August 2014

The Summer Travel Month

Grandma's House

The goal is for our kids to see their grandparents for at least two days a month. We live in Vancouver, they live in Victoria so it seems reasonable that some together weekends should be spent there, some in Vancouver. August's get together is in Victoria. We took the ferry over on Saturday morning (less crazy, but still packed) and arrived in time for nap. After dinner we went to McMinn Park for a good play. Nara really likes firepoles right now and Claira has graduated from exclusively swing to swing and slide.

Fun on the Deck

We live in a Condo. My parents have a back yard and large deck accessible from the living room. Given that it is beautiful weather outside, the kids spent as much time in the back yard as they could. My Dad is growing his collection of small people bikes and Claira really likes bubbles. Helen seems to have cleaned out a toy store of their bubble products - one down side of a deck (as opposed to grass) is the deck gets slippery when you break a lot of bubbles over it.

Time Not at Home

Claira takes a few hour nap every afternoon. Nara doesn't nap anymore. Nara and I often go out on little adventures. Today we went up to the top of Mount Doug. Nara quite enjoys climbing bits of rock and I was quite surprised to find butterflies flying around the peak. Claira has a scary habit of running away from us (and into trouble) to make her life more interesting - there are too many steep slopes for Claira up here.

Another morning we went to a Parent and Child class at Swan Lake Nature House. This week was snake class - I was surprised to see 4 girls and a boy in the class. The instructor showed four different snakes - a garter snake, a corn snake, a ball python and a milk snake. Only the garter snake is local - the other three snakes are from pet stores. Funny enough - all of the snakes were found around Swan lake. People "drop off" their pets in the park and eventually the park staff have recovered them. They are now part of a touring exhibit - the fee's for the class probably pay for some of their mouse-icles.

Sometimes Nara just likes to colour or hang out with Grandma. During on nap, I walked over to Outerbridge park for a walk around. Begining of August, it is dry and the pond levels are low.

Grandfathers 90th Birthday

Yes, my grandfather just turned 90. It took a bit of work, but almost all of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren gathered in the same place to wish him a happy birthday. My uncle kindly offered to host an afternoon BBQ in the front garden of his lovely home.

There are currently 6 great grandchildren, all within 5 years of each other. The youngest is Kiera - just a little over one year old. She is currently more of a "talker" than a "walker" - she would imitate words as she heard them.

Claira is next youngest at just over two. She has an older sister Nara who is 4.

At two and half is Lexi Mae. She knows her way around the yard and really enjoyed having other kids to play with.

Next is James at three. He has an older brother who is five and really doesn't like having his photo taken.

Dinner was great - smokies and burgers on the BBQ with a great spread of salads and sides. For dessert we had a large birthday cake and a Ice Cream Bar staffed by Shauna and Chrissy. After dinner we started putting together the combinations of people for group photos.

I wasn't sure when the wagon was going to come out, but I knew it would eventually. Every year the wagon gets full of kids and pulled around the yard. This year it was "feats of strength" time as the grand kids pulled the great grand kids around the yard.

Thanks everyone for coming out and putting up with all the picture taking.

Kye Bay

Last year we got some nice family portraits on the beach so I wanted to try again this year. Turns out it was really bright sunlight which didn't lead to good family photos. This beach is really sandy when the tide goes out but we seem to have trouble scheduling to hit the opportune tides. That said, we still had a good time.

VanDusen

Parents have a lot of different strategies to make dinner with kids less crazy. One of our tricks is to tire the kids out with a walk or trip to the playground before a dinner out. We have a VanDusen annual pass so it's not so hard to just drop in walk around. This time we were lucky and stumbled into an owl. We almost missed it - a woman said there was an owl ahead but wasn't very specific about where. We actually walked past it before giving up and checking our tracks. Glad we found it.