Luke's bedtime prayer tonight...

Thank you Jesus for our good day, thank you for Jake and Josh and my hockey day yesterday. Help me to be the goalie tomorrow because I wasn't the goalie last time. Amen.

Summer fun

Julio and I celebrated our 6 years of marriage in and amongst birthday party mania, and here's a picture to prove it! On our actual anniversary I stayed home and sewed while Julio went to a movie with his friend, and we were both very content with that. I'm sure I wouldn've have been our first year of marriage, but I was just mostly amused that my husband was out with a man on our anniversary. Plus I had fun sewing. And he came home with clothes for me, that I like, that fit, that I probably wouldn't have picked out. And I bought him 2 golf shirts which still makes me laugh as he's not exactly the golf shirt type, but they do actually look very good on him. We've come a long way. The next day we celebrated with dinner at Buccacino's where gluten free pasta abounds and options are plentiful, so I was very happy as was Julio, although his chicken dinner tasted more like dessert as it was cinnamon flavored, amongst other things, so that was a bit weird. Almost in a good way. I should work on those run on sentences of mine, see if I can get them just a bit longer, hey?!? I had lovely plans, as I was the planner this year, of doing the river boat thing down to the Forks, having ice cream or coffee there and then walking on the trail back to our car in Osborne Village but it was remarkably cold that day and we were tired so we made the long trek from Buccacino's, to our car (parked about a block away) back to Baked Expectations for some very sweet Pavlova. And over pavlova we talked about triathalon dreams and quickly headed out to St. Vital Mall to buy me runners as I've never really owned a decent pair and Julio just recently got some and has a new lease on life, so we figured it was my turn. There's no stopping me now, a runner I will become. I love and hate the thought of running, but that's a whole other post, so let's just say that, for now, my dream of becoming a runner is just a bit closer to becoming a reality. And being married to Julio these 6 years has been great, I love seeing how far we've come and how much better we know each other now. Apparently the first 7 years are the hardest so we're just a hop skip and a jump away. And for now, we've only committed ourselves for 50 years and then we're up for re-evaluation, so just a measly 44 more to go. We're all about goals around here.

Boy number 2 with a fascination for being in boxes. I keep finding him in the funniest places. The other day he cleared all the potatoes out of the bottom shelf of our pantry and got right on in. And I can't leave the garage side door open without him going on and getting into the bike trailer. Whenever I can't find him in the back yard, sure enough, that's where he'll be, grinning at me waiting to go someplace. He is so funny.Cottage fun with Papa Ron. All the kids got a turn on the tractor, although Sammy's turn was mostly about being stationary.
Fulfilling tractor dreams...
Mr. Adventure, toddling around the cottage.

Pool fun...we just set it up for the first time this year yesterday, as we're in a bit of a heat wave, and they've been having fun with it. Somehow the fun thing to do is to pile all manner of large toys into the pool and sit on them. This is Luke in the lawnmower/recliner.

I feel like this has been my best summer in a long time, and I'm so thankful for the fun we've had so far. I would be happy for another month or two of this!

Birthday Boys

Today we celebrated the boys' birthdays. Yesterday was Samuel's first birthday and on Tuesday Luke turns 3, and just for fun we're throwing our anniversary in tomorrow so we can keep partying around here. We planned those pregnancies well, didn't we?!?
Because I'm tired and it's been a long day, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

This cake was hired out and so worth it! My cousin, Jessica, is a cake decorator and did such a great job. Luke just loved it. And Sammy did too, in the eating kind of way.




It was a really fun day for the boys - Samuel just went from person to person mooching food like he owned the place and Luke was in cousin heaven. They got great gifts, lots of nice clothes and fun toys and Julio and my dad built them a big sandbox which all the kids enjoyed. I couldn't have asked for a better day. Somehow we weren't even running around frantically beforehand; I managed to squeeze in a haircut for Luke about an hour before the party. So now we're in post-party heaven and I'm so relieved. As much as I love a party, I think I love when it's over almost as much.

I just had to squeeze in a few pictures of our baseball night too. We took Luke to a Goldeye's game on Friday as my dad had won 18 boxseat tickets and so we had a fun little crowd out. He had a blast. And can I just say that every penny of those dollarama sunglasses are so worth it, even though he doesn't want to wear them anymore. Nothing says cute like an almost-three-year-old in cheap plastic sunglasses. At a baseball game.