Lisa made a delicious cheesecake to celebrate the birthdays, and delectable potato salad and roasted potatoes (to go along with grillers and taco salad).  We ended the evening with the gifts, and a quick tour through the Cochran pictures of their trip to New Zealand - beautiful! We definitely will be adding this to the future Zbaraschuk travel "bucket list!" :)

As a way of spicing up the fun of our blog, we decided to include a riddle this week and perhaps next.  Then, we'll provide the answers in a few weeks - so don't post an answer comment on the blog as we don't want to make the answers too easy for everyone else!  So this week's riddle is "What bakes in an oven but does not get eaten?"

Phrase of the week:  Kaleb is struggling at home with putting on his sneakers every day (even though he does it with no problem each day at Miss Jennifer's!!!!) when Mommy asks.  One day was particular difficult, resulting in much whining and fussing with him saying pitifully "But Mommy, it is just really, really, hard for me!!"  Then when she tells him to put his finger at the back of the shoe to hold the back from getting pushed down with his heel, he cries even more pitifully and holds up his finger in a pathetic bent fashion in front of her face to say "But Mommy, my finger really, really hurts!"  AHHHHH.  The child totally has Mommy's "number" and doesn't want to be responsible for even such a small task as putting on his shoes!  Our two children could not be much more different as Zachary knew how to put on his shoes (demanding to do it!), knew which foot they went on etc, at a much younger age.  Zachary's phrase this week comes from his sweet willingness to help out a 'bro' from time-to-time - getting exasperated and putting on his shoes for him, getting his vitamins for him, helping him with all sorts of tasks.  He looks up at Amy and says in an exasperated voice "Ugh, I have to do everything for Kaleb!"  Amy informs him that he does NOT need to do any of those tasks for his brother (and she's never asked him to help) but that it is awfully sweet of him to help out his brother.  Perhaps we should cut off all assistance - maybe that would help Kaleb get a march on! :)

Playing hockey with Dad - much to Zachary's delight, he "won"!

Sankey Sojourn

We had the pleasure last weekend of having Aunt Elaine and Uncle Murray come to visit Florida.  It was so fun to catch up and visit with them.  Zachary and Kaleb were intrigued to ask them questions about their bison, and of course see pictures!



Going for a bike ride with Uncle Murray

Reading a Canadian Wildlife book with Auntie Elaine

We spent the day at Seaworld on Sunday - the entire day, which was kind of fun as we don't do that very often, so we were able to catch almost all of the shows which was a real treat.

Missing Karis, and Kaleb's face is dark, but Zachary was not in a "photo-mood" so we took what we could get! :)

Kaleb on the other hand was pleased to take pictures with Uncle Murray!

Ready for the Shamu Show

Best Seat at the Show - talk about riding in luxury!

Karis headed off for his second "male only" ski trip in Utah on Saturday, so Amy and the kids are batching it until Wednesday. We went over to Cochrans yesterday as they offered to watch Kaleb while Zachary was in Adventurers, so that was fun. Today we headed to the zoo to spend the morning with Deiningers, Hilliards and Cochrans. The weather was perfect, so we were really blessed!

All the kids, but Kieran is perfectly hiding behind Kaleb so he's not visible in this picture.  Bad photographer! :)

Kaleb and Kieran plotting their path through the zoo on the map

Phrase of the week:  Mommy, I prayed to Jesus that my head wouldn't hurt because I didn't take a nap today, and it worked! :)  Yeah, thank you God, it is awesome to have some "yes" answers to prayer to help teach your children about the power of prayer!

New Year's Whimper

Well, instead of welcoming in the new year with a bang, we definitely welcomed it with a whimper.  Amy had a four day weekend off, so we joined Bergherms and Hilliards at the Science Center on Friday, which was very fun.  The kids had fun at the bug excitement, the cars activities, the dinosaur floor, and of course eating lunch at the Subway! :)  One scary moment, we lost track of little Maddie and couldn't find her anywhere.  Beginning to panic, Amy prayed and no joke, turned around and there was Miss Maddie - where we had just come from.  Thank you God!

