Summertime...and the living is easy...

This summer we headed out to BC for a visit with our families. We sent the girls to my Mum's house for a few days ahead of time and made the drive out together, just the two of us. We made a little detour to check out Lake Louise....

...we stayed just long enough for a few photos...

...and left after we caught our breath...

The forest fires in BC are unbelievable, as I'm sure most of you know. We were surprised to see smoke just over the mountains. When we left Kamloops, the sun was setting and we looked back to see the sunset, the clouds and the smoke over the new golf course, Tobiano.

The weather was SO very hot when we were in BC. We spent a few hours out at a local lake one day to try and cool down. The girls were thrilled to get some good use out of the butterfly nets they got from Grandma and Grandpa earlier in the summer.

My beautiful Calli.

Marin looked for the perfect rocks for her "rock collection," which are actually rocks strewn around my house in all nooks and crannies.

Adam did a great job as the water taxi, ferrying the girls out to the floating buoys in the water.

Marin and Calli have been asking for a while to get their ears pierced, quickly followed by, "Will it hurt?" I figured I would use reverse psychology on them and tempt them with the offer of having it done whenever we were close to a piercing store. It worked, for a while....and they all out refused to have it done. Then, when we were in WL, it finally all came together.

Earlier in the day, Marin had accidentally grabbed my hair straightener and burnt 2 of her fingers. While we were in the mall, she and Calli were running up the stairs and down the ramp and Marin slipped and fell and ended up with a minor bleeding nose and a bruised face. Not two minutes later, after her crying had subsided, we walked past the piercing store and I used my "psychology," to which Marin replied, "I'd like to get my ears pierced." She was so confident and sure of herself, I couldn't say no.

She picked out her own earrings and sat up very bravely on the stool in preparation. You can see the bruise forming on her forehead in this photo...and if you look closely, you can see the dots on her ear lobes.

Here she is mid poke!! This was the first earring and I really thought she'd end up with only one earring after this!

And here is my poor little pumpkin, crying after they were both pierced.

We were lucky enough to be in WL during Oma's birthday. Because she was working all day, we decided to bring dinner out to her place to prevent her from cooking!

Here is Calli and Uncle Joe checking out some photos on his camera before dinner.

Auntie Marie looking beautiful and summery!

Little Miss Marin with her new earrings, feeling much better on the 2nd day.

Granny, looking beautifully and summery, delivering the appetizers.

Oma in the background watching Auntie Angie prepare the birthday cake.

I think Marin really wanted to eat some of the homemade ice cream cake, but because it was topped with those delicious raspberries, she wouldn't touch it and just watched instead. Look how red the kids cheeks are!! It was 37 degrees out there!!

Auntie Angie, Auntie Marie and Opa singing Happy Birthday to the birthday girl.

When Adam returned from his fishing trip, we drove to the family cabin at Green Lake where we spent a few days with Adam's parents. The girls loved riding around the deck with the tricycle and swimming in the lake.

The weather was brutally hot in the high 30's. Here are Grandma and Grandpa relaxing in the heat.

The girls got giant bubble blowers, which always makes for a fun time.

We took a nice evening walk to the back lake again this year. The grass is shorter this year than it was last year. I guess the cows have been around.

We took the longer road home in order to head down to the lake and watch the sun go down.

This was the first time that we saw Nellie swim properly! We had seen her swimming in our pool in Montreal, but she was a terrible swimmer and slapped her front paws high up in front of her. Seeing her swimming so nicely in the lake was really cool.

My handsome husband in the beautiful glow of the sun...

Even though it was smoky, the sunset was breathtaking.

The girls saying their Goodbyes to the cabin for another year.

Nellie spent a few months with her Grandparents in BC while we dealt with selling the house, packing up and moving across the country. We got settled into our new house, installing sod and a fence and picked Nellie up on the way home from our holidays in BC. Isn't she beautiful?

We stopped at Adam's parents place for the night before heading on to Vernon for the 30th wedding Anniversary of Adams' Aunt and Uncle. It was my first time seeing the house, but the girls spent 2 weeks with Grandma and Grandpa while we packed up our house in Montreal and moved to our new house in Alberta, so they knew their way around. Marin helped Grandpa with her duty of filling up the bird feeder.

I am slowly catching up with everything, but I am afraid to say I lost 650 photos covering about 2 weeks of events, including a trip to see Chelsea and her sister and kids in Banff (with photos of Calli doing Auntie Chelseas' hair in the middle of Banff, with the mountains in the background), a great weeklong visit with the Cheeks (including a trip to the zoo), the crazy smoke we drove through near 70 Mile, on our way up to Lac La Hache, the 50th Wedding Anniversary weekend of my Aunt and Uncle in Lac La Hache, Calli and Marin's Barbie makeover photos (before and afters), and Calli's first day of Grade 1 photo. Apparently I had a "corrupted" memory card, which I am certain became corrupted from a photo machine at Shoppers Drug Mart, but they have denied that it is possible. *sigh* And so you'll just have to take my word that these things happened and that I had some really great pictures of the events.