Summer Mustard

This summer we finally made it out to explore several lakes in this great province.  It is funny that we haven't gone out to do this sooner.  Had we known how beautiful these places are, we probably would've done it sooner.  Anyway, this is a lake pretty close to home.  Our friend's parents have a house here so it was nice to have a real bathroom to use after sitting on the sand and playing in the water.

Gavin had a great time just walking in the sludgey sand.  The bottom of the lake was a bit skummy and gross but the kids didn't even seem to notice.

At one point, our friend, Scott came out of the water with a giant leech on his leg.  I'm not going to lie when I say it put a damper on my desire to swim in that lake.  He calmly walked up to the house and poured some salt on it and it fell right off.  For the rest of the day I was in a panic examining legs and limbs when people exited the water looking for any more leeches.  Ahhhhhh!

Tati found a bunch of shells and made a collection in her bucket.  This girl makes more collections than anyone I know.  Love her.

Chloe took a while to work up the courage to jump off the dock but finally did it.  She was so proud of herself.  She is really growing up. 

I even got into the action with Brenda.  It was quite funny, it was super hot and we decided it was finally time to get wet.  So we got up to the dock and then the clouds and wind rolled in.  We had to wait several minutes for it all to clear up b/f we finally went it.  It was refreshing and fun but then that ole image of the leech on Scott's leg came into my mind and I couldn't get out fast enough.  ;-)  I'm not one to think I would put a "movie" of myself running in a bathing suit but this was so memorable and it ended up so fun that I couldn't resist.  Sometimes you just need to have a sense of humor about yourself people.

Super fun day.

As we sat on the beach and dried off, we noticed a beaver off in the distance.  I approached him quite close.  There was a wind blowing the reeds as I walked so he didn't hear me.  That or beavers don't have good hearing.  I was impressed at how fast he ran and then swam away.

It was beautiful there.  The thing I loved the most was how it felt like I was almost at a real beach in California.  It made me feel more at home.

Summer Ketchup

I've been trying to get caught up on all our awesome summer adventures and I will now be a more consistent blogger once again.  So be prepared for lots of posts to come.  Lots of our adventures this summer came through our friends.  We've been so grateful to be friends with so many amazing people here.  Here is our first one.  This is our trip to get Chloe's passport renewed (wow, has it really been 5 years already!) and since we have to travel quite a ways to get to an American Embassy, we decided to turn it into a vacation.

First we headed to the mountains with some friends.  We went on one of the most amazing hikes I've ever been on. I wrote about that one here. 

The next leg of our vacation took us to the city.  So we headed to the zoo.  The kids had such an amazing time seeing the penguins.  It was a super awesome exhibit.  You can see all the penguins up close. These were some of my favorite penguins.  (You'll have to click on it to see it better.)

We had heard a lot about this exhibit and how awesome it was but also how long people have to wait in line to see the penguins.  Luckily, we were there on a rainy day so it wasn't crowded at all.  We went through the exhibit twice and spent a really long time the second time.  It was super cool.  The penguins were marching and jumping and swimming and squawking and man, they were LOUD!

The rest of the zoo was just ok.  The kids had a blast though and it got them really nice and tired out.

Overall it was a rough day though.  You know those days that are just "off"?  Well we had tried to re-start our day a few times but it seemed like we kept having somebody cranky (even a Mom and Dad) and then some arguing or fighting would occur and we'd have to apologize and regroup and then try and restart again. 

