Back to School

Brendan started Grade 1 this week, and it will be a real adjustment for both him and Rob and I. He came home with homework on the first night, about 15 minutes worth of printing and spelling practice, and yesterday he came home with the same sheets marked with red pen where he needed to refill the sheets with better quality printing and the outline for his book report, due in 3 weeks and poem for memorization and recitation to the class. Wow. In case Mrs. Mills ever reads this blog I will keep my opinions to myself, but wow. Should be a fun year!

The second half of our summer was eventful (I guess that part sort of goes without saying with our family, like stating the sky is blue). We managed to squeeze in a great weekend camping in our new trailer with all the neighbours in honour of John, Heidi, Harrison, Rob, Pat and Laurie's birthdays, a week at the cottage with lovely weather with Bob and Gail, Mike and Tara, then John, Betty, Wyatt and Rowan and then the high school gang. It was all a bit of a blur, but lots of good memories and I took lots of pictures, so in 5 years when I have time to back through and edit them all we'll have a wonderful record of the good times! On the long weekend we took the new trailer to a Provincial Park (our first this year, we'd been boycotting based on not being ready to make reservations 5 months ago - the new standard for summer weekends at our favourite parks) - Ferris, near Campbellford. It was great - we were right beside the playground, and camping with our 2 bedroom cottage on wheels has certainly improved our quality of life!

This weekend I am holding down the fort while Rob is off in Temagami in a house boat on a Bachelor Party weekend for his brother. I will add pictures as able but currently Heidi is literally standing on her brothers head while he lies on the floor (well was, I was a good enough parent to stop typing long enough to correct that little situation) and Brendan tells me he is trying to make a craft with glue, except that I don't know where he got the glue from (!). Gotta go!!

Happy Birthday Harrison! Happy Birthday Heidi!

Happy Birthday to our dear, sweet twins. I'm going to have to stop calling you "the babies" soon, since you are somehow 2 years old. It seems like just yesterday you arrived!

 

 

August 9, 2011 - How the time flies

 



 

How times have changed since our traditional Canada Day family photo 2 years ago...

 

compared to last year...

... and this year!

 

And just for kicks, here's our first Canada Day family photo in 2008. We look so... well rested. Maybe it's the poor picture quality, or just the wishful thinking, haha!

 

 

Another spot in the driveway...

It is with great excitement that I'm pleased to announce a new addition to our fleet of vehicles - we bought a bigger camper trailer this weekend! The 1969 corsair we camp in now, with one dedicated bed and other convertible sleep options has begun to feel just a smidge tight once we shoehorn all 6 (including Blaze) members of the family into it. We've started to feel a bit like clowns in a car when we start to get out of it in the morning.

So we upgraded this weekend to a 29 foot Dutchmen with a separate bedroom at the back with four bunk beds for the kids and a separate queen bedroom at the front for us. Bliss! We've not only upgraded our sleeping arrangements, we also have added a working fridge, freezer, stove, oven, microwave, built in toilet, shower, furnace and air conditioning to our camping experience! It's a bit obscene. It's a 2006, and we can tell ourselves that we made a very moderate choice since it's still not as big or new or full featured as our neighbours trailer, but I think the only people that will buy that argument are the neighbours in question. We're pretty thrilled!

We went to the park to give the sellers time to clear it out on Saturday, and I discovered that even more effective than having the twins hold each others back packs is having them hold hands! Love it! They move very slowly, and Heidi WILL NOT let go, so it's a long lasting solution.

Family Photos

We got our professional family photos back and are thrilled. Big plug here for Nicole Pettipas (N Vision Productions) our photographer, whom I liked so much I bespoke her for an extended family portrait the next time the Coles all get together. She did a great job considering she was juggling three kids, one of whom just wanted to escape our arms and run off into the woods (Harrison), one of whom has a beautiful smile but has gotten bored of looking into the camera after 6 years living with a paparazzi mother and usually stares off elsewhere instead while he says "Cheese" (Brendan - we bribed him by promising that if he looked AT the camera every time we would buy him a chocolate bar - shameless yes, but it was a worthwhile investment), and a child who plays strange (translation - stone face) for a full half hour with anyone new, even if that person is a photographer without a half hour to just hang out relaxing until the child begins to smile (Heidi). There was a lot of tickling involved in these photos to cajole Heidi, but it all worked out! Here they are in no particular order...

 

 

Happy Canada Day!

