Sunday, July 30, 2017

The Best of July Vacation Days: Rachel Sleepover!

On Tuesday, July 18th, Rachel came over for a sleepover! We've been trying to plan this for months because I think the last one was in October. Summer is much easier since weekends are crazy for everyone.

Aleksy had to work so the 3 of us headed to Kustermans Berry Farm on the Tuesday. This was such a great day! We went last year for berry picking but didn't hit up the play area because Logan was only crawling. But I remember the blueberries being amazing, and we have a blueberry monster so Kustermans repeat it was.

These 2 being pulled by the tractor out to the blueberry fields.

More blueberries please!
Capturing that I actually had 2 competent pickers to help me fill the bucket this year! And I instantly remembered that blueberry picking is way easier than strawberry picking. There's no shortage, they are close together and they all look good! This wasn't so much the case at Heemans this year...

Blueberry taste testers.
Logan and Rachel approved.

After we filled our bucket and paid for our blueberries, we headed over to the play area. It was a pretty good deal - for $28 we got admission to the park and 2 lbs of blueberries and because we picked more than the 2 lbs, we just paid an extra $5. So reasonable for all that you get at Kustermans!

The first spot Rachel wanted to hit up was the zip lines. She probably did the zip line 100 times (no overexaggeration!).
How convenient that the giant sand hill with a bunch of trucks was right beside the zip lines? I could supervise both when they were both having the best time ever!
Meeting some new friends too.

When we got home, Logan decided that the 20 minute nap in the car was it, and he was good to go, so the 3 of us put our blueberries to good use and made some blueberry muffins.

Not the healthy kind that we usually make in our house - these ones had flour, sugar and butter...
Rachel was an awesome help for everything, ad Logan's specialty is putting the batter in the pan. Hes such a kid of precision that he can do this with making minimal mes even before 2. Gets is precision/slight OCD tendencies from his Dad...

And Rachel's sleepover night consisted of some Moana and Rachel staying up as late as us! (we go to bed at 10 like all the cool kids do)
Day 2 of Rachel sleepover, I offered Rachel to either go to a wading pool or splash pad, and she chose the wading pool. I decided to do the McMahon pool instead of Springbank because Springbank is so busy. It opened at 11am, which is a bit later but I figured we would just play on the playgroud first then swim.

Well, it actually didn't open until almost noon... how is that even allowed?! The City website clearly said 11. It was a long morning of trying to keep these 2 busy and happy, and this lunch was a bit early around 11:30!
Peanut butter jelly time!

Once we got on, life was grand again. Watering cans and pool toys were readily available since not many kids go there but the only thing that would have been better is an older playmate for Rachel!

This day was a bit better for the sleep situation for Logan. He napped for about an hour while me and Rachel set up the pool outside. How do you make the 1 1/2 year old happy when he wakes up crying from a not long enough nap? Freezies! Logans favourite!
This was our afternoon until Rachel had to leave!

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

The Best of July Vacation Days: The starting Weekend

July is a good time for a couple weeks vacation if I don't say so myself. The last 2 weeks of July are for spending extra time with the fam, having some new adventures, and a bit of relaxing (kind of).

The weekend that kicked off my vacation was the weekend, Aleksy and his brother started our patio. This is going to be a project over a few weekends. But it is very exciting that it's started and by the end of the summer, we will have a patio for the first time!

It took pretty much a day for them to dig out our sod and wheelbarrow it out the the massive rental box that costs way more money than I would have ever thought! It was like 300 or something...
Logan loves projects and wanted to help too. Good thing he as his own personal Costco sized shovel.

Logan having some morning break food with everyone... part of the crew... minus the egg sandwich.
While Aleksy and Andrew were working, I took advantage of a Logan/Mommy play date. Since Logan only wanted to go outside anyway but would be in the way of productivity, we headed to Springbank park on Saturday morning (that was the 15th!).


Logan went swimming in the wading pool (where we learned that toys brought from home are way more appealing to other kids at the pool and its safest to leave them home) and he played at the park and then we went for a little walk by the water and through the garden.

He's always the happiest little camper when he's outside.


And day 2 of patio prep, the gravel was filled in, so its now already to have the stone laid - after ordering more gravel twice.












Vacation Day 1

Day 1, Logan went to daycare. The only days that he was going to daycare during my holidays were the 2 Mondays! So I took the me time in the morning and went for a leisurely 10.3 k run at Springbank!
Definitely not my best pace, but at this speed I felt like I could go forever! Just over an hour, and the best kind of run!

That afternoon, I was supposed to take more me time, but I ended up cleaning the house. Maybe not the most me centered choice, but at least things are (relatively) clean around here for my holidays!

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Warm, Sunny July Weekends

Summer is a beautiful thing. Weekends are jam packed because even with no plans, its so easy to find a fun activity to do for the day!

The first weekend of July - the Canada Day long weekend, we originally had plans to go to Mitchell's Bay with friends to their parents trailer but it got cancelled because of lice (last year there were scabie baby cancellations, this year, lice) so we ended up making a day pool date with our neighbours!

Always make friends with your neighbours with a pool!

Logan also loves going to the neighbours house (and knows who he is - points to "Rob" all the time!) and playing with the twins and their toys that are clearly far more superior than Logans at home.
Logan also eats way more when he's with these 2! A few bowls of the homemade mac and cheese I made!
And Monday was a holiday for Aleksy and I and we made plans for strawberry picking with Steph, Jon and Rachel and Heemans.

