After they splasked in the pool for a while, I got a call from Mike that he was able to get off early. Well, 3 p.m., which lately is really early. So I packed up the kids and the beach stuff, and we took off for the sand and surf.

John spent the day collecting quartz rocks, which were everywhere. Dave just kinda puttered. They had their cool new hats with them, but they were all in and out of the water so often, they just wound up staying off most of the time.

Dave, puttering in the water.

Joan, building a sand castle

Even Tom had fun! We took him right in the water, because when we took him out of his seat, his whole back was soaked with sweat. He didn't like it at the time, but after, he felt nice and cool, and flashed me lots of goofy grins.

This is actually Wood lake - I think just one up on the chain of lakes through the valley. It's a smaller lake, so we thought it might be warmer, and it seemed to be. Lake Okanogan has been freaky cold, and we wanted to go to a place where we knew the kids would swim, because they were all melting in the heat. Wood Lake was perfect - still cold, but warm enough to plunge right in and stay in without turning TOO blue. All of the kids spent a good chunk of their time in the water, even if it was just sitting waist deep, like Joan and Dave like to do. Joan called this lake her bathtub. I think we might revisit this one again - especially if the Okanogan doesn't really warm up that much. 

Ah, the lazy days of summer

This was actually taken just after John got off school on his last day - hence the PJ's, from his PJ party. Except the second he got home, he took OFF his underwear, socks and shoes.

Sorry no post the last couple days - it was Mike's weekend, so we tried to cram as much in as possible. We cleaned both vans, and did a long-overdue dump run to get rid of cardboard from his work. The garage is looking much better now! The vanagon has never been so clean. Everything is out, and it was all vacuumed as well. John got in, and said "Wow! it's so clean in here! Now we can make a whole NEW mess!"  Thanks a lot, kid. 

Speaking of messes, check out this atrocity:

  John and Joan have had a falling out in their sleeping arrangements. John, strangely, just wanted to sleep, but Joan was keeping him up. We were sick of him screaming, so we threw his bed in Dave's room, and sent them all back to bed. It was a horror show - Dave, who normally just rolls over and falls asleep, didn't much like the company, and stayed up screaming instead. But it launched our latest "musical beds" experiment. We've been trying all different combinations to find the most peaceful sleeping arrangement. The boys' room/ girls' room model didn't work well, mostly because Joan was lonely, and Dave wanted to sleep in John's bed. First, we moved Dave out of his crib, and onto the floor with no walls, which he liked. But then, Joan kept trying to sneak into John's room, by hiding in Dave's bed. So what did we do? As you can see from the picture, we moved her bed in, and had all THREE in Dave's old room. Ugh. It was ridiculous. It made the room impossible to clean, and they just stayed up horsing around all night. So we tried the final combination - John getting his own room, with the little kids sharing. As much as I wanted John to just learn to deal with it, I have to say, I think this is the winner. John gets to sleep in peace, Joan gets her company, and although they do stay up and goof around a little bit, Dave's roll over and go to sleep habits are rubbing off on Joan. They're cute together - they'll wake each other up and sit on the floor between their beds and read together before coming out. They are partners in crime, however, so they do tend to trash the room, and it gives them time to conspire. But it seems to make bedtime more peaceful, so I think we'll go with this set-up for a while.

We took three of the four kids for shots yesterday - only Dave got off. I scheduled it for a day Mike had off to make it easier for everybody. He sat with the whole troupe in the play room, while I took each kid in one at a time for shots. Much more civilized! The boys did as well as can be expected. It's not exactly fun. But Joan was tough. She was fine going into the clinic. She didn't seem to remember. That is, until we got to the room. It was the same room and the same nurse as last time. She got to the door and just froze. She wrapped her arm around her back, refused to go into the room, and started screaming over and over  "LEAVE MY ARM ALONE!!!!" It was pretty horrible. We again had to pin her down kicking and screaming, but it was only two shots - not six - so we could do it with just one nurse and myself. Thankfully, we don't need to do that again until mid-September, when all four are due for boosters! Yikes! 

