Skating

During the month of November, we enrolled Elijah in his first set of skating lessons. The session ran for month and lessons were twice a week. I was a little worried about the falling but he seems to really like winter sports. Skiing is one of his favorite things to do and it turns out skating was ok for him too, even with the falling. He was very pleased that during the run of lessons Mama, Papa and Charlotte all made it out to watch. He made great progress and we'll consider signing up for the next session in January. In the meantime, here are some pictures on and off the ice. At the end, there's a video from his first lesson (sooo painful to watch) and from his last lesson. Yay Elijah!

First time getting all geared up

Posing with Mama

Last day; Papa doing up his skates and waiting for the lesson

On the ice, last day

And finally, some videos

Day 1 aka Distracted by bright objects


Last day; what an improvement!

Elijah Turns 5!

This past Sunday was Elijah's 5th birthday!! The whole weekend was about birthdays! We started off with cupcakes to the kindergarten class on Friday morning.

This was followed by some silly shots of the kids in the backyard. :)

Saturday was Elijah's party. We borrowed Rowan and Harriet's common room (thanks!) and invited many of Elijah's friends to help celebrate, including some new school friends.

In case you didn't catch it, the theme of the party this year was Transformers!! Bumblebee made quite an appearance! ;)

Sunday evening we had our family dinner celebration for Elijah. We started out by making pizzas. I think the "kids" had a great time. (Didn't they, Ed?)

After dinner was birthday cake! We were kind of "caked" out at this point so we had a special mango, blueberry icecream cake! YUMMY! :)

And finally, Elijah opened all his birthday gifts.

The other event on Sunday was Elijah's friend Josh's birthday party! The kids had a blast. Thanks for inviting us Josh!!

Do you think Elijah had a good weekend? Well, this about sums it up! Happy Birthday Elijah!!!

PS. Now we've got about a week's worth of assembly to do on all these toys....

Summer Favorites

Here are some favorite picture from the summer months this year.

Canada Day - Yes, Summer posts in November. :)

Canada was full of fun events this year. We started out the day with some community celebration in a nearby park. Elijah especially liked the firetruck, where as Yumi and Charlotte enjoyed the face painting.

Yehyeh got tired after the walk and took a rest in the wagon. :) Elijah played with the diggers and Charlotte played with the new ribbon wand that she was given.

Yumi and Elijah also posed for a nice picture. Charlotte wasn't interested. :)

Later on that day we enjoyed a backyard BBQ with our friends Peter and Val. They invited us to come over early and go on a "little" hike near their house. Well, what's little for them turned out to be over an hour long hike on interesting terrain with the kids. However, we made it all the way in good spirits and I was amazed at how well Charlotte did! Quite the troopers, our kids!