Keira and Keisha

Last Friday morning while Shelby and Elizabeth were on their way to Seattle, I had the opportunity to look after Keira and Michael, while Jason went to the dentist(Aidan was at school). Keira seems quite fascinated by Keisha, but I am not sure if the feeling is mutual. I'd say Keisha is tolerant of her.

Come on Keisha, a cute little 2 year old girl wants to play with you!

Pancakes for supper?

Shelby went away this past weekend for her annual shopping trip with the ladies to Seattle, so it was the boys and I left to fend for ourselves. On Friday night I gave the boys the option of pizza or pancakes for supper. They both agreed(thankfully) on pancakes, and they really wanted to help make the pancakes too. So here they are at work in the kitchen.

Me and the boys

This past weekend Shelby was away on the Island for a retreat with some youth from our church, so it was me and the boys for the weekend.

On Saturday morning Aidan and Michael came over. We had pancakes and then the boys played together. We don't have a lot of costumes in our house, but the ones we have the boys found and played dress up. They took turns trying different costumes. Here is Michael as Spiderman.

All the boys together

Seems after a while they get a little stir crazy in the house, but it was raining pretty hard outside, so I wasn't that keen on going out. After a while I bit the bullet and got all the boys dressed for the rain and we went out for a walk. They had fun puddle jumping and running around in the forest and on the artificial field in the park nearby. I had to empty Kyle and Michael boots out as they were full of water!

With flash

Without flash

In the afternoon we went to see the movie Madagascar 2. We met up with Ray, Madi and Lexi. It was Kyle's first time in the theatre as well as Madi and Lexi's. The kids behaved quite well during the movie, but I can't really say the same for the kid behind me! The kids enjoyed the movie and I'd give it 3 out 5. Later we had dinner at Ray and Ginny's house and hung out there for a while.


My picture taking was quite minimal this weekend, so even though I don't have many pictures we had a good weekend together, and in 2 weekends I get to do it all over again.

Last week of October

Each day last week could have probably had an individual blog post to it, but who has time for that? So here is a condensed version of the past week, although it makes for one fairly long post!

Saturday the 25th

Last Saturday Aaron had his soccer game in the morning and we all came out to watch. The highlight was when Aaron scored his first goal, way to go Aaron!

Later in the afternoon while Kyle was napping Aaron and I went out for a walk. I thought it would be a good chance to take pictures as the fall colours peaked and the weather was nice as well. Aaron was unusually co-operative in getting his picture taken, maybe it was because we were gone for a week, who knows?

Sunday the 26th

On Sunday afternoon our church held it's annual Fall carnival and the theme was western. The kids have different stations to try like 'Go Fish', 'Cookie Walk' , 'Bobbing for apples', 'Pumpkin Ring Toss' (our group help out at that station) and many others. The kids wanted to get their faces painted again. They enjoyed the evening and received a lot of candy along the way.

Flickr has an edit option to make faces zombie-like, seemed to work in this photo.

Monday the 27th

After work I played outside with the kids as it was another beautiful day, not too many pictures but it did give Kyle a chance to ham it up for the camera.

Tuesday the 28th

Ginny was out of town and Ray had to coach volleyball, so we had Madi and Lexi for a few hours in the evening. The kids quickly found the paraphenalia we brought back from Mexico and played rock band. Whenever Madi and Lexi come over it's like energy doubles, but they all get along pretty well, so they had fun!

Wednesday the 29th

While I was at work, Shelby and the kids carved the pumpkins. They gave direction on what the faces on the pumpkins should look like, they both wanted scary pumpkins.

Here they are posing with their pumpkins

Thursday the 30th

For Kyle's pre-school class, the last day of the month that he has school, it's party day. it's a chance for parents to see what the kids have been learning mostly through song. This month was also a chance for all the kids to dress up. They looked pretty cute with all their costumes. I tried to get all the kids in one photo.

Friday the 31st

The kids have been waiting for Halloween for a while and it finally arrived! Aaron was able to dress up for school, then later as we went out trick or treating. Before we went out I took some pictures of the kids. Kyle was so cute as a bumble bee, he was a nice bumble bee, he said.

Aaron was the pit crew for Lightning McQueen and wanted to look cool with his hat facing backwards.

The brothers...

So it came time for us to light the pumpkins, the middle one was the one I carved, although Shelby found the idea.

We first went to visit Uncle Mike and Auntie Viva's house and then stopped by Aidan and Michael's house, then we went around our blocks for bit over an hour. The weather was great, no rain and pretty mild. The kids had fun going to all the houses and the people liked their costumes. Once they couldn't carry their bags anymore, I figured it was time to head home.

Once we were home the kids checked out all their candy they got and it was a lot!

Ironically Kyle doesn't even like chocolate, so here he is eating the apple Uncle Mike gave him.
Keisha was also interested the loot they brought home.

So it's been a good week and today as we start November I didn't take any pictures, but I am sure more will come soon.

Puerto Vallarta

On Sunday afternoon, the day after the wedding, Mike, Viva, Shelby and I went on a short flight to Puerto Vallarta, after having brunch with the family. When we were in Guadalajara the weather was nice in the upper 20's with low humidity, once the got off the plane in Puerto Vallarta it was in the 30's with high humidity!

We stayed at the same hotel we have stayed in the past.

Once we arrived and got checked in, we all hit the pool and made our way to the pool bar. Mike and Viva were staying the week, but Shelby and I had 2 and a half days to spend in Vallarta. We spent a lot of time cooling off in the pool.

We took a couple trips into town to walk along the boardwalk(Malecon) and to see the various markets around.

Can you spot the tourist?

We watched some kids in the market have a birthday party with a pinata.

A few morings after our room was cleaned we would find these creatures left in our room.

These next 2 pictures fall into the attempts a creative shot.

We had a great vacation although it went by quickly. It was nice to have a kid-free vacation and we had a good time with Mike and Viva there. On our way back home we had a 3 hour lay over in LA so we decided to call the kids, it was the first time we called them on our trip. Seems we were interrupting their playtime with Aidan and Michael, so it was a quick call! Basically we weren't missed, I'll take that as a good thing!:-)


In the market in Guadalajara we found a Spiderman and Batman costumes for Kyle and Aaron, they seemed quite happy with them.