Summy Vacay - Day 41: Headed West

I am heading to Vancouver to run my first half marathon this weekend and so the kids were dropped off at Nana and Papa's house for a weekend full of fun times without me. As for me, today Ryan and I set out west bound on a start of our weekend away. Pretty uneventful except for a few wildlife spottings. We made it half way to Vancouver and stopped for the night.

The next couple fun days of summer vacation will be mine but I have no doubts the kids will be entertained to the point of exhaustion all weekend long with their Nana and Papa in Invermere.

Summer Vacay - Day 40: Packing

I know this is a lame activity but my kids really do enjoy packing. They love picking out a few books or toys to take for the road, it builds the anticipation for what lays ahead. They have their own little suitcases from our world travelling days in the Philippines and once they are filled the kids drag them around playing airport. So yes, lame for me but super fun for them!

Summer Vacay - Day 39: Sun Dial

This morning as soon as we woke up we made ourselves a sun dial. We weren't too sure if it was going to work but we every hour on the hour we went outside and marked our dial where the shadow lied and noted the time.

12 hours later our sun dial was only off about 1 hour which I thought was pretty good considering it spent the day on our front porch with the kids continually running in and out. I'm sure it got kicked and nudged and then quickly righted so next time we'll be a lot more careful as to where we put it but it was a pretty good activity. It kept the kids engaged and I found them reminding me each hour to check and mark the dial so definitely a success.

Summer Vacay - Day 38: Statue Fun

It's so nice to spend a hot sunny day outside. After church today we took a nice family walk a few blocks to the Lethbridge City Hall building to let the kids ride the bronze horse statue. We've been before but for whatever reason, it never gets old. We pick the cowboys nose, kiss the horse, all pile on and just be goofy.

Summer Vacay - Day 37: Inglewood Sunfest

Today we headed up to Calgary to check out the Inglewood Sunfest. In the little research that we did we learned it was a street festival with loads of vendors, a kid zone and street performers. All those things sounded good to us so off we set. It was pretty fun walking down the street checking out all the different vendors. There were lots of neat little specialty shops and abstract art on display along with delicious smelling foods. Just after the first block we ran into our first street performer. He was a magician who spit out cards, farted out balls and liked to use Brayden as his man to do his tricks to. We checked it out for a bit and continued on our way picking up some balloons along the way. One of the specialty shops sold forged Japanese knifes and watched as they shaped the metal for a knife and a few feet away we watched a dance group giving a show to a crowd.

At the end of the block was a little show and shine with Herbie! I love Herbie. It was HOT HOT HOT out and lunch time so we turned around with a mission to get some food in our bellies. We had to stop off to cool down at a couple of spray hoses and that seemed to buy us extra time with the kids so when we made it to the Kids Zone they were ready to play. They got free tattoos, stickers, frisbees and keychains. They played some games and we had to pull them out of the place to get ourselves some food. It was pretty cool, lots to see and enough performers and balloons to keep the kids entertained. I would recommend people to check out the street festival if they haven't before!

Summer Vacay - Day 36: Masters of Disguise

Today the kids picked out some faces they liked and we made some masks. What I thought was going to be a simple activity turned into a 2 hour creation period. I didn't think too far in advance, if I had I would have realized the kids would struggle cutting through the plates so only one mask could be cut at a time by myself. This wasn't too big of a deal except that it was getting near to dinner and so I was trying to juggle dinner prep and 3 masks. The kids were amazingly patient as they watched me work through one mask to the other. Thankfully Ryan got home from work and jumped right into professional cutter helping me out. First we needed to find our masks. I did a Google image search for their requests and came up with a nice Wolverine mask and an equally perfect Hello Kitty face that needed minimal resizing in Photoshop (Maddy's head is smaller then Sydney's so I made two different sizes). We printed them off on regular white paper and cut out the image. Once the image was cut out we pasted them onto paper plates to add the perfect strength reinforcement so they wouldn't break or bend. After cutting out the pasted mask we poked small holes and attached elastic string to keep them around their little heads. Success. The masks fit great and the paper plates were strong enough to keep the holes from ripping and the masks from bending and tearing from little fingers manhandling. The kids look good, don't they?

