Wind and Tide play

Last Saturday Aaron's preschool, Wind and Tide, was part of musical called "All about Art." They have been learning about different artists during the year and a song that goes along with each artist. They practised the actions and learned the words to 3 songs and performed them at the Chandos Pattison theatre in front of family and friends. Some older kids were part of play and the preschool kids songs served as a like a 'choir.' Aaron had lots of support on hand as Auntie Sara, Uncle Jamie and Webb, along with our family and my parents were there to watch him. Aaron also got to stand by his good friend Aidan during the performance who is in the afternoon class at Wind and Tide Uplands.

Auntie Sara made this storyboard of Aaron's performance.

Here are the kids performing the song Kandinsky, and I must point out the cool teacher they have' Teacher Sarah' dancing on the left. Great job!

Sun Run 2008

So this was Aaron's second time running the mini Sun Run and this time his friend Aidan came along. It was a chilly morning as we had a cold front come through on the wekend. My friend Webb from Houston was in town and Shelby's brother, Jamie was over and we all headed to Vancouver to be there for the 8am mini Sun Run start time.

Here is a video of Shelby and Aaron crossing the finish line

Aaron and Aidan did really well in the 2.5 km run and didn't have to stop, so next time we think Aaron should try a 5km race.

Near the finish line, I think Aaron sees Grandma and is distracted

Aidan and Aaron, running buds

I timed myself to finish under 50min and the timer I had said I did, but my official time was 50:14, still an improvement over last year.

At the finish

Sun Run 2008 family picture

The runners together.

Jason had a great time of just over 40 minutes, which was slightly behind my brother Mark's time of 37 and something minutes. Although the start was a bit chilly once you started you hardly noticed it. All in all it was good to get another Sun Run done, next year is it Kyle's turn??

Blastball

Aaron has now started in his first team sport Blastball. What is Blastball? Well it's kind of like preschool baseball, an introduction to the game. The kids hit off a tee and run to first base, then when the next kid hits they run to the next base. The kids in the field try to catch or stop the ball and when they do they yell 'Blastball' and throw it to home. They don't keep score and each inning each child gets a chance to hit the ball. Aaron has played 2 games now and is starting to figure it out. Here are some pictures and a video from his little league debut!

Kyle turns 3

So last Friday was Kyle's 3rd birthday, we had a little family birthday party with my parents and Mike and Viva. Kyle got a little more Jello which he liked.

Aaron decided that he wanted to give Kyle the semi-truck from the movie Cars called Mack, to be from him. As soon as Kyle opened it, Aaron wanted to play with it, he lets Kyle with it sometimes too.

The next day I took Kyle to get a haircut from the $5 place in Cloverdale, it's where the boys and I usually get a haircut. Kyle has been there a few times and he cries the whole way through the haircut. This time I said to Kyle 'are you going to cry at your haircut?' He said 'No.' Well he cried through the clippers, but not through the scissors, he's improving!

Here is the video evidence:

This video can only be described as 'He's his mothers son!' :-)

Welcome to 3 Kyle!

Kyle and Aaron's Birthday party

A week ago Kyle and and Aaron had a joint birthday party with some of their friends.
The first part of the party was at the Sportsplex in Walnut Grove. In the Sportsplex is a climbing gym and play area for kids.
Here are a couple of videos of the kids going down the Lava slide. It's pretty steep so the kids went with an adult after Lexi hit her head pretty good going down the slide last time on her own.

Afterwards we went to our house and we had pizza and cake. Aaron had a Lightning McQueen cake from the movie Cars and Kyle had a Jello car cake since he doesn't like regular cake.

Here are all the kids that were at the party:

Aaron

Kyle

Madi

Lexi

Aidan

Michael

and Keira

After dinner the kids opened their presents.

Seemed like everybody had a pretty good time, thanks to all who came.

Puerto Adventuras - Part 3

Trying to catch up with blogging, I'm a bit behind, but they will slowly come out.
Today is Kyle's birthday so I will have to make a post on that as well.
This is the last post on our trip(which seems like it was a while ago now).
This is a collection of pictures that didn't fit in the previous posts.


This is in Seattle on our way to Mexico on Monday morning. We drove to Seattle on Sunday evening, went out to dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. The food was really good and on our way out Kyle thought the fire alarm looked like something interesting to pull. Luckily Shelby grabbed Kyle just before it was pulled. Nothing like leaving a mark on your visit.

At the airport Kyle already spilled something on his pants so he ended up in shorts, ready for Mexico!

In Mexico the sunrise was at 6am, which means it starts to get light at 5:30am. 5:30 was the time we all got up each morning. Oddly enough we kinds of got used to it.

Ray had heard that the best shells were found at sunrise, so he was up out at the beach on a few mornings looking for the perfect shell for his girls.

