Christmas is here!

The gifts are wrapped, the cookies are baked and fun has been had! Now we wait. I cannot believe that Christmas is 2 days away and I don't have to go near a mall. This must be a first. But it is true- we are now officially just waiting for the day. The girls are so excited- they are bouncing off the walls, this is awesome to see. They have the spirit of Christmas all over them... We have completed most of our holiday traditions and so today we will have to try and find a new one as it will be a long day if we don't do something with these wound up children.
Merry Christmas to all- hope it is wonderful.

October came and went!

Wow- the time sure flies when you are having fun. My girls were so excited for Halloween- they had their outfits picked out early in the year and could not wait for the day. Luckily this year Halloween stretched over 2 days for them. The 30th was the day they celebrated at school- with a parade and hot lunch. Saturday was a long day of waiting for the big trick or treating expedition. We passed the time carving some great jack o lanterns and raking up the leaves. The weather was amazing- it was supposed to rain but it turned out to be the most amazing Fall day you could imagine. At 6:30 they were off! They returned half way through the night to drop off some of their stash- and then went back out for more candy. 2 hours later we had more candy than we could possibly imagine- now 2 weeks later I wonder where it all went?!!!

Summer is over!

Summer seems to officially be over. We have had the most amazing weather ever and the rainy wet coast we live in seems like a distant memory. That was until this weekend of course- the rain came with a vengeance - which is fine if you don't have to stand on a soccer field and watch your children play...
The only downside to the great weather is that all the pumpkins ripened very early this year, so the choice for Jack-O-Lanterns is not as large as usual. We managed to grow 2 pumpkins in our garden this year- but they are pretty small so we need to go and get some more from the Pumpkin Patch.

Summer Fun!

It has been a crazy, awesome summer so far. We have been to Oregon, we have been camping and this week the girls are in summer camp all week long. They seem to be having the best time ever and the camp is like the one you see in the movies- honest. Today they did archery and kayaking- amazing. We haven't done as many outings as we had planned but we have had a few local outings around town. There is still so much I want to do and the days are already getting shorter and the evenings cooler... Where does the time go? Next week is the last week of summer holidays so I will be sure to do something extra fun with the girls- what to chose from?

Gone Fisihing

We had a great Canada day at the lake. After a great picnic dinner, grandpa took all 5 of the grandkids fishing. Dani and Boo's have been fishing a few times and are a little discouraged as they have yet to catch a fish. Well what do you know, Dani feels a tug and next we look over and she is pulling in a trout. She was over the moon, until we realized that we couldn't throw him back as he had swallowed the hook. But grandpa gutted him and we had him for dinner the next night. What fun!

Catching up

I am getting more and more behind on scrapbooking. I have been trying to catch up and every time I get a few pages ahead I take a few more photos!! I am trying to figure out why my camera takes such dark photos. On the automatic setting it seems fine but when I switch to AV and adjust the white balance I have to go 2 F stops up to get them lighter- this is ever since I had a broken camera- I wonder if it was something that broke in the camera!! Anyway I guess I am eternally grateful to RAW photo adjustment in photoshop- I can't seem to look at a photo now without wanting to adjust it. It takes that scrapbooking to a whole different level and doubles the time to scrap a page {sigh}.

Moms gone CRAZY!

Hey ladies- here it is! The talent at the talent show was amazing and what a way to end 27 great performances!!

Holiday

We are back from our 2 weeks away- although it already feels like an eternity ago! What a great holiday we had. The first week we were in Orlando and did the Orlando touristy things- minus Disney. I love SeaWorld, we saw pretty much all there was to see there. My fav of all is the dolphin show. Our second week was on the beach and what a great place. Our condo was literally on the beach. We loved the hot weather and the sea- I have no idea how many sunset photos I took! The high light was having the manatees swim with us for about an hour one day. The next day the dolphins swam by as we ate breakfast- ahhh the little treasures. Now I have over 800 photos to scrap- wow that will keep my busy.

Happy Easter

What a wet Easter! We had 4 days in a row off and we had heard that there was rain all weekend long, so we didn't bother to get topsoil and work in the yard. But Friday turned out to be a wonderful day, it would have been great to work outside. Saturday started off rainy but ended in sun, another afternoon that would have been great to get out. Then Easter Sunday- oh my word- how much rain could possibly fall?!!! It was not just rain but a downpour all day- yuck.
The girls were up at 6:30am eager to see if the Easter Bunny had been! I was not thrilled to be up that early on an awful rainy day!! My bed was so warm! But up we got and then really lazed around the rest of the day- it was great. A around 3pm I had to put the ham in the oven as we had 14 people over for Easter dinner. And we had a great Easter dinner- what a great, wet day!
I am so looking forward to sun- we are off in 2 weeks for sunny skies and I cannot wait- summer seems so far away. I am still scrapbooking last summers fun and I tell you summer cannot come fast enough this year...

Memories of Summer

Being almost a year behind in scrapping, makes me look so much more forward to summer. I am so longing for long hot summer days. I look at our photos of last summer though and cannot believe that we didn't go to the beach more often than we did. White Pine is 10 mins away and we only went a few times. I think summer is just too busy- we have to take the time to enjoy the little things {sigh}! The good news is it is SPRING AHEAD weekend so the days now become longer.

Fishing

With all this snow STILL around I am dreaming of Spring. Not even so much Summer- just Spring would be fine! I look at the damage the snow has done to my yard and I can't wait to get out and clean up. I know that there is no point going out now though as there is more cold weather still to come... I so look forward to the Spring bulbs - oh wait I don't think that I will be able to see any bulbs this years- as the pesky squirrels, of which there are many, have been frantically digging up the garden and chowing down on all bulbs they can find! Oh well, I am looking forward to Spring, bike rides on the trail and fishing at the lake!

SNOW!

Wow, what a winter it has been thus far. I cannot believe the amount of snow that is on the ground. The idea of a white Christmas was wonderful, but the reality of it is another story! We started off our cold snap up on Grouse Mountain for our annual peak of Vancouver trip- it was soooo cold up there I thought we wouldn't make it. It was roughly -25C with the windchill. That is cold for us West coasters. Then the snow settled in down below.
We had so much snow on Christmas Eve I thought we were going to be house bound- but a power outage made sure we shoveled ourselves out! We went to Frank's brother and sister in laws for our regular Christmas Eve, which is always fun. Coming home was not so much fun- we got stuck on a side street and spent a while digging out of there.
Christmas morning we woke up to still more snow and off to Maple Ridge we headed! Thank goodness it eased up a bit. Boxing day- more snow- then rain and boy did those piles of snow turn to puddles of water FAST. New Years Eve- more snow- enough already!! Then the weekend of January 3rd- we had a further 30cm or so!!! Well back to school on Monday was awful- the little ones were stepping in snow up to their waists, there were no sidewalks to be seen and the traffic oh my gosh- a nightmare. Now we are stuck with huge piles of ugly, dirty brown snow- these piles will be here until the Spring- yuck!