Life as we know it

Is back to 'normal'! Yes, my kids are home with me. After a busy busy busy Friday, getting ready to leave, we drove 2 hrs to go stay the night at the farm, where the other 2 children spent the week. The night went well, (besides a horrible Rider loss) kids were soooo excited to see each other, they were very loud, but had fun. Hubby and I made lunch for the next day cause we were heading to the Ex in the near by city for a majority of the day.

We spent a few hrs at the Ex, and after almost dying from heat stroke, we left to come home, and then got to the farm, had a little bite to eat and then headed out on the road again. After 4 1/2 hrs spent driving that day, we were beat!! Glad to be home with our happy little family.

The living room is a slow process...mudding and sanding is still happening, I will post pictures once it's back together again, and the furniture isn't piled up in the middle of the living room (see previous post)! I still LOVE the colour, and can't wait till the kitchen is painted, but I don't want to try to attempt that for a while. At least the kitchen won't have as much 'prep' work to do!!

This is a mumbo jumbo blog entry, sorry bout that, I must just not be in the right frame of mind for writing today...maybe it's cause I SHOULD me making my kids lunch, cause we have to be out the door in 45 mins to drop off my oldest at a birthday party!! EEEK...

Its August already?

Someone the other day said what the date was to me, he said it was July 30th, I almost found myself correcting him, but thankfully I thought about it first...and then shared with them that I thought they were wrong, but realized that they weren't wrong...I was. Geesh, time is going by so fast, I want to halt it right now. My kids are getting so big, and that only means, I am getting old. Please don't remind me!

We are currently working on our living room, trying to get it painted, but we've had some set backs. We had a wall in our living room, the far wall, it was wallpapered covered panelling. We had a wall in our hallway that had the same wallpaper covered panelling, which by the way, was easy to remove, and fill holes. So we assumed in the living room it was the same situation. We were wrong. We tore off the wallpapered panelling, to uncover another layer of panelling. Yippee, no big deal right...wrong. We took that panelling off and discovered as we were pulling, that the panelling was glued to the gyproc!! This is how the conversation went, husband pulling the panelling, Me "it sounds like it's glued" husband, "na, it's fine" Me "no, it really sounds like it is glued" husband tearing off the whole sheet, Me "fiddlesticks, it was glued, now what, we can't fill all those holes with drywall mud" husband "no, we re-drywall" Me "fricken frackin". Aren't you happy I shared that with you!? (that was all Sunday night) So, it is drywalled, mudded and taped, and now my DH is working on the fun job of sanding it all. I am just patiently waiting to put some paint on the walls!!

I am really thankful that we have parents who can take the kids for a week or so at a time. They have been away twice this summer!! They are having a blast, and so are we ;) Well, maybe not a blast, but you know!

We went to one of our nieces 1st birthday on August 1st, and this is her gift. I have made one for the last 5 nieces and nephew. I really like how this turned out! My kids are asking for a name frame of their own. Noah said to me, "Momma, for my 10th birthday, I want a name frame!" I guess I have some work to do in the next few months!

Teeth

Wow, they are costing us a lot of money!! Our oldest and middle child are on a tooth losing streak. If they keep this up, we are going to go broke, oh, I mean the tooth fairy. Our youngest child hasn't lost any yet, and our son, he's only lost a about 8 I think, I can't keep track any more. And one of the reasons why we, I mean the tooth fairy is going to go broke, is cause they keep loosing their teeth when we are at a hotel, or camping, and when they lose their teeth in either of those two places, they get $5!! They get $1 for the front teeth, $2 for molars and $5 if they loose their teeth while on vacation. So, ya, now you understand why we, I mean the tooth fairy (sheesh) is going to go broke. Emmalee lost a tooth while camping this weekend, and I pulled out another loose tooth today. And Alexa lost a molar today! Craziness!

I think I will be sad when Breanna looses her first tooth, her being the baby and all, it's one more step for her becoming a big girl :( She's a big girl, but she's my baby. I am sad for that, her getting so big, and grown up. Not much I can do about it now, eh?

