2009

My house is too quiet. Everyone is at work and school. I have big plans for today. I'm cleaning the house and the exciting part of that is it will stay clean....until 3:30 when school's out!

The last 2 weeks were fun. I love having the family home when we are busy doing fun things. There was a lot of skating, some shopping trips (unsuccessful I might add) lots of movie watching and fun with friends. It went by really fast but both kids seemed pretty happy to go back to school this morning. One more than the other, can you guess who that would be?!?! Yes, the one who wanted me to find a school that was open all summer. Jade.

• A couple of pictures of Mark geared up for backyard hockey.

• After a couple of hours of hard hockey playing, the boys work themselves up an appetite. Hot Dogs all around.

• After the boys got off, the girls wanted a turn. Unfortunately for them they needed to do some zambonie work first.
  

New Year's Eve

We spent our New Year's Eve with good friends and family and lots and lots of kids. Good times, that's for sure!

• Jessica and Jade posing for a New Year's picture.
  

• The "Big Kids". Ben, Mark, Kaitlyn and Mikayla. They have a ton of energy. After skating for hours, they played Rock Band and air hockey and were still wide awake and ready for more when their parents made them leave at 2am!
  
  

• This is how we saw Leeann for the majority of the night.....holding Ryan! She claims she didn't have a cramp in her arm! She's a baby lover but her husband says NO MORE!
  
  

• We never did determine if this was Jeff's last hot dog of 2008 or his first hot dog of 2009.
  
  
  

• I love our house when it's full of people having a good time.
  
  
  

Mike worked really really hard to have the ice in perfect shape and it all paid off. There was someone on it at all times (except for when we made them come in for the Ball Drop and for some food) from 8pm until 1:30am.

• Finally, from Toonces: "Happy New Year"
  

Big Night in Toronto

On Saturday our family hit the highway with Pam's family to head north to Toronto. Mike, Mark, Ron and Kaitlyn had tickets to a Maple Leaf game. They were pretty excited, especially because they were playing the Red Wings who have a lot of familiar players on their team! We stayed at the Harbour Castle right on the water. If you have ever been hesitant about using Price*line.com don't be! We paid $85 for a $269 room! We actually had adjoining rooms so we could enjoy each other's company for 24 hours straight!
After we checked in we went for a walk and ended up in The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner.
Notice Jade's wavy hair. Well on Friday night we put in a lot more braids and boy oh boy was her hair wild!! Mark told her she had an Afro which caused her much embarrassment. We wet it down a little to calm it down. She still had wave in it at the end of the day.

This group had a fabulous time. They loved the excitement of the hockey game...even Kaitlyn who doesn't like loud noises! On the way back to the hotel they were approached by a homeless woman with no teeth begging for money. She told the kids to "Stay in School". Mark is still talking about it today. It's amazing what an impact it had on him.


Pam and I stayed in the hotel with Jade, Jessica and Emily. The girls put their bathing suits on and we packed up some "wiggly pops" as Ron called our coolers and sat by the pool. We were there for close to 4 hours! The girls were having an absolute blast. It was really nice to sit and visit. It's always amazing how we can talk for so long and still have more to say!!
Jade is showing off her big muscles here...she's so proud of them!

Pam and I sat on this window ledge until 2:30 am (still) talking and looking out the window. People were still walking their dogs at that time of night!!

Camping in the Rain

We are smart people....we knew it was going to rain, but that didn't stop us and our friends from dragging the trailers out for one last weekend of camping. Mike built a shelter out of tarps and we sat under it with our Smirnoffs and our snacks and had probably one of our nicest camping days ever. All of us adults felt zero guilt for just sitting around...I mean, what else could we do right? We gabbed and laughed for 10 hours straight!!



The 5 kids didn't let the rain stop them either. They were soaked to the skin and filthy from the mud but they were having way too much fun playing in the rain to make them stop.

Our perfect little sheltered area was starting to flood so these 3 beautiful engineers dug a trench to keep us dry.

Somehow Mike kept the fire going all day. Even in downpours the fire never sizzled out. For being such a crappy day everything couldn't have been more perfect.

Camping Pics

Because Mike can't take time off work we usually go camping on the weekends. We decided this year to camp for 2 weeks in our favourite park which is only an hour away and Mike would drive back and forth everyday. We survived it....but 2 weeks may have been a tad too long! The first week Ron and Pam decided to do the same thing so Pam and I hung out with all the kids for 3 days.

We have to drive to the beach so all the kids piled in the back of Pam's truck and they sang the Kid Rock song "All Summer Long" at the top of their lungs.


I think Lake Huron has the most beautiful beaches. Forts were made and were the envy of other beachers near us.

I ♥love♥ how all three girls are posin' in this picture!

