its been a very long time...

...sorry for such a long time in my posts. Its been a very very busy couple of weeks. We had Bekah's 5th birthday party. It was a blast! We had so many family and friends come over for a visit and some good cake and Ice Cream! Bekah loved seeing all of her family here, especially her great Nanny and Nana from British Columbia. Here are a few pictures from her special day! (the first picture is from her actual birthday on May 20th as she was going out the door for school. She is wearing one of her new outfits!)

On May 23 the family met at Cagney's in Guelph for a celebration of Eric's Aunt Ann's wedding on May 1st in Northern Ontario. I can't post any pictures of the couple on here but I do have one of Bekah and her cousin Abby. Abby became very attached to me and wanted to come and play at our house after. Her brother Noah and sister Ann-Marie came over for about an hour. It was so great to see cousins find each other and become instant friends. Tammy and Carlos you guys are always welcome here we need to keep in touch :)!

The rest are random pictures taken the last weeks of May.

Raven our younger dog playing fetch with Snicker's bone. Raven is sneaky she takes it and then plays keep away instead of fetch!! Water droplets on a buffet leave for caterpillars. I love the big drop at the end.

Its time for me to send the kids off to school. I will be making a few more posts a bit later today.

As well as an update on my mum.

Mothers Day

With the cooler temperatures rolling in today, it was the perfect day for us to get some much needed yard work done. The kids, Eric and I rolled outside about 3 pm this afternoon and got started. Our wonderful neighbour lent us her "claw" gardening tool and it was put to great use! Bekah tried really hard to make it work. I love these three shots of her making it work. The best is her face as she really gets it going!
Bekah then graduated to using the shovel to dig out the weeds. Wyatt and Quinn were there ready to grab them and stuff them into a bucket. They worked together like this all afternoon! Bekahs foot on the shovel is a really neat shot and my favourite of the whole day.

I also took some more shots of Quinlan's peach tree in bloom. I am very fascinated with it and taking macro shots of them. I managed to get a nice photo of the Lily of the valley growing in our flower bed. It is May's flower and its very pretty.

After much snipping and hacking, down came the raspberry canes that were very overgrown. Now we are able to get to our composters and actually use them. Eric was showing the kids what goes in them and how they work. All the weeds and yard materials we had today went into them!

Hope everyone had a great mother's day. I know I did. I slept in, made some awesome pancakes and bacon, rested on the couch with lots of snuggles and watched a movie and then worked outside with my whole family!

Spring is finally here

....and I was out taking pictures today. All the following pictures were taken in my backyard this morning!

Beautiful World

After many hours of cleaning the house on Sunday we were finally able to open the piano again!!! (it was kinda the storage for many things) Needless to say it had missed us and we had missed it. Eric sat down to play a few songs when Bekah climbed up on his lap. There is just something about those tiny little hands on her Daddy's big hands and moving to the music! I did them in black and white as well as colour. I can't decide which I like the most.

Today I went out with my camera and tripod and went on a mission. I needed to take a picture of something spring. I am entering a photo contest with Eric's Dad in an outdoor magazine. I thought hmmm whats more springish then a bird sitting on her nest?! So I managed to capture this shot of a morning dove on her nest in my hedges. She was very patient with me and didn't move a muscle. This is the result of about 25 minutes of standing still, gently moving away some of the hedge and take a few shots.

Been awhile....

...so I have a bunch of pictures taken over the last couple weeks. They are in some what of an order ranging from Good Friday, thru Easter to Saturday April 25th. I will be editing some more photos taken yesterday and post them later. Sorry for the delay in my blog. Finding time to do it now isn't very easy. I love to be outside with the kids when the weather is so nice. By the time I get my own kids to bed and straighten up I don't have the patience to blog and its bed for me.



















Mum is still in Hospital and by sounds of it will be there a while longer. They are going to change out her chemo to one that will allow her to have radiation done on the tumors sitting in her pelvis on the muscles to her legs. This will shrink them faster and get her back on her feet more quickly. Her spirits are still high and positive. Our stress levels have dropped considerably with mum in hospital as the worry factor is gone from when she was home. She is getting everything
she needs there (except being outside..she misses that greatly) and we know that she is safe!

These are pictures from Easter...we took our plastic eggs to the hospital and had mum help us fill them for the kids to find in the morning. The easter bunny doesn't do the egg hunt at our house, Eric and I do. So gramma helping made it more special for them this year.

Eric would come and play on the street with us when he got home from work every night. I took this picture while the kids and him were playing monkey in the middle with the baseketball!!!

Saturday April 25th we took the 2 little kids to Yorkdale Mall. We went to the Apple Store, Rainforest Cafe and had an icecream. Then we headed over to Jason and Andrea's for a visit. It had been WAY too Long since we have seen them for a visit. Quinn and Mark had a blast together. At one point we could hear them giggling upstairs so I took the camera up and had a look. They were playing marbles. It was so cool to see them doing an "oldie" game and having so much fun. I snapped a few photos and will have more to post later. These are the ones I have edited of Quinn shooting marbles. He looks so grown up in these photos.