While we were in Idaho, we came across a "Bumblebee" bike that was the right size for Mason. We had seen this one advertised back home, but it was never in stock, it was also priced for about half the cost!! So, in the presence of our soon to be 4 year old, we purchased the bike. And with no where to stash it, it was no surprise to him that it was for his birthday. So, just to make it official and to satisfy my need to throw birthday parties, I planned an "un-birthday" for him so that we could actually give him his present. We also wanted to give it to him a bit early so that we could squeeze as much ride time as we could before the fall and winter came along. I prepared his favourite: homemade (aka "real macaroni") and we had fresh, homemade blueberry pie instead of cake.

I think he likes it...
It's funny...he had seen this bike before, even had a try riding it in the store, but we kept in "hidden" for about a week and I guess the time apart was enough to make it seem almost like he was actually surprised! haha

Slade's Uncle and Aunt, George and Lucy Bates, celebrated their 50th anniversary this year in Trail, BC! We made a last minute decision and decided to attend the festivities! Unfortunately I forgot my camera at the hotel and so I don't have any pictures from the event. It was nicely decorated and had a really great program with lots of singing from the family! What a talented family!!! I was amazed and had a good time hanging with Slade's extended family and getting to know them better. We only get to see them once every 3 years, so things change a lot from then until now. They had a dance afterwards and Summer was in her glory!! That girl has got some moves! I wish so badly I had my camera there to take some pics and video. She was hilarious and had the best time of her life up to that point I'm sure!! She particularly like the old school songs from the 50's! After the reunion we headed down to Couer d'Alene, ID. We had been to an amusement park there called Silverwood and Boulder Park years ago when Ronan was only 6 months old, so we wanted to go back and check it out again. It is an amusement park mixed in with water slides! Your entry gets you into both parks. We started out at Silverwood and got right into the rides. Ronan and I went on this ride first. It was fun and Ronan got a real kick out of it!

The boys REALLY liked this ride. They went on it a few times, especially once it got later and the crowds started to thin out.

I, being a mean mother, forced the boys onto this rapid raft ride. teehee! It is by far one of the most calm raft rides I've ever been on. They plugged their ears the whole way down!


We got soaked, so we decided to hit up the water slides and let our clothes dry out in the sun for awhile. I had fun, but I don't think the boys were too impressed!

Coming into the home stretch of the summer, you start to run out of ideas for things to do. We'd been to the lake LOTS, parks, spray parks, swimming pools, play dates, shopping...we were running out of ideas and the kids were starting to feel bored with the mundane. So Irene phoned up one morning with the great idea to go check out the Dinosaur Exhibit at Metrotown! So after some planning, packing and getting ready to go we met up and headed out to Surrey to catch the sky train. We could have just drove, but we thought this would add to the fun. Just as we arrived at the Scott Road Train Station, Summer puked all over herself. This was confirmation that my little baby gets car sick!!!! Sucky!! So after I cleaned her and her seat up as much as possible, we got our tickets and headed off.

Summer slept through the whole thing except for the sky train ride!

We are spoiled during the summer because Slade gets all kinds of free tickets from Avenue Machinery to events throughout the summer/year. So, as usual, we had some tickets to go to the air show! We met up with the Leavitt's and had some fun.

Slade had the opportunity to play baseball with the fire department in the World Police and Fire Games! The team was organized and started practise in March. It was pretty exciting for him and I was happy to see him tapping into something that he has loved and missed. Slade played baseball all through his childhood and youth. He got to play first base with his team and did a really great job! I went out to watch 3 of his 7 games, the first one in Surrey and the next two in Burnaby. It was lots of fun, and I was thankful for the good weather! Glad it wasn't raining and glad it wasn't 45 degrees out! I love watching sports, but I really miss playing sports as well. It was fun to watch Slade and his buddies pull it together. They went up against the team from Montreal that won the gold medal in last years WPFG!! So yeah...they got beat pretty bad for their first game. Their final game would determine who would go on to play for the bronze medal! They were so close and only lost by one run! It was a good game, an exciting experience and he had fun playing anyways. :) Here are some shots of the action:

The dreaded phrase! One thing that is almost 100% expected with boys is that someday they will decide that picking up bugs and showing them to you is COOL! I was busy doing some budgeting on the computer and Ronan shows up behind me and says that awful and fearful phrase!! I turned around and this is what he had to show me:

We celebrated Erin Forchuk's birthday with her at a Japanese Restaurant here in Abby!

