Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Wordless Wednesday....


Best friend sisters :)

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Daddy. Can I have a pony?

So my kids want to ride. They'd actually like us to buy 10 or 20 acres and some horses, maybe a chicken or two but mostly horses...maybe we could ranch?


I'm not sure if you're following along but I'm the girl (lady, senior citizen...take your pic) who until last year had never had garden. Heck, we just got our first pet, but we're ready for the big time baby. Why? What brought about this sudden desire to do all things horse?

Horse riding day camp baby!


Our friends, we lovingly call the "pink family" (they have 4 girls who usually wear pink) own a small horse farm (or whatever the official term is for 20 acres where you ride, board and take riding lessons). Anyway, they hosted our kids for two days of riding lessons and fun.


Isaac on the pony Soda Pop. He loved it was we a terrific first time rider!....


Emilee on Soda Pop...


Maddy and Em on Cajan and Brany. (Emilee thinks she should buy Brandy. "But mom it's only $2000 - Cheap!"


Levi took the camp too and was, Tracy's words "A natural". She's never seen anything like it before. CRAZY! He had to leave yesterday's session early though to get his travel shots for Mexico so I missed getting a picture of him riding.

Un-tacking the horses with Tracy...


and Amanda...


Now we MUST have horses! The kids can talk of nothing else. Their eyes are a big as saucers and their little hearts are racing!

Actually, weirder things have happened. I mean, I do have a garden and a dog. NEVER say never people!

Monday, July 14, 2008

Happy Birthday oldest son!

It was 13 years ago today that Kevin and I became parents for the very first time!
We are proud of the young man we are raising and thank God every day for him!

Happy 13th birthday Levi Peter Jay!!! We love you!
Levi's13th

Sunday, July 13, 2008

more holiday pictures....


I almost gave up and just went on with my life, leaving what's left of our wonderful week on my computer. HOWEVER, here I find myself, up before everyone else and awake and dressed (trust me this does NOT happen much). Anywho...here goes....

Canada Day:

July 1 is when we celebrate our national holiday here in Canada, even the weather got the memo. Wow! What an amazing day in every way.

Check out Maddy's breakfast of champions!!! Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone I let my kid do this okay?! But if you can't have a little pop with your sugar, opps I mean cereal while you're on holiday then when can you?


Here's how the day started for Kev....pure bliss...


And Bella spent some time with the gookie (yup. Made that up myself, so what?!) bubble stuff I brought. You can imagine how delighted everyone was with me:)


And I finally got to meet Kristen's little sis. We've heard so much about each other over the years it was just a formality to actually meet irl. What an awesome lady! They were camping across the lake and came over to hang for the day. Awesome! Maddy and Anna were inseparable and Aaron blended in with all the crazy boys so seamlessly he just added to the madness. Perfect!
Here are Halley and Anna are checkin' out the dock...



We also got a great surprise! Our friends Lynn....

and Mark...

stopped by "on their way" to Kelowna. It actually took them about 2 hours out of their way but it was so great to see them again we were glad they took the time.

Lynn, Kristen and I met at church when we all only had 2 boys that were 3-4 and 1. There's something about the people you meet when you kids are little eh?! It's a bond that hard to break!

It's amazing to me how God seems to bind your hearts to some people. It doesn't matter how much time passes.

Check them out now! I only ventured into this madness to take a quick photo and than I ran for cover....


The tree boys in front, were our one year olds when we met. It boggles the mind! (and yes my 10 year old is VERY small for his age! In all fairness though Jesse, far right, is massive.)
I took a couple shots as I was backing away from the madness....


You don't want to get in the way of this crew!

Off they went on the tube...


While Princess Arabella entertained us with her extreme cuteness! And we, of course, ate more chips! ....


and I even got one of Kris, cutest preggo eveh! Pretty darn amazing for 6 babies! I know she's going to kill me for this but I can run faster than her right now. Ha Ha....


Sorry Kristen. Love ya girl!


Thursday, July 10, 2008

Holiday time!

Day one:

Our week at the lake started in Vernon with my parents and a "test run" on our new boat. We stopped in the middle of the lake for over an hour and just drifted and swam. SO FUN!





NOT so fun....stalling out in the middle of the lake and having to beg some other poor boat load to tug us back to the boat launch which was an hour away. YIKES and thanks anonymous good Samaritans!

Day 2:

We finally got to the lake after spending the day back and forth from Canadian Tire trying to replace parts on the boat and get it running smoothly.
What was wrong you ask? A loose wire which Kristen's hubby found almost immediately once he looked at it. At least we kept the receipt on all the engine stuff:)



and here the kids are...at the lake and ready to get wet! (Actually I think they were already wet at this point but...details...)


reacquainting with our best friends that we haven't seen in way too long!

My Amelia and Kristen's Judah hugging on the dock.....


Maddy and Bella hamming it up...(we pretty much decided these two are cut from the same cloth. Watch out world!)


And this is what happened after the group shot of our 8. Notice Brent running for cover. I think he may even be trying to remove Arabella and Judah from harms way?! Way to go super dad!!!!...



Day Three:

This is the day that Kristen and I thought we'd go into town and buy our food for the week. We filled up a huge cart and spent what we felt was a fairly reasonable amount on food for 12 for a week. We congratulated ourselves on our great frugality. "Wow, what wonders we are", we thought. Oh, you laugh! How long do you think we lasted before having to go for another car load of food?

TWO DAYS! How do small people eat so much?! I had no idea 12 people could eat so many chips in such a short amount of time! (I definitely did my part!)

And the guys and kids? They all loaded into the boat and headed out to Copper Island. I have no pictures evidence of what went on there because on this trip it seemed, you much be female to operate the camera and male to operate the boat.
From the stories they carried back, I understand it's better that way. We did hear that Ryley is quite the cliff jumper and that Amelia randomly jumped off the boat without telling anyone (yikes!). They had a blast though and want to live at the lake forever! (I wonder if this would still be true if we ran out of pop?)

Loading up...


Heading out...



Okay for those of you that got this far, stay tuned for more tomorrow....

and check out Kristen's Blog for more pics!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

We're home!

We've been back for a couple of days may I recommend a holiday with a family you never get to see but love like they're family! Very enjoyable AND relaxing!

We lay in the sun, ate, drank, lay in the sun, ate drank, lay in the sun....well you get the picture.

I'll post pics as soon as I have them out of the camera...I'm usually so much more on the ball than this but I volunteered for our church's soccer camp this week so I'm doing that every am. We were all bagged yesterday! I don't even think the kids had fun, it was just all too much after just coming home BUT today was waaaaaaaaay better! Nothing like a little sleep!

Oh and we bought a boat. Yup you heard right. On Wednesday just before we needed to leave for our holiday our hubbies started to think about the holiday (we left Friday. Yes, it's a guy thing!). Kev (my hub) started to phone around about renting a boat and found that it's freakin' expensive. I'm not sure why this shocks us every year, but it does and it's always totally expensive!

Anyway, he jokes that he should buy one (also go thru this ever year so I didn't think much of it) but this year is different, this year we live super close the the US border AND we have our new best friend CRAIG'S LIST!! YAY for Craig, whoever he was!!!

Kev and his bil found a couple boats, drove to Seattle and back to check on them and returned dragging an older (but still great) boat that they got for a screaming deal.
We are having a blast with the old thing even though it required repairs and isn't too flashy. My hub can not pass on a great deal:)

Stay tuned for a couple of photos of the fun in the sun....