Warm Spring fun

Yup, it's not even officially summer yet and we've pulled out the kids pool and are enjoying the nice weather! We are super happy with these nice warm days!




Miriam went down the slide once and then decided that suntanning would be more fun... (The water was super cold, I had just filled the pool late afternoon yesterday.)


Dylan couldn't resist the slide! SO FUN!



Dylan trying out the suntanning thing...
(He needed a little help with laying out his towel... every time he tried to lay it out nice, it ended up an a big heap on the grass.)




What do you do with wet kids when it's lunch time? Let them eat outside of course! :-)

Our street

I thought I would post a few pictures of what our street looks like :-) It'll probably be a while until my family can come down so I'd like to give them a bit of an idea of what we see out of our living room window :-)
There is a park close to our place - you can see on the last picture the baseball diamond. There seems to be a game there 2-3 times a week, I love hearing the cheering etc. from the games :-) just behind the baseball diamond is a school (only used a community center right now) and a playground. The actual community center that has a skating rink in the winter is right beside this park/school, I'm hoping we will be skating lots this coming winter. (Yes, I'm already talking about winter :-P)
P.S. I love the big trees!

Clothesline!!

One of the things I really really wanted when we bought our own house was -
A CLOTHESLINE!!!
I'm super excited to start using it!
Matthew hung it up tonight and I had our bed sheets all washed and ready to try it out! I'm hoping they dry before we go to bed :-D
The forecast looks great for tomorrow so, I'll be using it to dry Dylan's diapers! Whoop whoop! (The forecast looks great for the next week, yay for sunshine, warm days, and drying clothes outside!)






p.s. The reason I had to wash our bed sheets today is because, I've been putting Miriam to bed with no diaper on since we moved to this house and she's been dry every night. Early this morning she decided to come snuggle in my bed. Then I got up at 6:15 to get ready for the day and Miriam stayed in my bed. She fell asleep. I came back to the bedroom at 7:15ish to give Matthew his coffee, at the same time Miriam woke up and said 'eew it's wet in here'... yup you guessed it, she peed in my bed! eew!

May Long 2011

This May Long weekend we accomplished quite a bit and still managed to have a relaxing weekend.
Matthew built two gates and hung one. (Waiting for the gas guy to come and mark the ground so Matthew can put in the posts, so he can hang the second.) He also did a few odd jobs around the house.
We went to Ikea, bought a few decor items, plants, some end tables and a coffee table. (well we improvised with the coffee table... I really wanted something that matches the room but, was cheap enough that it doesn't matter if it gets heat spots and scratches.)
We baked cookies for the first time in the 'new' house, went to a birthday party, did some laundry, and searched kijiji for a couch and chair for our living room. I am a bit picky when it comes to spending money on things like this. :-S That can be good and bad. For a little while it looked like if we were going to get what we wanted, we would have to spend $1000+ used :-( But, along came a good deal on Kijiji and now we have a new-to-us (3 1/2 yr old) set in our living room - italian leather, reclining couch and chair, yay! Matthew looked up the model # etc and it's a Palliser set that retails for $1800+ We paid $600. So pretty good for getting exactly what we wanted (actually, we got a bit more than what we wanted) but, still a little cheaper than what we budgeted for. Next we have to look for a dresser for Dylan, one that can be used for a change table as well, no use having extra furniture when the two can be combined :-P

Here are a few pictures of us making cookies in the new kitchen:

The bucket on the counter has all my baking stuff in it. The kitchen we have right now only has two drawers that we use for cutlery, so there isn't room for a 'baking drawer'. My sil Linda gave me the idea of using a bucket you just take out when you are baking. Works great!




'Helping' Mommy bake is always fun!



And here are a few pics of our 'new' living room set...

Gate #1

Yay! Matthew put in a gate for us - Now hopefully no more escapee's!
He also built the gate but I don't have any pictures of him building it (I was too busy cleaning my 'new' house for the first time) :-) I'm super impressed, mostly because I've never actually seen him build anything before :-P
Here are some pics of my handy hubby hanging our new gate.







And here are a few pics of my two princesses, yup I said two... sigh...


Walking the runway! :-P






Dylan was sick of the dress after about 1/2hr - longer than I last before I want to take a dress or skirt off and put on some comfy pants!

New camera for my sister = Photo shoot for us!

My sisters Rebekah and Sherene came down for a surprise visit a few weeks ago. Our cousin Tim was coming down to visit his brothers and the girls asked if they could come along to visit us :-) They showed up at 10 or 11pm or something like that and Matthew and I were just getting ready for bed. They came down stairs and shocked both of us! :-P So fun! I love surprises! And sil Rachel knew about it all along! :-P
Just before they came my (little) sister Sherene (aspiring pro photographer) finally bought herself a new professional camera! :-) She's been using a little 'pocket' camera up until now. (The pictures she was able to take on that little thing really shows natural talent!) I also really like her fun, no pressure attitude, in my eyes she's a pro already! :-)
Becca and Sherene were only here for a couple of days, and just the right couple of days too... we used their babysitting services, and I was just at a nice lul in the packing. We were able to fit in a few fun things to do, and still have some nice chats over coffee. One of the things we did while they were here was go to the river valley and snap a few pictures while having a picnic supper :-) Here are a few pics my sister took.
Click here to see more pics Sherene has taken.



A few family pictures...








Just Matthew and I





Both kids




Just Miriam




Just Dylan





The picnic part






Becca





Rachel




Our amazing photographer - Sherene :-)





And as if this post wasn't long enough already... here's a few more :-)