Summer is Funner

Funner is totally a real word, mom. It means that it has higher levels of enjoyment than regular times. You guys, I am having a GREAT summer. I have barely been home! This past week was filled with more ice cream and beaches and play times! Observe...

After an afternoon of playing soccer, rescue-mission, volleyball-ish, and monkey-the-rope, my new friends and I settled in after dinner with some refreshing popsicles.

There was also a LOT of this. And by This, I mean newdie-ness and beach times. My little brother is doing a really good job on this:

...so the perma-no-pants dance is pretty necessary.

One if the highlights from our Comox adventure was blueberry picking. We ran around with our blueberry troughs (see photo for the sweet troughs my mom and Car made) and ate, I mean picked blueberries!!

A rare photo of my brother and I with my momma! This pic was from a post-dinner dip at the beach...

On our way home we stopped for MORE beach times to break-up the long drive and had a great time doing this:

This week we are off to be reunited with my cousin's Ben and Yogi, then onwards to the Okanagan for MORE fun. 

As my Auntie Kate says, hashtag blessed.

Love, Feewee

Old Friends/New Friends

A mommy post.

We were inseparable in high school. Like, would have seriously considered hip-attachment surgery had it been on the menu back in 199...well, a few years ago.

 In any case, this incredibly special humanoid hosted my two little hamhochs and I for a few days at her beautiful home in Comox. Yes, it was gorgeous. Yes, the weather was stunning and sparkly. Yes, the kids got along (save for a pair of deliberate truck-to-the-head incidents). But the real treat was reconnecting with someone whom I have missed. Post-secondary education put a rather inconvenient body of water between us preventing regular sleepovers and tandem bike rides. (Yes, we had a tandem, but that's another story.)

Allow me to return to my point...

My life perspective and experience has been so heavily influenced by her since our attachment waaaaaaay back in grade nine. Over the years, we have had our phone chats and have stolen an hour or two here or there to catch up and it is always as if no time has passed. We are seventeen again...ish. This visit was long, long overdue and I am so thrilled we made it happen. Even though it sometimes took us 4 hours to finish a short story due to the frequent and immediate needs of 4 kids under 5 (the constant prep/cook/cleanup/general maintenance required to keep the 24 hour food trough running & the troops entertained), we managed to have some good seshes.

Life is such a wonderful and beautiful gift. I suppose the wisdom? that's definitely the wrong word...perhaps it is in the act of experiencing more of life, that it seems almost glaring to me, that life is also so short.

So, invite yourself and your two free-range children over to an old friend's house for a visit, create some time for some special peeps in your life. And then give them a size large hug and tell them you love them. 

Hearts and glitter with a side of sand.

For Carlene, love Melissa

PS Thank you to Felix for permitting me to guest post on his blog. Here are a few snaps from our adventures

Impromptu Rath Trevor stop...

Post-dinner swimmies at Goose Spit Beach. Photo credit to Car for capturing the second photo ever taken of me with both of my children.

Blueb selection and sampling

Kye bay newdies

Xox

True Bromance

My brother is quite awesome. He is really smart, thoughtful, sharing, and fun to play with. Ninety percent of the time ;) the other 10 percent he probably has a toy that is essential to my survival and if I don't scoop it right at that second, my imminent destruction will ensue. Immediately.

Here is a little clip showing our love.

https://youtu.be/0jpH1B7MBtI

Recycling Towers!

Save some boxes, build some towers, then bowl them over with balls!

Oh, and only wear pants if your mommy makes you.

Love, Felix and Theo 

Shapes

Today during Theo's sleepy stroll (a walk with Theo in the stroller so that he will fall asleep) I had a special task. I had to find shapes! Circles and squares specifically. I used mama's phone to document the shapes I found on our walk. In the span of 4-7 minutes, I filled mommy's phone with nearly 200 images of my findings. Here are a few of the highlights...

MotherBoy 2016

My mom and my Auntie Kate had this great idea to take my cousin Ben and I on an adventure day called Motherboy. This adventure began with a plane ride over to Vancouver with Baboo...

When we got to Bancouver, I was SO excited to see Ben! We immediately had a water fight in the backyard and had such a good time.

The next day, motherboy continued with an exciting trip to science world, sushi and ice cream! There were dinosaur bones to examine, buildings to build, and mysteries to solve! 

Excited for science world!

Building 

Taking notes to solve the mystery in the Top Secret spy section...

Big strong dinosaur teeth!

Two little monkeys...

Joy of joys at Earnest ice cream!

And nothing like some nude cartography to round out the day...

Maps

I love maps. I like reading them, making them,  following them...you might say I have a mild to moderate obsession.

Today, we went adventuring at Anderson Park and battled the wind while clambering over rocks and running through long grass.

After all that wind, we sought solace in a cute little coffee shop for some hot chocolate and yummy toast...

Secret Hideouts

Making secret hideouts, finding secret hideouts, talking about secret hideouts... SECRET HIDEOUTS YOU GUYS!

We are obsessed over here...