Playmates

Liam has been chanting 'Emma' and 'Clodagh' ever since they arrived in Canada. He was very happy to have them over this morning for a little play time. They are sweet little girls and I do so wish they lived closer!

They made much 'beautiful' music together.
Dressing up was a highlight. Here we have a firefigther lion and cute little lady bug!

White Rock

Not a cloud in the sky! It's low tide! What more could one want for a day at the beach?

Maybe some peanut butter and banana sandwiches!
I just could not resist taking a photo of this man in the background. Liam was a handy cover. He got out his sun lounger, oiled up his already leathery hide and lit his pipe. What a picture of health! Meanwhile his companion had a hat, sunscreen and lily white skin. I thought she was the wiser of the two until she lit up a cigarette!

Pie Boy

Little boy Chad and his pie. He still loves Nana's pie and will eat it until we stay 'ENOUGH'!

Can't Get Enough

Fresh blueberries...we LOVE them!

(yellow upper lip from 'smelling' the danelions!)

I Think We're CRAZY!

After our last cat died I said that we'd never get another cat.

We got another cat!

Actually what I meant was I would never get another cat unless it was declawed and I didn't want to pay for declawing so I thought that finalized our decision right there. Then my neighbor told me about a sweet one year old kitten that needed a home...and she was already declawed! It seemed like it was meant to be. She's a wee little tabby (the best breed for families in my opinion) and she's ours now! I hope we've made the right decision....yikes.

Welcome to our family, Bella!

Finally!

I have been waiting 'forever' to do this post! I can now say with relief that our flood restoration is FINALLY finished. When this all happened back in May I thought it would be all done in about 2-3 weeks. I was ever so wrong about that! It was a bit of a pain between dealing with adjustors, contractors, project managers and suppliers but now it's done and I don't have to think about that stuff anymore! Here are the long-awaited before and after pictures...

Special Guest

Thursday morning there was a lovely young lady at my door bearing gifts such as these...it was Ceara! We have what can only be called a traditional sleep over that has been happening ever since she was a wee thing on her visits to Canada.

I was very happy to have some female company in the house and she's such a pleasure to have around. She's matured into quite a nice young lady as you can see. Even though she and Nathan are only 4 months apart the emotional maturation level is becoming quite noticable. I'm glad she was able to still enjoy being with the boys though! They love spending time with her.

After lunch I took the gang to the wave pool. They swam for 2 1/2 hours solid and seemed to really enjoy themselves. Ceara was loving the diving boards! I was stuck in the kiddie pool with Liam which was exhausting. That kid has no fear!


For supper I made a big hearty pan of nachos with the works. We demolished them after our active afternoon.


Next on the agenda was a bit of hot-tubbing!

And then ice cream sundaes to go with our movie! Ceara made herself quite the masterpiece.

Finally they got settle to sleep in the family room...it was quite late. I needed them to get some good solid sleep for our day at the waterslides!

Yeah, we made it to Bridal Falls Waterpark before lunch. We were given some coupons (thanks Lois!) so it wasn't as dear as I thought it might be to get us all into the place.

Here are the kids warming up in the giant hot tub. I don't know why they needed to even go in that pee pool since the sun was plenty warm! We had so much fun going on the river rapids ride. I love it and came out injury free! That is a plus at my age! Keith did something to his back. Just figures!

Liam loved the waterpark and enjoyed all the sliding he could do.

All that fun made for a tired boy and Keith was able to get him to sleep for about half an hour in the afternoon. Once he woke up he was raring to go again!

Here are my tired critters at the end of a long and very fun day! Thanks Ceara for being our wonderful guest and I hope you had as much fun as we did.

Overnighter

This past weekend we headed to Seattle with the older two boys for a little relaxation, shopping and fun. We knew Liam would have much more fun with his grandparents than with us so he was left behind on his own little vacation! We stayed at one of our favorite hotels, the Hilton Garden Inn in Mukilteo. It's clean, affordable and right beside the Boeing airfields so plenty of cool planes to watch as well. Actually, when I booked the hotel online I found a great managers special that included two free breakfasts in their restaurant. What a great surprise when we checked out to find that it was $20 less than the online price and we got all four breakfasts for free! Love it.

Even though this picture is blurry I just had to post it...makes me laugh. Keith and Nate had lots of fun jumping into the pool in various poses.

Chad watched forlornly from the hot tub. He is a bit timid around water and even though the deep end was only four feet he wasn't having any part of jumping in. Courage finally found him and by the second time we went swimming he had started jumping in and thoroughly enjoying himself. He told me later he had wished he had jumped in earlier to I could have take his picture too!

