rad-tastic!

 A very long time ago, one of David's friends told me about colour runs and suggested that our family would probably love them. Fast forward a few months, when I started to get excited about racing (that's another story, for another time) and I decided to look into colour runs again. We signed up for the Run or Dye event taking  place on Grouse Mountain in September. But then I found out that Color Me Rad was coming to Cloverdale, so we decided to do a test run on family 'runs' in May.

Not everyone was terribly excited at the prospect of running. But then we watched some videos and it became apparently just how much fun we would have despite all the running.

For those of you who haven't heard of colour runs, you do a 5K fun run. Which means you're not timed and there's no pressure to complete the run in a specific time. In fact, the entertainment stays until everyone leaves and it looked like a lot of people were taking extra long to get extra coloured.

At each kilometer mark along the race path, they have stations where volunteers shoot colour at the participants. AND everyone gets bags of dye (it's corn starch with colour in it) to throw at each other. My boogers were rainbow coloured for DAYS.

There was a lot of THIS going on. It was pure awesome.

Our next colour run is the Grouse Mountain one in three weeks.

 We can't wait!!

This is us.

It's been a few years since we last updated you all on our lives. Since then, our kids have grown. A LOT. And we've added two more cousins to the mix. So, in case you're not following us on Facebook (mostly looking at the Menary side here...), that's David on the left. Sitting in the back row is Jade (Kathi's youngest), then Lizzie who is holding my brother David's oldest, Ada. And then Ashlie (Kathi's oldest) is holding Rob's Cara. Give us a couple months and there will be ANOTHER BOY to add to the picture. As you can imagine, both Davids are terribly excited about this. And I'm excited to buy cute baby boy clothes and toys again. yay.

We old folks are getting...old. You can picture that yourselves without any help from me :)

We like it here

David and I spent a good few hours today looking through pictures on here. And we came to the decision that we love this blog. It was a good way to document our lives (cause goodness knows I'm never going to get my act together and print all our pictures. I have ten years worth to print. It's too overwhelming). 

So here I am blogging again. I'll try and start with July. Here's a picture of us to start:

And a story:

Lizzie is away for her first ever WHOLE weekend away (WAAAAAAH!) but before she left, she made sure she took care of some important business - she took her brother aside and schooled him on her "tips to be the favorite child". David, unfortunately can only remember one of them. "Listen to mom more."

I said, "that's sage advice, David."

"Meh, I don't think so. Not very much of what you say is important."

And THAT is precisely why SHE is the favorite

Merry Christmas from Davey and Tink!

I'm back

It's been a long time, blog friends. And while I would love to update you on everything we've been up to the last 13 or 14 months, the truth is it's just more of the same.

I got a job. Full time. Add that to everything else I do, and I'm a very busy girl.

Andrew got a new job. He started programming again. Turns out he's still very good at it. And he still loves it. Plus, we work at the same place again.

David is in Grade Three. Last year was a hard year for David at school, but thankfully this year seems to be going much better. We are happy.

And Elisabeth is in Grade One. She comes home from school most days claiming that, "Mrs. Lewis is the BEST TEACHER EVER!" so we think she's having a good year too.

Lizzie got her bangs cut, but she's growing out the rest of her hair. Long hair = beautiful in her books.

David. He's just cute.

And I got my hair cut too. I already want to get it cut again - shorter.

While my brother Rob was off in Hawaii getting married, and dad was there watching, we raided dad's house and toured the island. We went to Fisgard Lighthouse and the Fort.

 And saw a bear.

We ate ice cream.

 And saw a monster.

 oh, here's Fisgard Lighthouse.

Then we went up island and saw some really big trees.

 And toodled around Sidney too.

Where I took pictures of my almost - birthday boy.

And the kids got their pictures taken in Halloween Costumes (that was once we were back on the mainland again!)

And that about sums up our crazy month!

I still remember my grosspapa taking me to Harrison when I was a little girl. We'd swim in the lagoon - the water was much warmer there - and he taught me to pretend I was a crab and keep my whole body under the water. I remember loving the swimming, the sand and hanging out with my papa. 

A million years later, and Harrison is still one of my favourite places. I love it in the summer, but it's just as beautiful in the winter. And so I dragged my bestie, Natasha to come spend the afternoon here with me. We walked the lagoon and enjoyed the water, and the views. 

At this point, Tash was still super into visit. 

This is the view towards the village. 

Somewhere around here, Tash started to question my sanity. We'd walked towards the other end of the beach and Natasha started to smell something unpleasant. She thought I was taking her to see a sewage treatment facility.

Well, isn't it the loveliest sewage treatment facility you've ever seen?

Just kidding, I would never. We'd walked to the hot springs - the whole reason behind this resort!! 

I'm a little surprised that Tash had never been here, being a Chilliwack native and with the number of hours we spent hanging out here as teens.

Fires at the river

 Began the day with a stroll around Fort Langley with the ever fashionable Elly Mae.

This is her posh face. 

Six year old Elle would be so pleased to know that 8 years later I still force her to dress pretty for photo shoots in the village. 

We headed home to change and made our way to the river.

The mountains were glorious as usual.

Still practicing her samurai moves. 

The Rossis arrived. 

Along with a few of our other friends. OH THE DAYS when we had friends to hang out with of an afternoon...