This, that, and the other

Oh hello internets! I do believe I remember you…it’s nice to be back, but I didn’t miss you much…

Summer arrived and with it came beautiful warm weather and an apartment that felt more like a greenhouse than somewhere to live…so, we decided that we would spend our evenings outdoors and, whenever possible, we would leave town. And that’s what we did. It was wonderful and it gave us a chance to disconnect from the Internet and social media and all that stuff…

In no real order we:

Went to an 80th birthday bash

Went to another 80th birthday bash (adventure #2)

Did a lot of swinging

Reluctantly learned how to take a bottle

Flew on a few airplanes

Discovered the trees and the clouds

Ate our meals on the deck in Kelowna

Practiced swimming

Practiced swinging on the monkey bars at the playground by the school where J will go in September

Unexpectedly purchased a new vehicle (which J absolutely loves…in part because the paint sparkles!)

Ate lots of popsicles

Read lots of books (although some of us would have preferred to just eat them)

Spent a day in Steveston (adventure #1)

Packed up our life and had our apartment painted

Caught some beautiful sunsets

Built elaborate train tracks on the deck

Visited a tree growing in the lake

And spent a lot of time at the waterpark on Granville Island riding the waterslide.

Summer isn’t quite over yet, but the mornings are feeling crisp and the evenings are getting darker sooner. Back to school this year really is back to school for our family and it’s a pretty exciting time! Hope your summer has been just as fun as ours!

Five whole years?!

Today this little lady turned 5.

She has grown from a teeny, tiny, cuddly baby into a long-limbed, always-moving, fiercely independent ball of energy with a "special" camera smile.

She loves reading, art, cars (especially Mercedes and anything with both a roof rack and a rear windshield wiper), Cars, [literally] smothering her sister with love, dresses, and dirt. It's hard to believe it has been five years since our lives changed forever and it's hard to remember what life was like before her! Happy Birthday Miss J!

Her daycare does a special birthday walk around the “sun” for the kids. They hold a little globe and walk around a candle once for each year of their life. They bring in a picture for each age to show the other children. Except for the very first picture, these are the pictures J picked this year. J chose her going home from the hospital picture as her “zero” picture.

When she turned 1, she received a ball and it was one of the first gifts she opened. This is J, wondering where the ball went when it was briefly hidden in hope that she would open some of her other gifts.

By the time she was 2, J had perfected her camera smile.

When she was three, she had a birthday in Kelowna (see that camera smile?!?!).

When she was four, she spent a few weeks with my mom and dad and helped them harvest their apricots.

And just last week, J demonstrated that she doesn’t have her mom’s fear of heights as she climbed to the top of the spider web in Mission Creek Park in Kelowna (hmmm…we seem to spend a lot of time in Kelowna!)

Happy Birthday to my little lady!

Russia - “The Motherland”

Postcard from Russia from prostim

Description: The statue The Motherland in Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd. When it was dedicated in 1967, it was the tallest statue in the world at 87 metres.