Camping Trip

We went camping! It was a fairly epic 1 night 1.5 day experience, I'd say:-) The kids were so totally excited, it was crazy. This was their first time to camp and sleep in a tent!

We went with a bunch of friends, and all had such a blast. The kids had no idea what to expect, and had all kinds of wild ideas about our "wilderness" adventure. In reality, we went to a State Park that is on the beach, and just down the road...no exactly exotic or anything, but at least we gave them a somewhat realistic idea of what camping is (although, often camping has no beaches:-).

As Grey told his Aunt this morning "It was like, it was not like the wild, 'cause there were like, no trees all over the place" - I think he was alluding to the "cleared out" campsites:-)

When one of Kenna's friends suggested they go exploring, Kenna was over heard saying "Ok, but we should stay close to here, because we could run in to something that could kill us".

Suffice it to say, we saw no wild animals. Well. Nothing lethal anyway. There were lots of squirrels. A hawk landed in our site for a minute, and I saw a little lizard at the beach, and that was pretty much it...

Except the huge crabs we found!!

This was the medium crab we found. One ran right across our "towel area" and inbetween a friends legs! It was huge! It was hard to catch, but we briefly did until it escaped. I don't have a picture of him, but he was bigger than this guy. Claire is being very brave!

We spent lots of time Friday night and Saturday at the beach!

The guys spent lots of time doing stupid manly things. Like "how long can we keep our legs in this cooler of ice?"

Kenna & Jackson, and the beautiful endless sky

So pretty!

Grey, Kenna and Claire, exploring the back of our campsite

I spot 5 people in this tree:-)

Standing at one end of the group site, looking all the way too the other side. They were still setting up tents over there. Our borrowed tent is the one with the kelly green top.

Setting up the beds:-)

The far side of the site. We went with 4 other families.

The guys could not forsake their weekly Saturday morning workout. In fact, two "regular workout buddies" who did not come camping, came at 6:45 in the morning to not miss the workout on the beach

A truly good time was had by all! No one got overly sunburned (just sun kissed), the bugs weren't too bad, it didn't get too cold at night, and it didn't rain! We laughed a lot and made some good camping memories. Here are a few more pics, all in random order...

So Josh says, "Can I roast a marshmallow for anyone?" Haha

Peter is telling an interesting story:-)

Brooks and Pete dug a hole nearly to China

All the camping kids!

Most of the camping adults - we just hung out, talking, in the water

We had YUMMY food. One delicious idea we tried out: A waffle ice cream cone, sliced banana, strawberry, chocolate chips, and mini marshmallows. Wrap well in foil, and roast (we laid on grill thingy) over the campfire. Sooo good!

Brooks and Claire got buried

Thanks to technology, we were able to watch California Chrome make his run for the Triple Crown. We were alllll huddled around a little iphone, watching it live, and cheering him on. We would have loved to see another triple crown winner in our lifetime. So we were sad he didn't win. We left in time to come home and watch the Rangers play game 2 (and lose, in double OT. Boo)

A nice little "stay-cation" I guess. We really want to do it again next year too. Sleeping on the ground is ok, for only one night:-)

Beauty, Close Up

Hanging some flowers, in my favourite colours (purple and white)

Some new perennials I need to plant somewhere...

Tomatoes plants are growing nicely!

Crane

On Saturday, we got to witness something pretty cool...something that Brian has been pretty stressed out about actually. In fact, I don't know that I have ever seen him so worried or nervous about anything, work related or not.

This is the deal - He is (through his company) in charge of this remodel project - and it calls for a private staircase between the 15th and 16th floors. Options: Take the steel up in the elevator, in "bite size" pieces, and weld it all together. Or, "fly" it in through the window with a crane.

Oddly enough (to me anyway), it was thirteen thousand + dollars cheaper to fly it in with a crane. So in the interest of making good profit, giving a good price, and adding years to his life in stress, he went with the crane option.

Very cool. Very rare (esp for a sleepy little down town like ours), and very scary.

Here are a few pics and videos! I took the kids down to witness this "once in a lifetime". They were impressed for all of 5 mins. Then they were bored, and hungry, etc etc etc. Haha. Someday, they'll get to tell their kids they saw this, and their Daddy did it!

By "did it" I mean, he organized everything, worried about it, and was responsible if anything went wrong. Other than that, he didn't "do" anything, HAHA. No Spiderman-like repelling for him!

