My Mom arrived this weekend to visit for a month. It's fantastic to have her here, particularly for the kids who always have something they want to show Grannie, read to her or tell her about. 
All of our kids are completely taken with Renee, and Evan couldn't wait to hold her. He is so caring with babies and it is a joy to watch. I recall how gentle he was with his sisters when they were babies, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he enjoys holding little ones so much.
These three gals always have a blast together. Our girls love playing dress up anytime, particularly in princess garb, but doing it with Chloe makes it double the fun. Evan even joined in, donning his pirate costume. Too bad it was so dark and rainy, which isn't the greatest for photos. 
A scrapbooker's world is sometimes completely time-warped. Even though I'm currently photographing my kids in the beautiful sunshine of summer, the pages I've been creating lately are of last fall and Christmas! Not many scrappers I know are "caught up", and we all scrap older photos, yet it just feels odd to be preparing winter pages in the heat of summer, and vice verse. 
It was a very busy weekend at our house with a lot of dress up fun, and even a touch of scrapbooking. This is what Alicia wore for most of the weekend. She dressed as Tinkerbell last Halloween, but her costume is much more suitable to summer than to cold weather. She has been having a ton of fun lately "flying" around the house in it.
I've created a new tradition in our house of late, and it works wonders with the girls, although not quite as well with their brother.
Vanessa was also very happy to pose with her latest page. Although Evan didn't participate this weekend, all of the kids love to scrap, and every few weekends we try to squeeze in a little scrapping time. Alicia's page turned out nicely, too, but she just wasn't in the posing mood with it.
I had a wonderful time last weekend at the Summer Crop at The Scrapping Nook. We scrapped, we laughed, we ate, we visited, we talked about scrapping (and about licking - but that's another story)!
Could this face be any sweeter?
This class is geared to those of us who want to finally take our cameras off of Auto, and explore the manual settings. So far, so good, although I would have to admit that compared to how quickly I am used to shooting in Auto, it is definitely slower going. I guess a learning curve is expected, though!
...at the end of the rainbow, then someone living in this neighbourhood must have a huge cauldron of wealth right in their backyard.
Isn't he sweet!
First, I layered a Hambly transparency over this page and added a big title using BG, Pressed Petals and K & Co. alphas together with a Prima flower. Prism cs, EK letter stickers, AL stamp and a smidge of Daisy D's pp round it out. 
Here's my dude who just turned 7. I think he's too cute for words, but then again, I may be a bit biased!
Mmmmmm, this photo makes me long for a vacation. This was the view from a room a few years ago on our Mexican holiday. 
Finally, these are pics that my girls have been after me to scrap for a while now! They just love their gymnastics class. And their antics are so cute!
...it shows, regardless of how many birthdays you have.
Seeing as this is only my fifth month as a blogger, I haven't yet spent a winter looking for topics to post about. I'd venture a guess, though, that it is much easier to find cool things to post about in the warmth of summertime. Take something simple like a backyard pool - what a blast!
We spent Saturday afternoon at a local butterfly conservatory, which the kids talked about for the rest of the weekend. They all loved the beautiful and colourful butterflies, and raced after them, pointing out the most colourful ones, wanting me to capture them in pictures.
They also stared for a long time at the hatchery. I think they were waiting impatiently for a butterfly to emerge! It made for a wonderful afternoon. I did capture a few interesting shots, but found the most beautiful butterflies a bit elusive. Oh well - I think we'll be back!
...and I just can't hide it!
Hey, Mr. DJ put a record on,
Not only are we celebrating Canada Day today, which - in our house - is an all day celebration, but I'm also happy for another great reason. 
We are back and forth to the soccer field a few times a week, since all three kids are participating this year. 
The kids are also busy trying hard to ride their bikes; the girls are on their first two-wheeled bikes, with training wheels, of course, and Evan is going to give it a try without training wheels. Evan is also big into the rollerblades he got for his birthday.
What a great way to celebrate that last day of school! Not only did Evan say good-bye to class for the summer yesterday, but he said good-bye to his very first lost tooth!
A little while ago, I posted a cool story of how Connie and I, who have known each other through scrapping boards for years now, figured out that we lived a few blocks apart for a while as kids, then worked at the same McDonald's restaurant in high school. Check out the original story here.
Well, we finally met in person last week when Connie and her boys travelled to Ontario to visit her sister and family. We crammed so much into that short afternoon that my head is still spinning. We ate a delicious lunch, then drove around the city to shop at 2 different scrapbook stores, all while talking a mile a minute, and comparing notes and names of who we remembered from our McDonald's days. Then we headed back to her sister's beautiful home, where I met some of the family. 
This past Saturday, Stephen, the kids and I were lucky enough to attend a golf tournament for a little boy, Trevor, who has Hurler Syndrome, a disease in the MPS family.
It's wonderful to see him at this age, seeing that MPS kids, untreated, are not expected to reach their 10th birthday. 
We have become close to the family after Trevor made it past the 2 year post-transplant wait that CBS enforces, before they allow unrelated donors and recipients to share personal information. It's nice that we live so close together (just over an hour apart), seeing as the registry is national, so a bone marrow recipient could live anywhere in Canada. 
