July 12/13

Back to the Bleau family with boys in tow. So how do we start our time together as a family??? You got it – repeat performance at the splash park! Seriously whoever came up with these deserves a medal. We could LIVE at one! 

Back to the splash park

Cups, boys and daddy and all… lots of splash and run and play and smiles… what a great way to celebrate being together again. 

With Daddy

Mr. Emanuel

With Mommy

Oh and stopping to smell the flowers…

Pretty

Then back to our home base and the chance to hang out with another family we have missed who are up temporarily visiting from California. The Davey family. It is the first time in years that we have all been together… 11 kids in total! Catherine and Trinity were instant buddies. 

Catherine and Trinity

Although at first it was just the Davey 3 and our 5. After all, the Bleau 3 had their program at the swimming pool. 

Some of the kids

The next day it was the Reinsch-Johnsons and the Daveys at the splash park. With the wildfires in other areas of Alberta there was some smoke coverage but nothing too horrible. That did mean the splash park was empty of all but us though. Definitely a nice situation! 

Splish

Splash

Catherine and Trinity

Jeff and Zack

Amanda and Chris

And then Sharon joined us after her lane swim.

Sharon and Echo

Which meant that she and Ken banded together and drug me into the park and soaked me good. All in good fun of course. 

SOAKED

And then for lunch… McDonald’s thanks to Jeff. And for the afternoon/evening… we got to watch the guys fix a kitchen faucet. It really DOES take 3 programmers to do so! From the dismantling, trip to the store and then to the final installation. But what a lovely faucet indeed!

Under the sink

Work in progress

Success

Don’t forget supper around the table… 11 kids at one meal! It was so much fun!!! Our last chance to have all 3 families together for possibly years and years!

BBQing

Full table

And then the evening free of men as they went to Spiderman. The night before as well, just us girls watching movies and hanging out. It was so much fun!

Hanging out

We even had the guys hamming it up for us after their showers and our girls in their first sleepover party!

Emma, Trinity and Catherine

It was so nice to be with old friends. I hope that one day we can do it again. But it will be quite a long time…

Our big boys

July 9-10

Now what does one do when one only has TWO kids??? Well, we pack them up at around 11am and truck them off to the local splash park to enjoy the sunshine, water and company of other bathingsuit clad children. 

Bathing beauties

With Daddy

With Mommy

We lucked out and ran into Emma there as well, she is at the pool (most of the time) each week day for her summer program and this time our showing up lined up perfectly with her group’s time at the splash park. 

With Emma

Such a helpful girl

I love these cheap cups for splash parks!

In fact, the rest of the day we were tied to the landline getting things sorted and allowing Ken to finish up the work he has left to do. This gave me the chance to go through what we DO have here and downsize, organize or chuck what needed to be done. 

Spending lots of quiet time

With one more full day boy free we had one more trip to the splash park. Less busy without the summer program kids but no less fun! With their cups to splash and each other for company the girls did just fine. Of course that meant we had to take LOTS of pictures!!

New suits and more fun

Skipping in the water

Together in the puddle

So much fun

With other kids too

Which means Wednesday ends up in another entry… after all we had to go to pick up the boys AND visit AND drive back. Seriously the past week or more has been go go go and it feels like there is NEVER enough time! 

From a distance making some noise

Just so much cuteness

July 4th and 5th

When one is within visiting distance of a god-parent/great friend what can one do but… VISIT. It just so happened that on Wednesday we had the time and she had the day off so what did we do? Pack everyone up and head to a different part of town to visit Gavin’s godmother Christine. We so rarely see her with how busy she is with her job as a pharmacist and our not living in the same town. BUT we lucked out with her days off and our spare time though the weather was not nearly as nice as the company.

Gavin and his Godmummy

No kids to play with but TWO dogs and THREE cats, though the cats went out of site quite quickly one by one (with one not making an appearance from the start). Echo was quite intrigued by all the fluffy critters. 

PUPPY

There was a bucket of toys and some snacks and some good company and the time apart just sort of melted away. I have to say, I love visiting with Christine and miss her so much. It is so wonderful that when we DO get together it is like the time has not passed. Gavin was over the moon with his chance to spend time with HIS god-mother. 

The Lego structures he created for her

Chatting

Thursday was a day of kids time INSIDE with a weird continuation of crap weather. Thankfully having kids to play with made the weather bearable.

They got in a brief amount of time outside before the weather truly turned

Giggles at the table

Logan and Echo

We adults dealt with the doom and gloom weather with homemade hamburgers on the grill… note the lovely apron!

Isn’t he cute?

And that was that, sometimes you just need some slow down sorts of days! Which brings us to the end of the week and FRIDAY… which began a much more exciting weekend so… more on that later! 

Ominous weather