Back to School… In October 27/10/2015

Dad – Okay, so we’re a bit behind with our family news, but for those who don’t already know, all the boys (even Ethan) headed off to school this fall.

To celebrate they all got fancy haircuts.

Dad – Ethan wouldn’t let me take his picture, and he put his hood up for the family photo, but trust me — he looked just as handsome.

Dad – On their last day of summer freedom, we went for a hike at St Ignatius. The boys climbed trees and played havoc. Ethan wouldn’t let me take his picture. {I hope you’re noticing a trend here.]

Dad – Jayden walked with Dad to his first day of kindergarten. He was quite excited (though he asked my quite seriously a few days later, “Dad, how long does school last?” and I had to inform him that it was probably something like twenty years).

Dad – Our other exciting family news (which I left until last only to let you enjoy it longest) is that the boys have two new little baby cousins. First, my step-sister Rachel had a little girl named violet

Dad -Then Jaya’s sister Anna had a little girl named Simone.

Dad – We certainly did need a couple more girls in the family. Now if only we could get one of our own…

A Busy August 02/09/2015

Dad – We had our friend Aiden stay for a week this August, so we did some extra special things. First, we went to the climbing gym.

Marlon – I went to the top of all of them, and I went right on top of the boulder.

Jayden – I went up past daddy’s head, and then I jumped.

Dad – Then we went zip-lining at Elora Gorge.

Marlon – I went first, and I got to go two times because I got stuck half-way and they had to start me over. I was hanging in the middle for like ten minutes.

Dad – Or maybe thirty seconds.

Marlon – Ten minutes.

Dad – Aiden went too, but his ride was much less eventful.

Dad – When Aiden went home, we went to Manitoulin Island for a week. We stayed in a cottage near Manitowaning.

Ethan – We went in the kayak. I was probably the fastest kayaker because I could reach over the edge properly. Marlon was a good steerer, but he couldn’t make it go straight when he went fast.

Marlon – I found the most fossils. There were lots of fossils.

Jayden – I found some too. And I put some in the car, but they got lost.

Dad – On the way home from the Island we stopped to have a visit with Marlon’s foster family. They brought a great picnic and we spent some time playing at the beach.

Marlon – I didn’t see them for a long time, and their kids were way bigger.

Dad – But the coolest thing of the summer happened while I was on my trip to Killarney with my brothers and we saw a northern water snake eat a catfish minnow bigger around than it’s own head. It was like National Geographic live.

Summer Fun 10/08/2015

Dad – We went to camp last month, our last year directing Inter-High, so we decided to go out with a hill-billy bang, including a hoe down, a hootenany, and a old-timey country fair that the perm staff put on.

Marlon – I did bobbing for apples in a pool of oatmeal.

Dad – A pool of oatmeal that had been sitting in the sun with twenty other people’s faces in it. It was disgusting.

Marlon – It was awesome.

Dad – There was also face painting, but jayden chose to get his arm painted instead.

Jayden – It’s a cat, and it’s on me. Somebody else put it on with paint. They didn’t get any on my pillow.

Dad – We also had a birthday party for Marlon at a trampoline gym.

Marlon – I picked it because it totally keeps us out of trouble. And you can bring your own food there. And we brought our own Rolo cake that I made. Well, that Dad made with me. And there’s some left still, because it was huge.

Jayden – You can jump on the foam there, and then you dig down to the bottom. Dad said, “Get out so other kids can have a turn,” but he couldn’t get me because he had his shoes on.

Ethan – I was trying to bounce on all the trampolines in a row with only one step on each. Only Anyk and I could do it.

Marlon – You can play dodgeball too, but nobody could get me out. I was jumping so high, and then I would catch the balls in mid-air.

Marlon – It was pretty much the awesomist birthday. I just ate junk food the whole day. And Gaterade. And I watched movies with Dad til the middle of the night. Next year I’m having the same party, because I’ll be bigger and I’ll bounce even higher.

Catching Up with the James-Hill Family 09/07/2015

Dad – We’ve had lots going on this past while. Our little Marlon got to meet his birth dad, Big Marlon and play some soccer with him.

Marlon – Big Marlon played goal, and I scored on him every time.

Dad – Every Time?

Marlon – Well, sometimes he stopped it, and sometimes I scored.

Dad – Jayden has been going on a fort building spree, which almost always involves the cushions being torn off the furniture and everything rearranged in increasingly complex configurations. It also sometimes involve traps so that we can, you know, split up and catch the monsters.

Jayden – That’s Fred. He says, “Split up.” I’m Fred, because Fred loves Daphne, and I love Daphne too. And I say, “Split up and look for clues.”

Dad – Ethan has been doing what he always does (and as I always did as a kid, because, well, genetics) — making fortifications to replicate (vaguely) WWII battles. He has nothing to add to this, because I didn’t ask him about it, because he would just tell me not to post about it anyway.

Dad – We also went to about five different block and neighbourhood parties this spring.

Marlon – I did dancing. And Jayden got naked in the pool.

Dad – Both true statements. Here is Marlon dancing —

Dad – And here is Jayden in the pool (with clothes restored) —

Dad – I’ll leave you with this unnecessarily long video of Jayden asking to be filmed jumping of an electrical box and then taking he sweet time to do it.

African Lion Safari 03/06/2015

Jayden – Uncle Cory and Brandi took us to African Lion Safari. We went on a bus, and we got a movie. You get one for free. You don’t have to take them out with your hands. [I have no idea what that means.]

Jayden – We saw some kangaroos jumping. [He hops for the rest of this paragraph.] And there were some monkey son a playset. And a giraffe. And a rhinoceros. And lots of animals.

Ethan – The rhino stopped in front of the bus so we couldn’t move for a while.

