Au Revoir Summer!

At least summer vacation. We're still enjoying some nice, warm weather but we know fall is just around the corner (there are some changing and even some falling leaves already!). So here is an ode to summer days gone by and all the fun we've had in Canada's beautiful phase.

I love a picnic. I hate the dishes afterward but I love being outside with the fam, enjoying nature. It seems like no matter what we're eating, it always tastes better outside and the kids always eat better. There are so many beautiful parks close by so we are really lucky.


We even managed to do some fancy picnicking (AKA BBQ-ing). It is like the poor man's camping. A little more prep time involved but so fun. Here is Chloe with her buddy Corbin roasting marshmallows at the park. BTW, if you've never tried nutella and sliced bananas on your s'mores, than you are missing out!

I love flying kites. We still haven't found a great place to fly yet because there are so many trees. The kids go nuts over "Zeke" our kite. He's a trusty, sun faded kite that even the least skilled of kitateers can fly. We keep him in our trunk to be ready to roll at a moment's notice.


We also really love playing in the sprinklers. I bought this little "tidepool" from Walmart and it has proved to be so fun for the kids and even for me. If you're really thirsty, it turns into a drinking fountain too. There is a little section that looks like a mini pool and the Littlest Pet Shops have really enjoyed their summer playing out there as well. You know you're from CA when you go to lay out in the backyard and your kid's friends go, "What is your mom doing?" and she answers, "Oh she's just laying out. She thinks it feels so good and it makes her really happy." I sure do. It is also great to see Chloe having such a great time playing with her friends. Remember when that's all you did all summer?



And even the indoors have been great. The girls have really spent some great quality time together. It is so fun to see how much they love each other. Chloe has been teaching Tati how to color and it is really paying off.
So goodbye summer vacation. Hurry back! We'll miss you!!!!!!!!!!!!

Foreign Imports

Greg's parents came to town and we were able to show off Edmonton in the summer. Last time they were here was right after Tati was born (January) and brrr, it was cold in our stinky basement apartment. This time, luckily, the weather really was beautiful.

We went on a picnic at our favorite park. Chloe was so cute. She took the camera and just started taking a bunch of pictures. Of course we were encouraging her all over the place. She said that someday she is going to be a photographer. Here are a few of her good ones.

Now that the geese babies are a little older, they all seemed much more low key. Phew because last time was a little rough.
I mean yeah there was the occasional shot of half a garbage can or a water bottle but overall, I think Chloe is really getting a good eye for what would look good in a picture. She is quite artistic already so maybe this is just another branch of that.


Greg took this one, not Chloe. He was so triumphant because usually his pictures don't turn out so swift.

We also went to the zoo. I have to say after visiting the petting zoo with the kids, this ghetto zoo is actually growing on me. Maybe having a free poor people pass is helping with that. And hearing a kookaburra. It really does sound like how Captain Feathersword does it. (For all the Wiggles fans out there.) And their heads are way bigger than you think. Anyway, I digress...

The inside of the shark's mouth had an aquarium. It was pretty funny.

Even if you weren't thirsty, you know you'd take a drink from this fun drinking fountain.

I also got my mother-in-law to teach me how to make a pie pastry. For some reason it has always intimidated me. Maybe it was having shortening as an ingredient. I always would buy those frozen pie crusts. In the end it made me think like, "Duh, of course this is why people make their own pie crusts" because it was so easy and tasted delicious.


We decided in the end that we actually made "Pie Soup". I couldn't believe how wet it was. I decided to try and drain it a bit and the following day it was much better. I learned my lesson about using the cherry juice with the fruit though. Of course it didn't bother our kids at all.

So now all I need to do is get some apples and I'll be set to start fall.

Iron Lion Zion

Well, this is the final tier of our summer vacation catch-up. Enjoy.

Greg's little brother FINALLY got married so that gave us the chance to go visit the old stomping grounds: UTAH! It was so fun but so sad also. I never expected that I would miss Provo so much. I think the time away did us both some good. We didn't have near enough time to do all the things we wanted to, eat at all the places we wanted to, or see all the people we wanted to. So if you got dissed, sorry it's just that we had like one day to visit anybody. Luckily we ran into some old buddies (the Quinns) in the parking lot of the mall. What are the odds of that? It was really great to be in Utah again. We were all nostalgic. That is where Greg and I met for those of you who don't know. We were able to show Chloe where she was born and she loved that. She kept wanting to hear the story again and again. It is kind of hard to explain an emergency c-section without it being too graphic but that is her history so what can you do?

Anyway, so here are some photo highlights:

Grandma and Grandpa with the girls. Man, don't mess with Tati.

