Our birthdays and anniversaries come close together so Lowell and I also celebrated our anniversary last week. Thank you to our babysitter, we appreciated it. I am not sure who Socrates had in mind with the following quote but regardless Happy Anniversary honey!
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
– Socrates
The adults had to hold on to the small people on the merry-go-round. We’re not sure who got more dizzy on the ride, the adults or the kids. K wasn’t really a fan. She wanted to go down.
I suggested to L, not thinking that he would be up for it, that we should check out the roller coaster. To my great surprise, he was enthusiastic. I guess he had had enough time to get comfortable with the place. I expected him to change his mind when we had our first go-round, but I think the roller coaster turned out to be his favourite ride. 
We ended the evening by going on the ferris wheel together. I think the experience may have changed K forever. She was definitely not a fan. Every time we came over the top, she cringed and cried. Then later, between 4 and 6 AM, she had nightmares. We’re hoping the emotional scars aren’t very big ones.
It’s been a while since we were camping at Buffalo Pound Provincial Park near Moose Jaw, but I just realized that we haven’t posted any pictures.
We had a great time. The kids handled the drive without complaining and we can’t complain about our campsites. Saturday morning we were happy to still be at the same campsite after the rain/wind storm during the night. K did alot of complaining at the wind and flapping tarps during the storm so she wasn’t the most rested Saturday am, but she was a good trooper. Saturday we went for a short hike and did some off roading up and down the hills. It was a good hike as long as you didn’t step on a cactus.
Sunday morning we went for a bike ride, it is getting to be a bit of a custom for us to ride our bikes down to the shore and then back up and down to the campsite. This bike ride cannot be described as purely enjoyable it is more of a battle between wills and muscles. Apparently we are all stubborn!
The afternoons we spent at the beach; Saturday it felt a bit cool down by the water, but Sunday was very hot and it felt good to cool off. Something clicked for L this time in the water. He trusted his life jacket, let his feet come off the ground and practiced his swimming. Now my boy who hates baths needs to over come his fear of having water on his face. Having so much fun is hard work though.
This is what L looked like after his bath yesterday, and K woke up this morning not feeling very well.
When we first noticed the spots appearing, Pam and I thought they were mosquito bites–we had just come back from a weekend of camping. But then we noticed that the spots were appearing in L’s armpits and on his upper thighs, not places where you typically get mosquito bites. Then we started putting two and two together. “Cousin” M came over for a visit a while back shortly after he was exposed to Chicken Pox. Does L have CP? It sure looks like it.
But he can’t have CP. He was immunized against it. One of the things about being born in Massachusetts is that you are required to be immunized for certain things, one of which is Chicken Pox. Pam and I thought it was unnecessary, but we didn’t really have a choice; certain things were required by law and some things just came with the particular vaccine that is given to children there. Anyway, L and K were supposedly immunized for CP. He hasn’t complained at all about not feeling well, so maybe he has enough immunity to avoid feeling ill, but not enough to prevent all symptoms.
Pam was working on Sunday about a week and a half ago, so I decided, on a whim, to take the kids to see Rainbow Falls. We packed a lunch, got in the car, and drove out to Whiteshell. When we got to our destination, I was disappointed. I realized that the falls I wanted to take our kids to go see wasn’t Rainbow Falls—I’m still trying to remember the name of the falls that I wanted to go see. After I got over my disappointment, I realized that we could have some fun playing in the water anyway. The falls I intended to take the kids to are much bigger and not the kind that you can play around in. Thus, I didn’t take along any swimwear or life jackets. But we made do. K splashed around in her diaper and L rolled up his pant legs. They got wet anyway, but we were lucky enough to find a dry pair of pants in the car after the fun was over. We stopped for some ice cream on the way home.
Somewhere along the line, L learned how to make silly to the camera.
…but not quite this much.
We’ve had the fortune of being at St Malo Beach twice during this past heat wave. The water was nice and it’s been awhile since I thought that a Manitoba lake was anything like warm. L & K had a good time. K has no fear of the water and L is getting more comfortable playing in the water, venturing in further than his knees.
Now that we are having a short reprieve from the heat there is a lemon cookie recipe waiting to be tried.
Like the plants in the pots in the backyard K grows and grows. This is a quick shot of K before we left for church on Sunday, I wanted to get a shot of the dress that I made her.
K is all about dollies; carrying them around, feeding them and changing their diapers. Usually her babies are undressed since she doesn’t know how to put their clothes back on yet. K wanted to feed her baby sausage from her supper plate, thankfully she was satisfied with plastic food for baby.
When we got back from camping we had our first ripe tomato. K doesn’t know her colours yet, but she can tell the difference between red and green. She knows that she isn’t supposed to pick the tomatoes, but they are so tempting. To her credit she has just picked the red ones to eat.
We spent July long weekend camping in Gladstone; it was a great weekend not too hot and no rain until we got the tents packed up on Sunday. It has been awhile since there were young children camping with us so instead of hiking and long bike rides we had baseball games and water gun fights.
We were camped right beside the fair grounds, town pool and park. On July 1st Gladstone Firefighters had organizied all kinds of children’s activities. While we were washing up breakfast dishes a man came through our campsite and told L that there was a pile of sand filled with gold coins that he could dig for. No one was really sure how to take him, was he just encouraging L to check out the playground? Anyway Aunt C thought there might be something to it and took the kids to dig for gold coins.
Lo and behold there was money in that sand pile, Aunt C always finds a good deal.
This past Friday L took us to the ice cream parlour and treated us to ice cream. I did feel a little guilty he probably should have taken his aunts and uncles for ice cream since they helped him find it.
Even though the dynamic of our camping trips has changed since I was one of the kids, sitting around the campfire never gets old.