We then went downhill, thanks for nothing.  Saturday the boys both ended up getting fevers, which weren't anything much to write home about other than it wrecked our plans to go with Hilliards to SeaWorld for New Year's Eve.  Bummer.  We were up part of the night off and on - not from celebrating but from listening to our neighbor's fireworks going off - even until 2:30A.  We know this as we were up with Kaleb, whose fever woke him up at 2A.  Why do people think that it is acceptable to still be sending off fireworks at 2:30A??

The highlight of the weekend was that we opened presents with Grandma.  The kids thought they had reached nirvana with all those presents to open and play with!

Monday, Amy ended up falling prey to a severe head cold - probably from the lack of sleep from the weekend.  The boys recovered nicely and Amy has marginally improved each day - with several days being in quarantine to try and keep the boys from getting the cold!

So all in all it's been a relatively quiet week, although the big event is that Zachary has a new bike!  It is two sizes bigger than his last bike, so our fingers are crossed that this won't end up in a broken bone, but Daddy believes that he can handle it just fine.

Phrase of the week:  Inhale breath, tilt head up into the air, put index finger on pursed lips and say "Hmmmmmmm."  Not sure where this new "trick" has come from, but both boys now have picked it up.  It is funny to watch, so we parents have a hard time keeping a straight face! :)

Holidaze

This was the Zbaraschuk family Christmas - and we celebrated together in fine style up at the farm.  We spent a total of 10 days there.  When we landed, there was NO SNOW on the ground in Saskatoon, which caused a bit of panic for one Zachary but thankfully as we drove the 2 hours to the farm, by the time that we got there about four inches of snow blanketed the ground.

The kids had a FANTASTIC time playing with their cousins Emily, Connor and Kaylie.  Kaleb adored Kaylie, and immediately began referring to her as "my little friend" - they were too cute all week playing together and laughing.  As the house is large, there was a lot of running around but the kids also went outside a few times each day to sled.  We were fortunate that the weather was quite mild, and the kids could be outside as much as they wanted.  In fact, we had a couple of times above freezing!  Who knew!?

Korey and Rachel joined the family there, so we had all of the Zbaraschuk brothers together. It was fun to catch up with everyone, REST, read (okay, that is just Amy's favorite thing to do), and play.  There was entirely too much eating (Lorie is much to blame as she kept making Amy's FAVORITE Ukrainian dishes!!) - in fact at one point Rachel and Amy were comiserating over the level of pain that we were experiencing as we kept over-eating at each meal! :)

We went to the bowling alley the first Sunday that we arrived, and it was quite fun as Kaleb was big enough to play.  It was 5 pin bowling where the balls are small, so the kids could actually bowl without too much difficulty.  They also have a small rides/activity area there, so we headed over to the bumper cars, bounce house etc afterwards for some final minutes of fun.

With the sun not rising until about 8:45ish, Kaleb treated us to several mornings of a post 8AM wake-up and Zachary did his very best to sleep until 7A each morning (pretty good for Mr. Z, so we'll take it).  The parents however stayed up playing games and working on puzzles, so we did not cash on on the extra sleep as much as we'd like! :)

Phrase of the week:  Grandma is the luckiest person I know.  Why is that Zachary?  Because she lives where it snows!  Kaleb's phrase occurred after he bumped his head on the headboard of his bed.  He looked up very worried to Amy and said "Am I going to lose the rest of my hair?"  Poor kid!  No you won't sweetie!  On that note, we should give an update that his hair appears to be growing back fast and furious, of which we are SO THANKFUL!

Korey and his Dad enjoying some relaxed time on the couch!

Playing "Up and Down the River"

The kids wrestling with Uncle Korey

One of our delicious meals

Playing with the very cool car track - the kids got the hang of it fairly quickly.

Holding hands with his "little friend" Kaylie - so precious!

The whole family

Grandkids and Grandparents