The cute couple. This is Heather. Chloe kept saying she was so beautiful then she'd say with a nervous smile and glance at me, "But not as beautiful as you Mommy." It's ok Chloe, you can think we're both hot.
You should go over to Chloe's blog and see the awesome picture she drew of Heather and Kirk there. Check my sidebar for the link.

(Here are my two girls together. I was having a super unphotogenic day that day. Don't you hate that?)

[Here's Tati with "Sneaky" her baby jaguar(insert the rarh, rarh from Diego in your mind). She loves this thing. It is quite cute.]

Even though it was a short amount of time, we had a lot of fun seeing family. (Thanks Lori and Rod for the great hospitality!) It was also fun for Chloe to get to see some of old cousins again and get to know her new cousins a little better--especially Brielle.

(Chloe and Brielle swimming at Aunt Lori's house. Brielle was being Chloe's swimming teacher. It was very cute.)

(Chloe with her Aunt Stephanie on the go-cart. She was so nervous and excited. She kept talking about how brave she was for like 2 days afterward.)

(McKayla, Tati, Natasha, and Chloe. It continues to blow me away at how helpful and nice these girls are. Chloe has really lucked out on the whole cousin scene. I just wish we lived closer to you guys!!!)
Overall, a great trip. We even enjoyed driving there from California which we did not expect. You'd be surprised at what having a Harry Potter book on c.d. can do for passing the long time. And speaking of the passing of time, it is crazy how fast summer passed by this year. I'll miss it, the families, the beach, the sprinklers, the friends, the fun and the sun. Let's all cross our fingers for a short and mild Canada winter.

Walk Like An Egyptian!

So I gotta say that sometimes Greg really does impress me. Here is a perfect example. So Chloe had to give a talk in Primary. No, Chloe doesn't know how to read a whole full on talk but I also hate just whispering sentence by sentence to her. The last time she gave a talk it was one of the factors in my Mommy Vacation so we came up with this idea last time she had to do a scripture for Primary and it worked so well that this time we went for it with her talk. When we have her do a talk, we basically spend a few days talking to her about the subject and asking her different questions, then we set aside some time to actually type it out as she tells it to me. Then I make a few edits or ask her some follow-up questions to get some answers that we're looking for. It usually turns out pretty good this way because it really is her work. I like Greg to be the one to help her at the microphone mostly because I'm always busy doing something else like telling a kid to please not kick the child in front of him/her and it is good bonding time for them. Anyway, click on this and take a look at this masterpiece. You'll have to compare the first few lines of words with the first few lines of the pictures.
We were all amazed at how awesome she did. It did take her quite a while though--probably the longest talk our ward has ever seen a kid give--but she didn't need any help or prompting. Did we revolutionize this whole thing or what?! Go Team!

Camparama

I'm a little embarrassed at the sheer quantity of photos in this post but as Greg told me, "Hey, people love pictures." This will be my second tier about our vast vacation. Our crazy camping trip to Mammoth Lakes, CA. We used to camp here all the time when we were little but we haven't been back in a long time (since right before my mission). Some things were the same and some things of course were very different since now both me and my little brother have families and kids. There are so many geologic points of interest that I knew that Greg would love it. If you've never been there, it is a great place to check out. Here are some highlights. You may have to click on the images to really do them justice. (Please note: Greg's hat says, "#1 Grandpa" ha ha ha! He hated that all these pictures have him in that hat. Hey, it was hot and I was just protecting him.)

Devil's Postpile:
This is some crazy rock formation made from cooling lava. They are these hexagonal shaped pillars. Greg went crazy and started spouting off such things as "heat loss" and "cooling rates". He even started talking about "vesicles" in the rocks. I told him he was being inappropriate what with children around and all. Thankfully Marnie's dad was a geologist so she was able to give Professor Greg better ears than some of us (that means me--he gets this like voice...). She even showed off some of her rock knowledge which was fun to see. Anyway, it was great. Chloe even turned into a mini professor in her own right lecturing her cousin, Penny, about volcanoes and how they only erupt lava when they are awake instead of sleeping. She also explained lava as the volcano's blood. It was pretty classic. I'm pretty sure Penny kept talking about sleeping mountains for the rest of the camp-out and being careful not to wake them up. :-) We took a little detour afterward to go to a spot on the river where there are natural soda springs. It was fun to give the kids a break from the heat to play in the water. Check out the bubbling water. Cool.


