Yay Summer!

We're having a great summer so far--busy, but great. I'm working three days a week, Cadence is experiencing summer as part of a gang of kids, and Drew's super busy doing what he loves best.

A number of weeks ago we went with Gramma to the drag races in KL. We all enjoyed it way more than we thought we would. Cadence got right into posing with the cool cars in the pits. I was impressed...it was like Hot Wheels come to life!

This one was just in the parking lot, but he felt it deserved a posed pic as well.

We went to Morpeth for our annual Canada Day trip, and of course Aunt Tracey, Uncle Brian, Hallie and Emillie threw him an early birthday party.

We went to mini putt, played in the water and sand, went to watch fireworks, and again Cadence found a gang of kids to hang out with.

Oh--and we didn't play as much scrabble as usual, and rerouted our competitiveness to a mac and cheese cook-off. (it turns out we make our mac n cheese almost identically). It was a tie :)

Lastly, I took this pic this morning--our solar panels are up! Yay! Hopefully we'll be grid-connected and inspected early next week. This was all Drew's doing, and involved much perseverence. Yay Drew!!

Winter flew by--in part because it was really short again this year. We played outside as always, but also had the fun of our first year as a hockey family.

This year's luge track off the front deck. The best one yet!

This year for Valentine's Day, we all worked together to make melted crayon heart valentines for Cadence's classmates. They turned out fabulous and I felt very proud because a) I'm not at all crafty, and b) we all worked together really well. Yay!


Hockey fun day in Englehart. First full-ice games and it was really quite fun.

Clearing the deck/hockey rink for some practice time.


Last week we were lucky to join the Canadian Invasion to Orange County/LA. Cadence had the time of his life playing with his cousins, and we all got to connect with family and with Sunny SoCal. It was an unbelievable week of get-togethers and sight-seeing, and our hosts went above and beyond expectations to make our trip memorable. One of our first stops, of course, was the Hollywood sign. I discovered that I might have a wee fear of heights.

At Grauman's Chinese Theatre--fitting our feet in with the Star Wars stars

Hey, who's that in the background?

After a very sensory-stimulating afternoon at Universal Studios (seriously, our museum selves were completely blown away by the quality of attractions here).

We spent one full afternoon at the beach, where a few of us surfed (sort of), and the three boys dug in the sand.

Of course, we visited with Mickey.

and who could leave Disney without visiting these two leading men?

While waiting for the fireworks that ended up being cancelled due to high winds (that we couldn't even feel), Cadence and Drew had fun making light sabre photo art (with the light sabre Cadence proudly bought with his own money).

Drew and Cadence took some time out to visit the Star Wars exhibit down the road. It held all the original movie props, and they both loved it. In fact, the photographed every single item, so if you have any specific interests (the light sabre display? yoda? other various flight machines I don't know the names of?) let me know and I'll send you the pics.

There he is again!

Fall & winter

Geocaching in the fall. We found our first prize in the cemetery. Then we headed to cobalt for an awesome exploration around old mine shafts etc. We haven't been out since, but I hope we will sometime soon! I'd love to try it on snowshoes. Geocaching I mean.



I'm not sure who designed this costume, but little Cadence turned into a rather abdominally muscular dark version of batman this past halloween. He was therefore the opposite of the bright colours recommended for safe trick or treating...so I made sure to stay close in my gigantic cow costume.


A first iteration of house-as-pumpkin. I expect it might grow more elaborate over the years.


This year it was a healthy snack--carrots for the reindeer, I think...I can't remember what Santa got.


Christmas was really nice this year, although we really did miss being with family. After a spontaneous brunch with the neighbours, we went out to a friend's on the lake for some curling, hockey, and skating on the lake then a quiet dinner. It was all really wonderful to be outside on such a special day.



After New Year's, we travelled to TO for a visit. Drew & Cadence went with Auntie Mer to a vegetarian restaurant, where they had fun making special effect pics. I decided not to post them...out of respect for the subjects.


Our family.

Backlog!!

A few posts on their way...this is from a while ago.

We had a great Gauley visit in Toronto last fall. Cadence got to see Casa Loma,



the new TTC streetcar,


and eat dinner at Wayne Gretzky's! (we're sort of related, you know....)

