Rock Climbing

One of the activities Eli did with school last week was rock climbing. He had so much fun and made climbing look sooo easy.

Saturday lunch at Coombs

Trampoline with Zach

Sunday Morning Walk

We had a quick walk this morning on the trail in our neighbourhood before Daddy had to go catch his plane again :-(

Saturday Morning

Saturday morning was nice and warm and sunny. It felt like spring was here. Too bad that by lunch it was raining and by Sunday afternoon was sleety snow once again grrrrrr. But anyway the kids enjoyed a nice morning in the backyard playing before the yacky weather hit.

Daddy and kids digging where the old shed was - getting it ready for grass seeds.

Love our backyard. I am really going to miss the space and the privacy and the trees that surround us :-(

Playing soccer (Eli was actually having a big tantrum about something - can't remember what - so he sat down in a rage and the grass was really wet :-))

Doing giant jumps!

And Imogens turn!

View from the kitchen door...yup will really miss it! :-(

Daddy came home (again lol)...

... and we went out to a new Mexican Restaurant. The food was really good and the kids were well behaved. It was a really nice night and made me have hope that one day we can start to go out for dinner again regularly as Imogen is maybe (just maybe) starting to come out of the 'can't take her anywhere as she's 2 stage'!

Coast Guard Station

On Friday Eli's science class got to tour the Coast Guard Station. They usually don't do tours and class visits etc but one of the Coast Guards is the dad of the girls in Eli's class and he did a special tour just for them! I think it was one of the best places Eli has ever visited and he wants to be a Coast guard now! One of the things we learned was that in Canada all the Coast Guards are volunteers and that the Nanaimo Station is the busiest in all of Canada. I was quite surprised by both facts. Although I guess there aren't that many cities along the Coastline of Canada. Anyways they have two boats and the kids were allowed on both of them (even Imogen which she thought was fantastic!) they let the kids all have a turn using the fire hose, talking on the radio, using the loudspeaker, flashing the sirens, they even demonstrated, at a k-2 level the (very high tech) GPS system to the kids and best of all (for Eli anyway) did a rescue demonstration using the pulley/crane thingy (highly technical jargon there!) with the stretcher and a dummy. He talked non-stop all day long about being a Coast Guard one day!

Trying on the Coast guards life vest

Eli climbing onto the boat

Demonstration of GPS system

Eli's turn with the hose

Eli helping to fasten the dummy onto the stretcher

Hoisting it up - Eli was shouting orders to the Coast Guards! He thought he was part of the crew I think. Shouting "bring her up" and other random things like that at the top of his lungs! 

At the movies

Eli, Cerys and Ryan watching 'The Lorax'.

Eli's train table.

Eli got his train table for Christmas when he was 2.5. At that age it was all about the trains. The track was irrelevant, as long as it was there! As he got older he realised that the track could be changed and he spent lots of time taking it to pieces so that daddy could put it back together again. Him and David played many different adventures over the years but this last year he hasn't played with it so much. Just before Christmas I was thinking that he was probably done with it. The table had been used for cars and then after that as a craft table. I thought it had done it's time as a train table and that would be that. However when we pulled the Christmas decorations out he remembered that he had snow and Christmas lights for his trains and suddenly he was interested in fixing it all up again. Since then he has developed a whole new fascination for it, but not for playing with the trains. He is only into making a railroad - he's building some really elaborate tracks. When he's finished he likes to ride a selected few trains around to make sure it works properly but he doesn't really play. He will leave it for a day or two and then rip it apart and start again.  He doesn't just randomly put pieces on the table and hope that eventually it will all fit together and work (like I do lol!) he has a plan in his mind on how it's going to look and he builds the track according to his plan. He is so persistent and loves to figure out ways for it to work when it's not working. I guess it goes along with the fact that is quite analytical and has always enjoyed puzzles. He has made some amazing tracks. I need to start taking some pictures for him to remember when he is old! 

Anyway last track he built he wanted to take some video of it to show David. 

You may want to close your eyes and just listen if you get sick easily!!

Today...

...was sunny! Definitely not warm but not freeeeeezing like it has been. The kids took advantage and jumped on the trampoline for hours. Eli pretends that he is the trampoline teacher and that Imogen is the student and he has all these levels he is teaching her. I think she's on level 10 now! It's very funny! Loving our backyard and making the  most of it before we move to a house with a postage stamp size backyard!

And this morning outside Eli's school. Imogen managed to get herself up here by pulling up with her arms and then proceeded to try and make her way to Eli at the top. She so needs to be in gymnastics!

This weekend....

...Daddy came home,  yay! We were all so excited to see him. Saturday we went for a walk around Westwood Lake and then in the afternoon finished off the work on getting rid of the shed in the back. Finally looks good! Sunday we had planned to go for another long walk at Neck Point but I had made a treasure hunt for Eli that he was doing early in the morning (like 8am early...one day my kids will sleep in!) and Imogen picked up one of the clues and was waving it around and caught her eye. She ended up crying for the whole day and I mean the ENTIRE day so we spent the morning at the doctors and the afternoon cuddled on the bed. Not what we had planned but at least I got hugs with my baby girl all day long!

At the park at Westwood Lake. Imogen so wanted to go on the tire swing to be like Eli but she didn't really like it!

racing down the beach

My boys!

Walking around the lake. ELi looks really unhappy but he was being so sweet and lovely to Imogen.

Science class!

This is why I love Eli's school. Friday mornings are science class. He is learning about marine science at the moment. Last week the class went down to the beach (his school is 2 minutes away from Departure Bay Beach) and the kids collected 'samples' of rocks, sand, shells, seaweed, pretty much anything they felt like collecting and then we carried them back up to school and examined them with magnifying glass and we made slides of sand grains etc to look at under the microscope! So fun. The kids had a blast.

(Look at the wet line on Imogen's Jeans lol...she waded in that far and soon regretted it when water filled her boots lol)