Crane! When we arrived around 8:30am (Brian had been there since 6:30), "Spiderman" was cutting the caulk off the first window.

These windows have been in place for 25 years, and so it was difficult to get them out. It took almost an hour to get the first window out, and about 30ish minutes for the second one.

Each pane of glass weighs 312lbs. !!!!. If you look close at the "hole" here, Brian is in the white hard hat and the light blue shirt, in the corner peeking out the window. He was not tethered, and helping get the window in.Talk about FREAK ME OUT! He waved to us.

They removed 2 panes, the one they needed (15th storey), and one above it, in case that heavy ball thing on the crane should "bounce" once the load was released

 

Behind the scenes from Brian's phone: Here is Spiderman, cutting away the caulk on the outside of the glass.

From Brian's phone: a view from behind the caution tape

Waiting for the 2nd window to come out, we took a little walk around the block (to help with the boredom factors). Here's a  a statue, complete with rebel flag at the base to "Our Confederate Dead".

Here's a few minutes of video and few moments with the man of the hour:-) I was watching this with the building's engineer, and a few coworkers of Brian's. Everybody had to come take a little look-see at this rare event! The crane went up I think 6 or 7 times. Each time took about 5 minutes.

Our Weekend

Memorial Day Weekend! We had a lot of fun! Three day weekends are always a treat, although it was a busy one. Saturday had us doing baseball, a baby shower, and then deck layout at Dale & Lauren's (lots of stakes and strings!), and a little post hole digging.

On the way home from baseball on Sat, we drove past a yard sale in our neighbourhood. It looked like they had a few nice bikes for sale, so we stopped. A perfect bike for Kenna - a 21 speed in excellent condition - for $10. SOLD! Kenna got to ride the bike home all by herself, since we were driving:-) Needless to say, she's been loving it! I'm still on the lookout for "new" bikes for Brooks and Grey, I intend to use my Cookies/Cupcakes profits for extras like new bikes (all of theirs are too small for them). A few more yard sales and YAY, that would save me from buying new:-)

On Sunday, we had church, and then there was a church wide picnic afterwards. The weather was perfect, and we stayed until 3. Brian played a game of Ultimate Frisbee (a fave), he hasn't played in awhile, so that made his day. Then, he was given a few giftcards to the Outback restaurant from a subcontractor ('cause he always goes above and beyond:-), so we went there for dinner with friends, and then onto Rita's for dessert for gelato!

Monday was lawn-work, beach, dinner, BED!

Beach - kids with Chae

Getting buried by Mr T

When Dads care more about building castles than kids do...

Rita's! The favourite flavour of the day was Swedish Fish

Baseball - the season will be over next week!

Some flower garden work!

A good helper. His chosen outfit cracked me up

He worked really hard

Burn pile is doing good, Mom

After spraying weeds, hoeing, removing all the rocks, getting rid of a bush, putting down mulch, and replacing all the rocks. It looks really tidy now! The shrub we got rid of is on the end of the porch - because it was weird looking and half dead, and also - we'd like to put stairs on that end of the porch too - since our front walkway floods really bad. Currently, when it's raining, you have to walk on those flat stones to get over to the steps, by adding a second staircase, we won't have to people to walk through the garden anymore:-) Adding stairs is easier and cheaper than tearing up the concrete walkway, leveling out the yard, and replacing the walkway.

We planted some petunias in our mailbox garden - the strange (and dead) shrubby thing just had to go. At the base of the mailbox, we planted a dark burgundy plant in the front, and a climbing flowering vine on the back side.

The flowers on the climbing vine

Other side of front garden, coming up next! this is basically what the other side looked like before too! Amazing how much better it looks now! Thankful for a yard of free mulch from a landscaper friend, it's enough to do all our flower beds. On this side, I can plant some flowers...I can't really on the other side, since we have to walk through the garden when it rains (kids aren't super great about only stepping on stones)

We planted some tomato plants! I need to get the wire thingys so they can grow properly, but excited for our own vegetables!

Anyway,  a fun and busy weekend for all! We slept in on Monday morning until 8:30, and that made us feel like kings!

Kenna learned how to do something new on Monday. She had a few belly flop landings before she learned to tuck better and land properly:-) Here's a belly flop!

Here is Grey just being Grey