Another summer week is here and gone. August is just around the corner and I am excited for the kids to be back in school soon but dreading the fall weather.
This week Cassidy and Aidan started swimming lessons. Tuesday we also got the chance to head out to Splash Island in Portage la Prarie and met up with Nori Milton and her kids and Christy Klassen and her kiddos. They were both friends from back in my Brandon years and we had a moms group together when our first baby boys were born. It was good to catch up, Nori and her kids had traveled all the way from BC and we hadn't seen them for about 2 years. It didn't take the kids long to warm up to each other and had a blast swimming. Aidan and Cassidy really became attached to the waterslide and it was nice to be able to sit back and watch them go up and down themselves, rather then dragging them up myself. Liam on the other hand was rather upset that he was too short to go down alone. Cassidy going down. This is the best picture I got of Aidan going down. I kept missing him because I was chatting too much!!

Here are a few pics of all the kiddos, wow has our old thursday moms group grown in the last 6 years, and we are missing some!


Thursday after swimming lessons, I took the kids to Harborview park, which is about a 5 minute drive from our place. They used to have this cool wooden pirate ship playground but I was doing family portraits for a family there in the evening and I wanted to check it out and warned the kids that they were taking down the old park. Much to my surprise, they had built a new park which was amazing. It was ships in an ocean, complete with lighthouse. The kids loved it and it was good to find a new place for us to go


It is now the weekend and we stuck around here for it. It has been nice to not have any plans for once. Steve has been opening up the wall from the living room to the kitchen. He finished opening it up today and just need to do the finishing work. It took alot longer then planned because he had to do some electrical work but it will look great when all done. Next plan, do something with those ugly kitchen cupboards!

We survived another weekend of camping. We headed off to St.Malo last friday for the annual "Keown" camping weekend with Steve's side of the family. The weekend ended up being beautiful and the bugs weren't as bad as last time.
The kids did lots of swimming, and they enjoyed spending time with there cousins Julie and Ashton. I am finding camping with the kids easier and easier every time we go. We have a good system worked out and it seems to work well. We do have an older tent trailer, I think the green beast will be put to rest at the end of this summer. Steve plans to gut it and turn it into a utility trailer and we will look for a newer tent trailer. I have to admit, a trailer makes a HUGE difference when camping and I think I would find it hard to go back to a tent.

Here are the kids enjoying the water

Enjoying some ice cream

Like i first mentioned, the bugs weren't as bad but they still were out there biting. Cassidy seems to swell up so bad with misquoto bites and got bit on the eye, which then started to swell shut. I don't think I had mentioned before but she was also recovering from getting the 'swimmers itch' from the cabin. Poor girl.
It is hard to believe it is almost August and in a short month the kids will be back to school. We have two weeks of swimming every morning starting today. Tomorow we head to the water park at Portage to meet some old friends, the kids are very excited. I also have taken a bit of a break the last few weeks from photoshoots and get back into it this week and am getting my August booked up quite nicely.

Camping Pictures

We had a great time at St.Malo. The weather was nice, not too hot but nice enough to enjoy the beach. Every year seems to be easier to camp with the kids, I think it has to do with age.

We are home

Wow, it has been a long time. We are now home from our two weeks of vacation. Steve is back at work today and we are experiencing our real first day at home since school is done. I am going to have to think of things to keep the kids busy. I am going to have a few posts to summerize our past two weeks, I think I emptied one of my 4GB cards on my laptop several times so I have TONS of pictures and not enough time to go through them.
Vacation starting on July 1st when we headed 3 1/2 hours to the Canadian/USA border to Lake Metigosh where my parents have a cabin. They are basically right on the border off of the lake. It was a beautiful hot week and we did lots of relaxing. Granny and Grandpa spent the time with us and it probably was a good thing because we may have gotten bored there after a while.

Joel and Laura also came up one evening and we were able to visit with them.

Steve and my Dad went fishing every day, sometimes twice and took the kids out alot too. They caught lots of fish, Aidan with his first two and Cassidy with her first. Steve also caught quite a few with a big monster one. Cassidy showing off her fish Aidan's second fish (37 inches, daddy helped him get this big guy)

Of course, who could forget Daddy's 40 incher, this guy was huge!

July 4th, Grandpa took us all out on the boat late at night to the American side where we saw one of the best fireworks show. Everyone there blasts off there own so everywhere we looked there was stuff going on, the kids thought it was pretty neat and I must say the Americans now how to put on a good show. They also thought it was great to stay up to midnight!We were very glad that we left right before the tornado went through. Thankgoodness our cabin was safe but many of the neighbors weren't so fortunate.

Saturday we started the journey back home and stopped in Brandon for the night at Grandma and Grandpa Keowns. Sunday Grandpa took us out to shoot rockets and then we went for icecream.

Sunday night we arrived home and monday I spent the day doing laundry and grocery shopping and we got the trailer all ready for camping.

Tuesday we headed to St.Malo and enjoyed the rest of the week camping. We had great weather and spent lots of time at the beach. Lots more pictures from camping will be coming in my next post!

Now we are trying to get into some kind of summer routine. We are camping this weekend again at St.Malo with the 'Keown' family, so I didn't even bother unpacking half the camping gear. Next week the kids start swimming lessons for two weeks and the end of the month they are going to Vacation Bible school.