End of an era(s)

As summer began on the calendar, a few things came to an end for our kids. Aaron had his last Blastball games of the season on Sunday with a double header. After the games there was an awards ceremony for the kids and lunch. Aaron received the award for most improved hitter!
Good job Aaron!

Here he is receiving his award from his coach.

On Monday Aaron 'graduated' from preschool, it was a long road for Aaron, but we are very proud of him. I think he is finally ready to get out into the 'real world' called kindergarten. We wish him luck on his adventures. Does this mean he moves out now??

At his graduation, the kids put on a series of plays, Aaron played the big bad wolf in the Three Little Pigs. In this picture the wolf tried to blow the brick house down, but couldn't and ended up burning his tail going down the chimney!

Here is the wolf explaining that he justed wanted to borrow some sugar from the little pigs for a party he wanted to throw for them.

Next it came time to cross the floor and receive his preschool diploma.

A big thanks goes to Teacher Angela and Teacher Sarah for all the work they did this past year.

And now pictures with the graduate!

The brothers...

The family...

If I keep this blog up there should be a similar picture in 13 years!

On Sunday afternoon Shelby hosted a Sunday school party for the kids she teaches, which are about 11 and 12 years old, of course Aaron and Kyle wanted to get into the action as well. At the end of the party was a slip n' slide which Aaron and Kyle enjoyed as well.

Probably the part we are most excited about for an end to an era, is Kyle 'graduating ' from diapers to underwear!! Seemed a while there where we didn't know when he would transition. Suddenly he has 3 dry diapers overnight and we thought let's try no diapers and he has been accident free overnight for about a week now!

Way to go Kyle!

Seems our kids are slowly growing up, we are thankful to God for their blessing to us!

Fathers Day weekend

We had a fun weekend this past weekend, although not many pictures were taken. Having the weather warm up again was a bonus too! On Friday Shelby's parents and Jamie and Sara came over for dinner and stayed the night. After dinner I went to my brother Mike's house quickly to pick up the Wii Fit to play for the evening. When I got back Aaron had his haircut, into a Mohawk/Fauxhawk not sure which one it officially is, with some encouragement from Auntie and Unc Unc?? He has been talking about getting one and now he finally got it! I haven't taken any really great pictures of it yet, but here's a couple.

On Saturday I helped out with Love Langley, basically it's a way for churches to show unconditional love to the community. Our church decided this year to hand out care packages to the local businesses free of charge. It didn't take that long to hand out the packages, but it was neat to see the reaction on the people's faces as we gave them their packages.

In the afternoon Aaron and Kyle went to Aidan's fifth birthday party. It was a dinosaur party and from what I've heard the kids had a lot of fun. Perhaps Jason and Elizabeth will have a post about it soon.

In the evening there was a goodbye BBQ for for Sara's friend Cheryl who is leaving for Quebec soon. Cheryl also happens to be a decent photographer and got a sweet going away present from her boss, so we should expecting even better pictures right Cheryl??

On Sunday morning we went to church and then after church my family and Jason's family had a surprise for us, if we could solve the clues to find the treasure, basically a geocache for us dads to find. Once we found the treasure, with the odd hint from our kids, we found chocolates and gummy fruits waiting for us along with homemade Fathers Day cards from the kids. Thanks kids!

Here we are opening the 'cache' in Campbell Valley Park

After finding our treasure we had a picnic in the park, the weather was great and everyone had a good time.

After lunch we headed for Aaron's blastball game, then Jason ended up running to the park and we went for an afternoon run, and it was really hot!

For dinner we went to Mike and Viva's place for a Fathers Day dinner with my dad. My mom is out of the country right now seeing the world(again), so my dad is on his own for a few weeks, so it was good to spend some time with him as well.

Anyway like I said before, not that many pictures, but a nice weekend nonetheless.

May Flowers bring June Showers?

Here are a few pictures from the past week.

Aaron is dressed up and I can't remember what exactly he was trying to be, but it sure looked pretty funny.

