Play by Play!!

These are the shoes i am choosing represent how i ran through my day today!!  Crazy! Fun! and very busy...literally! ;-)

Here is the rundown:

Up at 7; made breakfasts, lunches, packed gymbag, on the road by 8:15.

8:48: Isaac heads to school, 9: Elliot heads to preschool~both happy boys.....nice.

9:15: drop car off at Honda for oil change, rear tail light replacement, Cristin picks me up there for a quick visit at Serious Coffee.

10: Cristin leaves, i head over to Walmart to pick up some groceries

10:45: Walk over to Honda carrying all my new 'goodies'

11: Pick up fabric to finish recovering my dining chairs as well as pick up 2 sorry looking stools that could use recovering at the chiropractors office {good deed of the day!!}

11:30: Pick up Elliot

11:40: First 'weigh in' with Nicole, my beast trainer.  No weight change, dropped 1.5 inches around my mid section.

Noon: Tailgate party picnic with Elliot and little play at a local playground in the gorgeous sun!

12:30: Back at the gym!  Elliot merrily heads to kids care while i do upper body and sweat it out for an hour.

2:48: Pick up Isaac

3:10:  Arrive at Elizabeths so kids can play....she gracefully gives me the best latte and we sit in the sun.

4:00: Leave my kids with her, i head up to Burdges to finish my chairs and to recover the chiroprators little stools {they look amazing now}!

5:30: Pack up kids, head to farmers market for sweet potatoes, meat market for chicken, turkey and ham.

6:Pre-order Dynamite Rolls from Nha Trang since its too late for dinner now at home.  Boys and i sit down in the restaurant, Elliot has miso soup and Isaac races me to finish the dynamite rolls, raw (or smoked?) salmon on top and all!!!}...

7: Home, bathed the kids, gave them some cereal, slid through the tub myself.

7:30: kids in bed

8: Had a proper dinner on the couch with chris

9: stared at the wall for awhile and opened some mail until chris turned dragons den on {yay new season!}

9: 20: Went outside to see Caleb tree a baby bear cub.

9:36: Currently finishing a very boring post for everyone else, but i need to remember days like this because life is good and i am healthy enough to do all these things....firing on all cylinders and running!!

Boys get a new train set

The folks who sold us our new dining set were also selling their kids train set....so we all came out pretty good!

Jack and Carrie come to visit.....short, but sweet.

I did not take my camera out during this visit....i think its because i am missing my SLR that we recently sold...but my sis caught a couple:

Here is Jack and I making lemon roasted chicken....

 And here we are reading....

yup, that was the extent of the pictures!

But to summarize, my sister put the time and energy to come and see us and i appreciated it so much.  It was funny how at the end of the visit, we both looked at eachother and said 'i don't know how you do it, your life looks exhausting!!'.....funny hey?  i forget what it was like to have to chase a 2 year old, and she hasn't been introduced to the new phase of making lunches and getting kids out the door on time....

It was lovely to see her, she is easy company....i just wish we weren't both so exhausted at the end of the day when we could finally just hang out with eachother....but i loved having her in my space while parenting our kids....they are lovely kids.

It was a good day......

This was what i walked in this morning....Caleb and I...my trusty side-kick.  It was a wonderful day all in all.  It started with a walk like this:

The middle was hanging out with girls like these:

And the end of the day was recovering dining room chairs with my mom in law, that now look like this:

1 Peter 1:8

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now,

you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

Today!

We started out with a double drop off!  Meaning; 2 of everything!! lunches! breakfasts! getting them dressed and out the door!  After a successful drop-off, i headed to Jazzercise and had a better time than friday, still sweated like a banchee, but no back spasms sending me crawling for the outside door!  Luckily, elizabeth was there to follow me out and punch down my spazy back! ahh..friends!

So, there was jazzercise, and then a nice luch at Rachels.  I haven't seen that girl in ages, so it was nice to catch up and let the kids play.  I ate my brown rice and veggies {yawn}--luckily she had hotsauce which i needed to get it all down!