Tom got weighed and measured. He's not growing as crazy fast as John did, that's for sure. But he's hugging his curve just fine. He has to see his family doc for a check-up in a few weeks, to make sure all is well, but the nurse had no concerns. She thought he looked alert and content. He's 11.5 pounds, and 23 inches long now, so he's put on another pound in the past month.

a rare glimpse of Tom...

I felt bad not posting pictures of him, so I worked hard to catch him awake, but not crying! He's chilling in my lap.

A little blurry, but still cute!

Sometimes Dave likes to join us as we blog/eat as well.

Just pictures today, sorry. It's going to be one of those days, with lots to do! I have soaking wet kids running around, a crying baby to feed and loads of paperwork to do that needed to be done... yesterday. Ugh. I'll post again soon - until then, enjoy the pictures!

Canada Day

The shots were taken on the way home after last night's fireworks. They were pretty good, but we were high up on the hill, so they looked tiny. John and Joan squealed with excitement through the whole show, while Dave let out an occasional "wooooow" of wonderment. Tom didn't even notice them - he ate and dozed the whole time. He could sleep through a train wreck. It's an ability that comes in handy around here - I can put his seat in the middle of a room where his siblings are rough housing, and he'll sleep through the whole thing! Looking over this, it feels like he's not even around. But he's either sleeping, screaming, or being held by me. It's hard getting pictures of him doing anything but sleeping. But that's better than nothing, I guess!

I had an entertaining conversation with John yesterday, about why Canada has a birthday, sparked by his question "How can a country have a birthday? That's just weird."

Me: Well, we used to belong to England. Do you remember how we got free from England? (we discussed this heavily on Victoria Day.)

John. Yes. There were massive earthquakes, and the plates of the earth separated, and we just drifted off to sea.

He's probably right, but he went back a little further than I was expecting!

Tom's been in a bit of a rough patch - he's a pretty fussy little guy these past few days. The night feedings with the growth spurt seem to have passed, but he's still really fussy in the day. It might be gas. Mike thinks it may be the start of teething. We tried Tylenol, and he did settle down for a nap after that, so it could very well be. He sleeps fine if he's being held, and is sleeping well at night again, but he's hard to soothe and he's not sleeping deeply, because he pops awake when I set him down, which is very unlike him. he's been such a good sleeper so far, so something's up.

Joan met her actual OT today - the girl we saw before was SUPPOSED to be her OT, but had just accepted a job in the hospital's rehabilitation clinic, so she just wrote up a report. The girl we met today is newly immigrated from Australia, and she's great! I had to bring all the kids, because she only works on days that Mike works, and she too it all in stride. She got the boys involved, but was still able to see what she needed to see from Joan. She's going to see her twice more before we head to Dryden - next time she's coming to the house to help teach Joan all the tricks she needs to dress herself. We talked about adaptive things as well, like adding longer pulls to her zippers and things. We don't do a lot of adaptations for her - we were told that at this age, it's best to force her to adapt to real everyday things, so she can do as much as possible, and to treat adaptations as last resorts. We do give her a plate with sides, though, so her food doesn't glop onto the table as she eats. We give her narrower drinking glasses, as well, so she can hold them in one hand. But for the most part, we still keep her daily life unassisted, and this OT agrees with that, too. But she said she'll likely need to have certain things provided to her daycare come fall - apparently, it's often things like chairs with wheels or rails,so they can tuck themselves in easier. spring-loaded scissors. that kind of thing. But she never had a wheeled chair in Calgary - I'd think that would be more dangerous. I think they just have to be small enough and lightweight enough - the clinic here has heavy little wooden chairs, and she wasn't able to scootch herself up to the table in it.

Gotta go- I suddenly have three soaking wet kids surrounding me, all pointing fingers at each other. This aught to be good!

Happy Canada Day!

were actually all taken yesterday, but Blogger was - and is - having some technical issues, so it wouldn't post. Hopefully, this attempt will work! I'm trying to keep up with a daily post just to see if I can. I figure I'm stuck sitting still while I feed Tom anyway - may as well multitask. So far, so good, but no promises! And you'll have to excuse the typos and grammar errors - I'm doing these kind of quickly, with my one free hand, and several of my keys stick from sticky kid fingers and the sticky goo they leave behind. Anyway, yesterday morning, the kids were surprised with a package from my parents. Just like everything that the Big Red Truck brings, it caused quite a bit of excitement!