During the week, Kyle and I watched Aaron play Blastball...

looks like Kyle is ready to play too!

After we went to the park and kids climbed up the monkey bar dome, is that what it's called?

On Saturday I took the boys out to Williams park and then to the waterpark, Aaron is pretending to be a shark, but the girl was oblivious to him.

These are a series of shots of the fire hose with Aaron.

As we started May with the tulip festival we now enter June with showers, I hope by the weekend we will see the sun again, so more picture taking can ensue!

Weekend review

This past weeekend started with an introduction to Auntie Sara and Unc Unc's new addition to their family, Mr Jack Black. He was adopted by the local animal shelter. The kids were a little apprehensive meeting a bigger dog, but they did well.

Later on Friday we watched a documentary called My Kid Could Paint That, I thought it was pretty well done and inspired something we did on Sunday.

On Saturday morning we went out to Mud Bay, we have been to Mud Bay a number of times, but this times we went to a part in Delta and we for a walk. The kids took turns in the stroller as it was pretty hot. I think they are both getting too big for it.

I did find a geocache among the logs here, Aaron was my helper.

As we were heading back we noticed a few eagles around including this one watching us in a tree nearby.

Later in the afternoon Aaron had a blastball game and after the game went went to Lexi's 4th birthday party.

For the birthday party they rented a bouncy castle, which the kids enjoyed.

One of Lexi's birthday presents was some new pink rubber boots.

Kyle watching from the playhouse.

Here I am teasing Aaron by getting Lexi to give Aaron a kiss.

This was another one Lexi's presents

This was Lexi's room after the party was over, seems like they had a good time.

On Sunday afternoon we had a church picnic, this is Aaron and I in the father-son 3 legged race, we didn't win, but had fun.

Keisha looks on, it was a bit warm for her

As I mentioned the documentary we watched on Friday, the 4 year girl in the movie sells her abstract art for $10,000 each, so we thought we should check to see if our kids have the natural talent too.

Here is Aaron painting ...

and here is Kyle...

Well the jury maybe out on the natural talent but they had fun.

May Long Weekend

I guess this is technically before the weekend, but on Thursday Shelby took the kids and dog to White Rock. They spent some time building castles and running through the tidal pools.

Can you guess which kid enjoyed running through the tidal pools more?

On Friday through Sunday we had warm summer-like days(finally!). We spent Saturday preparing for our Sunday Barbeque. We finally put a gate up under the sun room to keep the dog properly in the yard. Shelby mowed the lawn and I cleaned the gutters. Basically we worked most of the day the get things looking a little neater.

Meanwhile the kids got out the pool to cool off a bit...

and played nicely with each other...

but who's keeping score?

On Sunday we had our barbeque, we had quite a crowd show up of 30 adults and 10 kids or so. The weather was perfect and I think generally a good time was had by all. After dinner a lengthy game of volleyball took place. It was also nice to see newly engaged Jill and her fiance Lawrence visiting from Edmonton for the weekend.

Here are some of the kids hanging out in the playground.

Kyle seems to have taken a liking to David and thought he might be nice to climb on.

On Monday we met up with Jason and Elizabeth and their kids at the Fort Langley Parade.

The kids enjoyed the treats being handed out...

along with the various floats, I think this was Aaron's favourite....

While the kids enjoyed most of the floats, Kyle was not a fan of the loud emergency vehicles.

I have to say Keira is quite cute and seems to enjoy having her picture taken too, she also has the regal wave down, a future May Day queen? I think Kyle thinks she is cute too...

Aaron on the other hand is not sure about Keira's advances...

An Aidan and Keira sandwich?

It's great to see how our boys enjoy hanging out with Aidan and Michael, and their parents are pretty good to hang out with too;-)

So on Monday evening we were able to relax a bit after a fairly busy weekend and glad Shelby decided to have the barbeque on Sunday rather than Monday as it began to rain, but all in all it was a nice weekend.