letter to Santa

Zoe's class wrote a letter to Santa (Pere Noel) .... and this morning we prepared to walk with her class to put the letters in the mailbox.. I put on Zoe's running shoes, due to the long walk and promise of sun... but she looked at me funny and got our her rain boots... she said, "Mom, I need to wear my boots, we are going to the north pole."

I told her that was too far away, and we should let the post office handle it.

she was a bit perplexed...

Dying

For some reason Zoe locked onto dying tonight as she was going to bed... She cried and cried and said she was afraid of dying.... Something about remembrance day came up, about people going to war and she said she did not want to die in a war.  Then she said she was afraid of her Daddy dying in a war... "doesn't he have a military uniform? I saw it in a picture."

Wow... Hard stuff to help her process... Hard to let her talk it out... I just wanted to make it go away... But I did keep her talking until she was done... Then helped her to think of happy things...  I hope it sticks...

--
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"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."
Chinese Proverb

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Dr. Amy Ashurst Gooch               http://www.csc.uvic.ca/~agooch
Assistant Professor                 amy.a.gooch at gmail.com
Computer Science                    amygooch at uvic.ca
University of Victoria              agooch at cs.uvic.ca             


   (250)-483-5941    (Canada)
   (801)-649-3923    (SLC Virtual)
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ProD Nov

ProD day Novemenber
18 Evie tries her hardest to copy.JPG (image/jpeg) 310K
 13 Skating on carpet is far less scary.JPG (image/jpeg) 277K
 14 Messing around with Evie.JPG (image/jpeg) 325K
 15 Belly laughing with Evie.JPG (image/jpeg) 284K
 16 Evie is about to get hiccups.JPG (image/jpeg) 275K
 17 Blowing games for Evie.JPG (image/jpeg) 300K

Photos - 2nd e-mail

Photos including a ProD day

12 Zoe asks for a photo to show her pink top.JPG (image/jpeg) 246K
 7 Helping out with baking.JPG (image/jpeg) 283K
 8 I could just take a little taste.JPG (image/jpeg) 298K
 9 I know she said no eating but.....JPG (image/jpeg) 282K
 10 Peer pressure...or just plain mischief.JPG (image/jpeg) 274K
 11 The ladies hit the make up.JPG (image/jpeg) 317K

is it true (commercials)

Zoe was listening the radio in the car as we were heading to pick up Finn.. and she heard a radio's commercial.. the kind where you do A, get a chance at a trip to Jamaica... and Zoe asked (demanded), "Is it true"?   She really, really wanted it to be true, that the "you can win a trip" was meant for her...  I forget how desensitized we are to the "you" part of advertising.. Zoe really thought they were talking to her.

shot

Yesterday at noon I got a call from Zoe's school.. she had cut her hand on the fence and they wanted to make sure she had her tetanus shot up to date... she was due for her 5 year old shots, so after school Bruce took her.  She was amazingly brave.. did well (unlike the last shot which too her a year to get over... she would whine -> hypercry anytime we got near the doctor's office)...  she was quite sore today.. the cut was a scratch, but they were worried about the fence none the less.

keeping up the tylenol...

Skip it

Zoe is in love with "skip it"... She usually borrows one at school, and now finally has her own...

She played last night before dinner, after dinner in the moonlight, and again before school...

Halloween

We had a very busy day... Finn went to Evie's and Zoe went to school.. Andrea took her crew (with Finn) to downtown Oak Bay.. a quaint little business street where the businesses hand  out candy from 3-5.. it was nice to be out during the day light hours...  Luckily she got to dress Finn..  

From

Zoe Bruce and I got dressed in my office at work

From Photos

Zoe was really worried about the black hair,  because Wonder Woman has black hair.. so I bought one of those cans of spray color.. what a mess!
but we did cover the top of her head... and my hands trying to smooth her hair down..

 Then we zoomed down to met them at Starbucks.  Zoe was very nervous.. and didn't want to get out of the car.. I think her system gets overloaded with nervous/excited and sometimes she can't differentiate between the two.. but once our feet hit the street and we started filling the bag with candy, she was in her element.

From Photos

From Photos

Zoe and Finn are in love with superheros, so this year's theme was in the queue months and months ago.
I have been grabbing super hero movies.. they watch the 2009 Wonder Woman all the time
we have several books and read them at night...  Finn was Thor and Zoe Wonderwoman.
Knowing my Zoe and her need to keep pure to character, I did manage to get tights on her, but no shirt.. thankfully the capes worked..

We also meet up with her two best friends:

From Photos

From Photos

We tried some Trick-or-Treating on the way back

From Photos

At 5 we went to Asha/Kirsten's house and was spoiled by delicious real spanish omelets made by Sabine (I need to learn to make), pizza, and loads of candy.  After fueled up, Zoe, Asha, Claire with Lise headed out the door.. too impatient to wait for us and we lost them... Bruce Finn and I went door-to-door but only caught sight of them once, but they were really far out. 

 We just did the trick-or-treating (Finn Bruce and I) ... At one house, Finn found a tire swing.. it was so cool to see him swinging with his wings flying..

From Photos

and then on the way back towards the bon-fire at Oak Bay Firestation, Finn tripped.. I picked him up, took him for one more door of candy, and then on the way out I feel, sprung my ankle, scrapped my knee, nearly landing on top of Finn with him in my arms, but cradled him and he didn't get hurt more... we were kind of getting tired, so we headed to the bon fire.. Finn got to hold the fire hose ... three times...

From Photos

From Photos

then we went back to Asha/Kirsten's and tried to get our sugar coated kids back out the door to home... after a long bath to get Zoe's hair back to blonde ... Zoe was asleep by 9, Finn 9:30...  (and both up at 6:45am!)

prehalloween

Every morning for the past month, the subject of Halloween has come up..

Finn would wake up most mornings and say: "It is Halloween day!!!"

Last night Zoe was so excited (nervous), she slept in her black clothes (it was only wear black and orange to school today)

she didn't have any orange so I had to make a pumpkin to put on her shirt

then my sewing machine freaked out.. I had to attach it with double stick tape and a few hand stitches

my first major sewing project was a triumph however

I made the kids capes to keep them warm

found this great red with shiny star crepe material

 then backed it with red polar fleece

 I made the cape from scratch, making it up as I went

 it worked great