Rain, rain, go away.

I want my clothes to dry today.

Katie, of course, thought it was hilarious.



Until I told her that her clothes are out there too.

Little funnies

No pictures at the moment, keep forgetting to take the camera card out of the computer.

Katie has started putting words together to make sentences. Sometimes, good ones. Her new thing is "no want", the meaning of which should be obvious. This morning she told me "Katie hungy" so I asked her if she wants breakfast. "No want. Hungy" Okay, do you want some yogurt? "no want." Waffle? "no want" Pancake? "no want" Cereal? "no want. Daddy cereal." Apparently, cereal just isn't as good unless it comes from Daddy's bowl.

She also got pretty excited a couple of days ago because "Bailey tail running". Bailey's tail is in perpetual motion when there's a kid around.

Loads of pictures

For my birthday we went camping. Big surprise there, I think I've been camping more birthdays than not, and what better way to spend a birthday than surrounded by family in beautiful surroundings? I love camping, Andrew loves camping, and it appears that Katie loves camping too. See those mountains? Well, we didn't quite make it there, but we were close. Most years, it's my side of the family, this year, the Midgetts decided to get together too, so that's where we went since we were with my family in March at the Great Lakes 50th anniversary.

Here is about 10 minutes after we arrived. The Way farm, where we all camped, has 300+ acres for Bailey to run on... And all the kids want to take her for a walk on the leash. Of course, she loves kids so much she won't complain for anything.
Here she is with Katie & Alicia.
Then we did some stuff. Mostly eating, it seems like. We did go for a nice long quad ride around the pastures, which was great fun. We took plenty of quads and plenty of helmets, so everyone who wanted to go for a ride could do so safely, and it was fantastic. Lots of people who hadn't ridden on a quad before got to, and everyone got suitably muddy. Even Miss Bailey, who hasn't gone on a quad run for a long time and was so excited that she wouldn't stay on the back of mine when she got tired. So she over did it and got a bit sore. And then slept for 3 days. Young at heart does not mean young legs, my girl. You are 9 now, you know.

On the morning of my birthday, instead of breakfast in bed, I got this while I made everyone else breakfast. But it was so sweet to listen to that I don't mind one bit.

At lunch time, we had watermelon. Here is Katie with a bunch of her girl cousins.
Jalina, Aliyah, Katie, Lauren, Diana.
And one boy cousin, Dylan. Waiting for someone to suggest another quad ride.

This is the look I got when I suggested eating something besides watermelon today.
Then someone mentioned spaghetti.
And it was GOOOOOD spaghetti. So good that she ate 2 platefuls of it.

And for dessert, more watermelon.

While everyone huddled under our awning to escape the torrential downpour that arrived the second we finished lunch. Good thing it's a big awning! We had even more people under there a few minutes after this picture.

And on the car rides and while a little girl was napping, I managed to put the finishing touches on my first sweater. It's a bit big yet, but I did that on purpose (who knew when it would get finished?!), and both of us are happy with it.

Goings on

Uncle Mark and Aunty Kim got married!
It was a beautiful outdoor wedding at the family farm. Lots of room for the kids (and adults) to run around and burn off energy, and a fantastic sunny day.

And, in true farmer fashion, they arrived at the reception (which was about 20 feet away from the ceremony) on the quad. Which got washed first, at least. Photo credit for this one goes to Aunty Alice, I was too busy keeping track of a 2 year old.

Who spent the entire ceremony munching crackers and guzzling water.

The night before, Aunty Naomi came over to paint her toenails to match her dress, so Katie had to have painted nails too. Good thing I managed to find some super-quick-drying polish for her!

Today when we checked out our yard, we found lots of big apples,

in the enormous apple tree.
(someone should really prune that thing)

Fat, juicy raspberries that taste so good, but you have to brave the nettles to get to them!

Cauliflower!

And tomatoes! Pay no attention to the weeds, please.
Some of those tomato plants are about 2 inches shorter than I am. And about 3 feet wide. It's getting jungly in there.

Today's haul.
Red & blue potatoes, a few peas, 3 cherry tomatoes, and 2 strawberries.
Yum!

Horsey business.

I almost didn't get this post written tonight, because my internet was distracted by the storm. Getting a bit tired of that. But I played for a while and then it was back. Here's what I was playing with.

I was playing with the picture, not the horse. We played with the horse earlier today. There are more pictures of him, but I spent so much time playing with this one that I didn't get those resized. Here are some other things to look at.


For instance, the twins. They share Charlie's paddock. (Did I mention that we're boarding him down the road at a friend's house? She has an arena and other horses who are teaching Charlie to be friendlier) These twins actually come from 2 different sets of parents, but they share strikingly similar characteristics. They are nearly identical in size, you have to spend a ton of time out there to see which one is smaller. They have identical leg markings, and their face markings are almost the same as well. And surprisingly, they are exactly the same shade of palomino.

But the little one is much friendlier. He wanted Katie to reach out to him, but they couldn't get their timing right, he'd reach when she wasn't looking and vice-versa. This is the best picture I could get, because Katie was much more interested in Charlie standing next to me.
Katie is in love with this bunny. He is obviously a child's bunny, he wants nothing to do with me, but he darts right over to Katie as soon as she shows up.

Here are a couple of pictures from before the storm that interrupted my internet. The only thing I altered was their size. This rainbow was amazingly bright.
Or as Katie calls it "raining-bow"

It's a start.

This.
Becomes this.
(Plus about 3C that I send with A when he went to work)

And with a little help,

Becomes this.
(And then some.)

We still have nearly a gallon left, hoping to get to that this afternoon and tomorrow.

Made you smile!

She does, doesn't she?The other day, we discovered that kids 2 & under are free at Galaxyland at West Edmonton Mall. And apparently, their chaperones (since they are not tall enough to go alone) are free as well. Which means that we went on the carousel for free. And this one is much slower than the one in Paris. We were by ourselves, so this is the only picture I got, but she's clearly much happier than she was on the horse in Paris. She was quite disappointed when our turn was over.

Yesterday she decided to get out the pouch Grammy made and cart her baby around just like Mommy carts her.
"See, I can bend and everything!"

She does not, however, like to hold still for very long.

And this morning, Andrew's mom and I escaped at 7am and went and picked strawberries.
Between the 2 of us, we got 4 gallons in less than half an hour. Not too bad.
So today, I guess we're making jam.

Birthday wishes from around the world.

This parcel actually arrived last week, but with the holiday weekend, the post office was closed for 4 days.

Some friends in Japan sent Katie a nice birthday gift. She was so excited to get some mail just for her. Inside, she found a new purse with a bunny on it, a toy fan, a beautiful handkerchief and a little washcloth. She stuffed it all in her purse and demanded "PENNIES!" to put in there too. She loves her new purse, she was a little upset that I wouldn't let her take it to bed.

Then she wanted to take a picture with a more realistic expression.

2 of 2 - June 28

Today was a scorcher. So we decided to play in the water.

First we tried the sprinkler, but that well water is cold, and she wasn't real sure what to do with it.
So we got out the little pool.
Still really cold, but she seemed happy enough with it.
That's more like it!
Ew! A bug!

Hmmm. This is fun!Thanks Mommy!
Then she got tired of playing in the water and decided to have a car ride.
This is the face I get when I ask her to smile for me.
And this is "show me some teeth."
What a little goof.
And Bailey cried the whole time, because we had to tie her up so she wouldn't get the water all muddy while Katie was playing. She sure had fun diving in after Katie was done though!