After leaving Rachels, it was off to the gym for the last hour before picking up isaac.  Elliot loves the gym daycare....he packed popcorn for his 'gym snack' today so he watched movies and played and ate--what isn't to love??  I have a workout that takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to do depending on which day i am on rotation.  Today was arms, i am able to fire through it quickly than others, so i got to have a shower!! i was never one to shower at gyms...but i never knew how amazing it makes you feel afterwards!! Like a million bucks!!!  This new routine that elliot and i have is pretty great so far--he has preschool, we visit with friends for lunch between 11:30 and 1:15...1:30-2:30 is the gym, 2:48 is time to pick isaac up.  The days are going by faster than i anticipated.....

Picked up Isaac and raced him to piano lessons....his teacher raved about him and could tell he practiced his little black ant song!

Home by 4--boys played upstairs as i slinked into bed for an hour before dinner!

Chris calls at 5, as i am starting to think about dragging myself out of bed to make dinner, to say that there is a group in so dinner is already made--yeah!!

6pm, dinner finished, extra jackets are grabbed and we head out to explore this: {or something that looks like this that i found on google images}:

We live in such a beautiful, almost magical place.  There are tags everywhere for future logging...so we need to remember to get out there now to enjoy it before its all slashed away!

We hiked around and explored looking for mushrooms, chris found a few pounds of chantrelles....the kids and i spotted a few, but mostly we spotted leaves that looked like mushrooms...not a huge help! ;-)

My favorite memory tonight was this:  chris and isaac went ahead a little while elliot slowed a little behind.  He and i sat on a stump and chatted for a little while {its hard for little legs getting over those big fallen trees!}....but when it was time to get going, elliot called out for isaac....isaac called back...and they kept that up til they found eachother as i watched from behind my little guy clammoring over trees to get to his brother.

Its 9 and i have been in bed for almost an hour...i am so done!  Tommorow i get to stay home all day with elliot as isaac has his carpool!!  The plan is to paint and play and get ready for carrie to arrive at 7!!

Hello FALL!!!

The routine is in place, we are getting into a groove.....and its been good.

However, the rain has started, lessons have started, everyone is making new friends, the fall is officially totally underway....yet the countdown to the end of November is on and i feel like it will get here in a blink of an eye.  It makes me want to start my christmas shopping now, so i can relax when December comes around...what is in December, you ask?  This:

With no other plans, other than to go where the road takes us with the only stipulation is that it must be South!!  Can you feel the excitement?? 

What Elliot and I do while Isaac is in school!

He was driven to school today!  So, Elliot and i have stayed home ALL day!!  After i dropped isaac off in lake cowichan to meet up with his carpool, i had an hour before Chris had to leave for work....so i walked and got my 45 mandatory minutes of cardio in!

Elliot and i walked down to the camp for some ice {for all the smoothies we are making with my new magic bullet!}....and while we were there, we saw that the office goldfish had some proper fish food!  Isaac got a gold fish a few days ago from some staff who saved it from being eaten at youth camp {don't ask, i whole-heartedly do NOT agree with what they were doing with them}....but we haven't gotten food for it yet....so i scooped about 2T of it for our fish into an envelop and handed it to elliot to carry home.

We arrived home and as i was putting my ice away, elliot was very quiet.  I went to hunt for him and found him looking at the fish in their bedroom.....he had dumped the ENTIRE envelop into the tank!!!  sheesh!  You could hardly see through the tank anymore....figured this was a good 'teachable moment' and pulled out my childhood favorite book about a boy who feeds his fish too much.  We sat in front of the fire to read it together:

After a quiet afternoon, i figured i should take the garbage out and the cardboard to the recycling, so elliot and i loaded up the quad and took off.  After that was done, we went on our normal 'bear hunt'.....i love that he sits right in front of me so we can have a running dialogue as we ride.  The Mission: Find a bear!

