BESTIES

Sunday brought sun and a visit with the Georges at the park.

The Georges are one of our besties (this is my new favourite word). Jake and Sean are besties, and have been for over 20 years, and Candiss and I are besties and have been since I started dating Jake 18 years ago, and now our kids are besties too! It is the best.

The Georges have lots of kids...4 of them.

CaCa (Claudia) is the oldest. She was the very first baby born of all our friends. I even was there in the delivery room! And since I did not have any babies of my own yet, I got to do lots of Aunt Bee stuff with her...just me and her...reading books, playing dolls, going to parks. I love her.

Will's favourite girl (Sara) stopped by the park too.

There's Uncle Sean and Will with a chocolate cupcake face.

Sam tells me that he is going to marry Truman (his bestie). It was a toss up between Truman and Clara for a while, but Clara explained that it would definitely be against the law to marry his sister.

Truman has introduced fashion and worker stuff to Sam. Every visit, he has some sort of worker type gloves on with his very fashionable outfit, as well as a tool belt and big worker plans, like making big piles of stuff and moving wood. Here is Sam showing Truman just how strong he is:

And I love this one...this is exactly how Jake walks too! With his hands clasped behind his back.

WILL PRACTICING HIS INDEPENDENCE

Will opened the cupboard, found some Lucky Charms (in my defense, we bought them specifically for St. Patricks Day), climbed up on the chair and poured some on a plate. This is how I discovered him when I came downstairs. Having himself a little Lucky Charms appie before dinner. He was quite proud.

THE WONDER OF EVERYDAY

a visit to the park down the street, pre bedtime...

CLARA'S DAY

Clara turned seven on April 1st (seven came so fast, and seven sounds so much older than six).

If you recall, birthdays are "yes" days. So here are some of the things I said yes to, on Clara's day:

Yes, to not going to school

Yes, to Sam still having to go school

Yes, to waffles with chocolate chips, syrup and icing sugar for breakfast

Yes, to a girl date with me and Hannah (her cousin and BFF)

Yes, to buying a toy (a tiny puppy that wags it's tail when touched and has a tiny bottle that we have lost already)

Yes, to hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles

Yes, to getting our nails painted at the Nail Bar

Yes, to MacDonalds for lunch

And then we packed up the car for our week at Whistler, but there will be more Birthday celebrating on the 24th with her friends.

I love you my sweet girl...my beautiful daughter! May all your birthday wishes come true!

FIVE PEOPLE 3/12

Actually there are six people in this photo. Charline is practically family at the moment. She does live with us, we adore her, she makes us crepes, tomato coulis and chocolate and pear cake, and I think I spend more time with her than I do with my husband (although because of her I also get to go on lots of dates with my husband). But I'm getting off track...

Here is my attempt at family photo number 3. It is true, I'm 12 days late to post, but we did take this photo April 1st. We had just arrived at the cabin in Whistler, have not even unpacked our bags, and somehow I have a giant glass of red wine in my hand. Clara wanted to try out the self timer on her new camera, so we set it on the coffee table...

Not very professional, but I'm posting it anyway! It is us...real life.

It is surprising how difficult it is to gather the entire family for a photo. I'm going to try harder this month.

I pulled these pictures off Clara's camera as well. They are from our car ride up to Whistler. I love, LOVE that she took a picture of the policeman who pulled Jake over for excessive speeding. We all somehow managed to squeeze into the car, Kirby included.

We are home from our long weekend at Whistler that turned into a week at Whistler. The kids and I and Charline decided to stay on after the crowds left on Monday. It was such a lovely way to spend our holiday and I'm so excited that Clara can officially ski down a mountain! It was so cool to ski with her, just the 2 of us, playing eye spy on the chairlift, practicing our pizza pies down the hill, racing down the last slope to the lift line, stopping for a quick hot cocoa and some fries...

Sam still prefers tubing and puzzles and blue Gatorade over skiing but we have big plans for him.

A few pictures from our time:

Will finds an egg...with a chocolate inside!

Clara got a camera for her birthday. She wants to start a blog too. I think it might be really funny. Stay tuned...

Now that I'm home, I need to come down from my chocolate high. This week, I vow to drink water in the day and not coke zero and beer, and eat more vegetables.

STILL HERE

Happy Easter everyone!

I know Easter was 3 days ago, but we have been at Whistler and I have only recently figured out how to go online using my i phone. Who knew? However, uploading pictures using your phone is really, truly slow, so I will make up for my lack of posting once I get home.

It has been a lovely and cozy Easter break. More sunshine is always welcome, but we have skied, skated, tubed, swum (?), climbed, hiked, played and eaten lots and lots of chocolate. We have also spent lots of time in our jammies and in the giant jet bath, and I have had to answer many, many questions about Jesus and death and resurrection, etc. Sam mostly wants to know if Jesus is bigger than a giant and if He is the strongest and fastest in the world? And then of course, there is the question, who made God? and my personal favourite of the day...what is better, Jesus or a trophy?