Summer Vacay - Day 35: Squishies

Today was a colder day (18*C) and so the kids didn't really spend too much time running around outside like they normally do and it was the perfect excuse to put them to work in the house. We did that good, much needed cleaning that I've been neglecting because I was waiting for a rainy/windy day. The kids weren't too thrilled about it and to be honest, because we did it on a day they were spending inside it didn't stay clean for a while but at least that layer of grime building up was scrubbed away. Without house dropping in temperature I had no reservations turning on the stove today for some cooking. We made a couple batches of playdough and set some aside for our activity today which I will call "Squishies." We took balloons and shoved them full of our newly made, super fresh playdough. After they were filled I tied off the balloons and let the kids squish and mold them for a few minutes while the glue gun heated up. Once the glue was hot and ready we glued on some eyes and small pom poms for hair if they chose to. Of course they had to use the markers so they drew mouths on theirs and deemed them satisfactory enough for a picture. You guess for yourselves whose is whose but mine is the best. *wink wink*

Summer Vacay - Day 34: O Christmas Tree

We made a quick trip to the Dollar Store today and returned with this Growing Tree that cost us $1.25. It was something that seemed pretty simple; set up the cardstock tree, put in the included liquid and watch. And watch longer. I think that the package stated that we would start to see something within the first half hour but all we noticed was that the tree was getting saturated in the liquid. The kids were totally bored and I was thinking to myself "well I guess that's why it was only $1, it doesn't work." I still had some faith so we set it off to the side and kept busy with other things. After some time Sydney came inside and started freaking out. I had no idea what was going on but she had already ran back outside to assemble the troops. They all came stomping through the kitchen and stared at the tree so this drew my attention and I had to join the small crowd. Sure enough we could see the starts of our growing tree!

Now that we knew that it worked the kids were running in and out of the house for the rest of the afternoon. It was fun when we went out to do some errands and came home to HUGE growth and they started jumping up and down. The 'oooohhhhhs and ahhhhhhhhs' were amplified after growth was noticeable on the trunk as well as the tips and the kids were asking me how I did it. I'm just pretty awesome like that, I know how to open up a package and set it up in style!

Summer Vacay - Day 33: Sprinklers

One thing we don't have at our house is a sprinkler. Our garden hose has been squished on the end so nothing can be hooked up to it. When we play outside with water the kids all know how to cover the long skinny end with their thumb to make a stronger farther spray so it never seemed necessary. While we were at my moms visiting they opened up the hot tub cover, turned on the sprinkler and filled the dogs kiddie pool with water and let the kids go wild. It was crazy watching them jump out of the hot tub, run through the cold sprinkler or dunk themselves in the little pool until they were chilly and then diving back into the hot tub to warm up. They were out there all afternoon playing in the water and it got me thinking, maybe we need to invest in a sprinkler.

Summer Vacay - Day 32: Angry Birds

Todays activity was so much fun. It took up almost 3 hours of purely playing together. We started by making our players. Each kid made an angry and a pig. Is everyone familiar with the game Angry Birds? I'm not so much but my kids play it on the iPad at times and have seen Ryan attempt to do his thing. As far as my understanding goes, you try to knock over structures by launching angry birds at pigs. So each of them made their pig and angry bird using a glue gun, googly eyes, felt and pom poms. Once they were completed they each modelled them for the camera:

Putting our animals aside momentarily we took some dixie cups and built a simple tower and started there. It didn't take too long until their ambitions grew and Brayden had to use every single dixie cup we had. I think the tower was taller then Madison and they giggled in anticipation as they carefully placed the pigs on the tower. Once all pigs were placed, Brayden launched his Angry Bird and watched his empire crumble to the ground.

I can not tell you how many times they told me how much fun they were having and they thought it was "SO AWESOME." Once they were finished and I forced them to quit so we could go out and get some groceries they very carefully placed their pigs and birds in ziplocks so they can play with them again tomorrow. I would totally recommend this for anyone. All three my kids loved it although Maddy focused more on creating homes for her cute cuddly friends and the older two were all about the destruction angle, it was great fun.

2012 Beattie Reunion

Well, it's that time of year! We had the annual Beattie reunion this weekend and it was AWESOME. The couple of vacations trips we took up past Castle Mountain to prepare were totally worth it, even though those trips were so much fun too. It was our (Ryan and I) turn to organize the troops, find our venue and delicate tasks/meals which was kind of intimidating at first thought but with everyone doing what was asked it was easy. The technical start time was breakfast Friday morning and all but 1 family was able to make the trip up Thursday night getting the cousins all pumped up for the weekend. Friday morning the sun was out, breakfast was great and we were ready to play! The kids were riding bikes and quads while the adults followed on their quads. After everyone had arrived the party was really able to start and we had some lunch, got sweaty posing for a family picture and then got the kids in the water. The men had made a rope swing off the big trees into the river which was a big hit with the little kids and Uncle Derek!