We did go to the beach as well a few times. Ray was the official sand castle builder with some help from the kids.

This is a 10 second time lapse of the sand castle building in action.

Kyle did not appreciate sand in his mouth.

On the beach there were some tidal pools the kids could look at various sea life.

In Puerto Adventuras, they have a dolphin encounter where you can get up close and personal with a dolphin. Here is Ray being pushed by 2 dolphin's noses. You can't see them in the water but tyey are there. Ginny, Madi and Lexi also were able to pet and kiss the dophins, we opted to watch from the sidelines and save a few pesos.

Shelby bought this fabric in Madagascar years ago and never did anything with it. She gave it to Ginny, who gave it to her mother and made a dress each for Madi and Lexi. They wore them out for Aaron's birthday. I am not sure why Madi is holding a toy tiger in her hand though.

After we went to Tulum we were walking through a shopping area. We noticed the various coloured walls. So Aaron and I went on a mission to get a picture of him on all the different coloured walls we could find.

Back at the condo we were supposed to have 2 beds upstairs, one for the kids and one for us, turns out their was only one king size bed upstairs and guess who got the bed? Not us, can you say futon and a couch? They weren't too bad, but I would have preferred the king size bed.
Here is Aaron and Kyle playing on their bed.

We had another great time with our friends and here we are on our last night together.

Our last sunset...

At the Cancun airport Kyle continued his love of kissing animals.

We did have a good time down in Mexico, but found the Mayan Riviera to be quite expensive. It was definitely more pricey than when we were married in 1999. Still definitely worth it to get out of the colder weather for a while.

I am still waiting for spring to arrive...

PS Happy Birthday Kyle!

Puerto Adventuras Part 2 - Excursions

On our holiday we took a few outings to town(Playa del Carmen) and other places on the Mayan Riviera.
One day as we headed back from town all the kids and Ray and I, fit into a cab which meant Kyle and I had to sit in the front seat. Kyle enjoyed this mostly unique experience(and try not to think of the safety issues).

When we first went to Las Palapas 12 years ago it seemed slightly out of town from Playa del Carmen. Now the town has completely surrounded it and it's now a little oasis in the middle of town. This was also the site where Shelby and I were married 8.5 years. I wanted to take my kids to the site where we were married before it's slated for demolition next year to make way for another mega resort:-(

Walking around town in the heat of the day was challenging for the kids, so a little ice cream always seems to take the pain away.

This next picture is from a separate outing to town. The story behind this picture is that when Aaron received the ice cream from the vendor, he tripped and knocked the ice cream from the cone onto the floor. After a few seconds when I sensed the vendor wasn't going to replace the ice cream, I scooped it up and put it back on his cone just in time for the '5 second rule':-)
Taste good Aaron?

If a shop has hats for sale Kyle is most likely to try it on.

I thought this tiled floor would make a good backdrop for a photo, so I had the kids lie on the ground and smile. Somewhat cooperative I guess.

We passed by Senor Frog's and Aaron saw 'Leap' a character from one of their educational toys and not Senor Frog. So here they are with 'Leap'

We took a trip to Xcaret, which is a type of Mayan theme park. It's really like a mini Mexican vacation in one park. It has pretty much everything you would imagine that you would do in Mexico. It has animals, birds, aquarium, ruins, beaches, dolphins, snorkelling, cenotes, boat rides, a cultural show, shopping, and lots more. You can really spend all day there and we tried to squeeze into a half day so it felt like you were rushed all the time.

This is atop the ruins there.

In the butterfly section Madi had a butterfly land on her.

Later at the show Kyle is trying Pepsi for the first time, he actually liked it.

An excursion we did as a family was go to Tulum, the Mayan ruins by the ocean.
The weather was a little cloudy that day which made touring the ruins a bit more bearable.

Going up and down the ruins was a little challenging in a stroller, so Kyle came along for the ride. Did I mention he's close to 50 lbs??

Looks like Aaron is holding on to his life here, it was windy, but no that windy.

Tulum

We went down to the beach at Tulum for a while. Aaron took a picture of the rest of us.

This is not really an excursion, but we celebrated Easter down there. The night before Easter the kids decorated eggs.

The next morning the Easter bunny had arrived in Mexico too.

The kids found the bunny had hide things for them...

After all the kids being successful in their finds they posed for a shot of them and their loot.

Ray and I took an excursion to a cenote, which is an underground river. These run all around the Yucatan peninsula. We went for a 2 hour snorkel tour in caves which was a pretty cool experience.

This is what the caves look like inside and when you are snorkeling you can see what the cave looks like underwater with all the stalagmites.

It's now a week since we have been back and I have one more post to make about our trip and I hope to make that soon. Thanks for reading.