Cool in the Pool

but not in a good way! They wanted to go in but it was cheeeeeee-lay! They were in for about 20 minutes and then came out, teeth chattering, bones rattling from shaking so hard.

Sweetie is now diving to the bottom to retrieve the sticks!

They're using their flutter boards on their own.Even Honey is dunking under. Still not ready for dive sticks though.

Whole lotta bling in that swing!

is she the poster girl for TBall or what? note the charms hanging off the skirt & the sparkly pink sneakers. You can give a girl some boy stuff but some girls are just plain girly no matter what!

Renovation Progress....

The new entryway has had some progress lately but not as much as we'd hoped. We've been waiting over a year to have this done and every new delay is soooooo frustrating. I think we're getting somewhere and should see some more results tomorrow. Joel's wife made him come last week & they got some siding put on so it's looking a bit more finished on the outside.

When he was here last week we tried to pin him down on when he'd be wrapping this job up and he managed to avoid promising anything definite. He did say that he'd be back on Saturday and would get a lot done that day (ie today). I expected he'd arrive about mid morning as he usually does. Then they phoned to say they'd be a little longer. At 3 they phoned to say they'd just left (2 hr drive to our place) At 4 they phoned to say it'd be better to wait & come up early on Sunday instead. This wouldn't be too big a deal normally but my very helpful & generous with his time Dad had taken the afternoon off to come down & help! This didn't seem to faze Dad though, he just went into demolition mode!

It took awhile but he got the old doorway ripped out and I pulled a bunch of nails in between child minding issues. I did get to bash some stuff while he was gone for a coffee break though!

Hopefully Joel will be here tomorrow am at 9 as planned and he can get started right away. It took Dad a few hours to get all those boards & glass torn out so that should save Joel quite a bit of time right there. I love my Daddy!

If Joel gets as much done tomorrow as he plans, we'll have drywall up, some crackfilling done, siding finished, some closets up maybe.... something was mentioned about flooring but I'm not going to get too excited yet. It should look a lot more finished anyway. IF nothing else comes up.... stay tuned....

The Birthday Lives On!

Shirley came to visit the girls on Wednesday & brought 3 HUGE boxes with her! I had a feeling I knew what they were. She'd told me before that her favourite thing when she was growing up was playing with her dolls & that's what she gave them last year. As soon as she walked in she said "well I'm not very original!" as if the girls would have any complaints about creativity! They were very excited to tear into the new stuff and were not disappointed in the least to find three new babies to play with!

These ones are neat, they come with little accessories, a teddy bear, a bottle & a blankie. They all have magnets in them & so do the dolls' hands. The baby can hang on to her stuff. She also takes 4 AA batteries so she can talk & play & demand stuff. I was in my room this afternoon and someone had left theirs on the bed & I must have jostled her back to alertness because right in the middle of my laundry sorting, she says "bottle. I want my bottle mama". Luckily she has an off switch if "mama" isn't around to handle the requests.

Day Trippin'

Any reason to load up the backpacks is a good one for these girls!

Grammie, or as the kids call her, "GG" had a little surgery today. She is now sporting her own pacemaker. I was really scared when I first heard that she was having an operation. I thought it was very involved, open heart surgery type stuff. Apparently it's a very simple procedure so that was quite a relief (for her as well I imagine!). They did it this morning, with no anaesthetic, just some freezing to the area where the incision was made. She was in & out of the OR in 45 minutes and back in her regular room within a couple of hours.

Dad wanted to go see her & I was planning to go down sometime this week anyway so we decided to travel together today and that made it much more fun for all of us.

We got there around 4 & GG was glad to see us. She looked totally normal, not even tired at all. She will however have to avoid any arm movements over her head for about 6 weeks so there goes her jumping jack routine and aerobics for seniors. Just to remind her of this limitation, they've tied her left arm to her side with a sling. It may work....

