Fun Summer!

Summertime fun! What are we up to? Why are blog posts so few and far between??? We are enjoying our summer of good weather and seem to be running the roads a lot! We're in the pool on sunny days which has been often. We've been to the beach a few times. The kids have done a vacation bible school, 2 weeks of swimming lessons, a sports camp and Lovey will have some violin camp and the other 2 are hitting crafting camp while Lovey's doing that and then we have VBS at our own church later this summer. We've gone to birthday parties, golf tournaments, camping, and made lots of trips to the library to keep Honey up to date on her various series that she's consuming this summer! We've had a few dog sitting stints and are out for walks often and have been enjoying having a dog in the house again.

We currently have Rudy for his 2nd stay this summer and he'll be back for 2 months in the fall while his owners are away visiting family in the northwest.

We've made jam, had fresh strawberry shortcake, got a garden from a neighbourhood intervention project which I now have to somehow maintain... we've had lots of friends over to play and the girls have been at other houses visiting too.

I've had a few photography clients and have 3 more gigs this month and I'm gaining fans on my business page on facebook! (are you a fan??? c'mon, show me some love!!!) Exciting developments for my little business and looking forward to some high school seniors for the fall!

Needless to say the house is a disaster and I'm not getting nearly enough baking done to Murray's great disappointment! But on the upside, we're having a fabulous summer and enjoying lots of fun activities with friends and making the most of the great weather we've been having.

Forkaboo

Guess who wasn't very interested in her supper tonight and decided to put on a show about a dancing fork, named Forkaboo looking for adventure? At one point she had both feet straight up in the air, carrying on the storyline from under the table. What do yo do???

Honey's Viewpoint

oh that girl! While we were at a big family function at my grandmother's, there was a johny on the spot for the large number of guests. Honey saw it and had NO intentions of going anywhere near it. In an attempt to ease her fears, my Aunt Cathy took her over and told her all about how it had just arrived and was perfectly neat and clean inside and opened the door to show her the pristine conditions.

Unconvinced, Honey kept her distance as she looked in and promptly put one hand on her hip and the held the other hand out with her palm turned upward and scrunched up her face, looked at Aunt Cathy incredulously and said with a touch of exasperation and a dash of scorn "REALLY???!?!?"

Recently PW brought in a guest that he was promptly most inhospitable to. However the next morning, PW left a pile of vomit on the landing so apparently the guest got his revenge. The kids were grossed out (well, who isn't really?) and asked WHY he'd throw up like that?!?!?!? Murray said "well he must have eaten something that disagreed with him!" Honey replied vehemently "well, of COURSE it disagreed with him!!!! who'd AGREE TO THAT!?!?!?"

ohhhhhh that girl!!!

Sneak Attack!

Lovey's teacher got married in early July and had told me about her day, and plans for pictures before the ceremony. We decided to sneak in for a little photo op ourselves and got to the park ahead of the wedding party and waited for Ms J to arrive and another little girl from Lovey's class met us there. They were quite excited as they waited and were so pleased to see their teacher all dressed up in her finery! 

Ms J was equally happy to see them and took a few minutes to come talk to them and let us take a picture!

Wedding Fun

My cousin got married a few weeks ago and we had some downtime in between the dinner and the dance. The girls and I went exploring outdoors and cranked out some new shots. They were actually into this shoot! I took them by themselves one by one while the others ran around with Grammie & Grandad or Murray. 

Each girl picked out all her own spots to pose in and it was so interesting to see what appealed to each one and what they wanted to do there. I made a few suggestions but these are mostly their own!

Here are their official "8th Year Portraits":

 

It was party party party all night long! I had thought they'd stay for a bit of the evening, maybe we'd let them stay up til 9 or 10 and send them home to our place when M&D went. That opportunity presented itself around 10pm but these girls still had a lot of dance left in their shoes and were adamantly opposed to leaving early. They were having the time of their lives and were so well behaved that we decided to let them stay and just go home when they got tired. TWO hours later only one of them was starting to fade and willing to leave. One had worn holes in the toes of her dancing slippers and that red whirling dervish was never going to be done!

Finally at midnight, we pulled the plug on their all night dance-a-thon and went home. They slept very very well!

Purge!

Our cup runneth over! The girls officially have too many toys. They couldn't even close the drawers on the organizers holding all their dress up stuff, baby dolls, stuffed animals and the list goes on.

Last Thursday, around 10:30am we started going through their room section by section, drawer by drawer. We pulled out every bit of junk jammed under their beds, behind dressers and doors and in their nightstands! We even found one bag of black moldy goop of unknown origins in Honey's section. (aka hoard central!)

They had a "give" pile for things they no longer had a use for, a "junk" pile for things that weren't even worth keeping or giving, and a "this belongs somewhere else pile".

I brought out stuff out drawer by drawer and dumped it on the living room floor and set a timer. Anything left on the floor at the buzzer would go in the garbage. 

Well! Those girls thrive on a challenge! I never found anything unsorted when the timer went off. The pile on the couch is the give away pile. It took til after 5 pm to go through everything and clean their rooms but they look great now and they have more room to play and they're quite proud of their work and tidy space!

(disclaimer: I did give them a popsicle break and a lunch break!)