Sweet Yet Sour

We had a pretty good summer here – with a few bumps – and it’s probably about time to dump some of the best photos of what we did onto the blog.

One of our local parks, where we spend a lot of time, has a large sand pit with a water spigot that is on during the summer months.  I’m pretty sure that this is the curse of many local mothers – but I always come to the park prepared with extra towels and two sets of clothes for the kids.  There’s always a bath after – so I let the kids do as they please and get as muddy as they want.  Anna’s socks were originally a light purple – prior to this episode!

We spent plenty of time baking in the kitchen this summer – and I generally have two willing, if funny-face making helpers:

Henry loves to help with all stages of cookie making and can get pretty serious about putting them on the cookie sheet:

In July a traveling carnival always comes to town, just a few blocks away in a high school parking lot.  The carnies are scary and most of the rides are too dangerous for our kids to ride, but we did find a few that they could ride with parents:

The kids loved the carousel – I think we rode that thing 5 times!

And then there was the spinning/circling bears (Anna chose pink of course!):

A few weeks later we went to visit Nate and Laura and spend the weekend with them.  We spent some time on their neighbors swing set (look Nate can handle 3 kids at once!):

And then we went into a local town and tried out the indoor carousel there (sense a theme here?):

This was about where we come to a little break in the action of our summer.  In mid-July Mike had surgery to remove his tonsils, fix a deviated septum, get a new tube in his ear and fix a gland associated with his sinuses.  It was a pretty quick surgery and a few hours later when we were on our way home Mike, still in a drug-induced haze, snapped a post-op picture:

For the next two weeks while Mike recovered, and ate nothing but pudding or slushies, there was a lot of this:

After two weeks of doing not much but laying in bed, Mike went back to work, started to feel better, and is now almost fully recovered (his ear is still giving him a little trouble).

Having not attended a music concert in ages, I was quite happy to have the opportunity to attend a concert this summer with my mom at our city Botanic Gardens.  I have no pictures of the performers – Ladysmith Black Mombazo – and their lovely dance moves – but I did manage to take a picture of one of the water features in the evening light:

A few weeks later work began on the replacing of our roof which had been badly damaged in a June hailstorm.  We’ve had multiple problems with our roofers, not the least of which was that they showed up without notice and without supplies early one Tuesday morning.  Fortunately, this was easily solved with an impromptu trip to my parents’ house (kids, dog and all), where we hid out from the noise.  That day we had a great time going to a restaurant where you can sit in the cabin of an old airplane and then play in the cockpit after your meal:

The kids and Grandpa had a good time:

This is my dad’s “Glad they can’t actually drive this plane!” look…

And then in the afternoon we trooped down to a park near my parents’ house with the dogs.  The kids love their Grandpa!

At the end of August Mike was recovered enough to attend the annual salmon fishing tournament that goes on the waters off of British Columbia with my father and my uncle.  While Mike was gone for 5 days having very little luck with the salmon, the kids spent some time attempting to create the longest toy train track in history:

The track from here stretched into Anna’s room for several feet until they ran out of track pieces.  (Also, I have no pictures of this track that do not include the children making funny faces for the camera – go figure!)

We tried to make it so that Mike had plenty of brew days this summer.  He generally spends these days with his buddy Chris, who conveniently lives in our neighborhood.  The guys seem to have a great time brewing batches of beer together – Mike has made an amber beer, a tripel, a French Farmhouse, a Biere de Garde and some English cider (for me!) so far this season.  Once they get to the stage when they must chill their wort – it looks like this:

This summer we discovered that a local outdoor mall has a lovely splash pad where the kids can play in the fountains and then we can have a nice lunch in the shade.  I took the kids there a bunch of times this summer and took a classic summer picture of Anna there that we will end with; Anna stuck several grapes in her mouth, did her best chipmunk face and then let me take a close-up (silly girl!):