Rock Climbing

A couple of weeks ago, Katie and Emily were invited to a Birthday Party at WWU. It was really cool that they picked something unique to do. The first part of the party was rock climbing and then they went swimming after that. Needless to say my girls slept well that night!

The staff started out by explaining how everything worked.

Then they set them out to give it a try! Katie went first and actually did pretty well.

She made it all the way to the top!

Next was Emily's turn. Do you think she looks a little nervous in this picture?

I think that they did much better after I left and wasn't taking pictures of them!!

Katie complained that her arms hurt for a few days after this!! What a workout!

Long Time No See!!

It seems like it's been a bit since I've visited you. With my Project 365 on my Photo Blog all said and done I plan to devote more time to this Blog. Since I visited you last I think it was around Katie's Birthday and it started to snow and snow and snow. I think that the people that wanted a White Christmas need to keep it to themselves next year!! I never thought that I would be hopeful for rain! We just got home and it is continuing to snow.

One Sunday before Christmas Emily performed with her friend Callie and their youth group in a Christmas Play. They had lots of fun practicing and the group put on a very nice performance as usual.

Here is a mini collage that I made of our Christmas. The kids seemed very happy and we spent a relaxing day with a nice reprieve from the falling snow. My parents joined us for lunch and then Cheryl and her family joined us later for Turkey Dinner.
A week later it was already New Year's Eve and like the last few years we have joined Katie's friend Caitlyn at their house to Celebrate. We almost made it to midnight!! Gord was falling asleep on the couch (getting up at 4:45 am does that to you!!) and we left at about 11:15 pm. Gord went to sleep as soon as we got home as did Emily. Katie and I watched Dick on the TV, celebrated New Year's together and then we went to sleep too!! Such party animals!!

Two of the Highlights of the evening were as follows.

Meet Alexa. Alexa is 6 months old.Now meet Tucker. Tucker is 3 weeks older than Alexa and way more mobile. He was a chunk of fudge!!Now Tucker meet Alexa. Alexa looks like she is crying in the picture but they LOVED each other. She is squealing with delight!!Now here are some random pictures from New Year's Eve.Happy 2009 everyone!!

Am I Crazy...or What????

Thanks to those of you that answered or What!!! Before I get to the details of Birthday Celebrations I thought I'd tell you a bit about our weekend. We went out for dinner on Friday night to celebrate Emily's Birthday. She chose one of our local restaurants and she was very pleased with her gifts from us. I got her a pair of capris, a new shirt and a digital watch. The watch was a bit hit! She is now timing everything. I won't even share with you some of the things she is timing!

Yesterday we went in to town for Katie's Indoor Soccer game. She played a really good game (she has gotten so much better!) and even scored but they ended up calling it back (her coach told her he thought it was a goal in his books!) and she even had a breakaway shot on net!

After the game we checked out a photography shop in town and then ended up eating at a very old local restaurant that we used to come down from Canada to eat at when I was a little girl. The old restaurant's floors were settling so bad that half the tables were on an angle. They ended up closing the restaurant for a couple of years but then opened a new one down town and we enjoyed some really good fish and chips there yesterday!

As we were on our way to Costco we got news that our Local team won the State Championship in football and Cheryl's son, Calob came in First Place and won his chess tournament yesterday! Way to go Calob!! Very exciting news all around!!

We then headed on to do some shopping. As we were heading out of Costco I recognized a face from one of the local Blogs that I have happened upon in the last year. She seemed taken aback that I recognized her and asked her if she was from the Baker's Dozen. She has thirteen kids (some natural, some adopted) and it's just interesting reading about the antics of a large family.

We then headed home and were able to put up some of our Christmas decorations. Still lots to go but at least now we've started!

Today was the girls' birthday party! After having missed out on throwing them a party last year (long story) I decided that I would get the award for worst mom of the year if they didn't get one this year!! They voted for having it at the local YMCA pool which has a cool plaything called Pirate's Run. The kids love it!

These plus another dozen and a half are the cupcakes that I made for Emily's class for her Birthday!

Emily making her wish at her Birthday Dinner!

Here's Katie and Emily's Cake for their Birthday Party! Cheryl gets credit for the picture above, for the cake and many others that I didn't post with!

Here's what the Pirate's Run looks like. The kids have a blast going over it again and again and again!

Here's one of Emily making it to the end but the lady got in the way of the picture!!

Katie's going down the slide at the end in this one!

This is a group picture of all of the kids that attended the party plus one more that had to leave early! Yes, that makes 23 kids! That's where the Crazy part of the post title comes in!! LOL

Too Busy to Blog?????