After some failed attempts at stopping at nice rest areas and the like, we finally decided we'd make one last stop and then just push ourselves to get home.  We stopped off at a famous for delicious donuts place, called "The Donut Mill".  If you're a fan of heavy cream (which I super am), then these donuts are a must.  They are delicious and not overly sweet.  They are filled with flavored whipped cream.  Our favorite is the orange creamsicle donut.  Tastes just like it.  We barreled through 1/2 dozen donuts and finally with all those endorphines in our system, felt positive that we were all now in good moods and ready to get back to life in our town.  Then our car decided to die.  Like completely.  We could get it to go into Reverse but just enough to be able to back out enough of our parking spot to be a menace.  Then we had to have Chloe steer while me and Greg pushed us back into the parking spot.  Luckily the donut place had free internet so Greg called the transmission place back in Edmonton to see what they could do for us b/c we were sure that we hadn't gone over the miles or kilometers that it was covered for.  They gave us somebody to call in Red Deer who quickly came to the rescue with a tow truck.  In case you don't know, a tow truck def. doesn't fit 5 people let alone children's car seats so we were going to try and see if maybe a hotel had a shuttle service but then this really nice guy came up and asked if there was anything he could do to help.  Todd.  Turned out he was a member of the church just moving here from AZ where he just finished dental school.  He was on his way home to Calgary after having spent the day in Edmonton taking a dental test to be qualified to practice here.  He was heading home for a family wedding.  He dropped us off at the hotel.  He was seriously a miracle for us and a light of sunshine on a VERY cloudy day.  He'll never know what a difference he made to us.  Upon entering the hotel and unloading all the kids onto the couches in the foyer, we noticed that neither one of us had gotten our wallets out of our car (Are you kidding me?!).  So Greg literally ran the 5 blocks over to the transmission place and grabbed them.  We only grabbed the absolute essentials but of course that means that I grabbed stuff for everybody else and didn't get any fresh undies for myself.  By now it was dark and the car place was locked up, so I had to use the blow dryer on them.  And this all happened after a crappy morning with lots of not listening and arguing.  So this might very well be our worst day ever.  But then again there was Todd so we have to be grateful for something.  But we're the idiots that didn't even find out his last name so we could send him a card or something later.  Thanks Todd wherever you are.  I hope your wife wasn't mad that you got home late since you were supposed to babysit your kids tonight but you ended up helping us for like an hour when we couldn't find, the lady at the convenience store couldn't find, and your GPS couldn't find the hotel we were supposed to stay at.  Hope you receive some Super blessings because the Super 8 we were at wasn't really that super.

The next day we had two more miracle people help us.  The sister of a friend of ours lived in that town.  Our friends had called her on our behalf and asked if we could stay at her house while our car finished being fixed so we wouldn't have to pay for another day in the hotel.   She got a babysitter for her kids so she'd have enough room in her car to pick us up, took us to her house, fed us lunch, and she and her kids played with our kids.  She was such an amazing girl.  She made us feel welcomed and like we were old friends.  She also was able to add a little bit of humor to what was not a very humorous situation for us.  She was amazing.

Then a different friend from home drove her van down 2 hrs. to this friend's sister's house to pick us up and directly drove the 2 hrs. back to drop us off at home.  She was just doing her grocery shopping when we called her.  She dropped her groceries at home and directly came to get us. 

We were so humbled by the willingness of people to help us out.  It dulled the pain and struggle of having such a horrible travel experience.  It was a testimony to me of how much people are placed in our paths to help us out and how much Heavenly Father is aware of our lives and our struggles. 

It wasn't the vacation that we had hoped for or wanted, and it definitely wasn't all rosey, but it was a very memorable trip and a great learning experience for us.

Heritage Festival!

We finally made it to the Heritage Festival this year.  We've either always been out of town or busy this weekend.  We had a great time.  Well, mostly we walked around eating food and taking pictures in cut outs but still it was fun.  We even took our favorite babysitter, Emma with us.  She is a great girl.  If our girls end up half as awesome as Emma, we'll be happy. 

Our favorite things were listening to the guy from Peru play the guitar.  He was seriously so good, he could have made a c.d.

We loved the displays at the Ukranian section and I even bought some Russian doll earrings. Hey, speaking of Russian dolls:

And some Russian warriors maybe?

The Japanese booth was a thrill because they had a box of free origami shapes so the kids each picked one out.

The Indian dancers were really fun although the boys looked like they were going to die of embarrassment and totally made me and Greg laugh hard.

The Irish dancers were the best dancers by far. Their kicks and music kept the kids super entertained but man, was it ever hot sitting in the sun.

The Canadians had a booth for kids to do face painting and stuff and it was a nice break because we could sit down and be in the shade.

The Scandanavians had the most hilarious picture cut out ever. It cracked me up extra because Greg has never been fat and to imagine it is just funny.

