July 24-27

...the rest of Girl Scout Day Camp week. Lots of fun and learning!






This was part of Rocket Science
(something about hot air?!?! ;)




















We had a really great Native American unit, here E is touching a porcupine fur--prickly!!




Bubbles! Always a good way to pass some time...















We went on some great hikes






















More of the Native American stuff. The guy teaching us this week actually carved these masks!








The Egg Drop...











One of the most fun traditions of GS Camp--each group puts together their own packaging around a raw egg then the firefighters drop the packages from the very top of a super high ladder truck. Our egg made it down safe and sound!




















Another favourite tradition--finding the mascot. We added the pink bikini when we found the mascot :)

Monday, July 23

Girl Scout Day Camp! The Pink Panthers.

I'm one of the leaders for A's group this year...




...so E gets to be part of the Boys' Unit.



Fun for everyone!

Sunday, July 22

Getting ready for Girl Scout Day Camp... decorating their 5 gallon buckets.

Saturday, July 21

I told you there'd be more garage pictures! The latest addition was this peg board right above AT's coffee roasting area. I use the tools and such more often than AT does (I'm such the dude ;) and have always wanted our tool box to be more organized. I thought some peg board would do the trick.

Meanwhile, while I was screwing the pegboard into the wall and hanging up tools, AT was cleaning the kitchen. We are so odd!

Friday, July 20

Can you tell what this is?

We did something extremely unusual for our family... The four of us went to a movie!! I can literally use one hand to count the number of times that the four of us have gone to a movie together. We went to Ratatouille and all loved it. I tried to snap a quick photo of Remi the Rat to prove that this unusual event had really happened ;)

Before and After

BEFORE














I'm finally ready to share the embarrassing BEFORE picture of the garage. Mind you, I should've taken a picture a few days before this when all this stuff was on random shelves and piles and our cars could still park in the garage. But here's an example of the total chaos and the pile of random random random in the garage as I began the Big Garage Organization Project...

AFTER














Ta Da!! Everything in it's place... Still a work in progress (I'm sure you'll see a few more garage pictures in the weeks to come b/c I've spent sooo much time working on this that I feel the need to share :), but look how organized! This was after 4 trips to Goodwill and 1 trip to the dump... We love the painted floor, it looks so nice and finished now.

All the shelves along the right wall are full of tubs and supplies for my new job, that was the inspiration for starting this grand project--I didn't know where on earth I was going to store all the craft stuff for my job...

Wednesday, July 18

We met some friends by the library at the mall for a cool Mad Science special performance thingie.















I ended up getting TPd!! I was the adult volunteer on this one, my friend's son held a roll of toilet paper on a stick while the Mad Science guy blew hot air at it to see what would happen... The kids thought it was hilarious watching me get attacked by a roll of toilet paper!

Tuesday, July 17

Fancy fancy!

The girls had a good time with A's random makeup... You might need to click on the photo to make it bigger--then you'll see the oh-so-natural shade of blue they used on their eyelids. Yikes ;)

Monday, July 16

What a guy!

Sunday, July 15

A came to work with me at the local fair all day Sunday. Some of our neighbor friends came and she had fun walking around with them for a while. Face painting, ice-cream, balloons... fun fun fun!















I just love her goofy tooth-less smile!! She loved helping me out at my booth at the fair, she did a great job of helping younger kids with the craft projects.

Good Times With The Cousins

The big kids very seriously checking out something on the computer.




















The "little" guy hanging out... What a Chunkster! He sure has come a long way since birth when he weighed just over 5lbs!! Such a happy Day.

Friday, July 19

A & E had a great time at VBS this week. The theme was Spy Kids so everything was about being a secret agent...















In the evening the cousins came over to spend the night (with the uncle and aunt)!

Thursday, July 12

You might have to open this picture up bigger (by clicking on the photo) to see why I shared it... This was the first month my name was going to be in the ParentMap magazine as the events coordinator and I was rather excited about seeing my name published in a monthly publication! Oops, there was a slight error with my name. Oh well, it'll be right in the August issue :)

Wednesday, July 11

Here's an update... I thought 96 was bad (see next photo) but check this out! 105 on my van thermometer when I got in it after a few hours of it being parked in the sun. Now that's just painful.


Record breaking heat!

Here's me in the rearview mirror saying "OH" about the 96 degree temperature. It'll likely get a few degrees hotter before the day is done, I believe we have now broken the record from the early 1950s of 95 degrees on July 11...

Fun in the Sun

July 10: My "little" brother's 33rd birthday today! So we're twins for a month til I turn 34 in August... I will never stop wondering what the heck my parents were thinking having us so close!! I like to think it's b/c I was just such a great baby ;)















One of the hottest summer days... nothing better than fun in the sun (and shade!) with buddies.














E playing golf in the background, one of our cute little neighbor boys laying out on his towel and the girls perusing the High School Musical special People edition... Ahh, a relaxing summer afternoon.

Monday, July 9

The cutest little neighbor boy in the universe!!

July 6-8

Our 3 Day Walk Girl's Weekend in Vancouver...
My parents were out of town so we had free reign of their apartment downtown Vancouver.















First stop: dinner at a Greek restaurant on Davie Street...














...then out dancing with our good family friend, Solomon. Us old married ladies had such a blast on the dance floor!! The 19 year olds didn't quite know what to think of us ;)















But you see, it wasn't all food and dancing... We walked all day Saturday starting with the sea wall around Stanley Park.





We all loved this giant old tree.



























There was a lot of wind damage in Stanley Park after the wind storm in the fall of 2006 so a large portion of the sea wall is closed while they continue to make repairs. Part of our walk was on these lovely trails throughout the park. This beautiful change of scenery was just what we needed for a good long training walk for the 3 Day!!















At the end of the day we had another fabulous dinner and then went over to a dessert restaurant on Denman. Yes, it's a Dessert Restaurant! That's all they serve on the menu. Love it.














Proof of all the hard work we did! Funny how we didn't get any photos of us shopping... Didn't want any incriminating evidence I suppose ;)

What a fun weekend!!

Thursday, July 5

On the day of the two birthday parties A lost two teeth!! Now she's missing all four of her top front teeth (plus one on the bottom). Such a goofy look, but what a great childhood rite of passage!

In the background is our driveway full of stuff from our garage. All part of a huge project, we painted the garage floor and now I still have to finish putting everything back in and organizing it all. I took a "before" picture but it's too embarassing to share before I can also show the "after" shot! Stay tuned...

Happy Independance Day!

A bunch of us in the neighborhood got together out on the street and enjoyed our own fireworks show. No crowds, no traffic... It was perfect!

Birthday Party Day

First birthday party: Evan turned 3!!! (Yummy melty ice-cream cones on a super hot day) If you click on the picture--like for all the pics on the blog--it'll come up big on your screen and you can see the candy-topped ice-cream feast :)















Second birthday party: Simrunn turned 7!!! (Fun at the bowling alley)