It's always like a little Christmas when my parents send a parcel. This is Dave, asking me to open a package of candy-on-a-stick.

the kids, after John figured out which hat belonged to whom. (He new the brown was his, because it said L for Large.) So cute! My parents just got them in the store, so each of the kids got one, for our hot Okagogan summer, which will be spent largely at the beach. The brims are adjustable, which is pretty cool. Joan also got some hair clips, and they really DO stay in, like they say. She had them all day, albeit, under her hat. She refused to take her hat off all day, even while she was inside. I was worried she would insist on sleeping in it, like she does with her pink crocs her auntie Pam sent her. But thankfully, the hat did come off as she climbed into bed - the crocs were still a battle, though.

The kids, loading up on sugar from candy-on-a-stick! Woohoo! I don't normally let them do this, but they'd already had a healthy breakfast, and frankly, what better time could there be for a crazy sugar high than first thing in the morning, when there's no chance of it interfering with sleep?

Dave also got more little magnetic finger puppets. They all had a good conversation - well, they mostly just said "Hi!" back and forth for 10 minutes or so, but at least they were friendly - then they had a nap with Ruf-ruf. John LOVES his bug pen! It took him a while to understand that the bug was real, but no longer alive. He kept telling John to be gentle with the pen, because it it breaks his pet beetle will escape. He has it stashed in a special place, so the kids won't be able to break it before he can show it to his class in September. I got some spice racks, too. They work great! I'm NOT posting a picture of my messy pantry up here, but they keep even me neat and organized. So many wonderful things. There was something for everyone, and they all made wonderful gifts, for all occasions...or just because. And all these wonderful things, and more, could be yours, with a visit to Boffo Home and Cottage, located in beautiful downtown Dryden, across from Earl's Court. :-)

Oh, and thank you for the pastry rolly outy thingy! I hope you have a new one to replace it with - you've had that one as long as I can remember. It arrived on the perfect day - we STILL had some pesky apples left over from our canning experiments. I was so sick of looking at them, I'd already decided to make them into apple pies. And while I was going to the trouble of making pastry anyway, I was going to make some leftovers into beef pies, too. I used the pastry thingy, and it went super fast! I don't know how I managed before! In the end, I had more apples than I thought, though. I made two apple pies, a big pan of apple crisp, and a triple batch of apple muffins. But I'm happy to say, my kitchen is FINALLY apple free - for now.

Better go. We're not doing much today, but we WILL be watching the fireworks! Hopefully they're better than Calgary's sad attempt. We think we can probably see them from our front porch - we can see the park they're supposedly being launched from. But we might go down to a shore somewhere instead, so we know they won't be covered by trees. We'll see. It depends when Mike gets home, too. He's had some rough, rough days lately - he got called in on his day off, and he's been working 12-hour days most of the week. Not the greatest money - just tricky jobs, and weird stuff. Yesterday, he had to take an extra job, beyond an already busy day, because our pastor's step-daughter was getting Telus services. We've been taking the kids to a Lutheran church since we moved here, because it's really important to Mike that the kids be baptized, and you kind of need to belong somewhere before a pastor will do it. He's had a bit of a falling out with the United church he grew up in, otherwise we would have asked Pastor Mckee to do it. We looked around, and the Lutherans are an alright fit - they're fairly liberal, but not as liberal as the United, and the pastor is a pretty neat lady. It's a bilingual German-English congregation. There's a separate service in each language, but the English still has a lot of kooky old German ladies who like to see the kids. Anyway, the pastor's step-daughter also has Cerebral Palsy, from being in a coma while she was a baby. She's slightly cognitively impaired, but just has mild coordination issues, so she's mobile, but needs things done in a way to make them easy. The pastor asked Mike if he could take the installation, so it would be a familiar face and he'd know how to do it right for her. He bent over backwards to get assigned the job - it was a mess tracking it down and then having to get it from the tech it had been assigned to. Then, the job itself was a mess - it took all day, and he still had his full day of regular work to do! But the pastor's been trying to figure out where we stand on things, so it gave them a chance to talk. She stopped by the house to probe me - she was here three hours! I think she's mostly wanting to see where we stand on same sex marriages in the church. She's eager to baptize the kids, though. She seems to think it would be a hoot to do so many in one day - but I'm not sure when we'll actually do it. She offered to do it in the lake at the church picnic, but wasn't sure if that would offend the old ladies. It's a non-issue though - I think they'll still be in Dryden, then. Maybe when they get home, and are back in school.

