Back to Birch Bay!

We spent another weekend at Birch Bay but this time we got to spend time with my cousin Marsalie and her family - Shaylah and the twins (Caelan and Ashlyn). I got so wrapped up in playing with my baby cousins that I failed to take any pictures of them. I got only one shot of Marsalie taking a break on the sandbars. The kids did a little more fishing and Gabe finally caught a "big" fish.

Here's the "big one" and one very proud Gaber!

Alex's Pool

Alex's pool is where we seem to be spending our spare time this summer. Nevermind that Raph and I set up our pool in the backyard for them - there is an inground pool 5 houses down that has a diving board and a slide! Everyday that we are home I am bombarded a million times a day with the question "can we go to Alex's pool?". Alex's parents enjoy having the kids come down because then the pool gets used and my kids (or fish) encourage Alex to swim. The kids can usually spend an entire afternoon into early evening swimming with very frequent pee breaks for Gabe - Alex's Dad thinks the pool has a leak and is always running the hose in it - but I am pretty sure it is the Gaber just drinking all the water!

Yes, that is a 4 year old jumping off a diving board into 9 feet of water. He scares the daylights out of anyone watching him but I have come pretty accustomed to it. This is a pretty tame jump - he is usually doing some kind of spin.

Declan is a really strong swimmer and he is working on diving to the bottom of the deep end.

Allouette Lake

A couple of Sundays ago we went up to Allouette Lake with the Pahnke's and Deakin's for the day. Chris shuttled everybody and their massive amounts of gear to the beach from the boat launch so we didn't have to bring our boat - which was probably a good thing because Raph might have just left us and the boat there. Summer Sundays at Allouette bring out every boat in the lower mainland. The kids got a chance to do some innertubing and knee boarding - thanks to Chris!

The inner tube made for more fun that just being towed behind the boat.

This is Declan having his turn.

This is the Gaber having his turn - not sure he could really see above the inner tube!

Faith did some inner tubing and this is a shot of her knee boarding.

Sandbars

The tides were huge this past weekend at Birch Bay and we took full advantage of them - running the dogs, building sandcastles, collecting shells, chasing seagulls and flying kites.

July 4th at Birch Bay

It's hard to capture the full effect of experiencing July the 4th down at Birch Bay but I tried taking a few shots. There is nothing in Canada that can compare to this. People start lighting fireworks off at about 7pm and it goes until about midnight. For awhile there were so many going off at the same time you could not talk to each other for all the noise. Faith lasted until 11:00 but the boys passed out in the lawn chairs at 10:00.

Fishing for bullheads at Birch Bay

So Raph brought a couple fishing rods down to Birch Bay so the kids could try their hand at catching some bullheads. A great pasttime I enjoyed doing with my cousins when we were growing up. I have many fond memories of fishing off the rocks on the beach with weiners and then when the weiners would run out we would cut up one of the bullheads and use that for bait - probably a suggestion from our mothers (who by the way did the same thing!). This particular weekend the tide was up to the wall so the kids were able to fish right off the wall every night. Gabe waited patiently all day long to fish - although I guess asking every 10 minutes if he could go fishing is not really patiently waiting. It quickly turned into who could catch the most fish or the biggest fish and they had their Dad working hard casting the lines and taking out the hooks.

Raph had them well trained to "watch the bobber".

This was by far the biggest bullhead which Declan caught and was very impressed with himself.

The latest on Faith

Daddy's pretty girl now has blue braces on her teeth. Mommy wanted her to be absolutely perfect so she got braces to pull her top jaw forward now while it is still growing. She was not upset to get them - however the retainer on the bottom teeth have caused her great grief! She is a trooper and adapting very well.

June was busy!!!

So, it has been a while for any blogging but as anyone with kids knows - June is probably the busiest month of the entire year! We had Faith's dance recital, more Lacrosse than I care to talk about, many fieldtrips and fun days to wrap up school, throw in a few birthday parties, Sunday School and some daycare kids and every day on my calendar was booked!!! Here's a few shots from June ...

Gabe's preschool fun day had a bouncy castle with a slide which was way cool!

The funnest part of the Hammond Elementary fun day is the tug of war between the different classes. Declan's kindergarten class beat the Grade 1's but Faith's class lost their tug of war with the other Grade 3 class :(

Declan got to go to a PoCo Saints vs. Victoria Shamrocks game and go out on the floor with the players for the name announcements and national anthem. During the breaks between periods Declan's team got to play their own game. He had his lacrosse ball signed by some of the players after the game in the locker room. He was pretty excited about it - or as excited as our very serious son can get!

Declan got a trophy after one of his games - the Crazy Cat trophy which was for the hardest working player of the game. He got to keep it for one week until the next game.