A Tale of Dolphins, Baboons and Crashing Trees

Let me try to summarize our summer thus far...
Dash fulfilled one of his ultimate dreams by getting a chance to "drive" a firetruck..

Unfortunately he and Christine ended up in the paddy wagon as generally you need to get permission to take firetrucks for a spin.After the generous self-application of sunscreen we've been on many outdoor adventures..

We hung out with the dolphins and deer at Marineland, and went on the ever-so-dangerous Ladybug rollercoaster - next stop Space Mountain.

We visited the Baboons, Lions, Rhinos and Elephants at African Lion's Safari. The kids had a blast (although I think Dash's favourite part was helping to drive the car through the Safari). Here's as shot of Christine taking her Uncle Mike on a Elephant ride.Both kids had the requisite pony ride at the park - here's Dash and his trusty stead "Oreo",

And Christine and her galloping girl "Firecracker".

The only scary part of the day was when we lost Dash in the ball pit, fortunately it only took a rescue team and several hours of searching to find him safe and sound.

Speaking of safe and sound - our backyard did not fare well in the recent storm that we went through this past weekend. A tree located on our neighbour's yard split in half and fell - crushing our shed, and landing on our deck and scraping our house. A little bit scary and a lot messy - but we seem to have minimal damage.I think we're just very lucky that the tree wasn't 3 feet longer or we would have a new island in our kitchen.

And that is the end of our summer update so far - in the future there will be cottage trips, playdates and more so check back in soon.

A Very Happy Mother's Day

Today I had a very Happy Mother's Day with my favourite people. We started the day with a long walk to and in "The Woods" that are near our house and it was a relaxing trek with many little surprises along the way.
Here's the Dashman with his trusty walking stick ready to tackle the world.
In lieu of a big bouquet of store bought flowers I got this beautiful sight - thousands and thousands of blooming trilliums.
But the most exciting part of the walk was searching for local wildlife - we saw birds, squirrels, ducks and four snakes**, which through the help of the Internet we have determined are Northern Ribbon Snakes. Of course the kids were really exciting about seeing them and quite brave - Ben and Christine even got close enough to one to have it snap it's jaws at them. We discovered that Molly the dog is an exceptionally good Snake Hunter and was able to sniff them out quite quickly.

Here's a shot of Christine posing with a pink Trillium she was excited to discover, we were also able to find burgundy Trilliums as well.

Finally one non-Mother's Day shot. Anyone who knows Dash knows that he is obsessed with vehicles of all kinds - and firetrucks are one of his favourites. Earlier this week Ben took Christine and Dash to our local firehouse to have a peep at the trucks and found one of the big engines out on the driveway. So here's a shot of two very happy kids on one very big Firetruck.

**No snakes were harmed in the making of this blog

At long last...

Finally! A long awaited blog updated...

We have had our first (of many we hope) Christine and Dash Zoo adventure of 2009 - here's how it went down. Above you'll see Ben and Dash looking at the Zebras and pondering the age old question of black with white stripes or white with black stripes?

At the same time Christine managed to scam a Zebra-ride out of her gullible Aunt Boo.

Here's a shot of Christine hanging with the Baboons - she's been a big fan ever since we visited African's Lion Safari last night and they were hanging out on our van doing crazy Baboon stuff (use your imaginations).

Both Christine and Dash were entranced by the giant aquarium that holds over 10 000 fish. The only frustrating part was that Christine kept on "losing" her favourite blue fish in the masses.

And what would a trip to the Zoo be without rides of some sort. Above you'll find Christine of Arabia and her faithful camel Tom (not quite the exotic name we were expecting). Christine was surprisingly brave to be riding around on this beast all by herself and had a great time.
We decided that Dash couldn't be trusted to actually stay on the Camel without supervision but Dash did to get to ride his own exotic beast - a stationary Jeep! To Dash that's pretty much as good as it gets - unless he was able to take a firetruck for a ride, now that would be heaven.

Happy 2nd Birthday Dash!

Our little guy Dash celebrated his 2nd birthday on Sunday surrounded by (some of) his adoring family - in attendance were Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Luke and Amber, Uncle Matt, Uncle Geof, Aunt Brenda and their favourite cousin Caroline.

I think Dash had a great day - he got some great presents by people that obviously know his tastes very well, presents such as a cool plane (that Papa flies - according to Dash, a bat-copter, some trucks, clothes and a Spiderman Mr Potato Head - below you'll see Dash trying on the Peter Parker glasses that came with it. Dash and Christine also both got super-hero capes that I made for them (I am slowly trying to learn how to sew), then Uncle Geof took them for some flying lessons around the living room.

And of course there was cake - a blue truck cake that Christine and I made for our guy - Dash loved it and requested "more, more" several times until we all decided he had eaten enough.

So a big thank you to all of his guests for celebrating his big day with him, I think he had a great day.

Dancing Queen

Christine has been taking "dance" classes for the past 9 weeks at our rec centre - and although she was originally a little scared to go she really warmed up the class and enjoyed going each week. Us parent-types have had to wait outside the classroom each week while the kids instead danced around, although we could occasionally sneak peaks of the action inside today we were treated to the big show.

So the following video is Christine's first dance recital - all 2 minutes of it. You may notice that the girls around Christine seem to be dancing an actual routine - but of course in our eyes Christine was the best dancer there.