Hop-a-long Dash and his sidekick Spaghetti Christine

Here's a couple of shots from dinner time tonight of our local hero Hop-a-long Dash and his sidekick Spaghetti Christine. Tonight they battled a local rustler that was after their fixins - she was quick (and furry) - but they were quicker and it wasn't two shakes of a lamb leg before she was lassoed and presented to the proper authorities for disciplinary action.

Congratulations Aunt Boo

Christine and Dash would like to extend their biggest congratulatory hugs to their Aunt Boo tonight for getting her first permanent teaching job! Although they'll miss their occasional weekday visits they are very happy that Kathleen will have be able to afford both her new car and lots of presents for the two of them as well :)

Happy Birthday Truman!

Happy Birthday Truman!

We must have been napping on the job because we forgot to wish our good friend Truman a very, very Happy Birthday today. Our favourite little man around the town from T.O. turns a great big 1 today, here's hoping you had a great day with your awesome parents.

A Magical, Mysterious Visit

Today we had a visit from some very special friends of Christine and Dashiell. First above you can see that our friend Queen Erin of Etobicoke came to visit with her royal entourage. Now she also brought her little Princess Maja with her as well but unfortunately due to some unexplained camera issue we failed to get a picture of her little highness. We were lucky enough to find this older photo of Maja Potter sitting on her magical flying blanket (it wasn't flying at the time of course, there were too many of us muggles around).Christine and Dash pulled out the stops in trying to out-costumed our guests (all this hoopla and it isn't even Halloween yet). First Christine got out her bunny ears and showed us her best bunny impression - now with hopping!

Then Dash got into the act and put on his night-vision goggles to complete his camouflage outfit - what the heck? Those aren't night-vision goggles! What was he thinking?

Pirate Attack!

Today we were attack by an angry band (of two) pirates. They were relentless, they were evil, they pillaged, they destroyed our home - then they cried.

Party Time

We had a crazy party weekend and boy are we ever pooped (some of us are literally pooped, but I'll deal with that when I'm done catching you all up).

Saturday we headed to North York to attend our dear friend Truman's first birthday party. The party was monkey/jungle themed and we all went bananas for the wonderful food and the most amazing birthday cake I've ever seen or tasted (Truman was very lucky to have his Aunt Tina cater the party for him - if anyone is looking for a caterer I highly recommend her). There were lots of Christine and Dash's little friends in attendance and everyone was so well behaved and they all had a great time together. Below you'll see a picture of the adorable birthday boy at his party.

Directly from Truman's party we headed to Etobicoke to attend our dear friend Maja's first birthday party. Although the rain forced us all inside for awhile we had a great time playing with the many, many kids in attendance. Christine and Dash were very well behaved - although their parents were a little accident prone and both Ben and I managed to spill our dinners all over ourselves (in separate incidences, about 5 minutes apart - we're very classy folks and unfortunately are never invited back to Erin's). The birthday girl looked beautiful in her very pretty dress and was having a great time with all her friends and family.

Below you'll see a picture of Maja with the winner of The Adventures of Christine and Dashiell's blog contest for our regular readers, this lucky reader won the honour of her picture being posted on the blog! Okay, honestly this is Maja's grandma (and Erin's mom) Margo with Maja, she is also as mentioned a regular follower of our blog, thanks for sticking by us Margo!

Sunday afternoon we headed to North York for a great big combined party that was celebrating our friend's Mark and Tracy's new son Samuel, his sister Kelly's baby that will be arriving in December, his parent's milestone birthdays this year and his dad's amazing recovery from a life threatening illness. The party was beautifully decorated and catered with lots of balloons that Christine immediately began collecting and carrying around the party to everyone's amusement. Christine also got to play with her friend Timothy and the other kids at the party while Dash was content to sit and watch his surroundings.

Here's a shot of Mark and Tracy with their new son Samuel.

Here's a shot of Sam's big brother Timothy and Christine enjoying a hug from each other.

And here's a shot of our little girl Christine with her great big bouquet of balloons.

