Kathi and I wanted to get some shots of the kids for my mum's annual Christmas card. The weather here has been a bit iffy lately, but the lighting in our houses is not good enough for inside shots. After some discussion, we decided to make a day trip to Lucerne. After all, it's always beautiful there.


I think we made the right choice.

Lately, round here...

Yesterday we're all sitting 'round the dinner table when Davey looks over at me. "What are you dressed up as mum? Frankenstein?"

Yeah, you guessed it. No costume.

****************

Today everyone is outside doing yardwork, except me. I was spring cleaning when my mum called me to come over to her house. I came back and Elisabeth is in the house. At first I couldn't hear where she'd gotten to, then suddenly the sweet strains of ABBA fill the entire house. Ah yes. My teenaged daughter up in her room, blaring her music. Right.


Moments later, there's a crash and crying. I race upstairs to find her lying on the floor. She'd been standing on a stool singing a long when the stool tipped and she fell. I gave her some kisses, turned the music down slightly and was crouched beside her (wondering if she was feeling okay and could I leave?) when she turns to me and says, "You can go now."


Cute now, but what's it gonna be like when they're teenagers?? :(

October 31st

We decided to carve the last of our pumpkins yesterday. As you can see, the kids have become experts at this:

(Meanwhile, Andrew cleaned gutters).
The perfect spot was found for each and every pumpkin.

And some people spent exhorbitant amounts of time on each pumpkin (I'm sure the effort was worth it in the end though!)


Andrew, still on the roof of mum's house.

I happened to watch the morning news (a very rare occurence) and learned how to make arms for my 'kin.

Then, after dinner, it was time to costume up and go out a calling.

My two munchkins at grandma's house.


And our first visitors (almost!)

Davey's Kindergarten trip to Aldor Acres

Thank goodness we're done with pumpkin patching for the year! Three times in ten days is more than enough for me! That said, it was a good day for pumpkin patching. Lots of icky mud, wet, goopy pumpkins, and smokey bonfires, but NO RAIN! This momma was very glad!

One reason to keep my kids in their current school forever (as opposed to switching them to Fundy once a spot becomes available) is that my sister and neices are both there. And how awesome is it to have a friendly face greet you every morning? And someone to hang out with on almost every field trip?!

We were just missing Ashlie. Maybe next year we'll revive the old practice of pumpkin patching for David's birthday.

David grabbed a tractor and headed out to the field with his pumpkins.

Tink hijacked the tractor and brought it back again.

How do ya like them apples?!

(sorry, couldn't resist ;P)

Adorable piggies sleeping.

And here are David and Jade with their AWESOME teacher!

She gave each child an apple and some carrots. The idea was that they'd eat the apple and feed the core to the animals. And maybe some carrots too.


Some of the K-kids and Mrs. R right before we headed back to school.

Then we had a group lunch.



And carved our pumpkins!
Libby's 'kin!
And Davey's!

Elisabeth's first preschool party

Elisabeth's preschool had a halloween party on Thursday. Parents were invited to join for the last half.

Here's Elisabeth and our little buddy, Jonah.

And a cute lil cupcake face!

Our local meteorologists seem to be having more trouble than usual predicting the weather. But at least it seems to be working in our favour! So, I was supposed to spend Tuesday cleaning the house, but it was so nice we went to the playground instead.

First we climbed some rocks and ran around the big field.


Then we went to investigate the new playground equipment.


Ah here it is. They've gotten rid of the old truck that used to be here. Which is a bit of a shame. The kids loved climbing all over/under/through it. But this jeep is not too bad.

And Jade is a rocker chick.


Seriously.

See? Also, she has a lot of energy!




I was playing with the camera settings at the park. I thought I had finally figured out the manual settings, but when I got home and looked at my pictures, realised I was sadly mistaken. I tried changing this one, but it doesn't help much.



David riding his two wheeled scooter. We were given this by our realtor two years ago. Andrew's gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it. Now David can too ;)

Back in August, while we were in Ontario, my sister spotted a casting call for 2-3 year old models. She emailed the photographer a picture of Elisabeth, and then let me know about it. Of course as soon as I knew, I submitted a second photo. Well, Elisabeth's photoshoot was yesterday and I had no idea what to expect.

Not true. I totally snooped on the amazing photographer's site and knew I loved her work. But I was remembering back to last year's Christmas pictures and how torturous those were and wondering what we'd be up for.

Shouldn't have worried. After about 3 minutes of shyness, Elisbeth totally found her groove. I think we only had to make suggestions two or three times and other than that she was twirling and bouncing then squatting, then lying then twirling...

...and today I got a little sneak preview! I can't wait to see the rest!

The pictures from Andrew's Camera*

As promised, here are the pictures from Andrew's Camera*.

