Mothers Day

I've always been confused about whether there's an apostrophe in Mothers Day or not. This calendar in my hands says no. Whatever. (Note from Holly: Um, I've never seen it without an apostrophe so now I'm confused too.)

This past Mothers Day, I was sick as a dog and had to duck out of a special brunch invitation from the boys' Auntie Laramie at the restaurant where she works. It sounds like it was a heckuva good time and that the food was really good (endless shrimp! dessert buffet! omelette station!). Dang. Here are a couple of pictures from the brunch.



After the morning of rest, I rallied a bit so that Holly could hang out with some friends at a local art festival (super cool) and then, after nap time, it was time for our annual Moms Day ritual - heading on down to Dow's Lake to take some pictures with the tulips. Well, this year was something else. After that 30 degree Easter weekend, there were more hot temps in early May and all this coaxed the tulips out of the ground quite a bit early. Mothers Day Weekend is usually the time for tulips to shine. Instead, we had this:



Yes, those are toques and mitts we are wearing. There were snow flurries! All was not lost though; there were plenty of other tulip beds that were still in full bloom and we had the run of the place. No waiting for everyone else to take their pictures - we just snapped away. The gray day also made for good light.





Another bonus of the chilly weather was that we pretty much had the displays all to ourselves so we could talk to the staff and have a little fun with the Dutch and WWII artifacts:




On the way home from the tulips, we grabbed some pizza and had a nice quiet evening. All in all, it was a really nice day despite the frigid weather. We are pretty lucky to have the Tulip Festival in town and it is a nice way to spend part of Mother's Day. It is also a really cool opportunity to take some photos of Holly and the boys as Holly spends more time behind the camera than in front of it.

Random May stuff . . .

Quite a few things happened in May that we haven't really touched on yet. I'm only going to cover a couple of things in this post...it's time to get some pictures out there! Given that it was the first month that Max was out of daycare since late 2008, it was a great opportunity for him to do a bunch of neat activities with Leo and Holly. One of those special adventures that I have yet to take part in is Cosmic Adventures, a giant kid-oriented play center featuring play structures, ball pits and the like for kids to clamber on, in and around. There's also a baby area for the youngsters, so Leo and Max have been able to share in the fun. Here are some visuals:



In fact, Holly and the boys have had so much fun that we've roped some other friends of Leo's (um, and their parents) into going



The other really cool event for Max last month that I want to cover in this post was his friend's birthday party. One of the boys with whom he spent all of his time in daycare turned 4 and invited Max. We weren't entirely sure how it would go - Max has always been kind of possessive about presents and opening everybody else's at all events...but he was a real gentleman in letting his little buddy have his moment. And a little bit of cake is always a big plus. Leo got to attend too and both boys had a blast with their loot bags. A big thanks for the invitations!

We're alive

I promise, a lengthy post or series of posts is pending.

I just logged on and saw the title of our previous post, that Leo was now crawling. Man, that feels like an eternity ago. May was a crazy month, filled with visits from afar and the end of work for John. On the last day of the month, we left on a two-week tour of British Columbia to visit family and friends. We got back earlier this week, but have been primarily concerned with realigning the sleep situations of our little ones, who were locked into Pacific time for a bit there. The ship seems to have been righted at this point, so perhaps tonight or tomorrow night, I'll sit down and finally put some thoughts and pictures down in the blog.

Just to give you a taste of what's new for Leo, though, he has two new teeth, can climb up stairs (but certainly not down), is eating pretty much everything but citrus, shellfish and nuts, has suffered through two ear infections, has learned to point, is infinitely happier/smilier and has probably spoken his first two words (mama=mom and nana=banana). Wow, that's a lot.

Anyway, I promise there's more to come soon.