These are all pictures that Pam emailed to me. I forgot my camera that day...bad blogger...*slap*

What a Weekend!

We met up with a total of 94 family members in Burlington this weekend for our Family Reunion. I will post some pictures of that separately, and not all of them because already there are more than 300 and only 2 of us have shared what we took!

On Saturday afternoon Mike, Mark, Jeff, Tammy and Craig went to see the Jays lose to the Yankees. They were way up high in the nosebleeds and they had a great time. After the game kids were able to run around the bases so Mark thought that was cool.

Jade and I had our own extra special fun on Saturday afternoon. It turns out that my good friend Debbie lives only minutes away from Burlington. Knowing that I had the perfect opportunity to spend some quality time with her I ditched the ball game and headed to her house instead. Her 2 boys are the sweetest little guys. Jade brought some gifts for the boys which was a great icebreaker because they spent at least a half an hour trying to get the toys out of the packaging! While they were doing that Deb took me on a tour of their brand new beautiful house. It was like walking through a magazine. They have decorated and designed the most gorgeous home.

• Jade, Matthew and Nathan waiting for bubbles to come out of the Bubble Machine.

The new house has a heated (bonus) pool which we had a blast in. See Jade without water wings!!! She's swimming now and so to heck with them....

Nathan likes to jump off the stairs into Deb's arms. He and I did this for quite a while. He's a hoot!! (Ha ha Deb...I had to throw that in somewhere!!)

We had a wonderful bbq lunch complete with a delicious cheesecake for dessert! Thanks for that!! YUM!

Deb and I have been friends since I was 8 and she was 7 (Jade's age). We are connected to each other in a very special way considering we never grew up in the same town, never went to the same schools and never had the same friends. We have years worth of precious memories collected from short, but always fun visits from the past 33 years. I love her to pieces and miss her terribly when we are apart. She has a loving husband and 2 wonderful boys. I'm very proud of her.

I love you Debbie! My sister by choice!

XOXOXO

More Pictures

Can you believe that people actually lived here?

The following 3 pictures are the only existing pictures of Canada Day! Kaitlyn took the ones of Mark while we were at the fireworks.

Toronto Trip 2 of 3

Mike and I were back in Toronto this past weekend but this time with the kids for a little family vacation. We were true tourists and joined the throngs of people who were also enjoying the sights of this truly beautiful city. On Saturday we did a tour of Casa Loma. Just as we were starting the tour Jade said "I think I just saw Emily." I told her she didn't see Emily but probably somebody who looks like her. A few minutes later we were standing behind Emily and her family watching a demonstration and didn't realize it was them right in front of us. Pam turned around and saw Jade and was thinking to herself how much that little girl looked like Jade. (We really are intellegent people!) They were in Toronto because their daughter Kaitlyn, who plays for Ontario, was at a basketball camp. I still can't believe we went to the same tourist attraction at the same time on the same day. It was a lot of fun being with them for the tour and then out for a late lunch later.

There were people dressed in costume this weekend for the Renaissance Festival.

Here we all are in a turret in the castle. We climbed a ton of stairs during this tour. Comparable to the Great Wall! Well, it seemed like it anyway.

After lunch we went our separate ways and our family headed to the Rogers Centre for a tour. Next week we are here again for a game against the Yankees. Here is Mark is in the press box.

This is a picture of the wedding Jade created. Using her imagination (and you may need yours to see this) she created this scene: the bride is the ketchup (see the veil) the groom is the Tabasco sauce (see the hat) The flower girl is the salt, the ring bearer is the pepper, the preacher is the glass of crayons, the napkin is the aisle and the ripped pieces of paper is the confetti.

On Sunday we spent the afternoon at the Science Centre. This place is amazing, I just love it there. Mark did an aging experiment. He programmed the machine to show what he will look like 50 years from now at age 60. He was a little freaked out by it!

Now at age 10:

How he may look at age 60:

Swimming

Our friends Ron and Pam put in an inground pool to replace the above ground pool that sprung a really bad leak. The kids and I spent Friday afternoon swiming with them. Pam heated the water to a beautiful 85 degrees so we (meaning her and me) could go in too, but we waited until the kids left and found something else to do so we could swim in peace and without getting splashed and jumped on...we are so old!!



Our goal is to get rid of those water wings once and for all this year.....I know I said that last year, but this year I mean it! Emily's toothless grin is so cute.

Mark and Kaitlyn are such good friends. When they are together they giggle non stop. They tease each other, compete with each other and enjoy each others company for hours. They were playing with this orange ball and Mark was not going to let Kaitlyn have it. She was kicking his butt and everything trying to get him off that ball.

She got it!

Trying to surf! He was up for a second or so a couple of times!