MyTwintopia

One of the things that got me back to churning out blog posts was a recent dig into the Mytwintopia archives. I had just measured the twins for their 5th birthday stats and read somewhere that kids height at age 2 doubled will be their final adult height. I scratched my head trying to recall how tall Sugar and Spice were at 2 and ended up on their 2nd birthday posts. The nostalgia! Back then, I didn't imagine a time would come when my memories would be blurry. However, as the years have rolled by, the memories have blended into one big glob of happiness in my mind so I'm really grateful and blessed to have things recorded and documented on this blog. (Speaking of documentation, Johanna is queen and she's building one heck of a memory book for her twin girls.)

So we celebrated the big 5 last week. I had initially planned on the girls having their first birthday party at age 5 but with daycare friends behind us and kindergarten friends still being too new, I put that off for…

It feels like it's been a lifetime ago since my last post but it's only been 6 months. 6 months of soooo much going on that I find my last post to be quite poignant. The picture in that post is my dad with Spice. It's one of my favorites ever. 
My dad passed away in August. It's been a few months now but my feelings are still so raw that words are inadequate; no words can fully convey the mind-blowing pain of losing a loved one. Especially someone as incredible as my dad. He put so much effort into being the best parent that he could. My mind was blank for the first couple of months but now I see reminders of him everywhere. The twins just turned 5 and for the first time, there were no birthday cards from Grandpa. Outside of the card from mommy and daddy, the card from grandpa was the only other sure one for their birthday. I could have a verbal projectile vomit right now and just keep writing about my dad (it's therapeutic too) but I'll stop here for now and mo…

I've just returned from a very short 6 day trip to Nigeria. I went alone. As in without the girls. As in I left my babies for 7 whole days!!! I think it was harder on me than on them but it had to be done as I really wanted to see my dad who's health has been quite poor lately.

The 46 hours of travel time plus the situation got me thinking about parenting beyond the first 20 years. My default parenting setting seems to have stopped at getting my college-graduates to move out of the house. The end! I've never really thought about my dreams as a parent when my kids are in their 30s and 40s and I'm knocking the door on 70. 

A little under 2 years ago, I read a blog post and was motivated to make a shadow box for my twins with their sorta-first dress. I found the shadow boxes on sale at Michaels, bought one for each girl and took them home. 

And they stayed in the basement for 18 or so months until this weekend. This weekend, we had junk removers come in and haul away the pile of crap we had in our basement and garage. In the midst of sorting out the must-keeps from the true-junk. I found the shadow boxes and supplies and decided it was now or never. I chose now.

Spring is finally here in Western Canada and pretty soon, the trees will be brimming with fresh berries. History shows that I left my green thumb in Neverland so I've graciously given up the dream of having a garden or at least a potted plant where my kids can pick fruits and vegetables. Not gonna happen in this era. My face-saving and still-fun alternative is to take them to a U-pick farm somewhere around Calgary. 

If there's something Calgary is not lacking, it's a plethora of farms nearby offering everything from CSAs, to Upicks to hosting birthday parties. Here is a listing of the farms that are within decent driving distance of Calgary and offer Upick.