The skating pics...

Posted By Todd.

And Great-Grandma goes Dancing...

I flew to Regina this past weekend to attend my cousin's wedding. It was just me. No kids. Yep. It was quiet. I had 4 days to myself. I read 3 books COVER TO COVER. I read one each way on the plane (6 hours of QUIET... each way!) and one when I slept until 10:00 am one morning! Can you even imagine?? Of course, my kids can now read so I must say that I missed them terribly and I couldn't wait to see them when they picked me up at the airport (which is the truth).

As for the wedding - it was good. One of the highlights was my 87-year-old Grandma who outdanced SIX of her relatives.

I kid you not. Have you ever seen 30-something-cousins begging for a drink of water and a chair while their Grandmother decides which one to take to the dance floor next?

It was 1:15 IN THE MORNING and we were almost out the door when the DJ decided to play "locomotion". Yep, you guessed it - the next thing you know Grandma & I are back in the door and we're doing the locomotion. Oiy. I was tired the next morning. As for Grandma. She was up at 8 am, dressed and finished breakfast by 9:00am.

[As an aside: Any of you that have been to Saskatchewan may laugh at this song by the Arrogant Worms: The Last Saskatchewan Pirate. I found a link to the lyrics and a version here.


Here are some pictures of Grandma outshuffling the rest of us.

Her sons:

Her grandsons:

Her grand-daughters:

Parksville with friends

Our good friends (R &M) from Edmonton were vacationing in Parksville and kindly invited us to visit. (Yippee. Any excuse for a vacation! Even better when it is with a great family.)
What a fantastic time we all had. Their children (J.& G.) are the same ages (and genders!) as our children and everyone plays so nicely. I highly recommend the French Creek House Resort (http://www.creekhouseresort.com/) if you're looking for a clean rustic place to stay. The individual cabins have furnishings that are dated but functional. There is an indoor pool, huge playing field, lots of toys and sports equipment, and, of course, the beach right there.

The Heartbreakers: Toria and her friend, G.,

Look out boys - here they come....

The girls had a fantastic time visiting and playing together. They made sure they were dressed head to toe in pink each day (except for the ocean incident... see picture below)

Toria already misses G. and is trying to negotiate the next visit.... (I'll clean up my room ONLY if we can go and visit G.)

The boys. "Look ma! No hands!"

Did anyone say 'Hot Wheels'?

Tomas and J. have a great time whenever they get together. They love playing cars together and just hanging out. I only hope that in NINE short years from now they KEEP THEIR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL!

Tomas was very sad when J. left to go home - he thinks J. should move here so they can play cars all the time.

[And a WOW to our big strong husbands].

The Beach

"Anybody got a spare dollar? Sand dollar that is?"

Parksville has a world famous beach. During low-tide you can walk for miles. The kids weren't really dressed for it but we grabbed a few sand toys and played in the sand.

Tomas & J., spent an hour collecting sand dollars. They even found a jellyfish and brought it - in a sand bucket- to show their moms!

Nice Outfit:

The cute little girls got so wet and sandy at the beach that they had to change. Unfortunately neither mother had spare girl clothes. I mean, really, when do girls ever get dirty?

Fortunately, we were able to change them into their newly purchased matching shirts (bought at the (fantastic) Errington Farmers Market).

As for shorts.... err, we each had a spare set of their brother's shorts!

And this is why God made warm summer nights:
We reclined under the sun with more Edmonton escapees.

E. & D. (who escaped Ed. winters many years ago) are friends of R. & M. They were able to join us Saturday night for dinner and drinks. This is the way vacations were meant to be. Thanks for a great weekend!

P.S: You can learn more about Parksville by reading my article(s):

http://www.islandrvguide.com/RVTripOnVancouverIslandP1.html

http://www.islandrvguide.com/Kalyniuk-WeltaFamilyP2.html

Part 3 is available in paper format but not online yet.

I also recommend Tiger Lily Farms (http://www.tigerlilyfarm.ca/index.html) - it was great. You can feed the goats, MILK a goat, play with the baby chicks, ride a pony and even feed a cow!

I also need to add the Errington Farmers Market on Saturdays was fantastic; great food, beautiful jewelry, neat crafts and live music!

Almost time

Today is Tuesday June 26, 2007 and there is exactly ONE AND ONE-THIRD days left of school. I don't know whether I'm thrilled that I don't have to get up at 6:30 am every morning and rush everyone out the door at 8:20:40 which gets us to school with exactly 32 seconds before the first bell. Although yesterday there was a front end loader blocking the walking trail and that took an additional 16 seconds to walk around plus 22 seconds of conversation with it's owner as to why it was in the middle of the path (checking underground connections). [Last week there was a woodpecker decimating a rotted log on the creek and we stopped for a full 82 seconds to watch wood chips flying everywhere as Woody pecked. We ended up running the last 500 metres to school].

ON the other hand I'm not sure how I will keep the children occupied for the additional 6 hours each and every day. That's 30 hours each week or TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY hours over the course of the summer that my sweet little darlings need to be occupied or they'll be yelling "MOOOOOOOM. I'm bored" Which takes about 2 seconds to say so in 270 hours of summer vacation they could utter that phrase 486,000 times.

B.B.B.& B.

Beach.Butchart gardens.Boat.Bed

My sister, Cathy, and her son, Weston, are visiting and we have had the most amazing weather - what great sight seeing we've been doing...

First we visited the beach (with some of Toria's school mates). Toria is the one in the front lower right & Weston is pushing the bulldozer.

Weston wasn't sure what to think of all the flowers.

This is the Attessa - apparently it is the 69th largest yacht in the world - cost around $50 million give or take a few million. I personally like the helicopter!

How do you get 3 rascals to fall asleep? Putting them into the same bed is NOT the best way.