We ate lunch at the Korean booth and I'm so glad we did.  We got bulgogi, rice and some kimchi.  I don't know if it was because we were starving or if it was really so amazing but we felt like it was the most delicious thing we had ever eaten. Then we were proven wrong when we headed to Romania.

The Romanians were the big crowd pleaser  because they had this enormous funnel cake elephant ear thingy.

We bought two and thought there was no way we were all going to be able to eat it all. But of course, we did. Then on the way home and again in the days that followed, it was common to hear, "You know what I'm totally in the mood for right now? An elephant ear with caramel sauce!" Yeah, it was insanely good. It's probably good that there isn't a place that sells these at other times of the year because I'm sure we'd go and buy too many of them.

Big, Bad, Big, Bad WOLF!

My friend put on a Drama Camp at the church this summer.  Chloe participated and as the culmination there was a big play finale.  It was the 3 Little Pigs jazzed up a bit with music and extra characters.  Chloe was a construction worker.  They were building things and thus made the pigs and the wolves paths cross.  She even had a dance number about the big, bad, wolf.  It was cute and dorky.  I wished they would've put microphones on the kids b/c the dialogue was a bit difficult to hear but none of the kids seemed to mind and they had a full house of audience members so it was a smashing success.

Gavin loved it to because afterward he ate a giant donut and danced around.

3rd Grade!

Where has the time gone?  This girlfriend is growing up so fast.  Chloe started third grade this year.  She was happy to find out that most of the kids from her class last year are all in her class this year again. 

It was sort of a miracle morning.  We all got up and dressed and packed up to go.  I even made scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast.  We all walked Chloe to school (even Greg walked with us).  Gavin cried like crazy when Chloe went into her classroom and we walked away.  It was sweet and sad.  Luckily a few minutes at the playground and he was back to being happy.

It was so hard to wake up early and get everybody going right away.  I'm missing summer already.  Chloe was excited to get back to school but sad too.  We sure do miss her during the day and I really miss out on all the help she gave to me but I'm excited for her and proud of her too.  And in case we worried, her French never left her over summer break and her reading skills continue to improve.  Her spelling is improving too.  There is hope that she didn't inherit her Grandpa Melton's spelling gene ;-)

After school I tried to get a picture of all the kids together for my future reference.  At first I was annoyed that the 3 of them couldn't manage one photo together but then I thought that probably in a few years, I would enjoy seeing this awkward picture documenting their day together.

This one of Gavin is just too much. I couldn't have planned it if I tried.  He was so mad at Chloe holding him still.

Now that we've started school, I just need to get back to documenting all the fun things we've done this summer.  Be prepared for me to start from June.  ;-)

p.s.  I forgot to mention that Chloe got her nails done for school from our favorite babysitter.  She's been watching nail tutorials on youtube and had impressed Chloe so much with other creations that she asked her to paint some apples on her nails.  You know, apples and school and all.  Look how cute.

Bug Trap

Tati decided that she was going to make a bug trap.  So she got a cup and filled it with grass to lure them in.

Here's a close up.

So far she hasn't caught anything.  But she's determined.  I love this coo-koo pants.

Mean Mommy

I've had a total mean Mommy day. It has been a par-tay! Diaper cream all over my bed, child and child's clothes (then all over me as I battled the cream away from him); whining, fighting, spillings of milk on the floor, yogurt all over the couch and bedtime battles. Whew!

I feel like I've been annoyed and/or yelling at them much of the day.  I feel like all my words go in one ear and out the other.  

The frustrating thing is that once they are in bed and the house is semi cleaned up and everything is quiet, I start to feel so mad at myself for losing it.  Why couldn't I just have been a little more understanding or patient or nice?  I feel like I let myself down.  I feel like I let my kids down.

This is probably one of those payback days I get from doing this to my parents when I was young.  

I found this quote on pinterest and it has been really good for me to remember.  

And obviously I need to remember it more.  So in the spirit of documenting something good, I wanted to say how much I love a good Whopper from Burger King.  Man, those things are so good.  Normally they are pretty expensive but on Wednesdays, they are only $1.99 here.  And sometimes Whoppers just make things seems a little brighter for a while.