Second Place for the WIN!

Sometime around Christmas I liked (on Facebook) a photographer up in Alliston who had taken some really cute pictures of a friend's kids.  Sometime in February I saw her ads for her kids photo contest.  This year she had a pouty face kids contest.  I thought it might be fun to enter it, but didn't really think too much about it. 

On the 9th Alice was playing with my glasses and wanted me to take some pictures of her, so I did.

After I took the last pic, I thought, oh my goodness, that pic is awesome!  Look at that pouty face!  The next day, the 10th, with a few hours to spare, I finally got a chance to send it in. 

The first round of the contest was a straight up popularity contest.  I petitioned friends to vote for Alice, and they did!  She came in fourth, but it was enough to get her into round two.  Round two was going to be judged by the photographer and two of her photography friends. 

I would have loved it if Alice won the whole thing, but there were some pretty cute babies!  Alice came in second and I was thrilled!  And of course there's the prize!  We get a free mini-session, which the photographer has said we can use for Christmas pics late in the year.  So excited!

Bounce

I thought since Alice was having her actual birth-day and her party on the same day, that giving her her present early was a good thing.  Tonight I waded through the snow to the shed and got out the trampoline.  It was a hit.  A BIG hit!

(A word about the awesome trampoline... I found this on a Facebook group - the Tottenham buy/sell/swap group.  I have wanted to get one of these for a while.  It was going to be a Christmas present, and then it was forgotten about.  I'm so glad I forgot about it.  It was the perfect birthday present!)

Oh and just because they are too cute - the girls in their Valentine dresses.

Stanley

 April 3, 1917 - February 8, 2015

This is the picture that Maribeth (Stanley's daughter) posted on Facebook today.  On Tuesday Mom told me that Stanley was at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto with heart failure.  He was 97 years old.  He would have turned 98 in April.  He was my Grandmother's youngest brother.  I had the pleasure of getting to know him in the last few years.  I interviewed him in May of 2006, and then saw him and spoke to him here and there.  We went out to lunch at Cora's when Kate was a baby, and we threatened to do it again, but it didn't quite happen.  The last time I saw him was at his 95th birthday party at Maribeth's house.  It was the night before I went back to work after Alice.  It was a lovely evening.

I spoke to Stanley just over a month ago on the 29th of December.  He called me to tell me thank you for the Christmas card, as he does every year.  This year I remembered to put our phone number on the bottom of the card.  (He has in previous years chastised me for not putting the phone number on the card, thereby making it very difficult to track me down!)  We chatted for a few minutes and he sounded great.  He said we would get together and go out to lunch in the spring.  I really believed we would. 

Stanley was very charming and very funny.  He liked to crack jokes and give out compliments.  I just found a recording (through the CMC website) of Godfrey Ridout's, Ballade No.1 for Viola, which was originally written for Stanley in 1938.  Listening to it is making me feel misty.  I must get myself a recording of this.  I wish there was one featuring Stanley. 

I love my family.  I feel blessed to have gotten to know Stanley in the small way that I did.

 

Stanley, Kate, Wendy, Alice - April 1, 2012.

And one last thing.  I feel to include his bio from the Historica Canada site:

Stanley Solomon. Violist, artists' manager, b Toronto 3 Apr 1917. After violin studies 1927-39 at the TCM (RCMT) with Luigi von Kunits, Vino Harisay, and Elie Spivak, he attended the Curtis Institute on scholarship, training (1939-42) as a violist with Max Aronoff, Louis Bailly, and Oscar Shumsky. During RCAF service 1942-4 he toured Canada and Europe as concertmaster and assistant conductor of the RCAF Blackouts review. He was briefly with the Baltimore, Columbia Music Festival, Columbia, and Toronto Philharmonic orchestras before joining the TSO in 1946. He was principal viola 1949-83, then principal emeritus until his retirement in 1988. In 1991 he continued to play with various Ontario orchestras (including the Hamilton Philharmonic) and as a studio musician. Solomon was a member of the Parlow String Quartet 1946-58 and of the Hart House Orchestra 1954-68, becoming manager of the latter in 1966. His Stanley Solomon Concert Artists Management (1963-9) represented such Canadian artists as Howell Glynne, Hyman and Erica Goodman, Sheila Henig, Daryl Irvine, Mary Simmons, Steven Staryk, and David Zafer. He began to teach at the RCMT in 1986.
Solomon's children, Maribeth and Lenny, have had careers in music in pop, studio, orchestral, and jazz settings.

I was going to

I was going to send out Valentine Cards...

Being Twenty Months

I decided to do a day in the life...

This morning didn't go exactly as planned.  After I dropped off the sisters at school, we had a very, very leisurely breakfast.

Eventually we made it to the community centre for the drop in and play program.

After the program, we picked up Alice, had snacks in the van and then went grocery shopping.  Fiona was woken up to pick up Kate from school.  When we got home the girls wanted ice cream for a snack, and I actually said yes.

After dinner Fiona "helped" me do dishes.  She is obsessed with water right now.  

Then there was play in the basement.

She watched some videos with Dad - another favourite pastime right now.

And then I tried to take her twenty month picture for the twentieth time... not so much.  

Life with my twenty month old (and almost four year old, and six year old) is crazy and busy and non-stop and I wouldn't change a thing!  (Except maybe add a few more hours to the day!)

Hello Snow

Just when I was thinking, oh, there isn't very much snow...

A Party in Barrie

Kate had a friend party at a play place in Barrie - Smart Moves.  Once it was established that Greyson was in fact a "very" good friend of Kate's, we decided we would all go.  Some play places shut down so that it is just the party people in the place, and others have party rooms.  This was a party room type operation, so while Kate could play with the party friends, she could also come back and forth to us.  Fiona, Alice, Kate - they had such a great time.  I did too.  (Ken went shopping at No Frills and did not have any fun.  Sorry Ken, thanks for taking one for the team!)

The place is STEM themed - science, technology, engineering and math.  It was a really fun place.  I hope we'll go there again some time.  It was fun!

The Closet

If you come home from a really nice double date - awesome restaurant in Orangeville - Forage, with my sweet friend Kim and her hubby, and you can't find Alice, because she isn't in her bed, and you panic a little, but you calmly look a few places, but she isn't anywhere, but then you remember seeing a pillow in the closet earlier in the day, you think, hey maybe she's in the closet??????

And she was.