We've just arrived at the farm and Elisabeth is very excited to begin the fun!

With her pumpkin. Like I said earlier, I was really surprised she could carry this. The rule is, the kids can take home any pumpkin they can carry. Elisabeth had to carry this one about 50 metres, and it looked pretty big for her. But she managed it! Amazing what they can do when they have to :)

Here she is on the wagon with a pumpkin she picked before she decided on her big one, and one I picked so we'd have one each.

And Elisabeth with a bunny. Bunnies are cute. Maybe we should put some down in the orchard.



*I say Andrew's camera, but actually it's my dad's. He had sent it in for repairs and Dave thought it would be good if we tested the camera before we send it up north to dad.

On Tuesday Elisabeth had her first school field trip! Andrew took the morning off to come with us too. And yup, you guessed it, we were at Aldor Acres!


Ellie was super excited, can you tell?

The first thing we did was take a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch. Once we landed in place, Elisabeth was off and trying to find the perfect pumpkin!

She tried out a couple of little ones before deciding on this medium sized pumpkin. Truth be told, I couldn't believe she could carry it!



Next it was time to visit the animals. Elisabeth's favorites were the goats and the bunnies (the bunny picture is on Andrew's camera though).

Elisabeth insisted on getting this picture taken.

Traditional How Tall This Fall picture.

And a picture with the sheep. I'm not a huge fan of petting zoos like this. It was insane the day we were there, and the poor animals are run ragged by these little kids. All of them want to hold, pet, chase them all and you can tell they don't love it. The turkeys were mad and actually trying to attack some of the kids. Yikes. So we didn't stay long.


And we go back tomorrow and next Friday for two more trips. woo hoo

The weather was so nice last Sunday that in the afternoon we decided to head to the beach for a long walk. After all, this is BC and you never know how many non-rainy weekends are in store for fall/winter. Or any time of year for that matter!

The Dr. Who booth very close to where we always park.

Some fall colour.
These hydrangeas were so beautiful. I'm going to have to figure out my backyard this year so I can plant a bush or two myself!


We walked right down to the end of the beach where the stairs and bridge are, and then we played. There was a big pile of gravel that the kids had a great time climbing up and jumping off.

My big five year old was being such a ham :)



After he'd finished posing, David threw some rocks in the water.

Wow. STRONG boy!

Then David and Andrew had to go for a little stroll so Elisabeth took over being my model.

Also a little ham!!

Both my kids are all about jumping right now.


The tide was coming in pretty fast, so it was time to turn around and find our boys. On our way there were too many signs of fall to ignore. You know, it really is my favorite time of year!





Oh dear, what could have Elisabeth looking so shocked?

And a little worried?

ugh. okay, I see it now. Yuck!

David's Birthday

After the huge birthday extravaganza we had for Elisabeth back in August, I really struggled with what to do for David's birthday. On the one hand, he was expecting something pretty amazing, but on the other, well, I don't believe in huge EXPENSIVE parties. Plus, David doesn't really know anyone from his kindergarten class and we couldn't afford to invite his whole class. So in the end we decided to have three parties. Over Thanksgiving we had what we called the Uncle Party. It was really just the normal Thanksgiving Family Dinner and we had some cake aftewards and Dave and Rob gave David presents. And played with him. He loved it.

Then on his actual birthday, we started off the day with pancakes. Davey's were human shaped. He LOVED that!

Then, in the evening we had home made pizza at Grandma's house. And gave David our presents. We got him this talking Transformers card. I think it was a big hit.

Grandma and Grandpa Menary sent a sweater and some great books for David.

And then when Uncle Dave and Alexis got home from work, we had Treatza Pizza (at Uncle Dave's request!)


Yum!

Then on the weekend we had Natasha, Riley, Mayah and of course Jade and Ashlie come over for some Star Wars games. And the Abelmans slept over. I'm not sure who had more fun...the kids or we adults! We stayed up late playing Dutch Blitz and continued on again first thing in the morning!!

Lately, David is obsessed with us training him out to drive. His words. So the other day we're in the car and he says, "Mummy, I think you need to train me how to drive because I don't know how to drive a car."

"Oh sure, honey. Is that so you can drive around the world to find your wife instead of walking?"

"Yes, only what happens if I get lost? What will I do then? I guess you're going to have to train me" we haven't told him about GPS yet.

*********************

Today my sister, Elisabeth and I were driving around town. We were talking about her blackberry and I asked her a few questions about the options she has on it. Then I wistfully said, "I'd love to get a blackberry one day."

A little voice piped up from the back seat, "Mummy, don't you know we get blackberries from the forest? We can go there and get you one."

Happy Birthday, my big FIVE YEAR OLD boy!!