Apparently it's been a while...(sorry 'bout that)

We just pulled out the camera and half the pictures are taken when there was snow...so I'll start with them first!

Total spring shot: no mittens (still in a cast, I see), but cool enough to kind of want them, hopeful we can see the sandbox but still not able to actually get at anything inside, and me in the background, sweater off, soaking up the warm sun.


Somewhat exposed, but not even a tonka can get out of the solid ice.

Drew experimenting with snow, gravity, and sunshine.


And when the snow finally melted (which felt early this year, actually), we added two additional plots to our garden. Very proud (they're now thriving for the most part) (something stole all the pea plants, but we're thriving otherwise).


...and fast forward to a summer trip to Toronto! This was when I went to Toronto for work, then Drew & Cadence joined me, then I went to Montreal. In between we had lots of adventures, including several visits to an outdoor splash park near Auntie Lee and Uncle Steve. My favourite parts of Toronto are all the things available to the people who actually live there (i.e. not really the tourism things, but these great neighbourhood things!)


Cadence turned 5 this July, and so he and Drew were up & outside that morning at 8am working on the backyard mini-putt course. It was great. In addition to the friends he invited from school, all the kids from up the hill came down, and the neighbours were over, plus some older siblings and parents...the more the merrier, as long as they're content with a bit of chaos! Anyways, there were 6 holes, I think, and it was great. Funny in the end, there was a 9-way tie for first place!



In mid-July, we travelled to Huntsville (sort of) for the River and Sky music festival, and Meredith came up to meet us! Swam in lake and river, rented a peddle boat, saw great music, ate great food, and of course build block castles (oh--and I don't have any pictures, but we even played parachute games!)
Hangin' at the campsite


Hanging out in the shade (those Gauleys sure do feel the heat) :)

Photo courtesy of Cadence. That's my castle in the foreground, and his behind.


...and then of course was our vacation!
We had a great time, and explored a tonne of new places while staying relatively close in northern Ontario. First was Ivanhoe Provincial Park near Timmins, where we camped just a few metres from the beach, listened to loons every night, swam, canoed, and biked around. Oh, and had shadow puppet shows! Drew and Cadence worked hard (while I enjoyed a novel about wild cats) to make shadow puppets using boxes and our marshmallow/weiner sticks, and put on some hilarious shows. They ended up refining it to a dinosaur version of the three little pigs, where everyone had Italian accents.

Also at Ivanhoe...there were a bunch of little snails around, so Cadence and I paid homage to them "en sable"

Wow, I had forgotten about this already--Ivanhoe also had a short bog hike. Didn't see any carnivorous plants, but it was still nice. This year Cadence is such a different person--we hiked at a regular adult pace, which was great.


Next we drove along the eastern shore of Lake Superior (which is beautiful, and we hope to return soon to drive along the north shore) down to the soo. We arrived at a family-oriented RV park right on Superior, full of family-friendly programming including wagon rides, daily soccer games, and crafts. Plus, we were lucky to arrive in time for the annual Halloween in July event, complete with watermelon carving, a haunted house (SCARY for poor C.) a costume parade and then full-on trick-or-treating around the entire campground. I've never seen anything like it, and to be honest it was kind of more fun that regular hallowe'en, because everyone was out socializing. But really??? we just got rid of the Halloween-Christmas-Valentine's Day-Easter candy horde! Sigh.

We went to Value Village for some pirate garb. Drew did the sharpie tattoos (after I checked online to make sure it was safe)


We had two big dinners out--the first one was at Gino's pizzeria in the soo, where the panzerotti were the size of..seriously, a football. We ordered a delicious pizza and even had some leftover but unfortunately they suffered a waterlogging fate in the cooler. (really not easy living out of a cooler for 2 weeks). Next time, it's dehydrated food all the way.


Apparently there are no pictures from the last leg of our trip--we left the RV park 4 days early to add another spot to the trip, which was a provincial park near Espanola. On a river, with lots of logging history, a current to ride in the dinghy, sand castles, gorgeous waterfalls, long hikes, great weather, and even a day trip to an old fort in the local reserve and a spontaneous swim in the north channel of Huron when we happened to just drive out onto a beach. Everywhere we swam, I swear it was like a warm bath.

Although we were sad to see the end of our vacation, we're excited about many more adventures to be had before summer's over. Next weekend = Santa's Village!