Family update

(I appologise right now for my spelling and grammar. If it bugs you, file a complaint with "blogger" about their spelling and grammar check. it's not great lol)

Boy! It has been a whirlwind month for us in the Harder household. I should probably back track though, since I haven't written one of these for a while. i'll toss some random pictures from the last little while throughout the post to keep you interested!

Summer with a sandbox and retro tractors galore!

This summer was fantastic! Really. Not a negative thing to say about this summer. The boys loved it. They played outside almost every day, including the rainy ones. Curtis built a huge in-ground sand-box around a play structure we scored off kijiji. we stocked up on old rust-bucket tonka trucks, and thats all you need for a flock of happy boys!  I had fun in the garden, and curtis...well... he found trees on sale in july.... so like...15 trees later!!! haha! We planted plenty of new trees in somewhat strategic places (for curtis's master-plan for building a deck and an addition... its a 10-year-plan lol).
3 apple trees, 2 lindens, 3 elms, an oak, 2 maples... I'm missing some now...but lots!!

Sammy always finding a new way to play

We also started to tame our out-back (Curtis is not a fan of that name lol), the back 1/3-ish of our yard that was farmer-field. Curtis mowed it regularly to help grass grow in, we tilled and planted a bunch of berries (Saskatoon, raspberries, strawberries) and a couple sour cherry trees. The idea is to keep the wasps behind the tree line. And in the fall, Curtis dug up a bunch of ditch-pine's and planted those around the perimeter. So we'll see if those took or not! I also popped in some acorns and silver maple sappers... who knows what'll come back! :)

My little garden thieves all summer long!

 The garden was a blast for me. Switching from a small square foot garden, to a large in-ground garden was a big adjustment. Luckily I find weeding somewhat therapeutic, and I took on my mission with the thistles like an Olympic athlete... But more on that in my gardening blog to come! :) The boys loved it, and I'm hoping to grow green thumbs in them yet!

Josiah started preschool in the fall

 Josiah started preschool in September which was a big change for us all! R O U T I N E! something I hadn't had in 4 years! So that took some adjusting, but it's been good. He was so excited and proud.

Another big change was christmas. We declared our claim over christmas morning, as family time. That was such a good idea!

Opening Stockings with Daddy

We were very relaxed and enjoyed our low key time together. It made the other gatherings more enjoyable too, knowing we had special time set aside for our own family time. Our Christmas was pretty basic and simple, but that's what made it special. I also did a pretty involved advent activity with the boys so that stretched out the season, and helped teach Josiah what it was all about.

 

Finally a decent family photo!!

 Kaiser turned 1 year old just yesterday! :) hard to believe this big dummy has been with us for a year already. He's smart enough to love and dumb enough to love lol! Definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed, but still a German Shepherd, so easily trainable and fiercely loyal. He's a big suck though, so dont let his size throw you off. Kaiser passed basic obedience prior to going insane with hormones. He's levelled out since then, but has developped a pretty serious tail-chasing problem.  I'd be worried ,but it's not like we walk him or give him anything to do all winter so.... we really brought it on ourselves. We're getting him a "special new collar" ;) to help jolt him out of it when he starts his spin-cycles. So far, we've gotten as far as training him that I personally dont like the spinning. So he doesnt do it around me. Its mostly when he's excited about something like the kids going down the slide, or the snowmobile turning on, etc... He's also had 2 $400 ear infections...which has been a real pleasure... :( so on those two notes, we've decided we'll fix him this summer. Not breeding material, but we love him to bits!

Our very own snow dog!

 Josiah's birthday also happened in January! We've had his friends party a couple weeks ago, and his family is coming over this weekend to celebrate. We did a snowmobile party, and it happened to fall on that gorgeously warm weekend! And since we live outside wpg, we still had enough snow! The kids and parents spent hours outside having fun.

Snowmobile birthday!

 Josiah wanted banana pops instead of cake (if you've never tried it, you have to! Freeze halved bananas with a popsicle stick in the cut side. Once frozen, dip in melted chocolate. I swear, you never need ice cream again...you're welcome!)

Josiah turned 5!

 And that brings us roughly to now! Sammy has been a fun little trouble maker lately. I feel like he's phased himself into "terrible 3's" a little early. He's gone from ignorant cave-man defiance, to willful and intentional defiance. And with such a strong will and personality, it's been a bit of a trick. Josiah was a follower, and his personality worked well with our parenting style, but we'll have to change things up for Sammy since he needs more control to function properly. It's all a work in progress.

He's potty trained though! And it was a cake-walk! I dont take any credit for that though. It's just straight-up his own independence that made it so easy.

The most recent thing on our plate was kindergarten registration for the fall! Being outside Winnipeg presented it's own challenges like figuring out our catchment schools, busing etc... Curtis ended up taking a day off work so we could take a tour of our top 3 schools. Dugald (french immersion), Oakbank (our catchment) and Calvin Christian (on the table for obvious reasons). We really haggled back and fourth over this one, and ended up choosing Oakbank, because it was over-all the best school from what we could see. The academics were high, lots of supports and resources, excellent music program and growing opportunities, a high focus on moral values, and (somewhat irrelevant to the decision) a Ukrainian language program! Weird right? well...

Josiah at children's museum with his new best friend from preschool.

Haha! We put Josiah in the Ukrainian program! Neither of us speaks Ukrainian, and it's not our  cultural background (other than what the Russian Mennonites stole from the Ukrainian culture). It's nothing like french immersion though. The principle said that by grade 5, maybe 10-15% of the year is taught in Ukrainian. So it's a much slower learning curve and there's also a focus on the culture. So they do lots of cultural field trips and events to learn about the culture. We thought this was a neat little addition since it still grows the language part of the child's brain without being an overwhelming immersion experience (which some kids are fine with, but i'm hesitant about, knowing josiah's personality, learning style and academic level currently). He will still take basic french, so I'm curious how the dual-language-learning will go. we may end up just putting him back in english for grade 1, but we figured it was worth a try! :)

well, that's about it, other than me eating dairy/nut-free Keto, but that's not terribly exciting, just difficult. It's just my "next thing" (i've come to terms with it... I'm a "thing-doer"... lol). I'm working on what I suspect is a "leaky gut" issue by eating keto (look it up... too complex to sum up what it is lol), plus eliminating dairy, nuts, caffine and vinegars other than ACV and citrus juices. Sounds specific and random but it's not. Basically the idea is to not consume anything that could cause inflammation in your gut for 3 months, take some suppliments like probiotics and magnesium to help tend to the gut and let it heal up, and then former food intolerances, and body aches and pains should disappear with the return of those foods within a healthy intestinal track. Hey, it's worth a shot, and if it doesnt work, it was still good for me in the end. :)

Thanks for reading! Have a good night!