Anyway, gotta go! Hopefully, everyone can see the pictures this time. Thanks to Adrian for letting me know they weren't appearing.

the rest of yesterday...

So what did they do with their sugar high? Mostly, they ran around screaming like crazy loons. Dave tried to help me with the dishes, but shoving his red chair between me and the sink, so he could splash in the water. So I set up some buckets of water outside. It was like flies to honey! Within minutes, they were all out there, and they stayed out there for hours! They did get dress, by the way - as they came in soaked, I changed them into clothes and/or bathing suits.


After the sugar wore off, they came in for some down time. The little kids all had a nap, and John spent the afternoon building this cool little boat. It's made with cardboard fragments from a candy factory he's spent the last few weeks constructing in the play room, as well as straws (the body is filled with straws, so it will float), paper and loads of glue. He was pretty proud!

why I should never shower...

Well, there's probably more compelling reasons TO shower than to NOT shower, even if it means leaving all the kids unattended, but some days I do wonder if the trouble is worth it. I usually come out to some sort of catastrophe or bitter battle, with everyone screaming. But sometimes, what they get up to is worth a picture, even if it's just to get a little sympathy from Mike at the end of the day.



I guess I should have fixed them a snack BEFORE I headed to the shower. Dave got his hands on the peanut butter jar, and dug in. Why he smeared it all over his body, I'll never know. What I didn't get a picture of was Joan, using her fingers to snack off his legs. Mike was 15 minutes from home when I walked in on this horror show - we were going to go to the beach. I managed to bath and change both kids in time, but I didn't have time to get the giant smears of peanut butter art off the walls.

Why they make couch pillows with free floating fluff is beyond me. Anyone can just unzip the pillow, for an indoor "snowstorm," which is what my kids thought was time well spent, during this particular shower.

Their rationale? Apparently, Dave started it. Funny - I don't see him anywhere. Do you?

On another note, today is John's last day of Kindergarten! He's a full-fledged Big Kid, heading into grade school in the fall. Getting him to his last day was somewhat traumatic, however. They decided to schedule a pyjama party on the last day - the kids were to go in their PJ's, and they were going to have a big pancake breakfast party. John, for all his creativity, can be extremely rigid about weird things - much like his dad. John intended to go to school ready for bed - as in, no underwear, no shoes. It caused a HUGE fight this morning between he and Mike, who insisted he wear underwear, or he was staying home. John, who's just as stubborn, insisted that wearing underwear with pyjamas is just weird, and refused. It was an epic battle. In the end, might made right, and John went to school in tears, because he had to wear underwear. The shoes were a whole other battle. By the time the underwear fiasco was settled, we were already horribly late, and I couldn't find John's shoes. I hunted EVERYWHERE, but they were nowhere to be found. He has a pair on indoor shoes at school, but he still needed shoes to get to the cloak roon, so he had to wear sandals to get there - over his socks. He was mortified. "Socks with sandals is just weird!!!" he wailed. "And my underwear is itchy!!!" He was so embarrassed, he hid behind me the entire way into school, and when other kids came his way, he'd "hide" by standing flat against the nearest wall. I feel for the guy, I really do. But sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do, and socks with sandals isn't the end of the world! Hopefully, his whole life hasn't just been ruined by me, but I can see this one being brought up in therapy later in his life, for sure.

Better go. Ironically, I'm heading for a shower. Wish me luck - or at least wish for an entertaining picture.

