New haircut.
More new haircuts.
Shopping with Dad in one of his favorite stores.
Clutching her first craft, a popcorn shaker made with Mom, ok, largly made by Mom, but still fun.
Oh no Isabel! Don't destroy the kids castle!! A couple of the kids were ticked, but most of them thought it was pretty funny when Isabel landed on the castle and rolled all over it.
Happy 4th Birthday Kalum!
A rare photo of me, in my oh so stylin' hat.
Pretty big one, even Isabel couldn't take this one down.
Her fortune is stuck there...ew...but funny.
Kidlets piggy banks were full, so they rolled it all and got it to the bank. They had a riot playing in their money.
Jia's 1st swim in the backyard, doing a cool model pose with the foot/knee turned out.
Water was too cold, she wanted to 'slide' instead. Swings are slides and slides are no no's.
Finally in and loved it.
Got tons of fun pictures of Chayse and Jia playing in the little pool with the balls, but they don't have tops on, so this is the only one I could post. They played and played and played in there.
It's 82 girls, just jump in!
Snack time.
Beautiful recorder music this morning while the adults sat at the table.
Summer has started. We took the girls camping right after school ended and camped with three other families and had a few visitors. On Sat. at the beach we had 12 kids in our group. Super fun. Jia wasn't impressed with sand. The first day she clung to me and finally relented to sitting on Fei's lap but wouldn't touch the sand. The 2nd day she stayed on the blanket with me for hours. In the evening we went for a bike ride to a little beach and the big girls made a teeter totter out of logs and Jia wanted on that enough to brave walking to in with shoes on in the sand. The 3rd and last day at the beach she started out on the blanket but then took off running with the kids and that was that...our sand baby was on the go! She had it everywhere! To say she loved it would be a total understatement. Of course, I didn't bother bringing my camera because she'd just spent two days hanging on the blanket with me! James took some for us, hopefully we'll get them from him. The kids even burried Isabel on the beach and she let them! I couldn't believe I didn't have my camera. So not like me.
Last night we met friends in the city for dinner, a group of 16, boy can we be loud :) Debbie got news yesterday that they have PA for baby Emily so it really was a night for celebration! Then we had Nathalie, Giles, Madison and Chayse come stay at our place. Jia loved having Chayse around. They're 8mo. apart in age but really the same size and fairly similar in developement. They were soooo sweet together. Not really interacting, still in parrallel play. They stayed close to each other though. Madison is the same age as Fei and the three bigger girls had a blast in the pool and then slept together in Lili's room. We'll get to see Nathalie and the girls once more before they had back home.
We leave tomorrow for our 10 day off island trek. We're so not ready yet. It will be a busy, busy evening getting things packed. We needed a new squirrel fan for our air conditioner and it comes in tomorrow (knock on wood) which doesn't leave E much time to get it working. We're a bit concerned that it will be a bit warm in the Okanagan. Our plan was to take Isabel, Lacie and the rats but after four days camping with Isabel, E has changed his mind, so Isabel will be going to her kennel instead. Lacie is still coming because she is so much easier to manage than Isabel. We're taking Mia the rat too. Our wee Dixie died a couple days ago. Such sadness. I really, really liked that little sweet rat. Fei was prepared, Dixie has been really old for a while now and she's been having breathing problems for a couple months. We're pretty sure she had heart failure.
Eric is concerned that every time a rat dies we'll just get another one and we'll have rats forever. We left it up to Fei about getting another one or not. Both girls want to keep going with the cage cleaning. I found a Russion Silver Berkshire female with Dumbo ears and she is reserved for us. She is 2 weeks old and we'll get her July 26th. Fei is pretty excited about the new baby and is totally focused on finding the perfect name for her. Right now she's thinking Pixie, Trixie, Lulu, Luna, Sophie or Starla. Feel free to add names for her to consider. She wants the name shortish, she is fond of ee sound endings and it has to be a cute name.
Can't wait to get this holiday started.
