And today, she sings

Vani has never been much of a reader, or singer (she's absolutely tone deaf, so this is a good thing).  She will rarely sit through more than a few pages.  She's also not 'pretended' - beyond a few doll interactions.

Tonight, all is quiet.  For too long, which here is a danger signal.  I start panicking, and find Vani hanging out in a chair, for 30 minutes?  reading a book to herself.  Picks up another she hadn't read, tells a story about it.  Comes and sits besides and pretends to sing another book, to the (oxymoron) "TUNE" of jinglebells frosty abcd bo-po-mo-fo rudolf!  Never have I seen her entertain herself for so long.

Folks, we have found peace amongst the screaching.

Practicing our side ponies

2014 summary

This was a good year at the greatwey household, albeit busy.

Kivani is now 2.5 and has really grown into her personality and brings a lot of laughter and silliness to the house. WHY is the question of the day!  Vons' favorite thing to do is to have a dance party.  We recently signed her up for toddler dance and while she mostly stands around and stares in class she boogies the rest of the day once home. 

Riley is loving preschool and continues to be a gem. He still loves cars, planes and trains and is content for hours with Lego.  I'm rediculously proud of his biking ability and fearlessness on the trails, he's amazing!  Riles knows most of his letters now and is showing more interest in writing, reading.

Si is enjoying his job at sfu and bikes up every day. The trail has a well deserved name cardiac hill, so this is quite the accomplishment!  We recently pulled Vani from daycare up there, but until then he even did it pulling her in the chariot.  He thriving on the exercise, and enjoying the pace of the university jobs.  Si continues to amaze me with his patience, and imagination.  He can play with the kids for hours and is always the preferred play mate. 

I've recently moved to general manager for Western Canada and am learning how little I know.  It's great experience, but was a big step - basically running a $100M business, with 19 employees, you know.  I'm squirming a bit but every day becomes clearer, so I can feel some progress, and its just a matter of not screwing up too badly in the learning.  My fitness, social life and ability to form a sentence has gone to hell as there just isn't energy or brain capacity to handle these (I recently said to my close friend neighbour, whom I walk with 3 nights a week that you can't even tell she's pregnant - forgetting she now has a 3 month old that I've now held hundreds of times).  I'm hoping that sanity returns soon,

We have a wonderful nanny, Echo, who joined us from china, and has been an absolute blessing.  She has removed need to worry about the kids - when we get home they are fed, exercised, educated and proud to show off the crafts!  Echo only speaks mandarin to them, and they understand beautifully though she has to prod them to reply in chinese vs. english.  She's great about getting them out to the forest, strong start and park, and has been adopted by the other mothers on our street, so the kids continue with their social circle.   Echo has been invaluable in helping us to make the best of family time outside of work, vs. even having to pack lunches, plan activities, or clean when we get home.

All in all, a great year.  New years resolution 2015: Take a family photo!

  

Naughty Raffi

If you believed the way Vani talks, all we do is put her in timeout at the end of the hall.  "you so naughty, you go end of haw"

Turks and Caicos trip - Dec 2015

Super holiday, and great timing to get away!  I took a new job that has been stretching our family time (and my brain) thin since August, so this was much needed bonding time.

I just want to freeze time, they are just such great ages right now.  

Kivani independent enough to be fun vs. clinging yet is still baby enough that I just want to eat her (still slightly chubby baby).  Unfortunately, so do the mosquitos, and we took an extra 5 minutes to count her bites before bed tonight.  "look mama, anada one!".  She's growing into herself beautifully; Vani was a tough baby but has become a charm.

Gogo got her first "princess" dress.  Except Vani has high expectations:  MY a QUEEN!!

Riley is swinging more to the indepedent side (read: he only wants his daddy) but his smile just lights up any room.  He loves playing by himself (lego, cars, colouring) and is just a gem of a boy

They are even starting to play together. Hallelujah! (Of course as I say that, the screams start). 

We once again had a marvelous trip.  The garden there brings me great pleasure (picking papaya, oranges, granadilla, coconut, with more fruit trees now settling in!).

Riley and Vani both got to pick fresh papaya.  I forgot to take a picture with it still on the tree.

 Bananas

Simon loves the heat and pace there. Thanks to Gogo and Pops babysitting we even got to swim to the island almost every day. That is hands down my favorite swim ever. Fourty minutes with shallow snorkel over (mostly sand, some interest from small fish, shells etc). Then at the island the water is deeper and there's reef and schools of fish etc.

Uber-fromagio picture, but lovely, eh?  Those are the islands.
I'd planted this hibiscus last year, and its thriving.  I love how delicate it is.

The coconut palms in the sandpit are perfect height for riley to pick and are loaded with coconuts. Once husked, riley was even in charge of draining the juice. Did you know the coconut shell has three holes, two hard and one soft. Insert a pointy knife into the soft hole, twist and drain the juice.  As far as cracking the husk and shell, Alex can do it in 30 seconds. After five minutes I'm begging for a circular saw!

Coconuts and the kids sandbox

My poor dad finds my trips expensive as I keep making work projects in the garden (two trips ago it was our sandpit and coconuts, last trip the garden by the pool, which took almost a month to finish). Dad and his helper Alex now have the process from starting plants from cuttings down to a fine art and have a ~900 sq ft nursery of potted cuttings that to me is heaven - free garden shopping. 

Dads project. I'm proud of him for being so clever. This was previously a one story garage but he wanted an extra unit for a caretaker or long term rental to build on top. Building materials are reiculously expensive on island. Like insane. Dad was able to jack up the roof using normal jacks, and build up the walls beneath it on block at a time to keep the existing tile roof intact and got the project done in weeks instead of months. This likely saved over $100k. No one had ever done this on island, and there was significant negotiating with the inspector involved, but so cool eh?

He built a pergola over the carport and there's a passion fruit going wild there (you can see him training it in the picture).   The plan is to extend the pergola down to visually break up the wall of the garage
Here's the granadilla (passion fruit) plant, hard to see but this vine is bursting with flowers. We are hoping its a strong producer!

I continued to enjoy my walks, where I scavenge orchids from the bush.  Poor vani usually ends up walking home as I fill the stroller.

There won't be too many photos of Kivani since she was perma-nudie. However this was so cute. Riley fixing up his dune buggy (oiling the chain) while Vani cleaned the cover.

This is my dads hole.   As you do.  He's standing there for scale.  He's always looking for natural holes to fill with soil to plant high value trees (the rest of the ground is just corral), and this hole just kept on giving!  He's pulling out the (extremely precious) topsoil as they dig, and none of us can quite figure out what to do with it.  For now, just keep on digging....

Riley and vani were fascinated by my comment that they could hit China if they just dug a bit more.  Ni hau!

Some other randoms - this pic reminds me of SA.  I'm really enjoying getting to spend time with my parents in the turks.

My mom fostered two potcake puppies while we were there.  The kids ADORED them!

We went out to West Caicos one day for beach combing.  Found this awesome log (lizard heaven) and this cute little bamboo root (doesn't it look like a curious lizard?), and brought them home on the boat.  Thanks dad, for your tolerance.

I know I've shown a lot of garden pictures... here's the ones from last year at our rental house, where we spent WAY too much time digging, and took off the roof.

Same spot, this year.  I'm thrilled with how much better it looks.

Funny - here's a pic of us on the way there.  They made us pay for checked luggage, so we walked on loaded!

On the way back we even brought home a puppy for a lovely lady in Seattle, and had a flat tire on the stroller.  We had a tight transfer, and incompetent Delta agents... by the end it was "don't even think of messing with me" mode, and a full on sprint to the gate!