Life

I picked a bunch of apples last weekend. They are ripe, and very tasty. But very small. As in, lots of them aren't worth the effort to eat them. I figure I picked over 100 pounds of apples, and I couldn't even reach the highest branch which is stuffed still. I hope to get to those this weekend though.

What do you do with so many apples? Well, in the past we have made apples sauce, and frozen some of them. Since we still have a few jars of sauce, we're going to skip that this year. Instead I'm going to dehydrate some apple slices and see how that works out. We've also given a whole bunch away.

In the summer while the kids were off of daycare, Elliot declared that his dog stuffie named Island was having a birthday. Sue asked him if he wanted to have a party, and offered to make cupcakes. Since it was warm out, we had the cupcake party outside.

The cupcakes that I iced. Not a professional by any means.

Elliot and the guest of honor.

Some of the other guests, Jingles and Ribbit.

Amy and her troupe of guests.

At one point a neighbour was out working in her garden and smiled at us. I offered up a cupcake but she declined.

Today's adventure was a trip to Mattick's farm. The plan was to head out and play some mini golf, eat some lunch, get an ice cream cone, then come home again.

Oh, and we wanted to ride out there. This was Elliot's first time on a Trail-A-Bike, and we chose a long ride. He did awesome though. The ride out was about an hour and any time we got moving I could hear him hooting and hollering, and yelling wheeeee. Lots of fun. I could also feel him helping out on the uphill sections. The Trail-A-Bike was more wobbly than I was expecting which was a little unnerving at first, but I got used to it.

At the farm mini golf was fun, but the kids sure powered through the holes. Elliot did very well with his shots, and even got a hole in one. If we had kept score, I think his would have been pretty close to mine. Amy had fun too, but her style was more hockey like than golf like

Lunch was yummy,but funny enough, as we were sitting down to eat, we saw some friends of ours that were at our BBQ on Friday, and whom we also saw at the fair on Saturday. They joined us in eating lunch on the grass.

After eating it was on to the cones. Amy had vanilla, Elliot chocolate chip mint, Sox had triple chocolate, and I chose the maple walnut. After I paid, I went outside to sit with everyone. Amy came running up to me, tripped (likely due to her flip flops), and hit the ground hard. She skinned her toe pretty badly, but worse was her cone. She did her best to hold on to it, but the cone itself broke in half and the ice cream bounced off my shoe and hit the ground.

Sad girl ensued. Thankfully she wasn't hurt too bad, and the kind staff inside made us another cone free of charge. I even got a couple band aids to patch up her toe.

Fully charged up it was time to head for home. Thankfully there weren't a lot of hills, and we made good time coming home.

We headed out to the Saanich Fair today with another friend and her two children. All the kids had a blast and did well sticking close to the adults and not getting lost. There certainly were a lot of people there. On our way to the car I thought it would be cool to get a picture of the sea of cars, but after getting the kids into carseats and hading out mini donuts, I forgot. Amazing that so many people can cram into such a tiny area.

Amy and Elliot even went on a couple rides today. The Flintstone's cars were a big hit.

The tractors were also a big hit. The kids spent a good long time climbing over many of them. Elliot even figured out how to turn the hazard lights on.

Fun with friends.

Amy spotted these people doing acrobatics on horses. Wild stuff. Sue saw three people on one horse doing tricks.

Lunch time consisted of fries and ice cream. Mmm, excellent fair food. Sue and I had some Indian food which was excellent, then snagged a bag of mini donuts for the drive home.

There were two guys walking around in body suits, one was orange, the other purple. You can see them on the elevator drop ride.

One more ride on the Flintstone's cars. This time with no adults. How do kids grow up so fast?

I was planing to go for a ride tonight after dinner. There was no Ulti tonight, and I wanted to get some exercise. I sent an email out about riding, but noone was able to make it.

Then last night happened. Around 12 Amy called me to her room because she had thrown up. We got her cleaned up and situated back in her crib, and a few minutes later she called again. Eventually Sue sent me downstairs so I could sleep, and so Amy could sleep in our bed.

In the morning Elliot threw up, meaning neither child was going to daycare. Sue couldn't take the day off, so I had the kids all day.

With the lack of sleep, I really had no energy. I bailed on riding, and decided to go for a swim instead.

After dinner was done and the kitchen cleaned, I headed down to the pool for some lengths.

It went pretty well. I had the lane to myself, which is a bonus to swimming in the summer I guess. I knocked off 550m, but didn't exactly feel all that smooth. I kept making mistakes with my stroke, and occasionally taking on water. It was good to get some exercise though.