Well, I think it might have been a little bit since I've checked in with you!! It seems that we may have been a tad busy over the last couple of weeks!! I am very thankful for my friends who have helped fill in the spots when I haven't been able to be there with a camera!

Also big thanks to everyone who helped me out in picking pictures for my photography class!! I will let you know how it goes!!

In order to catch up I need to go all the way back to Hallowe'en!! The girls were invited to their friend Kyanna's Hallowe'en Party. Emily has known Kyanna since Kindergarten when they joined Girl Scouts together. They headed over to Kyanna's house right after school and I picked them up in time to go Trick or Treating. Kyanna's mom Kat was nice enough to send me some pictures of the Party.

They did some Arts and Crafts.

Had a gigantic Spider's Web!

Played some games!

Got to stick their hands in some gross stuff!!

That night as the girls were T or Ting, the people that live in our old house invited the girls in to have their picture taken. You can see the picture here.

The next day, Emily's Girl Scout Troop went to the local Safeway to collect Food for our Local Food Bank. This will be one of their Service Projects. They met again on Thursday to visit the Food Bank and see how the Food was distributed. They did a fantastic job of collecting the food and it was a very worthwhile project for the girls. Here they are in front of all of the food. As they were trying to load it into their cars people were still coming up to them and trying to hand them food!!

That night Gord and I headed up to Richmond at a Greek Restaurant for another one of our friends' 40th Birthday Parties. Gord was excited to try one of the local ales. (Thanks to Leanna for some of these pictures!)

A self portrait of ourselves.

We even got to see a male belly dancer playing with fire!

Here's Christina and Colleen (it was Colleen's birthday)!

Christina's sister Leanna and her husband recently welcomed this bundle of joy!

And I even got to hold her and feed her!!

What would a party be without cake (or cupcakes for that matter)??

Later that week Katie joined her sister in wanting to shed her locks! She didn't have nearly enough hair for Locks of Love but she looked equally as cute!!

On Saturday, November 8th, the girls participated in a Girl Scout Dance event. They met up at a studio for a couple of hours and one of the instuctors ran through some dances for them and they got to earn a Dance Badge.

Point those toes Katie!

I'm pretty sure we were doing the Disco era on this one!!

Everyone having fun!

On Monday November, 10th, I was asked if the Girl Scouts would like to participate in Emily's school's Veteran's Day Assembly. This was quite an honor because the Boy Scouts have always been asked to do this. The girls were very excited and I was so proud of the job that they did. We received several compliments after it was over. (Thanks to a mom in the audience for providing this picture ~ I was busy helping out!).

Last night was an event that Emily had been looking forward to for quite some time! We have a new parent volunteer team at Emily's school this year and they've been shaking things up a bit and trying out new things. They wanted to put on a "father" (or other significant male) / daughter dance. They came up with the theme "A Knight for a Princess"! The decorations were absolutely fantastic and they ended up having over 200 people attend! All of the girls looked very pretty and their guys very handsome! It was a major success! They are holding a mother / son dodgeball event later in the year. Guess I won't be attending that one since we only grow girls!!

Here's one of the cakes!

They had a professional photographer there taking pics of each of the couples. Iwas able to sneak in one of my own! Aren't they a beautiful couple!

Here's Gord and Em at the nicely decorated table.

This is Emily and her friend Mallory. It is the only picture that I have of her full dress (missing shoes though!).

I ended up having to leave because Katied ended up having a soccer game in town at the same time as the dance. Thanks very much to Cheryl for the rest of the dance pictures! I really like this next one!

The happy couple dancing!

This morning we had to be up early to cover our shift at the DI Booster Club Craft Fair. Due to local budget cuts our School District is no longer able to provide the funding that it used to for our teams so we have taken to starting our fundraising early! We had lots of baked goods and misc. items. Here's a view of our table.

Some very nice looking DI participants!

Somebody even donated some money for "us" to sing Christmas Carols!

As soon as our shift was over Gord picked up Emily so he could take her to her first Basketball practice and Katie and I headed back in to town for another soccer game. This is Katie's first season playing Indoor Soccer. I think that she was in shock the very first game as it is very fast and a totally different game than Outdoor Soccer. She has been getting progressively better and had a fantastic game last night and played just as well today, contributing with an assist and a goal!! She had to play Goalie the first half which was hard. She let in a couple of tough goals (nobody could have stopped of them)! It is so much fun to see her progressing!

Finally!!! Caught up!!!! We are headed to North Vancouver tomorrow so hopefully I will be back with another post tomorrow night!!