The Day We Forgot The Camera...

....is the day we drove waaaay up a logging road on Mount Baker, right to the snow line. The day we watched chunks of ice being blown around the lake. The day Matt didn't feel the urge to jump in a mountain lake. :) The day the kids got to throw snowballs in July (I'm a little behind). The day we saw a bear. And the day we tried to capture it all with a cell phone camera. Sigh.
Testing camera phone....

Liam told us "the snow is kind of 'brrrr' cold!"


That's a pretty steep cliff behind you, Matt!


Do you see the bear?

Sick Day

This photo was taken on our camping trip at Manning Park a couple of weeks ago. Those tears are pretty "awwww" inducing. (She wasn't happy we made her wear her ladybug poncho in the rain.)
Today, our little ladybug is not feeling so well. Whatever she's come down with certainly has all the markings of a norwalk-y type virus, but so far the rest of us are faring well. (Knock on wood!) Glad we weren't in the tent last night. Because we would have had to burn it this morning.

Pineapple Psychology

Liam loves helping in the kitchen and one of his favorite activities is "decorating" his own pizza. Sarah thinks we don't notice her shoveling fistfuls of pineapple into her mouth. Truth be told, I "unleashed the beast" so that she would eat the pineapple, thus convincing Liam that he, too, must have a share of the highly coveted golden morsels. He doesn't like pineapple. But if that means Sarah gets it all...then all of a sudden his tastes have changed! (I tried this out with tomatoes last night. So far I'm 2 for 2.)

Couch Potato

It doesn't happen very often that Sarah is the first kid out of bed in the morning. Normally Liam starts chanting "The sun is up! The sun is up!.....The sun is up!" which means we are all up, but Sarah happily coos away and plays with her crib toys and books. However, skating lessons are doing a number on Liam and not only did he nap yesterday and today (wooo hooo!) but he was fast asleep at least half an hour longer than Sarah this morning. In my effort to extend that stretch I gave in to Sarah's demands for cartoons, which looks like this: crawl onto couch, cover legs with blanket, point at TV, grunt.
Here she is, totally engrossed in Curious George....


Too hot for blankets, I guess.


She is not picking her nose, here. I kind of wish she was, considering she was actually shushing me!


I was so annoying, she had to get away from the mamarazzi.

Rhymes with "Kevin"

See the guy in the yellow helmet? That's Kevin. Or, "Heaven", as Liam refers to him. (He won't budge on this.) But whatever you prefer to call him, he is Liams skating instructor!
Liam's first Snowbunnies class was yesterday and he's definitely in an immersion based program....he has class every day this week!


By the end of the week the goal is that he can stand up and maybe take a couple of steps on his own. Yesterday was a good day. Today was not. His attention was elsewhere and he did his best rag doll impression, staring up at the ceiling lights until someone else would drag him around the rainbow. Another Mom dragged her slightly older son out of the rink for a Time Out for similar behavior. I'm not sure I'm so....intense? I guess we'll see how tomorrow goes!
These pictures are all from yesterday when crashing to the ice was still novel. :)

You Knew This Was Coming, Right?

What is summer around here without a million photo opps at Buntzen Lake? We've been on the go this summer, but have still found time to relax at our favorite spot. And this year we've taken it to a whole new level with a hammock! Not that there's much lounging around with a book and a cold drink...but the kids think it's neat and it keeps them in one spot for a few minutes!


Something Matt and I will never be able to relate on, is the magnetic pull of a mountain lake. To him, a dunk in the lake is blissfully refreshing. To me, it is cold. So I stay on shore with warm towels and get to snuggle with my shivvery kiddos when they finally escape from their father! He's trying his hardest, but I just don't think they're taking after him in the "hearty" department.


Sorry, Matt. Looks like you'll have to keep swimming with the ducks!

Photo Round-Up

At this rate I'll still be posting Stampede pictures in December, so here we go: we're finishing up our Tour de Calgary right now!
Pony rides...
Petting piglets...

Matt, I mean, Liam (can you see him back there?) took his first ever ride on a roller coaster. He actually took several. At $10 a pop. Disneyland is starting to look like a good value....


Sarah doesn't quite measure up to the "Must Be This Tall To Ride" signs in the official amusement park. However, she did get to do a little gymnastics on the C-Train....

A picnic at Elbow Falls...


We anticipated that we may all still be a little shell-shocked from our Mega Day of Driving to get to Calgary, so we loaded up the car even more with all of our camping gear and spent a couple days hiking around Yoho National Park to break up the drive home.
Matt and Liam getting a closer-than-average look at Takakkaw Falls...