Jayden – Then we went to a show. A man did something. He probably did something. Then he went on the elephant.

Ethan – There were actually two elephants. There was a big one and a little one. The little one played soccer and basketball. It could actually dribble.

Springtime 30/04/2015

Dad – Spring is here, and so we’re doing spring-ish things. We took a trip to a maple syrup farm with our homestay student Marin and her friend Shiharu.

Marlon – It was cold, but the syrup was worth it.

Jayden – The syrup got on my fingers.

Dad – We also started planting a little bit. We put the kale in because it’s pretty frost tolerant, and then I checked the long term forecast, and we decided to risk planting the bean and peas.

Jayden – I dug the whole with the little shovel, and then I put in three beans, and then I covered them up. Dad only did two-three-four holes. I did lots.

Dad – We also put a new bike rack in the garage, so now there’s no reason to leave bikes laying around the yard – in theory.

Marlon – Hey! Sometimes kids have better things to do.

Dad – Like?

Marlon – Like talkin’ to the ladies.

Jayden – Or you can put a blanket on your head and be a ghost.

Marlon – Jayden, that’s not even what we’re talking about.

Jayden – But you can be a bacon-ghost, and then you can turn the robots into bacon when they attack, and you can eat them, and they’re defeated. (Which is when I’ll cut the conversation because, well, where do you go from there?)

Birthdays and Waterparks 01/04/2015

Dad – March is birthday month for Jayden and Ethan. For Jayden’s birthday we went to Playworx with the Duncans and had icecream. We also had an icecream birthday cake.

Jayden – My cake was giant, and it had jujubes on it. The jujubes were hard to bite because the icecream made them frozen. Ethan got one stuck in his teeth.

Dad – The Duncans gave Jayden some playdough that he promptly applied to his fire trucks.

Jayden – It makes the wheels faster and the sirens louder. Way louder.

Dad – Jayden also discovered that he can hide on top of the shelf unit, with just enough space to take a nap.

Jayden – That’s why the zombies can’t find me there. And I have a gun to shoot them too. See? The gun’s right there. It’s Ethan’s gun, but it’s okay for me to shoot zombies with it.

Dad – For Ethan’s birthday we rented the soccer dome and had thirty odd kids wear themselves out before cake. It was a triumph for the birthday boy in that he scored a goal, but a tragedy in that his team lost.

Ethan – And mom stole the ball from me at the end, even though she was on my team.

Dad – So it was a terrible birthday?

Ethan – Well, I did get some Magic cards, and one was a planeswalker, and… [Dad has cut several minutes of Magic cards talk here in order to keep this post a reasonable length and to save everyone’s sanity.]

Dad – Marlon did not have a birthday, but he wanted a photoshoot anywway. Here he is, dressed to the nines, looking very GQ, a look spoiled only by the crumb on his lip that I told him to remove but that he deliberately left for the camera.

Marlon – I don’t care. I like it.

Dad – We also went to a waterpark for Family Day, where we went down the waterslides half-a-hundred times, which was a real demonstration of love on my part, because I dislike rides of all kinds and go on them only to make my kids happy. I’ll leave you with a few watery shots:

Engine 08/03/2015

Dad [Coming down the stairs in the morning.] — Hey, Jayden, let’s go get some breakfast.

Jayden [Sitting on the couch.] — I can’t.

Dad — Why not?

Jayden — I can’t move. Something’s stuck in my engine.

Catching Up with the James-Hill Family 07/02/2015

Dad – We haven’t done a good job of keeping the site up to date lately, but here’s a taste of what we’ve been doing over the past few months.

Marlon – The Duncans came to visit. We played nerf at Exhibition Park and played on the new playground. The new playground is so dangerous. I almost fell off. It’s awesome.

Dad – Ethan went to St Ignatius with the Matheson-Moores to walk the labyrinth and go for a hike.

Marlon – We went to visit a native longhouse. I got to get out of school. I had a choice, and I chose to go to the longhouse. We saw some kids passing a lacrosse ball there. The longhouses were made of wood and bark. There was one big bed per family, and lots of families lived in the same longhouse. The kids’ job in the longhouse was to climb up and get food and stuff from the top of the longhouse. That is very dangerous. This picture is of some bones in the longhouse.

Marlon – We went to visit baby Mya at Christmas time.

Dad – Though she’s not exactly a baby any more.

Marlon – I got to play video games and eat junk food.

Dad – The most important things in life.

Marlon – And then we went to a Christmas party at Aunt Marilyn’s. Actually, we went to like fifty Christmas parties. We were booked right up.

Dad – Misaki, our homestay student, went home to Japan.

Marlon – We had pizza, because it’s Misaki’s favourite. I didn’t want Dad to take my picture, so I hid, but Dad was waiting and took my picture anyway.

Dad – Sucker.

Marlon – Hey! If you call names you get a time out.

Dad – Jayden spent his Christmas money to expand his fire truck collection (many, many of them not shown). He likes to line them up as barricades across doors. When asked why, he informed us gravely that it was to keep the zombies out. Which is fair I guess.

Falling Leaves Race 23/09/2014

Jaya, Ethan, and Marlon all participated in the Falling Leaves cross-country race this past Saturday in support of Bracelet of Hope. Jaya ran the 5k, finished with a respectable time, and raised over $1500, but the Bracelet of Hope has not yet reached its goal of $40,000, so if you’re interested in contributing, you ca do so here – http://fallingleavesrun.braceletofhope.ca/ng/index.cfm/9931/regPages/pledge/jaya

Ethan and Marlon ran the 1k, their first ever cross-country race. Jayden, too young to enter, pouted at the starting line.

Ethan finished strong, coming in 7th.

Marlon finished a wee bit later but was the only participant to run part of the course backwards and to dive roll down the hill.