It's hard to believe, but on Thursday Kaitlyn will be 9 years old! She had a few friends over on Saturday to celebrate. 

 

If you look closely at this picture you can see the girls are all blowing glitter.

 

Auntie Kendra of course made her famous birthay cake

 

and this year she helped all the girls decorate some fancy cookies.  Too cute to eat!

 

Happy birthday Kaitlyn! 

 

The thing she is most looking forward to about being 9: no more booster seat!

Pender Island

After going to Pender Island three years ago the girls were dying to go back.  So this summer we went with Gramps & Gram, Oma, Brian & Andree and their kids, and Jeff came out for a couple of days.  The boys loved the ferry ride!  

 We rented a house that had a great view with ferries passing by every half hour or so

and beautiful sunsets in the evening.

These three spent many hours in the "warm tub."

We went exploring the beach

for sea creatures

and sea glass.

We didn't find anything washed up from the tsunami, except for maybe this coconut???

 

 We saw sooo much wildlife:

75 deer (only 5 had antlers)

16 orcas

24 seals

6 vultures

lots of sea stars, jelly fish and sea anemones

1 snake

1 heron

1 mink

and 1 dolphin. 

To name a few.  But the highlight was seeing this little guy sunning on the beach for over an hour:

 I think that's the highlight of Rachael's entire life!!!  You can't even get that close at the aquarium!

 Playing frisbee golf was lots of fun, too.

 Yes, we had fun young and old.  Well, I don't know how much fun Everleigh had, but at least she didn't complain too much.   The kids are already asking when we can go back.

Everleigh Anastasia

We have a new neice!  Everleigh Anastasia was born this morning weighing 8.4 lbs.

Kaitlyn was the only one who wanted to hold her new cousin.  Well, I (Sharon) held her, too.

She's so sweet and precious, as all babies are.  Congratulations Brian and Andree!

New Rooms

The girls finally have their own rooms! 

After slowly working on the new room in the basement off and on since we moved in (4 years ago, can you believe it?) Rachael's new room is done. 

It's not a big room but it's her own. 

Which means that Kaitlyn also has her own room upstairs. 

We rearranged it so she has tons of room to play.

Better look quick because these are the cleanest these rooms are going to look in a while!

Easter Egg Hunt

We couldn't have asked for better weather for our 11th annual Easter Egg Hunt.

We were a big crowd this year.

Jaden had so much fun running to find the next egg that his goodies fell out of his basket!

This was the first year we found all the eggs - and even two from last year!

We had fun playing in the beautiful sunshine,

and making chocolate popsicles. Happy Easter!

Science World

We decided a four day Easter weekend wasn't quite long enough so on Thursday we took the kids on an unauthorized field trip to Science World.

We hopped on Sky Train for the last bit of the trip for an added adventure.

The Lego exhibit was pretty cool, though it wasn't as big as I was expecting it to be.

Darcy put his building skills to the test

and Rachael and Kaitlyn rode "Lego" horses.

We had lots of fun there - so much fun that Jaden wanted to crawl right in there with the dinosaur!

Sleepy Head

Temper tantrums sure wear you out!

Rachael's 11th Birthday

Rachael decided for her 11th birthday party to just have her three best friends over for a sleepover.

We went to Play Abby for a couple of hours of fun.

Kaitlyn and Jaden had fun there, too.

Then the next morning Auntie Kendra came over to help them make Angry Bird cake pops

which went on the cake.

Happy Birthday Rachael!

Can it be? Jaden's Three!!!

How can it be that my little boy is three years old already? Time flies when you're busy with three kids, I guess.We had his friend Nadiya over to celebrate on his birthday. She is just three days older than Jaden so we made a cake for both of them.But nothing like the amazing cake Auntie Kendra made for his party the next day!Thomas is the current favorite around here. He got his first set for Christmas and he plays with it all day, every day.Here they are with their cousins. Well, the little ones anyway.

Snow Day

We skipped school on Monday and it was closed on Tuesday so we had some fun in the snow: