Summer is HERE! Get Ready for Some GIVEAWAYS!!!!!

I finally get to spill the beans!  The TestosterZone is SO excited to be hosting a WHOLE MONTH OF GIVEAWAYS!!

I’ll give you a second to stop cheering…!!!!

Alright then, let’s get into the details.  Check this out!

Each Monday during the month of July, we will be introducing our featured business.  Each business will be giving away one or more of their AMAZING products to a very lucky reader.  Draws will take place every Friday, with the winner being announced right here on the blog.  Super exciting, right?

These awesome businesses and artists are all local to our beautiful province (Nova Scotia) and are all hard-working, lovely ladies who create gorgeous products.  I am absolutely thrilled to have them here this summer to share their products with us.

Are you excited yet?  First contest starts July 1st with Simply Gorgeous, so make sure to bookmark this page so you can find us easily!

Happy Friday!

PS. If you are a business owner with a product you’d like to share with our readers, please contact me at info@lyndsaydoyle.ca for more details.  I would love to feature you on the blog!!!

Overthinking it….

I was over thinking again yesterday.

I was trying to come up with something fun for the boys and me to do after school.  We had a couple of hours to kill before going to pick up Ken after work, and the thought of being cooped up in the house while they wrestled, screamed and fought over toys just wasn’t appealing to me.  So I tossed them (gently) into the van and we headed into town.

I took the long way in and tried desperately to come up with a plan.  Chapters?  The mall?  Indoor playground?  No, no, no.  Everything I came up with cost mucho money and was presumably fight-inducing, which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place.

Driving through an ordinary city neighbourhood, I spotted a playground.  I saw a parking lot and some slides – good enough for me.  The kids were excited and I saw a way to kill an hour.  Win/win.

But then, it turned into something way better….

Near the playground was a walking trail.  Griffin saw it first, and his imagination drew us away from the playground and into the “forest” (a few trees).  We followed the trail up a hill and, lo and behold, there was a soccer field.  And you would think they had never seen a field before in their lives 🙂

So they ran….

…and ran, and ran, and ran.

Sometimes I put way too much thought into finding activities for the boys to do, when all they need is right outside the front door.  They don’t need fancy playgrounds, or new toys, or movies, or organized playdates with their friends.  Although these things are nice, sometimes they just need to run and climb hills and play in the dirt, you know?

Happy boys

And it gets better!

After a few laps of the field, we continued up the trail to find this:

A bike park!

See Griffin down there with the orange hat on?  When we climbed up that hill and he saw this, I can honestly tell you that I have never seen his face light up like that.  His big blue eyes had never been wider and his smile had never been bigger, not even on Christmas morning, not even at Disneyworld last year.

As a Mom, I am acutely aware of gender roles and the implications of pushing gender stereotypes on my children, in that I don’t.  I try to expose my children to all the good things childhood has to offer, regardless of if they are blue or pink.  It is part of my Mommy Mission to make sure my boys grow up with the sensitivity they need to succeed in a world where everyone will be considered equal.  I know we won’t see it in our lifetime, but at minimum, my children will be part of the solution.

But sometimes, I know they just need to run.  And I know that they are boys, and that some boys, like mine, are hardwired to love things like bike parks and dirt.  And as much as I don’t get excited by bike parks and dirt, I am happy when I see them happy.

“Oooooooh, piles of dirt”

***

And then we tempted fate and almost ruined a perfect day by attempting a family dinner at a real restaurant.  I think this photo says it all:

After spilling the milk, emitting screams pitched high enough to break glass and several escape attempts, we decided that Jace cannot go back to a restaurant until he’s at least fifteen.

***

When he went to bed last night, Griffin told me it was the best day ever.  It was my “reset” button and what I needed to hear to remind me that sometimes parenting doesn’t have to be quite as hard as we make it.  You don’t have to make a lot of money, and they don’t need a lot of stuff.  We all know that, but a lot of us just forget sometimes.

Sometimes they just want to run.

Are you there, Spring? It’s us, Nova Scotia…

Maybe if we wish hard enough, it will come?  All together now…

We had a quick glimpse of it last week.  Just long enough to trick us into foolishly planting some seeds in the garden, and turning down all the thermostats.  Silly us.

A taste of Spring

Mr. Griffin went off to school this morning wearing his big winter coat and his beach hat.  Season Confusion – a common affliction in our part of the world.

On the bright side though, there is a lot to be happy about in our part of the world.  Big congratulations are in order for the PEI branch of the Doyle family; new relationships, an engagement and a new baby on the way!  Yay!!  Happiness is finally making its rounds over there and I couldn’t be more excited for them.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a great summer 🙂

Happy Tuesday, hope everyone is staying warm today!

 

 

March – WTF Happened? With Crappy iPhone Pics…

I really didn’t intend to take that much time off from blogging.  First it was March Break, then a weeks’ vacation, and then Easter long weekend (I know, excuses, excuses…)  And now I have a million things floating around in my head that I want to share and I don’t even know where to start.  I can’t even begin to process what happened to March; it’s April now, and I feel like the entire last month has been a hazy blur of traveling and noise.

Here’s a super quick recap, with some crappy pics, so I can clear my head.  March Break was great fun for Griff and I.  We skated, painted pottery with our best girl, Taylor, pushed Jace around the house in a suitcase, and ate too many french fries.  We also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in there somewhere and made cupcakes and drank beer (me, not the kids).   I also managed to squeeze in a little light reading, and managed to learn a lot of new things about our cat, Keji.  He really is trying to kill us.

