happy new year!

To be honest, we all slept through the new year.  I didn't even wake up for the car honking / people yelling on the street usual racket at midnight.  Sigh, I am getting old...

I try to keep new year's resolutions pretty simple.  The last 3 years I have had the same resolutions: (1) clean my boots more often, and (2) avoid library fines.  I am happy to report that I have finally succeeded on #1, although I still struggle with #2.  This year I am going to add a new #1, eat a cup of greens a day.  SO far so good on day 2 of the year!  I keep thinking I should make a resolution to blog more, but I worry that I will fail on this.  Perhaps I will start small and plan to post every day for a month.  Gulp, except for the first day of this month.







On the upside, I did take a picture yesterday of riley and his buddy morgan at Habitat Island.  We all biked down there and kaden and I threw rocks in the water while riley and morgan played war games with sniper rifles (a.k.a. sticks).

camping on the (sunshine) coast

We headed out of town for a triple celebration of the longest day of the year, father's day, and our wedding anniversary.  Mike did a bike ride on the Sunshine Coast called the "Gibsons' Grind Fondo" and we decided to spend Saturday night camping.  We stayed at a campsite by Porpoise Bay, near Sechelt.  We somehow landed up sating in a private campsite as opposed to one of the provincial sites on the Coast.  Strangely, when we googled "sunshine coast campsite" neither of the provincial sites came up, hence our stay at the lovely "bayside campground."

Our campsite was beside the playground and the boys invented this volleyball-type game with a baseball-type ball and they spent lots of time playing.  Mike was quite good at the game too!

The next day was both father's day and our anniversary and it was lovely to wake up looking up at the clear blue sky.  It would have been lovelier if it hadn't been 5:00 am, but we all managed to doze and keep the boys quiet-ish until the end of quiet time at 8am.

Later in the day we hit up a few beaches, one was lovely and sandy and the other covered in sharp rocks (but with lots of crabs...major excitement for the boys!).  We hung out with a few of mike's teammates and their families and had a great day.  The only snag was that we had to wait a long time for the ferry home (mental note, always make a reservation).

fitbit fun

I recently got a fitbit (activity tracker) and it is great fun to see how far I walk in a day.  On average it is about 6km, which surprised me...I had no idea that all my puttering around the house and running errands would add up to so much.


The boys love checking the time, number of steps, and flights of stairs I have done each day.  This morning kaden asked if he could have a turn wearing it, and he has been climbing up and down the stairs for over 30 minutes.  He is up to 113 flights of stairs as of 8:12 this morning!  What an unexpected and positive side effect of this device...

fan boys

We had a very hot weekend and I pulled out our fans to help keep the house cool.  I decided that it was high time to recycle the fan boxes, especially since we don't actually store the fans in the boxes over the winter.  The boys of course wanted to play with the boxes and this is what happened!  Mike stayed very close when the boys were in the boxes because they were rather, umm, tippable.

the invitation

Riley's class is preforming several plays next week.  Here is the invitation he made for kaden (all siblings in the school are going to the 'dress rehearsal'), and he also made one for mike and I as well.  The class is doing three different plays, and riley is in jack and the beanstalk.  Apparently he chose to be the beanstalk and my project this week is to make a beanstalk costume that is portable and quick and easy to put on...hmmm...any ideas?!?

pigs and a wolf

Here are three little pigs and a big bad wolf that kaden made at school.

riley's zoo

Here are some creatures that riley made from modelling clay.  From left to right there is a big snake, a little snake, and blue pig, and a red horse.  Riley insisted on making his zoo animals anatomically correct and wanted me to take a picture documenting that they all have "bum holes."  (FYI, I didn't take a picture of their penises!)