Rainbow Falls:
This is such a beautiful waterfall. It is so cool to feel the mist. I remember being so excited to be able to hike to the bottom and be right there. The mist feels so good too because it is a pretty dry and hot hike so it feels great to cool off. It was a little sad of a hike because there was a bunch of fire damage but that lent itself to a great nature lesson to Chloe from Greg about how forest fires have a happy ending for plants. Maybe you had to be there. We were really proud of Chloe because she was able to hike the whole thing by herself. She had a great time. The end was a little rough though so it was awesome that Grandpa bought everybody popsicles at the General Store before going back to camp.

The River:
We had such a great campsite (we moved the second day from a stupid one) right next to the river and after taking a secret trail, we had our own, private beach that we only had to share with a deer taking a pee. I never knew they squatted to go to the bathroom. It was hilarious.

Stephan was the only one with a fishing license but Chloe and Penny both had fun trying to catch a fish on the Barbie fishing rod. Hey, it isn't my fault if I picked such an awesome fishing spot. All I was doing was seeing if I still knew how to cast and a fish straight up jumped onto my hook. I had to pull him in. The same thing happened when Marnie was trying to learn how to cast. Out of our control. Tati learned how to say "rock" on this camp-out. Talk about melting her Daddy's heart. She threw a butt-load of them in the water too. That's weird because Chloe said "butt-load" this week and we didn't know where she got it from. I guess it was me. Dang, I was sure it was her Daddy. Or maybe we both got it from him!

(P.S. Is it obvious yet that Greg did these photo arrangements? Come on, that picture of me? Please.)


Below is our baby fish. That water was like ice but she still wanted to go inside.

Mineret Falls:
We camped at Mineret Falls campground which is so pretty. The whole time we had a far away view of the waterfall. We decided that we really wanted to hike to it like the old days. So even though it was late in the day (after dinner) we wanted to get it in. Little did we know the journey we had in store. We talked to the campground host and he has laid out a plan of action for us to follow assuring us that if we crossed the river we could meet up with the official trail that would've been way longer and started at a totally different campground. It was a good thing it was Pioneer Day because oh brother were we trekking through the river and bush like the pioneers. There was even an unfortunate injury when I was trying to pass Marnie a walking stick to cross this marshland log and I whacked her in the eye. There was blood. It was horrible but not that bad of an injury in the end (phew). We just sort of forged our own trail which was fun and retarded. Then as the sun was setting, we stumbled upon Mosquito Village and we were all attacked like crazy. It was so sad because poor Tati and Ginger were just helplessly in their baby backpacks. Tati ended up with like 7 or 8 bites on her forehead. The only part that wasn't covered. We thought of turning back on more than one occasion. We had to take turns holding lifting and guiding the kids, going through nasty marsh land, deep and shallow bits of river and finally making it to the falls. They were pretty and I'm glad we went but I feel like it was more satisfying because it was such a victorious story of survival. That's what good vacations are made of anyway, those great stories that you'll remember for years to come.


The Earthquake Fault
I love this sign. I think if I were to make this sign I would've done it just like this. It makes me laugh every time. This seems a little more thrilling when I was younger like I was being so brave and was about to collapse into the earth. Plus Greg kind of killed it, let's be honest. He kept talking about how it wasn't even a fault but rather a "fissure" and was all bugged that actual scientists would have allowed the word "fault" on the sign and blah blah. Thankfully there was some fine print on the sign that saved the day when they said, "this isn't actually a fault but a fissure in the earth". They earned his respect back. Luckily it was thrilling for the kids.

The Campsite & Misc.

I don't have any pictures but I always enjoy the free showers that are heated by some hot springs that they've piped into these like bunker shower rooms. Maybe next time. We didn't take the girls because we knew it would burn them off, especially Tati (her skin is still too delicate). I love me a super hot shower but even I was yelping a little. There is something about getting so clean while you're camping that I just love. It is my kind of camping. We also took my parents' canoe out on one of the lakes. I was afraid we'd drop the camera in the water so we left it at camp. Stephan did some fishing from the boat but it just wasn't happening. The exciting parts were when we got Chloe to jump in the lake from the boat and "swim" around with her life jacket on. The other thrilling part was me steering the canoe while Stephan got more and more bugged at my wrong turns. What can I say, I was a little rusty.

We missed out on a few things that we did want to see and ran out of time, like the hot pots that smell like rotten eggs. We have fond memories of turning our rings and earrings colors and then the not so fond memories of seeing the hippies swimming there in their crocheted bathing suits. It was all a little overwhelming to our young eyes.

Overall, a great and memorable trip! Thanks Mom and Dad for driving and for spoiling us like crazy. I even took home a few (understatement) souvenirs (AKA Mosquito bites). I forgot how delicious I was. Somewhere there is a mosquito telling stories about me to the other mosquitos and they don't believe him.

