Summer Fun

We've had a fun week!  We went swimming at the pool with friends on Monday.  Tuesday morning was the last library program for the summer.  Emma got her face painted and Ben played with all the miniatures.  On Wednesday, we took Lennard to the airport in Lethbridge so that he could fly to Vancouver to be with his dad.  After we dropped him off, I stopped in to Value Village and managed to find 13 shirts and 4 pairs of pants for the kids - all at 40% off!  Gotta love sales!  Then, the kids and I went out to eat at Boston Pizza.  Thursday was my father-in-law's surgery and thankfully it went well.  I babysat Holly's kids for an hour after lunch while she was at the dentist, and then we loaded up and headed to the pool again!  We were there until it closed at 5:00!  We had so much fun.  Ben even went down the waterslides all by himself about 4-5 times!  Hooray for getting braver!  I love going to the swimming pool with friends.  It is so much more fun (especially when I get to visit while the kids play!)

To finish off the week, we headed out to Wally's Beach this morning!  We haven't been in a few years, so it was extra 'special'!  Shauna came out with five of her kids so our kids were thrilled to get to play with their cousins!  It was so nice having older kids around to watch Emma and Ben too!

Look how perfectly beautiful it was!

 Emma found a 'mud hole' that she played in off and on throughout the day.  She and Anna added more sand and water to it and had lots of fun getting 'stuck'!

 Emma loved every minute of digging in the sand and got pretty brave going out in the water too.  She even tried to swim in it... with her nose plugged.  lol

 Anna attempted to bury her in the sand to make her a mermaid.

 To say that she had sand everywhere would be an understatement!  I couldn't stand being that sandy, but she had a blast!

 Ben was busy building a 'dam'.  Grace helped him out shoring up the sides and pouring water in.

 He was pretty happy with his 'hot tub'!  His toes are so wrinkly from being in the water!

 I just can't get over what a perfect day it was.  Seriously - so, so nice!  The bugs weren't bad and there wasn't any wind!

 Anna and Emma had a lot of fun together.

 Ben found a shady spot and claimed the chips as his own.  I love his pose here.  Such a cute boy!

 Shauna and I had a great time getting to visit and wade in the water to cool down.  It got pretty hot in the afternoon and we pretty much had to run over the hot sand to get to the water!  We are definitely going to have to go again!

 This is the picture I sent Lennard... such a rough life, but someone has to live it!

Carriage House Theatre Summer Drama Camp

This week, Emma had a dream come true!  She got to attend a drama camp every morning this week and then perform on stage today!  She did such a good job and it was so fun seeing how excited she was!

This is Emma with her instructors for the week - Dalys Fletcher and Tate Sommerfeldt.  They have been great with her and she loves them!

 They performed 'Hakuna Matata' from the Lion King.  It was a cute number.

Fly-In Breakfast

Lennard surprised Ben this morning by taking him flying to a breakfast at A.J.'s (north of Nanton).  There was a large breakfast being put on there and they had a fun time visiting with all the other pilots that flew in (many of whom Lennard knows).

Ben apparently loved this airplane... because there was a turret with guns!  He could have stayed there all day!

 There were LOTS of planes to look at!  Lennard had wanted to go last night and camp over, but the weather here has been so crazy and a huge storm came through in the evening.

OUCH!

Poor Benny really used his head today... He had just finished watching one of the Star Wars movies and had raced upstairs to tell me that 'Luke Skywalker won!'.  He turned around quickly to go get his shoes so that he could play outside with Emma and Jeffrey (I was babysitting my nephews).  Unfortunately, as he turned and ran, he went straight into the corner of the wall.  Immediately he had a huge goose egg pop up.  I was scared to have him move his hand as I thought that there would be blood everywhere.  Thankfully it didn't split, but he sure screamed!  He ended up laying on my bed with an ice pack on his head to try to get some of the swelling down.  

Beach Time

For some crazy reason, Emma woke up at about 4:00am saying that she was scared.  Lennard got her settled again, but she kept waking up about three more times after that.  Grrr!  We had a super lazy morning since we were all tired (except Ben - who slept through everything!).  We had our breakfast and the kids played with Payton for a while.  We then decided that we needed to make another visit to the bakery in Kimberley, so off we went!  We loaded up on sugar and then headed back to the campsite to get some swimming gear and toys for the kids before going in to Cranbrook to have lunch with Rachel at her house.  The kids were excited to get to play with their cousins again.  We checked out their new tent trailer - which Emma and Ben inform us that they would prefer...  

After lunch, we all loaded up and headed out to Moyie Lake.  Wow!  It is so beautiful!

We had no idea what to expect, so Lennard and I didn't even bring our swim suits.  We just figured the kids would play with their sand toys and maybe wade a bit.  Boy, were we wrong!  As soon as we arrived we were wishing that we'd had our suits.  It was so hot!  We'd brought our loungers so we had something to sit on.  Thankfully, Rachel brought her beach umbrella so that gave us a little shade.

The kids were in the water before we could hardly blink... but it is so shallow for a long way out that we didn't worry at all.  They had so much fun just going wherever they wanted.  It was great!

