Folk Fest 2012 Video

Here's a video from Folk Fest 2012.  We camped with kids and Dan and Kristen in the quiet campground.  We met up with Janet and Greg, Noel (with Rupert), Darcy and Sandy (with Hannah and Chloe), and Jolie the fire dancer (with Ezrie).

Robin is 4 and... wait, where'd summer go?!?

The summer has come and gone like a flash in the mind of a parent with children.  That is to say, very quickly.

We made a trip to Thunder Bay to wish Andrew and Liisa with little Ella and Eli farewell, as they decided to move back home to New Brunswick:

(lunch at McDonald's - of all places - to get out of the rain)

(The accidentally humorous clowns at Benny Birch's birthday)

(potluck in Liisa and Andrew's back yard)

(Olivia, deciding it was time to wash her hair.  With bubble soap)

(breakfast goodbye at Kristin's)

We had a blast at Folk fest:

(Rupert, Ezri and Olivia)

had lots of fun in the city playing in the children's museum and the zoo:

and spent a lot of time at the Potter's cabin at Falcon Lake (which is emphasized as FALcon lake by the way... because Olivia often misses the L, making it sound like Fukan lake):

This summer Robin had a special fourth birthday, because she had all her cousins at her birthday party: Ken and Yvette came out for a visit from Vancouver with Brigitte, Hugo and little Gustave!  After a birthday at the splash pad at Vimey Ridge park with all the Grandparents and Kirk, Miyuki, Lisa, Nina and Julian (as well as a few local friends dropping by)...

...we were off to the Potter's cabin at Falcon Lake with Ken and Yvette and the kids for a week! And it was madness.  Wonderful - every moment completly arranged to entertain and keep the kids happy - madness.  Kirk and Miyuki et al. came for the first night and we got to watch the whirlwind of kids latching on to each other and quickly learning to join with the other's games.

It was a special week filled with canoe rides, barfing on the road to Echo Bay, thunderstorm power outages (which were a treat to the West Coasters, and the kids who got to play with the flash lights), horse rides at Falcon Stables, a boat tour of Lake of the Woods, hiking to the top of the world, and many days at Falcon Lake's Mama, Papa, and Baby Bear beaches.  The Simpsons stayed in the Guest Cabin, which is now finished and looking amazing (way to go uncle Dan!).

And now that summer is over and Robin is 4, enter the next chapter: Nursery School.

Olivia turned 2 and we've been married for 5 years!

Olivia (back on May 1st) turned two!  Our not so "little" girl is getting so big.  She's also becoming a big rascal.  She does these jokes all the time, like when she looks at you out of the corner of her eye with a cheeky grin.  She's even got into a very specific joke we do as a family.  It goes like this:
Person A: "Are you going upstairs?" this could be any sentence with a noun
Person B: "You're an upstairs!" just add whatever the noun was from the previous sentence to "You're a ..."
Person A: "I'll upstairs you in a minute!" a mock threat retort to the last sentence, again just inserting the noun.


Now, Olivia has learned the retort and says it right on cue but she says:

Olivia: "Upstairs you midi!!!!" with enthusiasm.  It's freakin adorable.

Now for me to use my "potty" mouth.  On Mar 10, Dan and I were in the kitchen and Olivia was in the fireplace room. She started making a few noises, so we went in to go see, and she had her pants and diaper off on the potty. When she was done I checked, and no pee. A while later I saw her in the fireplace room again, having pulled her pants up as much as she could, looked at me and said "pee!" sure enough, she peed in the potty for the first time!  On Apr, 20 Olivia pooped on the potty.  She's wearing pull ups and getting more potty trained every day.

Robin and Olivia are tending to like "girly" things such as dresses and painting nails, being princesses and brides.  Olivia even stopped on the middle of the stairs to say "paint my toes!"And Olivia is in the stage right now of loooooving pink.  Robin got past it and realized there are more colours in the rainbow, and so Olivia will too.  Not that pink is that bad, but a little variety doesn't hurt.

They have many battles of late, mostly over possessions.  Toys, books, pieces of lint, hunks of garbage, an specific infinitesimal part of a room, whatever.  Sometimes things that are so absurd, they have to be written down to ensure they actually happened and my brain was going into hallucination mode:

Robin: "Daddy, there's five boogies coming out of Olivia's nose!"

Olivia: "No, FOUR boogies!!!!!"

Robin: "No FIVE!!!"

Olivia: "FOUR!!!"

Daddy: {they go to bed at 8; I can have a Scotch then}

I guess when Olivia's nose is running for almost 2 months straight, things start to get specific.

More recently, Robin wrote her name clearly on father's day!  She did it with Grandma early in the day, and it looks pretty good to me!  This happened when Grandma and Grandpa had the kids overnight while Jen and I stayed over at the Inn at the Forks.  Since we got married there 5 years ago, it seemed pretty appropriate, and it was great. 

I'll end with this quote by Robin when we were watching the playoffs.  I was a little disappointed I won't lie, but I'll win her over yet.

Robin: "when is hockey over? I want to watch commercials!"

Mexico 2012 Videos

There were two main features in Mexico for the kids: the beach and the kids' pool. These videos show those and a little more.

Our Vacation



Kids' Pool

A great start to 2012

What can I say? The weather has been great, Kirk and Miyuki had their third baby Julian, Ken and Yvette had their third baby Gustave, and we just came back from Mexico last week! Good luck to them. That's the bonus of being the youngest: I get to see how it goes for everyone else before deciding on a third or not ;)















Robin and Olivia are seeming to have a great time with each other, when they aren't trying to pull the toys out of each other's hands that are "MINE!!!" They've even started to have private jokes with each other. One day at music class, Robin decided to get over her shyness by running around with her hand over one eye and bellowing "One Eye!" This has become a LONG lasting running joke, that Olivia picked up like a sponge.

One night while Grandma was babysitting the girls, she was softly singing Olivia to sleep with her head on Janet's shoulder. Janet held her up and asked "Are you ready for sleep?" and Olivia replied by looking her in the eyes, putting a hand on her own face, and shouting "One Eye!!!"

Olivia has made a tremendous amount of advancement in the last couple of months. It's no wonder with her big sister really. The other day, Robin sat down with an alphabet book and slowly tried to teach all the letters. She still calls Robin Kiya, but every once in a while she calls her Roppy.

The following list is a few things she has said over the last couple of months that were endearing, but she now can say what she really wants and has stopped using them:

Uhuh is I want to, I'm going to, I want you to etc
Can you say Olivia? Me!
Olivia says Heh heh one.  Means "This one."
She full on said Macaroni.  With vigor.

Today, she rediculously said her first very clear 9 word sentence : "Daddy watch me do my socks all by myself", which goes very well with the fact that she wants to do EVERYTHING by herself. Good thing she's almost as big as Robin.

Robin is still a very clever and verbose little (very little) 3 year old. Although nights like tonight's breakdown before bedtime reminds me of something Kirk once said: "It's not the terrible 2s, it's the terrible 3s"

We still have our little struggles. We encourage the kids to eat their vegetables with such vigor that one would think they would get scurvy if they didn't. I do recognize when it's time to give up and I catch myself saying " Olivia. Olivia. Olivia. Please eat your peas and stop popping them on the table". I certainly can't complain though, as I'm sure I'll look back at these days and wonder where the time went. We just signed Robin up for preschool at Laura Secord a few weeks back. Won't be long before she's 4 and in school. Eep!

Sandos Caracol, is in the Mayan Riviera and the resort was spectacular. I'm working on a video of it now. We used a waterproof camera and about 90% of the pictures and videos are of the kids swimming. I'll try to make it interesting.