Happy Birthday Maja!

Happy Birthday Maja!

Christine and Dash would like to extend their very sincere Happy Birthday wishes to their good friend Maja who turns 1 today! In honour of her big day they both learnt how to say Happy Birthday in Croatian for her, so here it goes (don't mind their pronunciation skills) Sretan Rodendan! Hope you have a great day!

The Invention of Toddler Ball

Christine and Dashiell hosted an afternoon BBQ this afternoon for some of their little friends (and their parents were invited as well). Truman (age 1), Ethan (age 3), Olivia (age 1 1/2) and Jamie (age 34) all had a bunch of fun playing on the swings, running around the backyard and eating some hotdogs and burgers. They also invented some kind of new little kid game involving running with multiple balls and yelling - above you can see Ethan, Olivia and Christine playing it - let's call it Toddler Ball.

Here you can see Truman playing Toddler Ball - he's in the process of getting his team a point by biting the other team's ball - good job!

Watch out! Christine's in the end zone and is going to score a record 10 points for her team by holding the ball above her head and throwing it over a nearby animal - she'll make the all star team for sure if she keeps this intensity of play up!

In the end the game of Toddler Ball was very close and had to be judged by an impartial party who could not play in the game - Dash (as he's not yet a toddler - also babies are exempt due to excessive spitting-up). So Dash climbed the judging tower to get a birds-eye view of the field and declared it a tie, this was a very intelligent decision as no one could quite remember who was on who's team. The game then ended and everyone ate pie.

The First Cut is the Deepest

Today was another big first in Christine's world - her first haircut. Although she doesn't have much hair the hair that she did have was getting quite scraggly and needed trimmed. Here's a "before" shot of our little girl prior to her Spa Day.

So off we went to get it cut, a very nice lady named Flora did the honours and Christine was very well behaved - frankly I think she was intimidated of the stranger using sharp instruments around her head.

And here she is showing off her new 'do. Isn't she pretty? (I'm not biased in the least).

Dash came along with us for the ride but found the whole experience less than entertaining - he did however find his Jolly Jumper extra-entertaining and jumped up a storm for about an hour this afternoon. (One hour of entertainment for a 5 1/2 month old = priceless)

Who Knew Fanny Packs Could Be So Much Fun?

Christine, Dash and I headed off for a play date today at Erin and Maja's house along with Maja's friends Alina and David. We (as always) had a great time and the kids had tons of fun running around Maja's really bid backyard. Christine found a fanny pack in the toy box and insisted on wearing it the whole time we were there - who knew they could be so much fun (even if they aren't so fashionable these days).

Dash was a good guy, although he did get a little fussy at the end of the visit - and of course he spit up on several of Erin's blankets and toys (sorry about that, and for the time before, and for the time before that).

Here's a shot of our two lovely hostessess with the mostessess - Erin and Maja, thanks for a great day.

HRH Christine and Humpty Dashiell

Her Royal Highness Christine has been very busy of late trying on her many headpieces and making royal decrees such as:

• All uneaten food by HRH Christine shall be passed on accordingly to Lady-in-waiting Molly the dog
• The Queen Mom (me) shall push HRH Christine indefinitely on her swing-set
• HRH Christine shall make all rules governing bath-time including those regarding a time limit and whether or not the water should remain in the bathtub or not.

It's hard to argue with such a demanding monarch, but it helps that in the end I always win by putting her to bed when I want to - ha ha, take that!

In other news Dash has just begun to sit up by himself for any amount of time without help - it's so adorable and I can't believe he's already doing this, it seems like yesterday Christine was at this age. He's getting quite good at it although he's still having some Humpty Dumpty moments and tipping over, he's a photo-journal of such an occurrence.

First Ben (you can see his hand) steadies him for practice sitting,He seems to be doing alright in the beginning, although he's starting to lean to the side,
Then it's all over and he's down for the count. Such a shame.
With some time, patience and some crazy glue we were able to put him back together again.