By 5:30, the girls had consumed their snacks, (a box of raisins, a granola bar, breadsticks & cheese, a fruit to go, a pouch of little gummy fruit snacks plus many jelly bellies that GG had in her room), read their books, doodled with their new pens, told GG all about their birthday party and were getting restless & anxious to get right to Grandad's suggested restaurant "Captain Henry's". They were totally psyched about eating at a restaurant and thought that Captain Henry's would be great! Unfortunately it's not a real place & just something Grandad made up. He had to backtrack and tell them they only served oysters there and as luck would have it, they hate oysters so decided they'd rather go to Old MacDonald's instead. (a little easier to find)

Considering the long trip & the long hospital visit, I thought they did really well again & they really enjoyed having Grandad with them all day. A rare treat for his baby doll too! ; )))

Grandad treated us to supper and even got them some ice cream afterwards WITH sprinkles (I didn't even know you could get sprinkles at McD's but Grandads have their ways!), but I was too full for dessert. It took them awhile to get that ice cream down & two of them weren't quite able to finish. Any guesses as to who gobbled up her whole cone? The girl with the hollow leg of course! (another hint:her favourite colour is orange)

We got home around 9pm tonight so it was a late bedtime for the kids but they did fall asleep quickly!

Baby Birds

A favourite game of late is "baby birds". The "birds" build a nest out of pillows & blankets and then curl up together inside their eggs & wait to hatch. There is a lot of dialogue required by "Mumma Bird" (that's me), however my role is simple as they tell me line for line what to say. Eventually they baby birds work their way out of the eggs but apparently it's more fun inside. Shortly after the hatchlings emerged this morning, they declared that it ws winter and that they had to go back into their eggs! (this must be how it works in Bunny's land, they have a lot of weird rules there)

Runnin' the Roads

Although we load up the stroller to go for a walk, most of the time I'm pushing it empty or with just one on board. They like to run! and they are getting FAST! I have to run along to keep up. They say they're going to run like Daddy and they just might. (running's a nice cheap sport so I'm all for that!) Lovey rides the least & can run almost the whole route. She'll occasionally take a break but never wants to sit long.
We made a stop to play on this little area with the huge rock that they like. They checked out the flowers and raced around on the rock.
Sweetie is gathering up the leaves they need to make Bunny's favourite dinner: carrot mush
and then there was the Elton John sighting....

Weekend Fun

We had some more pool time, temp now at 20º! The kids still got cold quickly but had a great time

Lovey has been a little undecided on her career plans lately. Awhile ago she was going to be a "bowaweena", then she decided she'd be a "wacer" so Daddy didn't have to run alone anymore, then yesterday she was dancing around in the kitchen to the "12 Dancing Princesses" soundtrack and told me that she'd changed her mind, she was going to be a "bowaweena" again because Daddy already had friends to run with (ummm like WHO??). In there somewhere, she also decided she didn't want to be anything when she grew up, just herself. Then last night at supper she was helping Murray with his citrus and made yet another change in her career path. She is now going to be an orange peeler. Hopefully there's a big boom in this industry because I don't know that there's much calling for that line of work at the moment!

After supper Saturday night, Murray built a fire in the pit & we roasted marshmallows which the kids were thrilled with and consumed several of.

the ol' marshmallow flambé!Today we had church at the park & then a picnic afterwards and we were joined by a couple of my buddies from youth group.

This afternoon we were waiting for Joel & family to arrive. They'd phoned the night before to say they were coming today. This was very exciting so we rearranged our day & just stayed home & played in the pool again. Sweetie got to the bottom & got a dive stick today so she was excited about this new development. She'd been nervous before and hesitant to plunge in but with Daddy's help today she figured it out.

Joel & Angela got here at suppertime & worked on the siding until almost 9:30 when they ran out of stuff. We tried to pin him down on a project completion date but all we could get was that he'd try to come back on Saturday when he plans to put up the drywall, finish the siding... and a few other things that sounded like progress. We're really anxious to get it finisheds as we've been waiting over a year for this project. With any luck, we're getting close....