Family Life – Page 24 – a hippie with a minivan

Khéna's birthday in pictures…

Making decorations the day before…

and birthday hats the morning of…

Grandmaman (Simon’s mom) brought over a game for the boys to play…

hungry, hungry frogs!

Two of the gifts that we gave Khéna are kitchen/food toys so we brought the toy kitchen in from outside and cleaned it up… both Khéna and Colin had a renewed interest in it and spent quite a bit of time making tea and other treats…

Here are some of the decorations that the boys made the day before… Paper chains are so easy to make and look so nice and festive around the house…

Cake time!! I made my favourite Chocolate cake recipe… (the corners got accidentally squished but no one cared but me)

Khéna was so excited at blowing out the candle and us all singing the birthday song…

Yay!!!!

The two Grandmas with the boys… (my mom is on the left)

Looking at one of the new gifts… (Xavier picked this one out)

Playing with his new Helicopter…

It was really a great day…

The boys played and had tons of fun with their two grandmothers here, we ordered Pizza and had cake and all the presents were perfect for Khéna and we know that he will enjoy them for a long time to come…

It was just a perfect day altogether…

Looking back…

Today was the last day that Khéna is 2… tomorrow he will wake up a three year old!!

It’s amazing how time passes fast…

From this…
(10 days)

to this…
(1 year)

to this…
(2 years)

to this…

Love you little man… good night, and I’ll see you when you’re three!!

Smile…

There are times that one of the greatest tools of parenting is a simple smile.

a smile to show that you are there, that you are all ears … A smile that welcomes.

one that shows that you are paying attention…

that shows that you are there and that though a situation may be tense, you accept that their feelings are real.

that shows that you are ready to listen without judgment.

that shows that you respect them and are interested in what they are doing.

There are times that moods can be tense and anger is building and words can only make things escalate but that small smile diffuses the situation, lets tears come though and brings a child to your arms and makes their feelings finally come through…

It is such a small gesture that can say so much…

Shiv Chopra

I listen to a local (Montreal) talk radio station on almost a daily basis… when I am cleaning or doing things around the kitchen or cooking…

The H1N1 coverage and all the hype has been really getting to me though so when I heard one of the hosts introducing her next guest to talk about vaccines I rolled my eyes but decided to listen in anyway… what I heard surprised me. Not what was being said of course, but that he was saying it on the air, on a show who’s host is completely vaccine crazy usually…

After hearing the interview, I needed to know more about this guy and I really want to get my hands on his book on of these days.

Dr. Shiv Chopra is a former Health Canada scientist and “whistleblower”. He has a M. Sc and PhD in Microbiology and a degree in veterinary medicine and has been the recipient of many academic rewards including a fellowship of the WHO…

The interview started as normal but then he took over explaining H1N1 and how not dangerous it is and then went on to talk about vaccination in general… pretty much stating how it is a 50-60 year human experiment, how they have never been proven safe or effective, how they cause autoimmune diseases and just don’t work…

Here is the interview… it is really worth the listen!

(I have to say that I love how she sets up the interview and then is completely blindsided… live radio at its finest) I wish I had the second part also but they didn’t put it up… but it was him answering questions from the host and callers…

If you are interested in hearing more of what he has to say, look around his website, there is a lot of great info, I especially like the interview video from the Pimento Report which explains a lot of what he has done and what happened with his career…

Since hearing him, I have definitely been keeping an eye on what he has been saying.