Auntie Date

Last Week Rach and I surprisingly found ourselves with some extra time to play! Her volunteer shifts at the hospital hadn't started yet and my temp jobs were on relapse. We were planning to go to the beach with Meliss and the boys but the weather (oddly) didn't cooperate. So instead we gave Meliss some editing time and Rach and I ventured out with the boys to the children's museum on an Auntie date! It was a blast! There was so much to do and so many exciting things for them to explore in this two level children's playhouse. It was definitely built for them! Julian had a pile of pennies in his pocket that he had taken from the penny jar at home before we left. How fortuitous! They had an awesome spiraling 'toy' penny spinner (and place to donate)! He noticed how you could get two pennies going in different directions and watched penny after penny go through until he used them all up!


There was a ticket booth nearby that Jack and Christian adored, which allowed entrance into the theater where there was a stage and costumes!

Their favorite was an airplane to play in! Caleb and Julian played pilots and Jack and Christian joined in!




On the lower level there was a water table, puppets, a pretend restaurant, and so many other toys. Christian got excited about the mystery doors with different latches that had clocks and other gadgets behind them to explore. What a fun day!



We’ll have to have try to have an Auntie Date in Edmonton with the Schneider boys too!

Sunday evening, listening to the rain

Welcome: Sitting by an open window, listening to the rain trickle and thunder sound.
After a hot day, this cozy freshness is more than welcome.

Unwelcome: our neighbour who sounds like he has tourettes syndrome. Shouting and hollering without anger or violence, kind of just a habit, a hobby. His noise rudely interupting my symphony of rain like someone hacking and coughing through the moonlight sonata.

This is also how I often feel as a stay at home mom - my days brimming with generous portions of both the welcome and the unwelcome.

Mommy Photos

For awhile I've been kind of sad that I don't have very many photos of me and my kids. Since I'm the family photographer I'm not usually in them, and I'm just not very good about asking people to take them. My friend Lindsay is a very talented professional photographer, and also one of my fellow Joy School moms. She's about to move to Australia, so I asked her if we could get together at the park and take photos of each other with our kids. It was really kind of her to agree to it, because she just got a brand new camera that is totally amazing and so our pictures turned out extra special. I was really happy to just have some nice photos, and I couldn't believe how great they turned out! (I think hers turned out pretty good too) and had a lot of fun editing them. I did my entire page for my 'Project Us' week on the photo shoot. I figured it was OK since I'm not in very many of the weeks to have a one with a bunch of photos of me. I will treasure these photos always! It was so fun to get ready for the shoot. I actually got up early and spent all morning ironing and trying on different combinations of outfits on the boys. In the end I decided not to have us matchy, but just wearing a whole bunch of layers with lots of different colours to reflect how different we all are, but in the end I think everything kind of worked together in a colourful, funky way. It's such a fun time of life! Hard, but fun.

Caleb was my little helper. He loves to help me- whatever I"m doing, he wants to do it too. I try to encourage him as much as possible (although sometiems that's hard)

In A Western Town

As many of you already know, I've been trying to get a movie in production for the last couple of years. Its a western (a genre I particularly love) and I think its a really great script. Its called THE PRODIGAL and I love it. It has gotten very good feedback from a lot of people and I feel really good about its prospects, but I haven't yet had much success getting any recognizable actors attached. I decided to try to shoot a kind of teaser trailer for the project in August up in Santa Clarita. I'm attaching some pictures here for your reference.





I'm very excited about it. Hopefully it turns out well and helps us to push the thing into production. I'll keep you posted as things progress.

World Cup 2010 update - who's in the lead???

The group stage of the tournament has now finished.

There have been lots of upsets, including 2006 world cup champions Italy and 2006 runner-up France both finishing last in their groups!!

One of the best European qualifiers Serbia is also heading home early along with another strong European team, Denmark.

Some interesting things and a quick summary of our picks so far ...

• everyone picked Italy to go at least as far as the quarter-finals!!! a costly mistake for all of us in terms of overall points as it turns out
• most of us picked England and USA to advance and finish in that order. No one however picked the USA to finish ahead of England as it actually happened
• kudos to Meliss and Linds in Group D, the only two to get their Group D picks spot on
• commiserations to Dad and Jordan, who both thought we had a perfect Group C (England and Slovenia in that order and the only ones not to pick the US to advance) until the last minute dramatic US goal against Algeria completely ruined that order and put the US in first
• Japan was the only team of the 4 teams in Group E that did not get a pick from anyone in the pool to advance! it turns out however that they did advance to the next round
• our most successful Group was probably Group H - we all picked both Chile and Spain to advance from that group
• but the prize so far for most unorthodox pool (that is still doing pretty well) is ... Char!! Char was the only one in the pool to correctly pick Uruguay to advance (while also correctly predicting Mexico to advance at the expense of France, as France was also picked by many of us) and was also the only one to correctly pick S. Korea to advance. She also has one of the very few picks seeing Paraguay to the quarter-finals, which isn't looking like such a bad pick at this stage either.

So the results of the group so far ...

1. Goo and Mom (tied for first place) 155 points

closely followed by

3. Char & Rico (tied for 3rd place) 150 points

5. Beej 145 points

6. Ian 140 points

7. Woozie 135 points

8. Dad & Jordan (tied for 8th) 125 points

10. Melissa 120 points

but as it's early stages and more points are awarded for later in the tournament, anything could still happen. all of the winners we picked are still in the tournament so will keep everyone posted.

The Griddle

Rico came to visit and Rach made her way over for the summer so we went to a new Schneider favorite- the Griddle. There wasn't as much of a dilemma as Ian and the Pizza in making it my new favorite because there is so much variety with the pancakes and they are so GOOD!! They are very creative. Yes, Juniors can take back seat. One thing about them that's hilarious though is the size of the portions!!! Oh my gosh! The first time I went I polished off only 1/6 of the food on my plate! Here are some of the final percentages we achieved after our dining experience. Rico scored highest.

Rico 67% Pancake 33%


Linds 25% Pancake 75%


Rach 20%, Pancake 80%


Fun times were had by all :)

America's World Cup Fever

My family is a big soccer family. All of us played for a number of years growing up, I did a little coaching and some reffing. I'm probably the least educated in the sport out of my siblings, but, on average, we're way more into it than most Americans. I got excited this week as America got through and on such an exciting goal by Landon Donovan. I saw this video from a sports bar in Nebraska of the reactions of the crowd watching the game. I've never seen anything like it before. Definitely worth watching.