The hot tub was an interseting experience. Once the jets were on the water bubbled so forcefully it was coming right up out of the tub! It wasn't very warm either so we were able to sit in there for a long time. We swam before and after dinner and had the pool to ourselves both times.

For dinner that night we headed to one of our favorite places, Ivar's. We love their seafood and the restaurant sits right on the water. The view of the ferry coming and going to Whidbey Island at days end was beautiful.

I never liked clam chowder until I tried theirs a few years back. This is heaven in a bowl. Yum!

Chad loves his salmon and made a nice healthy choice off of the kids menu. A great plate of salmon with yummy mashed potatoes and green beans. I almost wished I would have ordered it! The rest of us enjoyed fish & chips.

After dinner we had just enough time to walk over to the water to watch the sunset. It was warm with no breeze. A beautiful evening.

Even though we were all stuffed, Keith convinced us that we needed ice cream cones. For $1.89 each we got these massive cones and could barely finish them. Really....we were certainly overfed that night!

The next morning we headed to downtown Seattle. We parked at Seattle Centre (near the Space Needle) and took the monorail into the downtown core. The kids certainly enjoyed it!

It's a very short ride...probably a mile long...but it's all about the experience!

We found some great deals at the downtown clothing stores which was great but meant having to lug bags around Seattle as we walked to and fro. We all took turns lugging the bags around. I guess if we were smart we would have saved the shopping until the end of our time in downtown! Too eager, were we.

This big tin pig sold pulled pork sandwiches and the like. A definite photo op!

We just love walking around Seattle. It's a city where there is lots to see. We especially enjoyed the guys throwing the fish at the public market.

We enjoyed walking around at the pier. The sea air was salty and fresh and the sun warm on our shoulders. Ahhh....it was a perfect day!

We found the famous gum wall in Post Alley. A sickeningly sweet smelling area that you can leave your mark on!

By 2pm we were really more than ready for lunch. We already knew that we would be hitting the Cheesecake Factory. Because of the time we were seated immediately which was great because the last time we were there it was an hour wait.

Keith and I shared this plate of fish tacos. Keith had two and I had one. The one I had was not good...the fish was dry and fishy tasting. One of Keith's wasn't that great either but he said that one of them was very good. Oh well. We could have complained but didn't really feel like it.

I was able to get past the fish tacos because I just knew dessert would not be a disappointment! Keith and I shared and he generously let me do the choosing. I think he was a tad disappointed I didn't chose something with chocolate but he did give me the freedom to get what I wanted :) I chose a pineapple upside down cheesecake. It was lovely...very good!

We also made the boys share a piece. It took them the whole meal to come to a compromise and finally selected the white chocolate truffle with raspberry. They were very happy with their choice!

We then took the monorail back to Seattle Centre with the hopes of letting the kids run around in the wonderful spray fountain. We were very sad to find that it was closed and undergoing maintenance when we arrived. Boooooooooooooo!

So we just headed back north. We wanted to avoid rush hour and Keith needed to return some shoes at the outlets. We also made a very special stop at the electronics store to pick up the boys long awaited DS system. They have been saving up their money for a very long time to get this. I made them write up a contract before it was purchased which stated who owned it, where it would be kept, how long they would play it each day and what would happen if they fought over it.

This is a happy boy with his new toy.

We picked up Liam and found him to be very excited to see us. He was an absolute gem for Keith's parents and they said they'd love to have him again. Sweet! We will definitely take them up on that offer sometime soon!

Buy Me Some Peanuts & Crackerjacks!

We had never been to a baseball game before! I'd often heard Nat Bailey Stadium described as the 'prettiest little ballpark' in Canada, the tickets were very reasonable, and we were invited by good friends. All very excellent reasons to attend a game a few weekends back to watch the Canadians hammer the Americans!

These cheeky sweet peas sat behind us the whole game and it brought back many memories of being 13-ish and being silly with my two best friends who happen to be their moms!

The weather was absolutely perfect, the popcorn was fresh and buttery and the people watching was spectacular. There was a contingency of 'aunties' and we found great humor in analyzing two people who were on their first date. Oh yeah...we did watch the game from time to time as well.

The entertainment between innings was amusing and the fireworks afterwards were way more impressive that I thought they would be! It was a wonderful way to spend an evening. The only damper on the whole thing was that our car was hit by a foul ball and now we have a lovely souvenier dent on our roof. I think we'll probably be back anyhow!