Bekah's Graduation Video.

We video tapped Bekah's graduation! Her little class as well as the other class joined together on this day as one BIG class. They sang 2 songs and did a poem. It was a wonderful day.

In came the water....

....and off came the shingles!








With the recent storms mum's roof started to leak badly. When I was up cleaning the eaves out I commented on how soft the roof was and how bad the shingles were. Not 2 days later we had water in the house.
Eric and went up on the roof, measured and went with mum to pick our her new shingles.
Saturday afternoon we started to peak at the damage. We had one side of the roof stripped of shingles when the torrential down pours hit us again. After some fast acting with tarps and shower curtains we managed (rather Eric managed) to get the roof covered.








The next couple of days were spent with us on the roof clearing it, fixing the rotten sheeting (one spot the shovel fell through). Alexander came up to help once he got home from the cottage. Dad even got up on the roof and helped! (did hell freeze over and I missed the news report) JOKING!!!








Poor Eric hauled all 40 bundles of Shingles up on that roof himself. He really worked his butt off on this roof. I was busy snapping pictures and helping lay out shingles as did Liz. I even got to use the nail gun. At one point Eric told me to stop taking pictures and get back to work. Can you tell which photo that is ? :) :)

Anyway the roof is now done, it looks great for a bunch of amateurs but I know it won't leak and its good for another 20 plus years.

Fun at the Park

With Eric on nights and 3 extra kids, I decided to walk with the kids to Forbes Park. Pulling the wagon and hauling everyones towels and snacks, Quinn, Madison, Bekah, Megan (daycare child)Christopher, Samantha and I made it to the park. The trip there took us 45 minutes! The little girls jumped right in on the splash pad. While they were chicken to get right into the sprinklers they did have fun running around the outside edges.

The boys had more fun playing on the creatives and just hanging out.

Madison and Megan did the same, hung out, chatted, goofed off. It was a great day for it and the kids had a blast.

The walk home however was a different story. I bribed them with Icecream from Indulge and the walk took an hour. The kids slept well that night!

Graduations

This year we had 3 kids "graduate" various grades of school. The first graduation was Bekah graduating her preschool program and moving on to Junior Kindergarten. The class sang some really cute songs and each got a special award. Bekah recieved the Lovely locks award. We are so pleased with her accomplishments in 6 months of preschool.

Alexander graduated grade 8 on Wednesday June 25th. It was the same ceremony that Eric and I had from Hespeler public. We are happy to say Alexander will be attending Jacob Hespeler in September that start of Highschool is upon us. The pictures from Xanders grad are the greatest as my external flash wasn't working the greatest...and the lighting absouletly sucked!

Quinlan graduated senior kindergarten and will be in grade 1 in September. They recieved little caps and cupcakes from Christopher's family. Ms. Dobler did a little ceremony in class on the last day of school. Mum, Bekah and I were there to cheer him on.

Madison passed into grade 5 and while they don't do "graduation" at this level we are still very very proud of her.

Reflections in a Bubble

The kids were having a blast playing with Bekah's new bubble blower and I was able to focus on this bubble as it flew past. It turned out so well, you can see the trees in our yard in the reflections! Quinn's colourful shirt as the background really makes it pop.

Random Pictures from this week

My mums backyard is a wonderful place to be when there are no kids and dogs making noise.
Since her house backs onto a beautiful forest area there are tonnes of birds and insects to take pictures of. Today I was able to see capture a pair of yellow finches, gathering food and nesting material. The male is the bird with the black above his beak. The female is getting some nesting material from the caterpillar nest in one of the trees.

Mum has a quince tree that seems to have a new bush sharing its growing space. The white blooms are from something like a bridal wreath and the pink are the quince blossoms. The two look absolutely gorgeous together blooming. This is one of the shots I got of it today.

Liz's cat basil as he was wandering the yard and eating catnip.

The Bushes are great attractors of bumblee bees. This guy was so busy today going from flower to flower pollinating as he went. I really wanted him in the pink blossoms but he always went into those at the back of the bushes.
Little miss Bekah who I can't beliebe will be 4 in a weeks time (ahhhh where did the time go!!) Found some stickers on mothers day and decided to add them to her face. I snapped this shot as she was being silly with the camera. For once her eyes remained open :)

This is a glimpse into the world that I live it lately...kids and anything else I can take a picture of.

Hand in Hand

Together we can!

Bekah wanted desperately to ride bikes with her friend Molly. When we got home from groceries, Nana was over. Bekah visited patienly with Nana and then said okay Mummy time for bikes.

I walked her over to Molly's. The entire Allen famiy was outside enjoying the beautiful weather. Bekah took her "big bike" to ride like Molly's. She had a hard time getting going on it. (her first time on it) Molly was an excellent friend and took her by the hand or handlebar and helped her along. She gave Bekah a couple good shoves from behind as well :)

This is the end product of my learning to digitally scrapbook. I happened to log on to a word art blog and the saying was the one of the day. It went perfectly with what I was doing :)

Hand in Hand together we can!