Saturday

Elliott and I had a lovely, busy Saturday.  Here's what we got up to:

 We took a morning bike ride to Starbucks and were lucky enough to get the comfy chairs!

 

Our sweet neighbour B turned 4 and his amazing mom made 2 guitar cakes. 

 Here's Elliott and his friend "Gibby" enjoying the cake together.  Elliott wore rubber boots to the party.  It was 28 degrees!

Our tot pool (rather deflated!)  Elliott loved it this weekend.   We also started a new Mother Goose at the outdoor swimming pool on Fridays- so fun (thanks glen for agreeing to host there ;)

My Mom and Dad come over in the evening for dinner and Elliott and Bumpa were searching the patch for ripe strawberries.

Shuswap

We spent a beautiful sunny summer day at the Shuswap with some friends and Elliott and AA were awesome together.  They rode bikes and played ball and chase, went swimming, got into trouble and got lots of mosquito bites.  With sun-kissed  cheaks we are all looking forward to going to bed early tonight!

Happy Canada Day!

Glen had to work Canada Day, but Elliott and I sure enjoyed our local celebrations.  The weather was perfect, and we ended our park festicities by lying on a blanket for 2 hours watching live music and dancing.  Very lovely! 

Run Bike Run!

Elliott has really been getting the hang of his run bike through the spring. He's now 'balancing' and riding without his feet touching for up to 7 seconds at a time. You can totally see him 'getting it'. Here's a short video clip from Glen's phone from his practice session the other night in a vacant parking lot near our home.

Despite the abrupt ending to the clip, we can assure you he did fine - in fact, he did awesome!

staying home

Elliott is a real home-body these days.  All weekend he just wanted to stay home.  If we weren't in the yard, he was lying on the kitchen floor playing with his cars.  It was quite nice actually- I cooked and baked and gardened, and mostly enjoyed all the fun of playing with Elli.

 Learning to play baseball-  not bad aim!

 I wanted to get rid of this tiny sandbox recently, but Elliott refused.  So I bought new sand- makes the cat pee less offensive.

Smelling the roses.  Apparently these ones smell like pineapples!

Little Strider

Elli has a run bike that he has really just learned to use in the last couple of months (his 3.5 year old neighbour taught him).  A run bike doesn't have peddles, exactly like a 'big' bike, he just runs his feet on the ground and learns how to steer.  On Father's Day we all went for a bike ride at our favorite park.  Glen kept saying "I can't believe we are all riding bikes together!"  It is pretty cute.

Red Rocks

I forgot to blog about this cool place outside of Denver called Red Rocks.  Natural amphitheatre that hosts live music by night and amazingly fit athletes by day.  Elliott climbed down and then up the seats.  The last picture shows the outcome of that.

Lips

Recently Elliott was playing with his cars and making this awesome car sound effect with his mouth.  Check those lips out!

Elliott is 3!

We had a big party and it was lots of fun.  Elliott loved the cake and balloons, and his bumpa and nama coming.  What he didn't realize is that he got presents.  It was pretty cute the day after the party when he walked by the pile and said "mama, what's that?"

Unfortunately, because glen and I were the hosts, we have no party pictures.  I'll see if I can get some.

Uncle Fred

We went to Denver to visit my brother, who has been living there for the past year (and hopefully a lot longer!).  We sure liked hanging out with him and Sandy.  They looked after Elliott for an evening and glen and I went out for a delicious, quiet dinner. 

Denver Zoo

This was a beautiful zoo- so many animals, so well taken care of, and so much learning.  We spent a full day, and Glen and I ate a peaceful lunch while Elliott napped in the wagon- nice!

Children's Museum

This was the most amazing kids place- we weren't expecting it to be so unique and interactive... we all had more fun that we knew what to do with.

 Amazing bubble room- you could make a huge bubble around yourself (didn't make a good photo though).  I loved that EJ agreed to the outfit.

 This was the create section.  Elliott made his uncle Fred a cool egg carton project (really loved using REAL tools).

 That's him, wearing a bunny costume, climbing through bunny holes. 

 This grocery store/kitchen sponored by Whole Foods was my favorite.  Everything was so authentic, no details missed.

Our little traveller.

 We just returned from our trip to Denver, Colorado.  I read something before we left about travelling being an excellent learning and growth opportunity for kids- that sure seemed true.  Elliott was awesome- it was a real urban experience and he just held my hand through it all.  We did some really fun things, and had some good visits, and I'll post those separate from these cute travel pics.  We took our car to Seattle, and then flew, and went on a myriad of trains, light rail, buses etc.

 the boys eating on the plane.

 Elliott played the i-pad when all the other entertainment wore off.

 This is a typical Elliott expression- slightly worried. 

 Elliott trying to figure out the clouds.

We don't have light rail in Kamloops- too bad.

Done- glad to be going home.

photo shoot

Last night, Elliott really wanted his picture taken.  He came up with all these poses and laughed his pants off after each shot.  We even resumed the 'sitting' in the morning.  I've got millions of the on my phone, in case anyone needs a few more.

my boys

Elliott loves when I say "Where are my boys?"  Aren't they so cute together?

TV time

We use TV everyday to give everyone a little down time.  We try to contain the quantity and quality, but regardless Elliott LOVES it.  I'm not sure how long he could watch it for, but certainly longer than I let him.  We are going on holiday soon to Colorado, and I'm really looking forward to not having to watch the final race in the CARS movie everyday.  Who knew that could make a holiday?!

Mother Goose

We hosted our final Mother Goose session for the year in our back yard last night.  This is a community program that we love, and have gained so much from (amazing friends, great songs, lovely family time) and it felt really good to be in our yard with all these great people, singing songs. 

gillis visit

We were lucky to have our friends the Gillis's come for the long weekend.  The kids were awesome (besides a 3pm crash yesterday- thank heavens for movies).  The first picture is from 3 years ago, C is holding Elliott- pretty cute to see what they are up together these days. There was lots of giggles during this.