Doe deer stops by for a visit

One of our resident deer stopped by yesterday, and the kids headed out to say hi! You can see, the deer don't really get very close - they never come down further than that ridge, so it's pretty safe for the kids. but they think it's cool! That said, I don't think I'd let them out with a buck. There's a lot more wildlife here than I bargained for. Yesterday, we took a drive on the outskirts, and there were bear droppings all over the place. And last night, I had to run to the van for something, and the coyotes were out in full force. It sounded like they were all around the house, barking and howling. They can sound very creepy when they get going, ad they sounded so close! I was going to do garbages while I was out, but decided to just head back in and find Bailey. I've only ever seen one in person - it was a day we were out looking for Mary after she vanished. Everyone we stopped to talk to told us it was denning season, and cats tend to vanish this time of year, as the new moms hunt for extra food. We saw no stray cats on that drive - but we did see a coyote run right across the street in front of us. Not an animal I'd want to run into alone at night. They don't attack people, but one did attack a little girl a few weeks ago - the conservation officer speculated it was because the family was out walking with their little dog, which is what the coyote was originally going for - then it changed its mind to go for something bigger. Like a 3-year-old. And don't even get me started on the freak bugs out here! I've already had several spider bites. We've discovered a bit of a wolf spider infestation in our house - another creature you don't want to bump into alone i the dark. I caught one in a jar the other day - it was HUGE!!! Joan now has a fear of ants, because there are some that bite. She had a horrible reaction - the bite itself turned into a bit welt, then she erupted into itchy hives all over her belly. They cleared up themselves after a couple hours, but now she freaks out when she sees ants - not cool, considering our yard is completely infested! At least it gets her into the van in a hurry when we go out!

a day at the beach!

Dave arrives at the beach, ready for non-stop fun, fun, fun!

At least Joan managed to stay awake

Tom, chillin' with the gear

we had the whole beach almost all to ourselves. A couple bolted as soon as they saw us coming, and only one other family arrived, and took up residence on the other side. Though we did have to share with a pair of ducks.

Joan and Dave building something together

John warming up. The lake was COOOOLLLD!!! I'm surpised he went in at all, but he was just so excited to finally be at the lake, he plunged right in!

Dave, digging. He's not big on getting wet OR cold, so he stayed warm and dry on the beach

Tom, not enjoying much of anything

John, wading with our duck friends

Dave, having a quiet moment with Ruf-ruf

John, leading his team of junior engineers

Joan, eating a sand-covered Dorito. Yummm

Dave, chasing down the ducks

Dave, chillin with dad's feet

Tom, not looking too impressed with the whole thing

dad's new van

John, putting the licence plate on mike's new work van, as Dave looks on.

Our backyard...

I know this won't do anything for anyone from Dryden, but we have a herd of deer who pop into our yard now and then, and the kids think it's the coolest thing ever! There's about 4-6 of them, who generally hang together, and we see a big buck out there now and then, wandering alone (though he's far too dignified to ever hop our fence.) They don't come inside the fence very often anymore, now that there's so much food in the regional park behind us, but we still see them around - mostly in the neighbour's yard, which has no fence. This was taken in early April, when things were just starting to sprout. The little kids like to run out onto the porch to wave hello to them. John tends to scare them by his mere presence - I guess he's just that much bigger. Joan calls them "doe deer", after the song, Do a deer, from The Sound of Music, which was on heavy bedtime rotation at the time. (Her new favourite is Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which I generally have to sing at least six times each night. She'll either sing along, with big rainbow arm movements, or just sit wide-eyed and listen, as the boys twitch in agony.)

Joan's bling

Joan got a real treat today - a big box of bling from her Auntie Pam! Thank you to Pam for making her day! She loves the little crocs - they reminded her enough of ballet slippers that she insisted of her full "banina" outfit, and she did a little dance through the living room. It was fun to go through it with her - it reminded me of when I was little, getting clip-on earrings and costume jewellery from relatives. I also have pictures of Dave and John in necklaces and clip-on earrings. They're cute too, but not in quite the same way. I'll post them up later on. Great idea on the princess party in Dryden, by the way Pam! Probably more fun for her than a princess party with all her brothers! LOL!

Stay tuned for more pictures! I suddenly have a lot to sort through!