After the men were finished building the rope swing they were back to work building a sweat lodge for later that night. That required some collection of special rocks, chopping down a few dead trees, a big tarp and a HUGE fire to heat the rocks. It seemed that building a big fire was no problem for these men thanks to the help of a propane tank. In the evening after Grandma's night games we started heading across the river to the sweat lodge. Jess was the only girl courageous enough to tackle the boys in there and I'm sure if she didn't enter in her sweats she could have outlasted each and every one of them! When it did get to hot you would see the tarp lift up and out someone would run into the river to cool down before going back in for another bought of the extreme heat.

The next morning all these men were boasting about how amazing they felt after their hot/cold experience the night before and were already talking about how they could improve on the lodge for that night. After breakfast we played some Minute to Win It and had a lot of laughs together at everyone else's expense. We played around, packed some lunches and loaded everyone onto quads for a ride up into the mountains to check out West Castle Falls. So pretty!

The boys did some fishing and the kids explored in the shallow waters and around the little paths close to the falls. There were deep parts and the water was freezing cold but the kids didn't really seem to notice it all. Sort of makes me jealous how they are so tolerant to things like that. I was more of a wuss, stayed close to the shore and just snapped the pictures and let everyone else get wet and cold.

As soon as we got back to camp late in the afternoon the kids got straight into their swimsuits and attacked the water. I have no idea how they get so much energy but I was so ready for a nap and a lazy evening. I got out my book and sat in my comfy chair and read while my kids splashed and the men worked at improving their sweat lodge. After dinner we all gathered around the fire pit for an evening of performing. Grandpa started out talking about fire and how awesome it is (in a controlled environment of course) and lit it up for the night. He had earlier placed a small copper pipe with rubber hosing inside it into the top of the fire and as the fire burned it started lighting up with different colours. It was pretty cool and looked amazing. After the fire was lit and warming everyone each family got up and rotated through a skit and song performing in front of the family. It was fun and our kids really enjoyed learning and practicing our little performances. Even the next day on the drive home they were repeating one skit and laughing uncontrollably. It was great. Sunday we had a short Sunday lesson and the kids each got a sling shot from Grandma after learning the story of David and Goliath. Slowly people started to clean up and pack up to go home but we didn't end up leaving until almost dinner time. It was such a fun weekend it kind of sucked to pull out of the perfect spot and say goodbye to everyone. It was such a success and I know the kids will be talking about it until next year so ... mission accomplished!

Summer Vacay - Day 31: Face Painting

My kids love dressing up, putting on old Halloween costumes and playing around. They love putting on those fake tattoos and the girls love getting into my make up so I wasn't surprised when it only took about 30 seconds after Aunt Jess brought out the face paints for the line ups to start forming. My kids love getting their faces painted and I think it's one of the few things that they will actually sit still for. It didn't take too long for Grandma to get in there and help out to shorten the line. With the two of them working hard they got through all the cousins and my girls went back for seconds getting big red hearts on their hands. They were pretty happy to be sporting their face art and Madison was very careful with her smiles so that her cheek wouldn't disfigure her little kitty. Also, I had no idea Aunt Jess had such mad skills with the face painting!

Summer Vacay - Day 30: Minute To Win It

Minute To Win It is so fun to watch. You kind of make a food of yourself having to do all these silly things making silly faces but who cares right? Its fun if you let yourself have fun. This year we played Minute to Win It and the kids were included on one of the challenges. We all had to get the cookie from our foreheads to our mouths. Daughter like mother.

Summer Vacay - Day 29: Boat Races

Yesterday we headed back up into the mountains for some more camping. This time it was with Ryan's family for a reunion. That means 14 kids all 7 years old and younger which equals lots of, um, energy. How to productively burn and direct all that energy? Boat races of course. Ryan separated the participating cousins into three different teams and got each team to pose for their official team picture:

Once teams were sorted out they were placed in their boats and off they went down the river. The three oldest boys were separated into a different team and each of these boys were pretty much the only ones that did much work. I will give credit to the 2 oldest girls of the bunch for the odd effort but the younger kids were solely along for a free ride.

Free ride or not I think most everyone enjoyed floating down the river, especially my three. Dad got in the boat with them and took them for a ride further down the river then they'd ever been before. Brayden took Madison for a ride while he was trying to teach himself how to master the paddles. He did alright and I think Ryan only had to go in after them once when he got tangled up in some roots. Sydney then had to have her own turn with the paddles which started out all right. It wasn't until she started picking up speed with the current and heading into deeper waters that realization dawned on her and she gave me the frantic looks that said "How do I steer this thing?" Thankfully she survived just fine and was ready to give it another try a few seconds later. However I was a party pooper and told her no because there was no way I was getting back in that freezing water to save her again. Next time we use paddles it will be in warmer waters!