More from holidays...

A photo of our rental house in Penticton:
Gram reading to the girls in the outside seating area. Gram and Papa had brought books for the girls. Eating lunch at the house. Shopping at the legendary used bookstore in Penticton. We love this place. Look at all the books! We bought a few for the girls...a Richard Scarry Dictionary and a Disney/Mickey Mouse one too.
Sam sat in this cute little desk, (she was so warm...see those red cheeks?) wearing the dress she insisted on wearing almost every day of the holiday. (well, not quite, but it took some convincing!)The new water toy that managed to come home with us. Fun, but really, it'll be more fun when the kids are older and can swim.
We (Ben) made lots of sand chairs. This day on the beach, it was a little chillier than usual, so hardly anyone was there. The girls had a blast running up and down in the sand. And sitting in their sand chairs. And jumping in our home made (Ben-made) swimming pools. I honestly could not believe how long they had fun with this one. Crazy. =) I think that's one of the things that made this trip so good...they could have fun doing a number of things for HOURS and it didn't feel like we were so busy going from one thing to the next trying to keep everyone happy. More to come...!

Back from Holidays!

We're back from holidays! (and have been for a week and a half.) Re-entry was a bit slow...partly due to Katie and I getting sick on our last night/morning home, but just because we've been busy doing lots of fun and nothing. Enjoying Ben being home with us. Enjoying the super rainy weather and monster mosquitoes. Yes, it's kind of dreadful here...We have had the odd nice day but hard to enjoy with those bugs. Ah well...shall I tell you about the holiday?

Other than it ending in illness (canceling our plans to go to the Calgary Zoo) we had our best holiday with the kids ever!

This is a stop we took because Katie said she HAD to go to the bathroom. Apparently not enough to use a pit toilet though! =) Anyway, it was a great stop. Good to get out of the car and throw rocks in the water.

We made it to Sicamous the first night with enough time to have ice cream at our favorite place...the D Dutchmen Dairy.
It was our only night camping. The mosquitoes were horrendous, such that Ben and I put up the tent while the girls were in the van and then threw them in quick before the bugs found us. We read books for(ever) a while and eventually all went to sleep. In the past we tried to get the girls down while Ben and I stayed up but that's just impossible and really a waste of time. Going to bed altogether worked well. I had an awful sleep and woke up freezing but overall we were good. Oh, and did I mention that while we were setting up the tent we found that one of our tent poles had a broken elastic...and was cracking. We made it work but it sure was a good thing that we weren't tenting more! Here's the girls in the tent.
After a quick take down we were off and found a super great little local place in Armstrong for breakfast(COFFEE). If I can dig up the card, I'll tell you what it was. Just down from the Home Hardware.
Driving was great. We had bought new sticker books, colouring books and blank paper and crayons (and markers for at the house) so the girls were well entertained. And new CD's from the library! I think the CD soundtrack to our holiday is by a band called Recess Monkey, their album called Field Trip. (favorite songs include Marshmallow Farm, Sack Lunch, Hot Chocolate etc) Definitely, if you're looking for kids tunes that are very adult friendly, I highly recommend!

Ben and the girls in Skaha Lake Penticton. The girls at Skaha.We were lucky that Gram and Papa were able to stop and visit us at our rental house for two nights on their way back from a wedding holiday in Vancouver. It was nice to have company. (They slept outside in their van.)After dinner, Ben made up a show for the girls. They did shows for him too. It was fun to watch.Little Sam and and bigger Dad by the big tree (at Skaha Lake Penticton).There are many more photos but that's it for now. This is only day 3 of the trip and we were away for a week and a half. I'll try and be selective about photos. So I'm not still posting them in Decenber. =)

Heather

More from before...

More pictures from before...

A playdate with some preschool friends.
Face painting done at the Children's festival in St. Albert...did I show you this picture yet? I can't remember...I've gone back and forth a bit now with photos and I'm confused (and too lazy to look it up on the blog). Sam didn't want any face painting.
She and our friend C were more interested in Jumpy Castles (for the record, I call almost all jumpy things "castles" even if they are not. I'm sure there was a castle themed one once, and now they all get called that!) The girls were so cute in their dresses!
Some action shots of Sam...jumping...
...and falling!
The weather was superb and we had ice cream in the sunshine!Which was great since went we went again on the weekend with Steph, Russ and W. it was freezing! (around 4C) And I think it rained too. =( But we still had fun.
And got our faces painted again. And had pancake breakfast instead of ice cream. Yum!
We weren't able to get balloon animals done since the line was long and took forever, so when we got home, I did up a couple of balloons for the girls. Sam wanted SuperWhy,
And Katie, a cat to go with her cat face. I did a bit of work for Auntie Andrea office at the University and Papa and Gram watched the girls. They girls had lots of fun, including enjoying ladybugs at the Muttart Conservatory. The girls were so excited to tell me about it! We went to the nearby mall again for ice cream ( a sure sign of summer!). Notice Ben wearing his new U2 shirt...from the concert we went to. It was AWESOME and though we got home really late, it was such a fun time and a really memorable event. We went to a family dinner at Auntie Gail's house, Auntie Jen was there too. She and uncle Ray brought chalk and little gifts for the girls that were much enjoyed!And Gram and Grandpa brought over the new bike they had found at a garage sale for Sam. She is so happy that she now has a big girl bike too!Yawn...to late to write more about what we've been up to this week. Trust me we've been busy, but in the best possible way! Really happy now that Ben is home for the summer.