Mission ACCOMPLISHED!!!

Elliot was scared for a moment as we saw it running ahead of us and then into the bushes, but then we were both pretty stoked that we found what we were looking for! how COOL is that????

Man Cave

My dad and i were laughing the other day over 'man caves' and how both he and chris never seemed to ever need one, or maybe want one?  I may have spoke too soon.....

What do you think?

i mean, can't see myself lounging around in this room anymore....i may even have nightmares about someone looking in and seeing all the weapons already available for use....seriously, there is even a bear paw trap, see it there, up on the left??  AND there is also a giant corkscrew {top right} for those visitors who come and need help with the wine bottle.......help!

CATHERINE.....long, lost Catherine!

Known her since she was twelve.....you may recognize her from my BBQ post back in August.  She flies back to Queens University tommorow morning and squeezed me into a visit before she takes off.  Here we are {after injesting booster juice} at Canadian Tire...yup, i know how to show my friends a good time!  but it was raining out, and i was hoping for some 'end of summer' savings, but to no avail......

After the Canadian Tire tour, we picked up isaac and took him to where ever he chose to go for lunch......guess where he chose??

McDonalds {i didn't even have 1 fry!!}......

Have a wonderful year Catherine!

GRADE ONE!!

Today i join the ranks of all the other moms who have sent off their child to school today and are home this afternoon to blog about it. 

It was a family affair as chris had the day off.....

it was a lovely morning with all my boys.......except:

Isaac went for 2 hours this morning and was greeted by a chaotic mob of kids and parents who had NO idea where they were all supposed to be. I personally think its retarded that after all these years of "first days" it has to be like this....who is running the show? monkeys?? Making us all stand in the rain, trying to listen to the principal introduce teachers, nobody can hear, nobody cares, we just want to get our children safely to their designated spots so they can start their day...is that so much to ask? Apparently, it is....but it was still a lovely morning, aside from the chaos.

Final Summer Weekend......

Thats right, it was the last weekend of the summer....and we officially had the camp to ourselves! {aside from jon and mel and some of their family, but they don't count cause we played with them too}.  Here we are making use of the BMX track!

After biking, we seperated so chris and i could take the boys to play archery.

This is chris's 'thinking' face {or tongue...elliot does the same thing when he is concentrating, its hilarious}

Notice the tongue.....

haha...very funny.

Rainbow Man was happy to carry the arrows.

Enjoying the water....

Enjoying 6 year old kisses....

this shot makes me happy....

he holds my hand and i notice that i want to remember that he holds my hand alot. 

Soon he will join the ranks of grade one and be off to school every day, all day...and days like this where he holds my hand and we laugh alot and play...they are good days that i need to remember.  These 3 boys make my life so great......

Stained Glass....

Today was a beautiful sunny day.  As Laura and I walked through the forest to get the mail this afternoon, we agreed that parenting is so much easier in the sun....

This family seems to be a magnet for wasps for some reason this season.....so we set up a little picnic for the 4 of the cousins to eat outside in the tent while Laura, Oscar and i dined in the safety of our kitchen.

I read a quote this afternoon that really struck a chord with me:

‎"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within." -Elizabeth Kubler Ross

This quote could be a daily mantra for me on many various levels.  I struggle when its literally grey outside, as well when things are hard in life itself.  We don't have many struggles as a family at this moment in time but they will come.  And when they do, i just hope that i will still have a light that shines with beauty, like stained glass.

Our Day off........

Isaac is the photographer in the next few shots, as you can see!!

Getting ready to go.....

my love.....

awesome.....

Riding in cars......

....with boys!

my wonderful man.....

Proof i was there.....

Our 'find'...we think it may not fit the 'cabin style-we-have-kids' look we are going for! 

But we think its beautiful.....and a steal for $275!!

Just for good measure, these are the shoes that my sis bought little Jack today....thought they were adorable!