henry turns 4 and sam turns 6

With these guys having their birthdays a few weeks ago, we know summer is drawing to a close and school is around the corner. Nine days between them on birthdays makes it easy to celebrate them together, however in our house with so many people wanting to have specific one-on-one time, we always try and celebrate each of them as individuals.

We have a few traditions here - on your birthday you get to pick your birthday meal, your cake, we get out your photo album and we tell them all about their birth story. Stew writes them a special poem, we talk about what time they were born, what happened the days following, and what they were like as a baby. And when it comes to these brothers they are so very different - Sam is sensitive, gentle and very focused on building projects, animals and design. Henry on the other hand gets very frustrated with building, is more vocal and has very specific and set ways on which he likes to play. In other words they disagree, argue, are very vocal on their opinions and often have lots of trouble playing together. Board games need adult supervision, they can't seem to agree on train track designs, Sam doesn't enjoy colouring, painting or dressing up as much, where Henry loves doing these things. Henry loves emergency vehicles, he tells us he wants to be a firefighter and a farmer when he grows up, Henry is an interesting mix of both Anna and Sam. As he heads into school Stew and I are very interested in learning how he will behave and what areas he will enjoy. We suspect activities around gross motor skills will be what he enjoys the most - he's very balanced on his bike, on the playground and with balls and bats.

They are an interesting mix these two, they get the benefit of a more experienced parent and a big sister paving the way as a positive role model (and where we learned from our mistakes!) - Happy Birthday number 4 and 6 guys, we love you!

our time in killbear

We have arrived home from another great camping trip. Anna has been away at Camp Quin-Mo-Lac, so this was a trip for me and the boys. We try and plan every summer to meet up with a few of my university roommates, they all love camping, and with our kids the same age it makes for a great group experience with lots of time for catching up and hearing about what everyone is up to. We stayed at a different group site this year - 1501, down by the rocks in the group camping area. With the fire ban, it made for some nice nights looking at the stars and playing with glow sticks.

We saw lots of wildlife on this trip - a huge highlight for everyone. Here is an American Toad, found one more on the rocks.

This is their reaction after it peed on Stew.

Lots of deer, I think we saw at least 10 or 12. Including a few fawns.

We rented a canoe and paddled around the tip of Killbear.

The park is so dry many of the leaves have fallen off the trees near the rocks. Here we found a gartner snake on our way into the woods from the point.

Lighthouse selfie!

The nature centre at Killbear is amazing. They have a snake talk daily with Charlie the Foxsnake, they show real displays of what campsites look like after bears with coolers and water jugs punctured with tooth marks and scratches. There had been no bear sightings the week we were there.

Here we are checking out a rock island with lots of seagulls, they were not happy with us!

Gosh, Henry looks so grown up to me in this picture. He got another haircut due to the heat, and it makes him look a lot older than 4.

Sam found a few of the nights hard, he was really missing Anna, in fact we all were. But as you can see below, she is back from QML - filled with funny stories, a rain soaked sleeping bag and a new camp sweatshirt and friendship bracelets. She is loving it there and we are hoping Sam might tag along next year with her.

biking to west montrose covered bridge

A few weeks ago we decided to test out our biking legs after a summer of practice and a few trips in the city. We'd heard from Kate and Craig that a nice flat trail exists from Guelph to Millbank called the Kissing Bridge Trailway. It also has Ontario's longest and oldest covered bridge in West Montrose.

We knew that it would be too long for Henry, so we decided to start is Ariss and see how far we could go, knowing the trail was flat and a nice hard packed gravel. The trail takes you through some beautiful Mennonite country, the fields and smells were incredible. We even saw a few horse and buggy with families and children.

Just as we stopped for lunch we came across the bike lift and stairs to take us up to the road that connects to West Montrose. We had to push our bikes up a small bike ramp 7 stories high, but at least that was the only real hill (little did I know the hard part would be coming back down...)

As you can see from the pictures, the sun went behind a few clouds just as we were getting ready to leave and it started to lightly rain. Well it rained almost the entire 10km back - we only stopped once for a trail mix break. A total of 22km round trip, little Henry's legs were tired, but we were so proud to have made it, our first long ride together. 

Stew and Henry cross the finish line together!