Character Day and Haircuts!!

Ethan and Maren had Character day at school today. Maren transformed herself into Strawberry Shortcake and Ethan, Josh and Micah became the 3 blind mice. The boys even won 1st place!

Mitchell was also transformed from a baby to a big boy with his new haircut!!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

October is gone already (what a bad blogger I am!), into November and started it off with my birthday. Mom and Dad hosted a lunch on the 1st to celebrate Mike's and my birthdays. No pictures of that one, but we did just fan out the candles to avoid any extra germ spreadage, H1N1 wrecks everything!! I felt quite terrible on my real birthday (had a cold and cough) but everyone at work was great to me and Jim and the kids got me sushi and flowers!! This past weekend Jim made a gourmet dinner, including appetizers, steak, seafood, cheesecake, and special coffees. It was delicious and I was spoiled!

Sunny September

Crabapples, cherry tomatoes, a few strawberries and an oak barrel full of carrots were a few of the things we produced in our yard this year. We also had some nice cucumbers, herbs and lettuce! Hoping to add some raspberries for next year!!

Flowers are still beautiful, despite the shorter days and cooler nights!! I'm sure the beautiful sunny weather has something to do with it!! Looking forward to a lovely fall and hopefully a late frost!!

Maren is in Kindergarten!!

After a long week of waiting, Maren finally began kindergarten today!! No hesitation, no tears or even a hug goodbye, she is full on ready to be there!! She sat in the circle time with the other children and before their teacher, Mrs. Bluemink, even sat down, they were counting to 10 together. Such motivated kids!! She's there now and hopefully will be tired tonight as she had a hard time getting to sleep last night!!

Fun Stuff!

We rescued a friend in the backyard today, a good sized salamander!! We found him stuck down in the backyard stairwell and cleaned him up and gave him some water. Maren and Joel observed it for a bit and then we put it in the garden!

Ethan is back at soccer for a few more times this fall! Brrrrr, the spectating is getting chilly!!

Papa Jim came to visit us at the end of August. We had some great weather and got in an evening trip to West Lake. Mitchell had some fun on his new 4 wheeler, aided of course, by his big brother and sister!

Ethan's First Day of Grade 2

Ethan's all smiles, I think that he thought it would never come!! He has been so excited to get back to school and his friends, maybe summer was a bit too long??

Shuswap 2009

Here come the collages!! Mind you, I picked only 84 out of 282 pictures, I think that's good when there's so much fun to share!

On our way getting sugared up with timbits!

Ethan and Maren just had to jump in on the first evening!

Our first day, at the beach all day! It was a little smoky but warm!

Mitchell loved walking on the road, stretching his legs! Soon he'll be big enough for a bike!!

The girl cousins, clothes and hair to match!

We took a break from our evening bike ride to skip some rocks, or just sink them!

Which one do you think best represents real life?

Family fun center activities: getting soaked in bumper boats and Maren with her amazing 2 hole in ones at mini golf!!

Fun at the park until...

Maren's face got a good whack on the teeter totter, notice the blue bruise on her cheek (it has darkened since!). What a good mother, getting a shot of her child being injured, don't know how I managed that!

Go-karting was the highlight for the men in the group!

What would camping be without food? Ice cream, yummy dinners, smores, campBBQ pies, and much more!

Fun times: Ethan's logging gear, blowing bubbles, playing slap.
"Bring it on baby!" - Ethan

Beach faces.

The best time, relaxing and playing at the beach! And yes Mike, we did do a sand castle war until we thought the risk of injury was too great! We called it a tie!

Bye bye Shuswap and #197! Hope to see you next year!