Where is summer?

As the days start to get longer again, I am so looking forward to summer. It seems the cold is very much in my bones and I long for some sun on my face. Spring break cannot come soon enough for a get away, but oh summer where are you?
This last summer we seemed to cram so much in and yet still never got to do the things I really wanted to- like hang out at the lake more often, go swimming (other than swim club) and more long bike rides. We did actually manage to get down to Stanley Park once- which was awesome. But this summer I hope we can get some more canoeing, bike riding, hiking in. It is going to be a challenge- especially now that I am working 5 days a week- but here's to hoping.

Chucks

Oh my word- my girls love their chucks. I could not believe the state of Danica's when I had a close look at them! I had the hardest time convincing her that they needed to be chucked away! She claimed "they are soooooo comfy"- but I do believe she was walking on pavement through the heels!! So we threw them away and got her her 4th or 5th pair- she seems to need a new pair every 6 months or so. I know how hard it is to find a GOOD pair of shoes so I am glad that she has found that in her chucks.

Vegas Baby

May 2010 Linda, Denise, Nat and I headed out to Vegas for 4 days. Linda and I flew out of Vancouver at some ungodly hour on the Thursday. Nat and Denise dropped the kids at school and then made a run for the border to Bellingham. As luck would have it we all landed at the same time. We were in Vegas baby!! We caught a cab to the Planet Hollywood Hotel, checked in and we were rearing to go. Wow, is all I can say. I have not been to LV since 1998 and it has changed so much.


The hotels, if possible, are bigger than ever, and the glitter and bling is incredible. Needless to say we shopped and shopped and saw so much (and that was just the first day). While we were there we saw the Cirque show Zumanity- amazing, rode the roller coaster at NY, NY, ventured up the Eiffle Tower, floated down the lagoons on a Gondolla and then shopped some more. After 4 amazing days in Vegas we were ready to come home. We were exhausted. We had so much fun though it was well worth the exhaustion. Denise is the only one who won 'big", we mostly just sat at the slots to get the free drinks! It was a great trip and we hope to do it again soon- thanks ladies for a blast.

It's been a year!!!

Really, it has been a year since I posted a thing- that is pretty sad ;(
I have been busy scrapbooking this last year- I still seem to be a year behind, but managed a year in review collage. I really like this idea as I can get a lot of info into one page.
2010 was a great year - we had some fantastic family holidays, we did a lot of fun stuff and spent some wonderful family time together. The girls had a most amazing summer- with one camp and the next. Winter brought a tiny bit of snow- but this winter has yet to bring a huge snow dump as was promised. The Christmas holidays were a whirl as always, but a great time none the less. I will try and post more in 2011, really I will.

2010 Winter Olympics

I remember the day they announced the Olympics would be held here in Vancouver- I was 9 months pregnant with Delaney. Now 6 years later we are enjoying them. For months there has been a buzz about the city- mostly people complaining of the inconvenience. Now as the 2 weeks of the Olympics are upon us, I see nothing but Canada wear, I hear everyone commenting on how much fun downtown is and what a great spirit is in the air. I have never seen so much patriotism, everywhere you look are Canadian flags and people in Canada gear. What a great time for our city and what a lot of great Canadian pride we have.
I took the girls downtown on the Friday of the opening ceremonies-we really had a great time and got to see so much. We even got to see the medals at the Canadian mint. Before we know it will be over- i sure hope we can all hold on to that Patriotism for much longer than the 2 weeks of the game!

Christmas came and went....

We had a wonderful Christmas this year- although the older I get the faster they seem to come and go! We managed to squeeze in all the fun activities we could and still came out ahead of the game. My only problem was that I was wrapping on Dec 23rd and I would have liked to have been done by that time. But the day came- the girls had a great time and as usual were incredibly spoiled. So were the grownups though- it was a great year!
New Year's was a blast- we had a smaller group this year- but we had so much fun. The music was great and the dancing as fun as ever.
After New Year's I even managed to get some tidying in- got the bathroom cabinets done, the kitchen pantry done and filing is all almost up to date- I'd say a good start to the year so far!

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!

A little behind

I really love digital scrapbooking but it seems everything gets in the way these days and there is no time for it. I am so behind in my pages, but trying to catch up. I am still working on Spring break 2008. Halloween just passed and now I am even more behind. BUT what should happen to me - the worst thing ever- my camera broke!!! i have no idea how I bumped it- but I did and it is now broken. So I am not taking nearly as much photos as I usually would- so this is a fine time to catch up!

All done

We finally put the play structure together for the kids. I cannot believe how many parts there were. It took me almost a full afternoon to sort all the screws into their own little areas. We then spread the 200 pieces of wood out- across the entire yard! Then it took us 4 days of working together to assemble the thing. I tell you I thought Ike@ products were bad. But we are finally done- the girls love it and that' s all that matters! I hope that the sun actually stays out for the next few weeks so they can enjoy it- the days are already getting shorter, don't take the sun away!