Around the yard...

I love how the scenery changes every day around here.

Shea's 5th party!

Every year we've had a great outdoor party for Shea. He is the only one in our family with a warm birthday, so we all enjoy it. We do our usual waterballoon volleyball game and they look forward to it as it happens only once a year! Shea has always loved cars and trucks and especially Hot Wheels. He would have had a Hot Wheels party every year if we let him. This year he chose Dino Racing, from one of his favorite Hot Wheels books. I took over and made it a dino party instead, so it wasn't all about cars again!! He didn't seem to mind.

So we had the dino cake....

I made some dino bean bags for some dino games....

Greg, Amy and Liam filled about 150 water balloons for our annual game...

We decorated with black, green and purple...

We had dino-sours in the goodie bags...

We chopped mini plastic dinos out of ice...

He opened presents... (Look at Ella's face!)

Said cheese for the camera...

And we all just had a fun time! Can't believe my baby is nearly 5!

7 month smiler

Another little honey in the yard!!

Fun on the grass....

I had two little cuties here this morning!

And then there were these two bigger cuties that snuck in for a picture as well!

Weekend away

Ahh....it was so good to get away! We hadn't been away with the kids in over a year (other than a few little campouts). We decided to head down to Vancouver to celebrate Hugo's first birthday!

After his party we took the aqua bus from Yaletown over to Granville Island for fun. It was gorgeous weather! I'll post some pics from there later. We got to celebrate my grandpa's 81st birthday with him as well, on the night we drove in.

We stayed at the Zink's B&B and enjoyed their lovely garden!

It was good to be away from the usual chores over Mother's Day! Hope you all had a good weekend as well!

May flowers

May has got to be one of the best months of the year. The arrival of all the flowers and leaves once again after the long grey winter. It can have some super warm days but isn't scorching. The kids are still involved in school and sports, so they aren't bored. The neighbors come out to work on their lawns and gardens so you actually talk to them again. The air smells like fresh grass, flowers or rain.

It is also Shea's birthday month, which makes him SUPER EXCITED! Yup...we like May. Glad it finally came!

Little Fish

My happy little swimmer just finished up his salamander level with his first attempt. He had never had anything but practice lessons on spring break before, and he loved it!

Cuzzies....

We have 3 little cuzzies (as we call them) in town for the next few months! So exciting! We celebrated Ava's 6th birthday today...so really started off their stay with a bang!

Happy birthday Ava!!

We love our cuzzies!!

Fitness update

Well, I've been going slow and steady. I have kept up my walking 5km at the rink on Tues/Thurs. I eventually tried running jogging on the ends of the loops, but it was pretty rare. Then I was watching The Biggest Loser and watching these huge people running a mile. So I tried jogging a mile (8 laps) during the course of my 5Km. Then I brought it up to 2km (10 laps), then 3km (15 laps) and now I'm up to 4km (20 laps)in 36 minutes (including 1 km of walking)! I am quite sure I could jog 5km soon, and that was my goal to do by the end of this year. I am quite surprised that I am nearly at that goal! To go from not even jogging one lap, to jogging 20 is pretty impressive for me, a total non-jogger type. I still am quite anxious about my back flaking out on me, and my knees are pretty fragile as well, so I'm trying to be cautious. But I am not using it as an excuse to not jog though. I'm sure I will only ever get up to the 5km and be content with that. I also still do my Jillian Michaels DVD at least 2x a week. I notice the difference in my tone for sure. Sadly, I'm not down too much in weight because I still enjoy eating too much! But I will keep working at it!

So pretty....

in case you're feeling sad....

....this baby should cheer you up!