Well, it's July, and that means it's high time I loaded the June pictures off of the cameras - hence the post. Summer vacation has started off well... meaning Rob and Brendan haven't throttled each other yet, but we've still got lots of time! Brendan strongly declines going to camp ("I just like playing at home"), but is also fairly bored at home since what he means is "I just like playing at home with the constant help of a grown up". Rob is working hard to keep up a steady diet of trips to town and playdates to entertain him. His new best friend, a neighbour in Grade 3 named Lily, is a real kindred spirit and they seem to be having a wonderful time together. They are bonded by their love of Zoobles, a small plastic ball that transforms into a creature. Huh. Parenting is all about learning new things, isn't it? Who knew his love of trains would be replaced by something so... plastic.

 

Brendan and his devoted mini me; Harrison

 

 

It was a very busy month for Brendan - he had a very unexpectedly formal Graduation from Junior Firefighters the day before his birthday party. He's pictured here shaking hands with the Township Reeve and receiving his certificate from the Fire Chief. Rob and I had shown up in jeans expecting hot dogs and cake. Oops!

 

 

Holy Name of Mary Graduating Kindergarten Class of 2013

 

Brendan's Kindergarten Graduation was very sweet. The kids had made handprint artwork, gave a Rose to their mothers and closed out the ceremony with a rousing performance of "Who Let The Dogs Out!"

 

 

Brendan's also been going to TBall every Monday night, and is sort of enjoying it. He seems much more interested compared to two years ago and is running after every ball, volunteering for more at bats instead of drawing in the sand quite so much etc etc. so it's all much more interesting!

 

 

OK, so this is why I love writing this blog. I often forget why we're so bloody tired all the time, it turns out this was a really busy month. Somehow you don't really realize it at the time, you just put your head down and push on through. It's not until you're sorting through 267 photos from a single month that you realize you're legitimately tired for a reason. Anyways, we also had a very memorable weekend wilderness camping with my niece, nephew and Brendan (my brother and his wife looked after the twins). We packed up everything we needed and hiked into their back forest to survive overnight. Problem was it rained. Sleeping in a fort made of branches and eating weenies roasted over a scratch built fire loses it's attraction in the rain. At least for Rob and I. Our nephew Wyatt was undeterred, and we ended up sleeping in a leaking tent eating hot dogs over a fire started with a candle in a tin bucket. We were close...

 

 

And finally, the birthday party pics. This is chronologically a little out of order, but when you see the cake our friend Heather made for Brendan you'll see why I wanted to save the best for last!

 

My niece keeps a close eye on the candy buffet

 

Juice Boxes covered with printed construction paper were drinks and decorations... I love efficiency!

 

Lego building circle. It started as a game where you built for 1 minute and then passed along your creation to the next person. Except that I'm crazy. No kindergartener wants to pass along their creation!!! The game dissolved rapidly into just kids building lego. Which was fine.

 

The cake!!

 

Completely made of fondant - Wow!

Total Genius!

 



 

Complete with a fondant sign!

 

So, a very busy, very Brendan dominated month by the looks of things. But wait! The babies, not to be outdone in all this excitement, have been stirring things up plenty at our house. After an absolutely blissful month of napping for 3 hours in the late morning, everything has fallen apart. Harrison learned how to climb out of his crib. Onto his head. 3 times. No more crib. Heidi had been working on it for some time, so we knew it was the end of cribs unless we wanted her to learn very quickly from Harrison and develop her own head injury. So no more cribs for either. It's been chaos. They run, they frolic, they play, they wrestle, they do everything except sleep when they're put down for naps now. For whatever reason sleeping is still fine. Except the night Harrison was crying "Heidi, Heidi". I went in to investigate and he had crawled over the rail into her bed where she lay fast asleep (sensible child) and was smacking her on the back, I presume trying to wake her up for a late night game of tag. So sleeping is ok, most nights, but napping is just not happening. We have tried every re arrangement of furniture possible and every configuration of our 18 foot fireplace gate possible to separate them, but they just figure out how to Houdini themselves around it. Our last resort is putting one down to nap in our room or the guest room, but there will be not a stitch of clothing left in the drawers by the end of the first "nap" I'm sure since they're both such keen "explorers".  Somethings gotta change, we can't on like this - with the no napping nonsense. By 5 oclock Heidi is falling asleep in her dinner, Harrison is literally walking into walls and Rob's usually unflappable personality is, well, flappable. Heaven help us!