Vacation's all I ever wanted

We are finally back from our long, extended break from the tight grasp of Canada's cold weather and funny enough probably missed much of the best weather of the year. The major casualty of our return was that our grass has dead spots everywhere. Other than that, our garden is a jungle. We are going to have tomatoes galore and our basil and peas are going berserka. It is really fun to see the girls' excitement as they pick and eat things from the garden. It is all that I hoped it would be. We ran out of sticks and what not to support the plants so I ran over to the ever trusty "Dollarama" and had to improvise as the garden section is starting to be a little bare. So I bought this "fishing pole" made out of bamboo and then Greg was able to use pieces of it to secure the tomatoes and peas. Pretty funny. (If we could easily send you one, Stephan we would because it would give you a good laugh.) I've been on quite a blog hiatus (sorry devoted fans) so I'll be forced to hit you with a wave of updates. Here we go.

Tier #1 of the Vacation break-down. CALIFORNIA/ARIZONA

I flew out early since Greg can't take off the amount of time I can for a vacation. Of course they missed their dad (as did I) but luckily there were also lots of other family members and activities to keep them busy and distracted. My faves about California were:

• Going to the beach.
• Shopping at the thrift stores.
• Shopping at Target (too many visits to admit and I still didn't get through the whole store sufficiently).
• Going out to eat. I seriously can't get sick of In & Out or Mexican food. My tight pants can prove it. Yikes!
  
• Laying out in the backyard.
• Watching the cousins all play together.
• Watching Tati in the sprinklers.
  
• Having a "Bachelorette" finale party. There I admitted it.
• I was able to see some old, dear friends (Liza, Leah, Nicole)
  
• Celebrating our 8 year anniversary. I even whisked Greg away on a surprise overnight getaway. Woo-woo.
• Celebrating my birthday with some fresh strawberry shortcake and HEAVY whipping cream. Delish. It has been a while since I shared a birthday with family around.
  

Here are some photo highlights:

(Sea lions in the Santa Barbara harbor.)

(On our "Pirate Tour" of the harbor. Doesn't that face say it all? She LOVED it! Her first water voyage.)

(Inside the beach tent eating snacks with Grandpa.)

(I wish everyday were like this.)

(Tati calls sunglasses her "Eyes". I love that. )

(Chloe had a blast playing in the sand. Now that she is older, not all of it ends up inside her bathing suit either so that is nice.)

(I love this picture.)

(The water was cold but she didn't care.)

(Daddy doesn't really like water but he knows we do so he does it anyway. Thanks Greg.)

(Isn't this an awesome background for a pic? This was after a long and very hot hike with my brother and his family. We were super impressed at what a great hiker Chloe was.)

(This is a shot of the cousins on their big hike. Chloe absolutely LOVED spending time with all her cousins.)

(Here's a shot that Greg caught of the two sisters reading books together. They really do love each other. We love when they actually are showing it.)

Then we went to Arizona to visit my sis. That is a trip that only few brave would muster straight up in the summer time but it was actually not that bad. I enjoyed the intense heat because it finally defrosted my bones from the longest winter ever known to man. It always feels like I don't have enough time with my sis. and it was great to let the cousins play together here too. Well really Chloe was in heaven here because Emily is her same age and she worships the ground that Hallie (just turned 10) walks on. Hallie is the grown up version of what we imagine Chloe will be like and Emily is the tom-boy version of Chloe. If Chloe didn't want to play super heroes, she would simply ask Hallie for an idea and next thing you know the Littlest Pet Shops were at East High or something. I have to also say that it is super fun to be around "Fat Carlie" because she eats lots of yummy food and has more time to just hang out. I didn't realize how much I missed her. (FYI, she isn't "fat", she's pregnant but that means that all the body building regime is on hold and we can even sneak away to the grocery store and share an eclair donut on the way home before anybody at home could see us. he he.)

My favorite part about our visit was the backyard pool. This pool should like be in a movie. The color, the waterfall, the slide. It is all so beautiful and warm. Usually I'm the only one who gets excited about swimming but this time Chloe and Tati were right with me. Chloe is usually such a scaredy with swimming but suddenly when her swim teacher, Hallie, was teaching her, she was brave city. (Maybe the life jacket helped too.) It was just what she needed to feel the confidence to actually take some real swimming lessons.

(Notice she is all alone here. And notice she is smiling.)

(This is Tati being pushed in and out of the waterfall. She thought it was hilarious. So cute.)

And we'll end this long post with a great movie. Tati loves balls. She wants to throw them, kick them, even sleep with them. This was a series of movies so we had to pic the best one. She was trying to figure out how she could hold 3 balls all at once. It was so fun to watch her brain problem solving. She's a little smartie.