Summer Campout August 2010

I meant to blog about this a while ago, but never did, so I will now! The first weekend in August Ben had a backyard campout with the older three girls. They had a blast! I was so surprised at how quickly they all fell asleep, and that they didn't get cold. It was strange for me to sleep alone in the house with just Olivia. Anyway, it is something we'll definitely do again next summer!

Recent Projects

So I finally got around to completing some projects around the house that I have been meaning to do for quite some time now.


Chloe and Olivia's Room

I took the back part of Olivia's bedskirt (that nobody ever sees) and transformed it into a window valance. It was something so easy and simple, yet it makes a huge difference to me in their room:



Chloe's little nook:




The whole room. Gotta make the most of that little space!





Isabelle and Lily's Room

In the last month, I have done the following:

-painted the bunkbed white
-painted Izzy's dresser and the nightstand white and the handles black
-covered the inside of the back of their stuffies shelf
-painted the dress-up trunk pink
-painted the hat lamp pink too
-ordered Ben to hang the curtains. What a guy!

Now they have a very pink room, which they love and so do I:

The new dress-up trunk. The old one was cream with gold trim and all scuffed up and fairly ugly.

Isabelle's dresser. It was also originally cream with gold trim and very scuffed up.

The new hat lamp:

The old hat lamp, which was nice, but just didn't go:

The stuffie shelf:

Here is Ben's dresser that I repainted about 3 or 4 months ago. It was originally his Grandma Bell's, and is about 30 years old. It is a good, solid, sturdy dresser. It was just brown wood before, with a short mirror on it. Ben and I could see about up to our stomach's with it! His grandma was a very small lady, and Ben and I are anything but small. So we removed the small mirror and bought this one for $5 at a garage sale, and painted it to match:

This chair I got for free at a garage sale too. I recovered it, and spray painted it black. I plan to use it with a dressing table I am currently working on.

Olivia Walks On Her Own

First Day of Kindergarten and Grade 2!

So today Lily had her first day of kindergarten, and Isabelle had her first day of grade 2. I can hardly believe it! They were both so excited to start school. Lily has been wanting to go to kindergarten for about a whole year now, and so she was just so happy today. I asked her if she felt a little nervous and she said, "Nope! Not even a little bit! I am so excited to have a new teacher, make new friends, wear my new clothes, wear my new shoes, and have a new backpack!"


Here they are showing off their new backpacks. (Take note of Olivia in the background...yes, she's walking!!!!)

At school

Isabelle found her name. She was so happy to be in the same class as many of her friends from last year.

This was on the way to Lily's kindergarten. Her backpack is a Tinkerbell one that has this little skirt that attaches to the front with velcro. She LOVES it.

Here Lily is running out after her kindergarten orientation was over. One of her teachers is actually Isabelle's old grade one teacher from last year! It is nice to have someone who already knows our family a little bit.

Here is Isabelle going in to her class for the first time.

Ben was able to have the day off to join us!

Chloe playing on the long hopscotch. Only a couple of more years and she'll be going to school too!

Hayden Lake, Idaho

So we took a week long trip to Hayden Lake, Idaho the last week of August. It was great! It was the first time we have been to the USA as a family, and the first time in many years for me and Ben. We went with 5 of my brothers and sisters and their families. We stayed in a nice 4 bedroom cabin with lots of extra floor space to accommodate everyone! We rented a boat from Calgary and brought it down with us. We went tubing wake boarding every day. Our cabin had a nice hot tub on the second level balcony and so it was so nice to go in that and have a beautiful view of the lake.

The shopping was great too! I had never been to Target before, but had heard all of the awesome things about it, and needless to say, I was not disappointed! I love the Carter's brand and the Circo brand of stuff that is sold there. It was the perfect timing as we were preparing for the girls to go to school. I also loved shopping at Kohl's. They were having a huge sale, and I saved 70-90% on everything I bought there, no joke! Everything seemed a lot cheaper. We could fill our van with gas for only $40! A gallon of milk was under $2. They had 2.5 L of pop for $1.00. Anyway, a lot of money was saved!

It was fun to go in the grocery store and see all of the "new" products of food they had. We saw Strawberry Milkshake Oreos, white chocolate Kit Kat bars, vanilla A+W Root beer, Chocolate Cheerios, graham cracker Goldfish, and Cherry 7 Up. We only bought and tried the Oreos and the 7 Up, and they were both very delicious!

We took SO many pictures, and since it is such a pain to upload photos on a blog, I have only added a few. Uploading photos to Facebook is so much easier and so if you want, you can go onto facebook to look at all of them. But here are a few of our memories of our trip to Idaho!

Family photo on the boat:



The whole group except Mike at dinner on the last night:

Picturesque sunsets every night:

Brayden, Robbie, and Izzy going for a tube ride:

Jodi kayaking with Braxton and Chloe:

Ben kayaking with the three older girls:

Edmonton High Level Street Car

My family loves to ride the Edmonton High Level Streetcar. We also call it the trolley car. We try to do it almost every summer. The girls love it so much. When we went up to Edmonton the other week, we took a ride on the trolley. We invited Izzy's best friend from Kindergarten to come along.

They have a trolley from Japan, Australia, and Germany, and take turns running each one. This year the Japan one was in operation. Here we all are after the ride in front of it:

Every time we rode we tried to take photos. Here are some photos from the very first time we ever rode it. It was in 2003 and Izzy was about 4 months old:

This one was not on the trolley, but before we left for it. I just had to throw it in there because she was so cute.

Here we are a couple of years later in 2005 in front of the trolley from Germany. Lily was about 4 months old and Izzy was about 2 years.

Here we are in 2006:

In 2007, Chloe was about 6 months. This trolley was from Australia:

2008:

Here are some photos of the trolley ride this year:

Beautiful views:

This was in the tunnel. I love Lily's face in the background, and the size of Isabelle's eyes:

The tracks over the High Level Bridge:

All the little girls:

She loved hanging from those things:

Blowing "wishes" after