We are hoping to start painting our living room next week, as the kids are leaving to grandma's and nanny and papa's again. The living room is a little more work, having to pack it all up, no windows to open, lots of furniture, some not coming back in, and needing to buy a few new little things to add to the 'new' room, which can be fun too! What I wish is that we could redo our fireplace, new brick, get rid of the hearth (or whatever that's called), but that seems to be a lot of work!? We would also love to redo the original hard wood floors, but that too seems like a lot of work! We knew a family that had to move out of their house for a few days while their hard wood floors were getting redone, cause it's so dusty, and stinky. Sigh... We will be getting new windows this fall sometime, so that's exciting! I will keep you updated, and hopefully take pictures. Usually when we do a 'reno' I can envision the outcome, like I did for our bedroom, the main bath, the basement bath, and the girls room. I can't envision the living room finished results. But, I am looking forward to the finished results, finally!!

Camping

**Edited to add pictures

We just got back from a fun, spontaneous camping trip. Well, mostly spontaneous, since we had no place booked, and had planned on going to Rowans Ravine, thinking they'd have some sites, well, we phoned and they never did. Plan B, hmm, we never had a plan b. So, Friday afternoon, we quickly phoned a few places and had a plan b, Echo Valley. It was fun, and we are so glad we went. I was a little under the weather with a woman issue, but made it through the weekend. Very glad to be home though.

I didn't take too many pictures at our site, I need to get better at that, but take some at the beach when we were there for an hr, the water was gross apparently, even my husband didn't want to go in.
I am now looking forward to having a relaxing Sunday afternoon. On the list of things to do today, get the kids bathed...fun times!

It's finally summer

Isn't it exciting?? Mostly!! I'm not a fan of the high heat, I'd rather be indoors in the air conditioning. But it it much better than the "should I put my furnace on in the middle of July" kinda weather. We did get the bench put on the deck. It was pretty easy, and again, my hubby and I worked well together!

We've been camping twice since the beginning of June, only twice, ya. Compared to our 9 times out last year, it's nothing. This past weekend, we decided to do a spontaneous trip to Lake Diefenbaker to see the Gardner Dam, and go to the two Provincial Parks that are on the East side of the lake. We stopped at Danielson, to find they really had nothing we were looking for, which was a place to picnic and a place to swim. Off we drove, south to Douglas. We go there, and they had a HUGE beach and a decent picnic place to roast wieners and have supper. What a day, it was so awesome, I loved every minute of our time away. I wished we didn't have to leave. It was fairly windy, as you can see from the first picture!!

This was such a neat site, I just had to take a picture! Of course, I had to do it, the sand was sooo nice! Emmalee said to me "Mom, this must be the sand they use in hour glasses" It was so fine, and soft!

A picture of my feet in the soft sand!

Look at what the wind did to the sand, beautiful!!I love this picture, my little family!!Breanna, my baby, walking along the shore.
I absolutely LOVE this picture, look at those sun rays!!!

We are hoping to go camping this weekend, we'll see how it goes. I've been keeping busy catching up on laundry, and scrap booking! I have so much stuff, I need to start using it, so I don't feel so bad buying new stuff!! Right? ;)

it's been a long time...

We've been so busy with soccer every evening and swimming lessons during the day for 4 weeks. It's been a tiring month. We've begun camping again for the year, and I hafta tell you, after nine trips out last year, I wasn't totally looking forward to it this year. But after the first weekend, even though it rained the whole time, I'm glad we went, and am looking forward to going out some more!! I really do like it, and one thing I like about it is cooking while camping! It's a challenge for me. I am not into the hamburger and hotdogs of camping, what I cook at home, I try to cook while camping. Like nachos, baked spaghetti (we have no oven in the trailer), taco salad, and sometime in the future, I plan on trying to make pizza!! We do have hamburgers, but Ultimate Hamburgers instead, with tomato, lettuce, pickles, mayo, yum!! The real challenge for me though, is fitting all our food into the tiny fridge in our tent trailer. I hope I won't have to worry about that next year!! We'll see!

One thing we did this past weekend while camping was play Spoons for the first time with the kids!! I've never played it before, and either have they, but it was soooo fun, I love it! Our new favorite camping game!

I have had different posts in mind, but rarely get them down on here. I have pictures, but haven't downloaded them from my camera. Soon I hope!! Just wanted to give you all a quick update on stuff!