End of summer!

I know it has been pathetically long since my last post!  Yikes! 

Here's what's been happening:  Ellie LOVES grade 5, mostly because she LOVES her teacher!  It makes me so happy to see her just bouncing everyday after school.  Makes me realize how even more difficult the last 2 years were for her than we thought.  She is just THRIVING! 

She is also about to become EXTREMELY busy with various things, Choir, two musical theatre classes (at different schools) AND piano.  But I would rather have her at activities 4 nights a week than on the computer or in front of the tube. 

Ayana is just exploding with her words now, I mean she is just saying different stuff all of the time.  She LOVES to help with everything, unloading the dishwasher, sweeping (with her own little "vroom"), she feeds the dog now (that's her job), dusting, you name it, she loves to help!  She is also SO GOOD at putting her stuff away!  I am enjoying it while it lasts!  If something drops on the floor she picks it up and puts it back, she cleans up after herself as in napkin (or "mackin") on her face, or if she spills it's "I do it."  Everything is "I do it."  And if she gets stuck she'll say, "Help you?"  SO CUTE!  She is starting to sing little songs with us like ABC's and Twinkle.  And of course she sings a few songs from our favourite CD that we listen to endlessly in the car, "Jack Johnson and Friends", the Curious George soundtrack. 

Potty training took a major back slide.  I tried it for one day and then realized that my week was jampacked with appointments I could not change, and so we went back to diapers.  Now we have a full on rebellion and she will not even tell me when she needs or HAS gone #2 like she has for over a year.  I have now stopped talking to her about the potty all together as I think she is going to be very stubborn and not want to if I attempt any potty shinanigans.  In hind site (and I KNEW I would feel this way) I should have went full on potty training last year when she started telling me about her #2 business.  Stupid stupid me.  Too late now.  Sigh. 

She hops, she skips, she still has some tantrums but they are getting less and we can kind of gauge when one is brewing.  Most of them seem to happen when her and Ellie are fighting.  It's brutal.  Those two can be the most loving sweet little girls with eachother and then BAM they are screaming and yelling and fighting.  I had no idea how stressful that was!  I thought parents just kind of lived with it, but now I see why parents go berserk when their kids fight.  As Ayana gets older it will get better.  They both just know the right buttons to push with eachother for sure. 

As for work stuff things are picking up in a major way.  THANK GOD.  Several things are going on.  Regan has been doing some freebie independant stuff as DP camera op, which is FANTASTIC!  And he will be doing some shooting for the TV show "At the End of My Leash" which is a locally shot reality show about a dog trainer, basically.  Also, there are 4, count em, 4 shows coming.  And as is usual for Calgary they are all shooting at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME!!!  Which means that everyone will be fighting for the same shows, and we have to pick a show instead of the shows running after one another and spreading the work around a bit.  Which sucks.  But on the upswing I have already had a few calls for work and it looks like I will probably working on a show shooting in November for one month!  Regan has kindly said he would stay home so I could work, eventhough he makes more money than me, I really need to work.  Not just for my sanity, but also for my career stability.  I have not worked for 2 years, and have had to say no to a half dozen shows since then.  Eventually people will stop asking.  In fact I lost out on finishing up working on Heartland because I was unable to work a daycall and they gave it to someone else who is now finishing the show.  That would have been about 5 months of work. 

Anyway, I don't want to work that much anyway.  Unless, of course Regan wasn't able to get work, then of course I would.  But I love being home.  I just like working a LITTLE bit, and then I can settle back into my routine.  A job I DID get, though, is teaching Film workshops in schools with a company called "Directors Cut".  They will work around my schedule and I can work as little or as much as I want, and my work day would be only for 5 hours.  We'll see.  I love kids, to pieces, and I love film.  But today as I was getting stressed out with my kids, I thought, do I really want to work around kids and then come home to kids?  Not sure.  We'll see how it goes.   

I am also the newly appointed Industry Rep for the Reel Fun Film Festival, which is the Kids film festival in Calgary that runs in February.  This means that I am responsible for coordinating and bringing in colleagues of mine from the industry and showcasing them at the festival.  If you visit their website you will see them advertising that on Feb 15th, which is family day.  We will be having an interactive Film Set running, with professionals running an actual set filming an actual scene.  After we run it a few times we will then start taking kids from the audience who have lined up to then run the equipment and run the scene themselves!  With their film industry person by their side.  We will also have Movie animals there doing a demo, special FX makeup doing demos, we have a props master flying in from Vancouver to do some cool stuff, as well as (hopefully) we will have a Stunt Demo as well with some stunt guys doing a stunt fight and then doing an impromptu workshop with any kid volunteers who would like to learn how to fake and take a fake punch.  Oh, and I also have a movie reptile guy coming to show off some of his more famous animals, like the two snakes that were in the Jesse James movie. 

ANYway, that and my book blog means I am suddenly very very busy.  But it is all good.  Tomorrow Regan is working on a commercial and I am going to be taking the girls somewhere fun, like Lake Louise and Banff.  Not sure. 

I will try to keep more up to date on my posts, if anyone is still reading them! 

:)