 Rachel brought their kayaks out and Ben took to it like a duck to water.  He loved every minute and was really good at it too!  We may just have to look at getting one for the kids to share... who knows.

Emma tried it out too and loved it.  It took her a little bit longer to pick up the paddling, but she got it. Seriously - so much fun!

Lennard and I waded quite a ways out into the lake and cooled off a few times.  I ended up stepping on a bee and got stung, so the cool water felt good on my foot (once I was able to walk again without my foot feeling like it was on fire).

 Emma loves the sand... so much that she had sand everywhere... literally!  I wish that there had been an outside shower for her because it was quite the chore trying to clean her off.  She went in the lake, but there was so much sand inside her suit that it almost looked like she hadn't washed off at all.  Crazy girl!  At least she had fun!

 Ben found a few friends to play with and had fun digging and filling holes with water.

After a few hours at the lake, it was getting close to dinner time, so we packed up and said goodbye to Rachel's family.  We stopped in at the campground to check out the sites and plan for a trip next year.  I can't wait!

We had dinner back at the campsite.  We tried to eat outside as it was absolutely beautiful, but there were so many wasps that we couldn't eat without them dive bombing us.  Ridiculous!  We're going to have to buy a screen tent to put over the picnic table for our next camping trips.

It's hard to believe that the week is already over and that we're heading home tomorrow.  It's been such a great week together.  I'm not ready for 'real' life again!

Enjoying Nature

After breakfast, we decided to go for a short 'hike' with the kids.  We only got a little way down the trail before Ben was complaining that the grass was bugging his legs.  We ended up turning around and going back to the trailer to get Ben some pants and it made all the difference in the world.

 We had a great time exploring!  Ben found a stick that he carried the entire time.  He thought he was pretty cool!

 Of course, because Ben found a stick, Emma wanted one too!  Lennard found one for her and she was all smiles!

 We met a lady on the trail that took our picture for us!

It was seriously the most beautiful day and a nice trail.  We loved every minute of it and the kids even enjoyed it too!

When we got back from the walk, we decided to explore a bit more and took a drive to St. Mary's Lake.  It was quite the drive to get there, but it was a beautiful lake.  The kids loved getting to throw rocks into the lake and it was cool seeing all the huge tree trunks and roots.

 Ben spent the time making a 'dam'!  He was so proud of himself and roped all of us into helping him!

 As we were leaving he kept having to add just one more rock.  It was fun to watch him.

After lunch, we took the kids in to Cranbrook to go swimming at the wave pool there.  The 'waves' were pretty pathetic, but the kids had a lot of fun swimming with us and the pool was nice and warm!  We then surprised them and took the to 'The Secret Life of Dogs' movie.  We were all pretty water logged, so it was nice to just sit and watch a movie together.  They were really tired afterwards, so we headed back to the trailer, had some dinner and then played SkipBo with the kids.  They went to bed really well and it was a good thing too... we had a major rainstorm come through with super loud thunder and lightning!  Thankfully, they slept through the entire storm!  What a blessing.

Rock On!

The kids were telling us this morning that Payton's camp site was better than ours because she had a fun game.  When we heard about the game, we pulled the game out of one of the storage bins!  The kids had forgotten that we had the same game.  Ha! Ha!  We had a lot of fun playing with them.

 Ben thought he was pretty smart standing on this tree stump.  What a funny boy!

 After a while, Emma went off to play with Payton.  Ben got to stay with us and we decided to teach him how to play Skip-Bo.  He did pretty good and had fun playing with us.

Just before noon we headed in to Kimberley to Spirit Rock to go rock climbing.  It took a while to get all the waivers signed and rentals figured out, but we got everything done and started climbing! They were both a little nervous to start out, but before long Emma was off and climbing.

 Ben had a bit of a hard time with his harness.  He complained of it hurting him, so he didn't want to climb.  After some time, we finally found a new harness and he did much better after that.

Within about a half hour of being there, Rachel came with her three oldest kids and we had fun climbing with them all afternoon.

 Lennard and I even tried climbing!  It was a good workout!  My arms and legs were shaking pretty good by the end of a few walls.

 Lennard had a lot of fun climbing and made it to the top of a couple really tall walls!

Since we really didn't have lunch, by the time we finished up rock climbing, everyone was hungry.  We went to the bakery and had a hard time narrowing down our choices!

 Emma got a chocolate covered cream filled eclair type treat.

 Ben requested the 'zebra' one... a Neapolitan.

 I got a big foot donut... YUM! Lennard got a sausage/beef roll. That was delicious.

Seriously - everything was SO good!  We said goodbye to Rachel and her kids and then headed back to the campground.  The kids really wanted to go swimming.  It wasn't very warm and almost starting to rain, but they were determined to go... so we let them!  Lennard had planned to get in with them, but when we got up to the pool, it wasn't very deep and the kids were doing okay by themselves, so we just hung out on the side of the pool and watched them.  Crazy kids!

We didn't stay very long as it was starting to rain.  We got back to the trailer and called Grandpa Nichols to wish him a happy birthday!  It was hard to call anyone with the spotty cell reception at the campground so we were glad we managed to get through to him.