Sarah put her feet up while Matt got a nice fire going to keep us warm. It was below 0 degrees the first night!


On the second day we did a pretty long hike to Laughing Falls....much more remote than Takakkaw Falls. We brought the tripod to set up a family shot and we all huddled onto a little ledge over the river and waited for the flash. Too bad we didn't notice the group of German hikers all found their way into our photo, too! :)


This guy was really working the camera.


Sarah's first un-sliced apple. Sticky, sticky, sticky.

Reclaiming The Top Dishwasher Rack...

....with one trip to the Emergency Room.
If you've kept up with this blog in the past month then you've surely noticed several references to Sarah's "tummy troubles." Let's just put it out there. She had diarrhea. Nasty, stinky, messy, 6 times a day, I-know-what-you-ate-3o-minutes-ago diarrhea. For 2 and a half weeks. There you go. I said it. There's no going back.
Did I mention how long our drive out to Calgary was? Did I mention that we finally crawled into bed at 3:30am and that Sarah was sleeping in her travel bed in our room? And that at 3:40am the sound of thunder jolted us both awake from a fast, deep slumber? No. That was Sarah's bum.
Something wasn't right. Two days into our trip we took her to the Emergency room and the doctor there puzzled the pieces together way after we (and several other doctors at home) should have recognized what was going on: Sarah is allergic to milk. Duh. Her symptoms were completely different than Liam's, but it finally makes sense why she hasn't gained any weight in 6 months...or as long as she has been drinking milk.
So our pudgy little mouse, who is no longer so pudgy, is off her precious cheese. And the other thing she is off of? The bottle. A beloved comfort one day was filled with rice milk and rejected with a pitiful shake of the head the next.
And so, the top dishwasher rack is freed up for glassware and spatulas. No more bottles and no more basket to contain all the rings and oh, I so don't want to put the word nipples on this blog, but there you have it. If you opened my dishwasher you would know that a coffee drinker lives here. As does someone who takes his beverages in a disproportionately large Coke glass. And kids who sip and spill from colourful plastic Ikea cups. But no babies. I'm not sure whether to sniff or double fist pump. Probably both.
The bottom line (ha ha): Dairy free living is doing a world of good for Sarah. I've streamlined my shopping cart to just 3 types of milk. And even after what I saw, I still think she's the sweetest little girl there ever was.

Approximately 3.5 Hours Later....

Back to the Calgary trip!
In case you lost track, here is a quick recap of where we left off. After multiple car breakdowns, one lost pair of flashy shoes, a 20 hour trip from A to B and an attempted break and enter, we all stumbled into bed sometime around 3:30am.
Fast forward 3.5 hours, and we were up and at 'em, getting ready to go downtown to watch the Stampede parade. I did point out the absurdity of the plan before the alarm clock was even set, but since I was the only one of that mind I decided to tag along. Thanks to some family members who probably showed up to save seats not long after the rest of us got to bed, this outing was (thankfully) not the disaster I anticipated! We slid into front row seats just moments before the cavalcade of horses came marching by. I got my hands on two cups of coffee. Turns out, Liam likes marching bands. And Sarah's previously alluded-to "troubles" didn't surface until the smell could reasonably be attributed to the equine occupation.
All in all....a good start!


Note: See Liam's funky footwear? Those are his water shoes. It was only in the sleepy morning fog did we discover his "real" shoes had been left behind!

Liam checks out some public art...


Another highlight of our trip was a Stampede style breakfast with the whole family. The pancakes were flowing from about 10am to 5pm (seriously, they were that good!) and the kids got a chance to play with their cousins. They had met before, but now that they are all old enough to play together it felt like the first time. They all got along great, and thanks to the supervision of older cousins it was almost as if we had a "parental day off". They ran around the basement together for hours with the occasional check-in from Mom and Dad. For the record, I am completely on board with this "older kid" thing. I'm sure I'll remember with some degree of tenderness the sound of Sarah's feet pummeling towards me when she is unsure, the feeling of her dimpled fingers gripping my leg, or her hot tears and drippy nose on my neck when someone who isn't me looks at her. But we're not entirely out of the Separation Anxiety woods yet, so this day, this glimpse of Sarah minus the mommy-itis was nice. Very nice.
Several of the kids had a bit of a rave/dance party thing going on for a while. Here they are all trying to outdo each other in a Splits Competition. It's one of Liam's favorite dance moves, so he did rather well.


Coming up next in this never-ending "How I Spent My Summer Vacation Series": Reclaiming The Top Dishwasher Rack with One Trip To The Emergency Room.