Its been at least a few years since the last time, so we needed some delicious local strawberries!

Love and miss this Rachel! We have a sleepover planned next week... cant wait!

Strawberry is a bit tricky with a 1 1/2 year old. He can pick a few... is confused that you have to take the stem off to eat them and wants to wander all over the bushes and stomp on the strawberries!


My basket was not quite as full with distracting Logan but we managed to pretty much fill 2 of these baskets. The strawberries were a bit picked over by this time, so it took a while. Way longer than I remember blueberry picking for last year!
And back to Steph and Jons for lunch and strawberry daiquiris!
These. Everything is maple these days.. and we had to buy into it a bit! 

This past weekend, we had a date day and on Saturday the 8th in the morning, we dropped goober off at Aleksy's parents and headed to the Fanshawe trail for a trail run! We've hiked it, biked it (Aleksy) but haven't ran it until now!
Post 8.8 km run. It took a little longer than what Im used to because I was so careful of the roots, rocks and all the tings that we could twist our ankles on - the way back I was waaaay faster!
Post run, we headed downtown and got some salads from the Salad Bowl in the market for lunch. And because it was an awesome day, we sat outside to eat.


We were downtown because of Aleksys hair appointment and still had some extra time so with out workout done for the day, it was beer time! $5 pints at the Oliver Twist restaurant that we never heard of until we read the door on the way out!

And while Aleksy went to get his hair done, I walked over to the galleria to gather some accessories for Michael's 80s party later in the evening! That was the real reason we had babysitting for goober, but made a day out of it. trail run, lunch and beer downtown, and then watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off to get in the 80s spirit before heading to Michaels.












Michael's Annual Awesome 80s party! Its not your typical work party.
Work besties. Well, those of the past and present because Jenny doesnt work with me anymore :(

Catch the alf?


 

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

June Vacation Days!

I took a week off the week after Father's day where me and Goobster had some good quality time together and Thursday we booked as Date day, where Logan went to daycare then Friday was family day where we kept him home. Aleksy had the Thurs Fri off.

Logan writing with sidewalk chalk on Father's day. He has great penmanship. I think his Dad's pretty cool too.
Logan and I had a very exciting outing to Wal Mart (we actually go there so often that this is a word he says very clearly now) and this little person was the most happy ever to get a new small plastic chair! The best $5 I spent for this smile...
On Tuesday night, the ice cream cravings were kicking in from being without for 2 days so we made an evening stop for a McD's cone! Logan loves it, but cant quite figure out how to eat it other than miniature licks. Then it melts everywhere and he gets mad when we (Aleksy) has to lick the melty ice cream so he doesnt make a mess.
And Thursday was our date day. We started the day off with dropping Logan off at daycare at 8am and going for a morning run... about 7 km in 36min.
Then we headed to Port Stanley for a beach day and some lunch at GTs on the beach. BUT we got there around 10:45 and it immediately began thunder storming! So we ended up eating 11am ice cream at Shaws and heading back to London for date day plan B.

And I even tried different flavours this time! Sunken ship and double stuffed cookie!
Plan B was rock climbing so after driving all the way back to London and changing from beachwear to activewear, we headed to Juction Indoor Rock Climbing!

Aleksy knew of this place because its right by his work and attached is a brewery (which we tried for the first time last summer) so we figured rock climbing and beers at the brewery was a pretty good date back up plan! Plus, anything active was a double win!
I thought we'd get there and we'd kill it because we're pretty active and work out all the time.
I was so wrong! I do not use those muscles ever and I lasted a total of maybe 2 hours and after that I was shaking like crazy. My forearms were the weird muscle group that were struggling because of the gripping to the rocks. My forearms were sore for 2 days after too!

We made it up the lowest level 5.4 ones easily, and Aleksy made it up the 5.8 while I barely made it to the top of the 5.7. Its the weirdest thing to trust a wire when you're up so high to bring you back down!


After we were too tired to be bothered to try hard to get to the top, we decided it was a good time for lunch and beer. So we got some Quesada burrito bowls and headed back to Anderson Brewery.

And we both chose our flights of beer ourself from their choices on draught. Im more of a light beer kind of person but its nice to try to local brews!

And on Friday, we had some awesome family day plans to go to the splash pad in Ilderton and then a picnic. But like date day, weather decided to kibosh our plan! So back up plan for family day was swimming at the YMCA. We hadn't been there for so long that we didn't realize that the YMCA punch card got stolen from Aleksys car when it got broke into. So we got a replacement card and Logan still had 4 punches (and Aleksys had like 8 because we're thrifty and sneak in even though it only includes 1 parent!).

Logan loved swimming! And we were reminded of the leg burn of the froggy squat walk in the super shallow pool...

And of course, We were courteous parents and allowed our child to sneak into the treehouse after for additional play.

 Saturday the 24th was Raeleigh's 1st birthday party. And we got to have the party outside! It seems most of our friends kiddos are not in the summer months, but the June birthdays are adding up, and the outside parties are pretty great.

Logan loved playing with his friends swing set, sand hill, and this little house!

This is Logan's "cheeeeeese" face! (cheesies and posing too)
And the trampoline! He loved this as long as the kiddos were gentle with him in there. he's not used to rough and tumble kids I think. Lyla is just his kind of trampoline partner!
 
 The Osbornes with all their babies! Time goes so quick with the kiddos!