leap day leap day!

Despite the number of should-dos on the list tonight, I thought I'd better get to the blog before February runs out - I even have an extra day! I love the Google image today, full animation here:

Does a day go by without a Google visit? For any readers? If I go online I visit Google... I'm pretty sure that's a given. Anyways! Steve just walked by me with a bowl of last night's dessert - which was ah-mazing, and I'll give you the recipe link here; Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake WITH ice cream, delicious. We had the Duerdens over for dinner so I doubled it up, and though I did cut down on the topping pre-boiling water, I could have done a bit more cutting as parts of the sauce/cake were a big too sugary. Anyways, you won't be disappointed if you make it... yums yums yums.

So after beating Guelph in the quarter-finals on Saturday we're in the last two weeks of season; we go to Toronto on Friday for semi-finals vs. Ryerson and then hopefully a Saturday night finals repeat of last weekend's match against Toronto. If we beat them, we've earned a ticket to Nationals in Brandon the following week - which would be AMAZING, and there's no reason why we can't do it. Toronto is strong, but we're strong too, just lacking some of the consistency they're able to display match in and match out. Steve heads to Hamilton this weekend for the men's OUA tourney, so Gram and Gramps are in town to hold down the fort with the kiddies. Hendrik has been pretty glued to Steve, asking him to do everything with him (sometimes for him) - and he insists that Daddy does things that I could very easily do (pour him milk, help him get his jammies on - while Alana is doing it all on her own). I'm not foreseeing any problems with the g-parents here as the kids are already excited about the upcoming visit.

The last few weeks have been a serious struggle with sleep, so a night away will hopefully mean at least one night of solid sleep for both parents (away at hotels in separate cities). Hendrik was pretty sick last week with a weird flu bug, and Alana has been up between 1 and 5 times every night with dreams, fill-my-water-bottle demands, and/or intentions of sneaking into our bed in the middle of the night. I had to lay down the law and put an end to the sleep with me thing because both kids were doing it and we'd end up waking up bleary-eyed-exhausted with four of us in the bed, or two or zero, and it was way too exhausting. The trade-off is this; once a month (or ???) we can do sleepovers with the kids but ONLY if they sleep in their own beds during the week. So after a few days of successful alone sleep by the little dude, the boys had a sleepover in the living room on Saturday night and Hendrik fell asleep while watching a hockey game with a HUGE smile on his face. Thought I should have been in bed (Alana was unaware of the sleepover) since I've had a pretty bad cold/cough, I went out to meet up with some basketball friends, and it was great to see them, great to talk about plans for next year's World Master's Games (the plan is to go and play bball and repeat the gold medal the team earned in Torino) and great to just step away from mom/school/family for a few hours. 

Steve finished the floor in the kitchen and it looks great - but we don't have before pics! After pics are below:

new tiles going over old ugly stickies

ta-da! it looks SO much better in there!

We're starting to think about summer plans, and it looks like we'll stay fairly close to home, with a few trips to the cottage (hopefully), Bowmanville, maybe camping, and maybe Chicago (or somewhere close-ish). Both kids are signed up for baseball, Hendrik is in soccer (starting in May), and Alana will do a spring gymnastics and possibly a soccer something. My beef with the programs that are offered is that they're ALL at that time when the kids (especially 3-year old Alana) will be close to hitting the pre-bedtime wall. Three-year old soccer at 6:30? Ugh! We're undecided, but the enthusiasm was running high after some living room soccer (with a volleyball) last night - until Alana threw it at the TV. We moved the sports down to the basement where we continued with some tennis, volleyball lessons (Hendrik and Alana were the coaches), and then came the major meltdown when Steve left for his Sunday night hockey. We survived, but it wasn't pretty; I think it was a combination of fatigue and a sugar low after the chocolate pudding cake ice cream chowdown. 

in her new bathing suit - she's loving her swimming lessons

Anyways, this is getting lengthy and I have schoolwork to get to and some vb stuff to do - I'd better jet. It's been beautiful here but I think it's supposed to snow again tomorrow... winter isn't over yet!

looking grown up in his new glasses