March Break was awesome, even though the weather was (not surprisingly) very crappy.  I think we managed to do a little packing in there too, because while Ken and I were planning an awesome week away by ourselves, we were also getting the kids ready to spend an awesome week at Nana and Grampie’s house 🙂  Hee hee!  And before you ask, yes, everyone survived, and they may have even had a little fun.  Grampie and Griffin spend hours in the garage making more, um, stuff, to add to Griff’s collection of stuff, and Jace kept everyone on their toes with erratic sleep schedules, random screaming and sudden mood swings.  Two is such a wonderful age, isn’t it?  If it weren’t for those squishy cheeks and hilarious things they say, well, I don’t know what would happen to all the worlds’ two-year-olds 😉

—

So, our vacation to Southern Utah and Las Vegas had been in the works for about a year and flew by way too quickly.  That’s always the way, isn’t it?  I think I’ll do a separate post about our trip, since there is just way too much to talk about right now.  I posted a couple of photos already on my Facebook page, you can check them out here.

I know everyone has different opinions on vacationing with or without your kids.  Here’s my take: You need to do both.  We love traveling with our kids and we daydream about all the places we’re going to take them someday.  BUT, sometimes, you need to get away from everything.  Just imagine a whole week, or even just a weekend with no diapers, bed-wetting, cleaning pee up off the floor, cooking, cleaning, picking up toys, crying, screaming, more screaming, slinging snacks, taking out the garbage, dog walking, cleaning up hairballs, or trying to figure out who barfed /peed /pooped / spilled juice on the floor.  Sounds nice huh?  It’s good for your head and good for your relationship.

But I also love the idea of bringing the kids along sometimes too.  I’m a huge proponant of kids getting out and seeing the world if they can.  Believe it or not, there’s a lot to see outside of suburban Tantallon 🙂  My list of thoughts on why traveling is so important is long enough to warrant it’s own post, so maybe I’ll save that for another day.  I’m not in a preachy kind of mood today.

So anyway, the trip was a success and we came home to happy children who asked to go back to Nana and Grampie’s house the next day.  I guess they’re more fun than Mommy and Daddy!

—

Oh, and Easter, that was good too.  We had our traditional Easter egg hunt with cousin Caelan and the neighbours.  One good thing about it being so cold this year – no ants in the eggs 🙂  We also had a big dinner with family and ate way too much candy (only one puker this year – yay!)

Who was it?  It was big brother this time.  We’re calling it a stomach bug because he refuses to believe he may have overdone it on the sugar.  He’s a sugar-denier just like his Mama, gotta love it.

So that’s it for now.  Back on track with regular posting for the next little while, I hope.  The boys are really looking forward to Papa and Memere returning this week from a whole winter in Texas.  Griffin even cleaned his room for them, so it must be a big deal!  And I know it’s only April, but we’re starting to look forward to a super fun summer this year too.  Bring on the sunscreen and bug spray – I love it!  Actually I just love any day that doesn’t involve snow pants and wiping snotty noses 🙂

Bye for now, Happy Tuesday to you!

Just add bunny ears 🙂

The Evolution of Kiddie Crafting

If you’ve been following along with us for awhile, you’ll know that we (particularly Griffin and I), spend a LOT of time making things together.  It’s our common ground.  I may not be great at having army battles, or playing video games, I can whip up a boat or an army tank out of paper like nobody’s business.  I love that I’m the one Griff comes to when he has an idea about something he wants to make, or when one of his homemade toys needs to be fixed.  And I totally love that he spends just as much time playing with his cardboard toys as he does playing with his yucky plastic ones.

Here’s the problem though.  I’ve created a monster.

His bedroom is overrun with his creations (I mean, they are everywhere), and I regularly catch him digging through our recycling bin to look for supplies for his projects.  I still feel bad about the day he was rummaging through our paper recycling bin and found several of his own items in there.  Oops.  (Parenting tip #231 – be more careful when throwing out your kids’ stuff).  Much to Ken’s delight, we even have people who save their egg cartons/bottle caps/paper towel tubes/cardboard/boxes/bread tags/popsicle sticks/corks, and deliver them to our house, because they know how much we use.  Hey, it’s art AND recycling 🙂

I totally love it.  BUT, there is a downside.  This is what our kitchen table now looks like full-time:

We now eat on the floor, picnic-style 🙂

I can put up with the mess, but this is what I’m struggling with… He doesn’t need me anymore.  All I am to him is the supplier of the goods and the wielder of the glue gun.  Gone are the days of scouring Pinterest for cool ideas and working together to create something amazing.  Now it’s, “Mommy, you need to buy more tape,” and “can you move?  I need more space.”

Sniff, sniff.

But I love his focus and determination, and how he works towards making whatever it is he sees in his head.  I even love moving all the furniture out of the way so he can make an epic-ly large castle for his G.I Joe figures:

Here is one side of the castle. He drew tanks all over it and put an electric fence along the roof to keep the bad guys out. Cool huh?

I am happy to put up with the crafty messes he makes, and the personal rejection because I believe so stongly in art for kids.  Music and sports come in a close second, but for me, art and creativity will always reign supreme.  It is problem solving, it is co-ordination, it is balancing and calming.  Like exercise for the soul.

And while Griffin is busy becoming an independent artist here at home, I’m not too upset that he may not need me as much anymore, because I’ve got another protege coming up through the ranks.

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our newest artist-in-training…

“Ooooh, stickers!”

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

How important is art in your home?  What kinds of things do your kids like to make?

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Happy Friday to everyone, and Happy March Break to the Nova Scotia kiddies!  We’ll be hanging around close to home next week if anyone wants to come over and build something.  BYO toilet paper tubes 🙂