My guy, Mason, has been anxious for a big boy bike! We still haven't made the purchase yet, mostly because we lack the funds and we are slackers in the bike training department. Eeek! We finally got Ronan his first big boy bike for his 5th birthday. We are thinking of waiting until Mason's 4th to get him his, but the dilemma there is that his b-day is in September...a little late in the year for a new bike. We'll see...He's almost to big for the smallest size bike, but still a bit to small for the next size up, so waiting until his birthday would make it easier to buy the bigger bike so he can grow into it without much frustration. Coming in to the fall/winter season there won't be a whole lot of ride time and his bike will be fairly new and fresh come spring! But just to make him feel a bit more happy with his current situation we purchased him his bike helmet and pads! (Probably should have done this ages ago to protect him while riding his trike...) He was so excited he couldn't wait to get it out of the package. So in the parking lot of the store, I took it out of the packaging except for a plastic cord that was holding the helmet into the plastic package. He wore it out for a short bike ride up at the park and then while we were at home. I was busy doing things around the house and found him here like this:

We woke up early as usual, and I let the air out of my bed. Ronan was full of questions and was begging to stay one more night. Would have been nice, but I was pretty exhausted by this point. Sleep deprived and dirty...I was ready to go home. So I let the air out of all their beds while they played around in the tent. I hauled all the bedding up to the van, took down the tent, packed up all the straggling items, and had an hour to spare before check out! It was nice to have that last hour to sit and relax, sit around a morning campfire and visit with my Grandparents. My mom had an appointment to go to early that morning. She had left at 5:30. By the time 10:45 rolled around there were new campers already waiting to get in. One even started setting up tent before we had even left!! haha You gotta be quick to get a site at Hicks unless you've reserved. It was fun. I said goodbye to my Grandparents who were heading back up to Merritt, the boys said goodbye to the campsite, and we were off. We got home just after noon. I bathed the kids and had a shower once I had unloaded the van and put some of it away. I can't believe how dirty I was!! My feet and legs alone took half an hour to scrub clean! That's what I get for wearing flip-flops all week! I have to say that I am so grateful for showers, flushing toilets, hair products and soaps that smell nice, and a nice clean house that Slade surprised me with! We left in a whirl wind and I couldn't remember what state I had left the house in, although I was pretty sure it was not clean. It was a VERY nice surprise to come home to! What a sweetie!!

Camping for 6 days with 3 kids...well worth the time and effort. It was so much fun, and my kids had the time of their lives!! I'm so happy that I was able to do this for them and for myself and build these lasting memories with them. I can't wait to do it again!

My Grandma!

I had to lie to Mason and tell him I was taking a picture of his orange not him...technically that's what I was doing!! haha

Ronan giving Summer some love as per usual!

Great-grandpa and Great-grand daughter chillaxin' by the fire!

Another early morning! Camping is always like that. I've never really been able to sleep in long while camping. My Grandma on the other hand...she and my Grandpa were sleeping in the back of their van. She had it all set up with a nice mattress and her big, huge, fluffy duvet. It looked incredibly cozy!! She slept well past 10 in the morning! haha I love it!

I called Slade this morning to talk to him about my frustrations last night. He had planned to come out and visit during the day so I decided to just suck it up and stay the last night. So we hung around the campsite for awhile. Brian and Brenda Leavitt showed up and took Irene's kids for a little ride in their car to explore the camp grounds and beaches. While they were gone, I put Summer down for her morning nap. While I wasn't looking this is what happened:



I saw Ronan (without his knowledge) hiding behind my mom's van. So I peeked to check out what he was doing. He had snagged Summer's bottle and was sucking on it!!!! hahaha Ronan, when he was a baby, LOVED his bottles!! It took me quite awhile to ween him off, he was 2 1/2! So this, some how, didn't surprise me all that much. He has been very interested in Summer's bottles when she started accepting one. I think deep down he misses having one. Either that or it is just the novelty of sucking on a bottle. Anyways, I crept around the van and snapped his picture. Of course he wasn't too happy with me, and he took off. This is also a common occurrence when I bust out the camera. Both Ronan and Mason declare they "hate getting pictures" and so I just take that many more! I know...I'm a mean mom. ;) So I chased them around with the camera for awhile.

Slade showed up at camp around 11:00. Summer was still sleeping so we decided to have lunch before we would go swimming. While we were cooking lunch Irene called out saying she saw a Raccoon. So we chased it through the woods and up a tree. It was so cute! It climbed up pretty high, but I managed to get a few good pictures of it! This must be a raccoon from the family that tromped through our sites very early in the morning the first night! As a recap: They had climbed up onto the bins some had stacked up underneath Irene's "bed" in the tent trailer. They woke her up by bumping the support poles for her bed. Of course she was scared at first, but realized what it was. The raccoons ended up getting into a fight, crashed into my mom's tent bumping Krystal's bed (who slept through the whole noisy affair) and then rambled past our tent. It was quite the fight, and I was surprised my kids slept through that. Anyways, here's the little guy peeking down at us: