August Long Weekend

It's very sad that our first trip to the lake didn't happen this year (again!) until August.  We made our first attempt on Saturday after the boys (aka entertainment) arrived, but it proved unsuccessful.  Something was wrong with the water pump.

So instead we got to listen to beautiful piano music.

Attempt number two on Monday was a great success!

Leif made some nice curves on skis.

And had some spectacular falls.

Keith got the water up there too.

Here's Kel shredding it.

And Joel not far behind.

The magnificent Krystal got up for the first time on skis!!! (Some of the photos in this post are hers.)

Even I got in on the skiing action.

Then we moved onto surfing.  Here's Leif showing us all how it's done.

And Keith.

Here's Kel shredding it again.

And Joel mastered the no rope trick.

My surfing turn came with some screaming when the board went partly under.

The next sport the boys tried was the air chair.  This thing is hilarious.  I dare you not to laugh while looking at the next few pictures.  Make sure you blow them up for full facial expressions!

Keith had the first go.

And Kel followed with some equally daring moves.  Those two are pros.

Then Joel tried for the first time.  He was pretty happy once he got up.

And this is him going way higher than he expected!

Last, but most terrifying, was wakeboarding.  Keith pulled off many great moves, but here's the best picture we got.

And here's his last jump.

And here's Kel shredding it for the final time.

 Krystal's lovely picture of the boys.

And here's one of us girls.

Overall, awesome weekend!  And we've already arrived at another one!

It's Friday, Friday!

Our rainy Friday night consisted of me going on a successful shoe shopping trip...

...while Leif and Keith went to the batting cage.

We got some pretty neat shots when I got there.

Where's the bat?

Bent bat.

Nice swing!

You can see the bat the whole way.

I even hit the ball!

They had this pro-pitcher machine.  The screen showed a pitcher throwing a ball and a real one would come out of a hole in the screen.  You can see the yellow blur!

Summer Fun

We just returned from a short but sweet time at my grandparents' farm in Ontario.  We saw aunts, uncles, cousins, and other extended family - most of whom I haven't seen in 5 to 10 years!  And of course Leif got to meet a lot of new people!  The weather was of the fantastic summer variety and we even got some colour on our pale bodies!

Here are the 7 of us cousins on our way to swim in the river.

We go swimming near a bridge so the adventurous lot can jump off of it.

Here are the girls.

We also went for some bike rides on these really old bikes.

One of my very talented cousins brought some body paint and gave us temporary tattoos.  All of these were on me, Leif, or my sister.

Much eating and much card playing also took place.  Overall, awesome 3 days.  Back to work tomorrow...

Petless

Our ugly bottom feeding fish died a couple weeks ago.  It was gross.  I may or may not have screamed a few times.

And now we have sold our turtles to a lovely man who has a nice big indoor pond with another big turtle to be their big brother.  We're kind of happy because we're sick of cleaning that disgusting tank and they'll be happier there and I will no longer have mini panics during the day thinking that the turtle tank may have broken the table it's on and destroyed our house.  But we're kind of sad because we liked looking at them.

Any suggestions for what to put on the table now?  We're thinking smaller fish tank and some nice green healthy plants!

Last Week in a Nutshell

Wednesday:  First day of real work!  11:15am, cue first real project.  It's a doozy.  Analyzing a poorly designed two-way concrete slab to see if it will stay up.  (I'm still working on it!)

Thursday:  Forget concrete design notes in the closet at home.  Genius move cost me my lunch hour at 9am.  Drive way down to Chinook mall to get a security tag off my article of clothing that was missed.  Took the whole evening almost.  Though we did go to Staples after to get some special rulers for work!

Friday:  Felt a tiny bit less stupid at work.  Had supper with the family and some old friends.  Refereed a basketball game.

Saturday:  Refereed another game and kicked a player out for swearing.  Did some housecleaning.

Sunday:  Lunch with the family and supper with the other family!  Leif gets the xbox for his month or so.  Hello awful cliches courtesy of NHL2011!

Monday:  CONVOCATION!  Yup.  It's official.  Got to wear my gold strappy grad heels.  Good thing they peeked out from under the tent I was wearing!  Lovely grad BBQ supper at the parents with a beautiful bouquet of flowers to take home.  (Pictures of grad hopefully will come from my grandparents camera because I didn't bring one...)  Congrats to my good friend Tim for receiving the gold medal in civil engineering!  He definitely deserved it!

Tuesday:  One week complete at work.  Feeling a little more comfortable with my lack of knowledge.  Leif finally got to spend time with Keith at their favourite hangout, Earl's.  First night of boot camp.  Oh man.  Here's to hopefully being able to move tomorrow!!