Dashiell Potter and the Curious Toddler

As you can see above Dash has turned into quite the little wizard - his wand of choice? Why plastic drumstick with black nubby things on it, I'm not sure what Ollivander would make of this. Of course he's an underage wizard so he can't do magic outside of the house, but you have to believe me that his skills are incredible - his best spell is Spitupis Alloveris.

And here's a picture of the Curious Toddler aka Christine. She's curious about everything these days - who's on the phone, what's out the window, what does the stuff inside our printer do (this investigation resulted in us having to buy a new printer this week) and what is Mommy doing in the bathroom. I now cannot even go the bathroom without Christine trying to get into there with me to see what is going on, and frankly I don't enjoy the company, I'm definitely one of those goes with the bathroom door shut people, but trying to explain this to a not-quite two year old doesn't really work.

Another day at the Zoo

We're back from another great, but hot visit to the Zoo. We piled into the family roadster this morning and headed off to meet up with our friends Jerry, Michele and Truman, and Ryan, Rebecca and Jake. We started off in the splash zone with the kids, and although Christine had fun looking at the animals spouting water (fake animals that is, not real ones, I think there would be some kind of liability involved if they used real ones), Christine was not impressed with the cold water coming at her from all sides - I guess she's gotten used to the warm water of Grandpa's pool and won't settle for anything less.

So at the zoo we (of course) saw a bunch of cool animals, here's a shot of Christine admiring the giraffes.


Then we headed off to look at the seals - they were definitely the hit of the day and Christine just kept on saying "whoa" whenever they swam by her.

Then we visited these animals (yes there are two there) - anyone have a guess what they might be? First person to response in the comments with a correct answer will win a prize! (assuming I know you of course and you aren't some kind of crazy stalker or something)
Update: here's a hint for those of you still trying to figure it out - it's native to Australasia and is a marsupial
We have a winner! Congratulations Aunt Boo (Kathleen) for identifying the Tree Kangaroo, the two below are a Mommy and her Joey. Her chocolate prize will be hand delivered sometime this week.
After the zoo we headed back to Jerry and Michele's place for a picnic lunch of pizza and beer. Dash got a little hungry and since he's too little to eat pizza yet - he decided to have a liquid lunch, hey I hear it's good for what ails you!
Finally we stopped by for a swim and some dinner at Grandpa's on the way home, another busy, fun day under our belt.

Dinner for Two

Well now that Dashiell has begun eating some baby cereal (with limited success) dinner around here has gotten a lot more busy and a lot more messy. Witness the photo above of our two kiddos resplendent in their messiness.

Dash as you can see is quite content to smear his cereal all over his face and body, he somehow thinks he has to use his fists to shove the cereal in.

And Christine (not be outdone) eats her spaghetti more independently now, albeit more messily as well. She decided to give me multiple unsolicited hugs during dinner as well as stick her orange fingers in her ears, apparently mine and Ben's dinner conversation was not up to par.

A Busy Couple of Days

We've had a busy couple of days around here. Yesterday we had my old friend (meaning she's been my friend since high school, not that she's old) Karen come by for a visit with her kids Avery and Evan. The kids had a great time playing together on the swing set and even managed to "capture" a monarch butterfly for examination. It was great to get together with Karen and we will have to make sure we get another chance soon. We managed to wrangle the kids into a group photo before they left, picture below is Evan, Avery, Dash and Christine.

Ben has been really busy installing our new over the range microwave (our old was giving off sparks, not something you want with a microwave unless you would like to grow an extra head or two). Since he was in busy handy-man mode this afternoon Christine and I went outside to play in the backyard with some water and the hose in an attempt to cool off in this crazy heat.

Then Christine decided to help me out with some gardening by watering my plants for me - thanks kiddo - you're doing a much better job than your BFF Molly to dog does when she "waters" my plants.

What was Dashiell doing while Christine and were outside? Well he was helping out his dad with his handyman work. I'm sure that a very cute 5 month old jolly jumping nearby is just what Red Green would have ordered to get the job done right.