The Simple Life: Last Couple Weeks Before School Starts!

Oops. Another 2 weeks goes by and I neglect to blog.

We've just been cruising through the end of our summer spending quality, intentional time as a family, and mostly doing regular life sprinkled with some special moments!

A big step the last couple weeks is that Dom and Emilia are now allowed to play outside/ride their bikes without us. Wahoo! They have to stay where we can see them, but there's very little traffic that comes by our place because of where it's situated in the complex, so it feels safe. It means I get some serious sittervising and main-floor chores done with one or two less kids than normal!

Next level! Crochet and RuPaul while the kids bike around out front. In reality it only lasted a few minutes before I was needed, but this was the first time and it can only go up from there!

Escaping the frequent heat waves chasing the AC. Opa and Oma's this day!

I watched Wren one morning and had a taste of 4 kids. It's like having two older kids and then twins. It went really well although I was a little sleepy after a night out with Ashleigh at Cactus the night before :)

This was absolutely as cute as it looks. Dancing to Finn McMissile

Eva's smile when we say "smile!" or "cheese!". She's got the cheese down, that's for sure!

August 26 was Sherlock's EIGHTH birthday! He's such a good boy. It's been too hot for him to walk properly, but almost every day we take him out to chase the ball in the evening. He is his happiest self when he's retrieving. It's like he was born for it or something ;)

Love you, our first baby! <3

6 weeks old <3. The day we found out "Rupert" got to become our Sherlock!

In the morning I brought Eva over to hang out with Aunty Ashleigh and Phoebe, and then Dave and I took Dom & Emilia to a Vancouver Canadians game! The weather was perfect. We quickly realized there are a lot more rules in baseball than we initially explained to Dom, so he was a little lost. It was loud so they were both overwhelmed, but the game was fun, the vibe was excellent, and our team won!

It's going to be such a different vibe in 3 years when Eva is Emilia's age! These ages are so much less demanding than toddlerhood.

The almost always prepared Renee brought books for the kids too just in case!

I made some goody bags for the kids and included these pop bottle candy. I guess their references are different than ours were as kids. They kept loudly announcing that they were "drinking so many bottles of wine!" "I want some wine!" "Mommy, would you like to try my wine?"

Many, many, many snuggles with this physical touch girl

We had great seats!

Tuckered

A little cousin spam from their playdate :)

After the game we met up with Matt and Helena and their kids at my parents' place! The big kids hit. it. off. They played so hard!

Last Sunday our whole family went to church. Eva was a newborn last time that happened. Dad took Dom & Emilia to Cornerstone and Mom took care of Eva so Dave and I could actually sit and enjoy. I also got the honour of holding the baptism bowl for Connie as she had Myles baptized! It was very special :)

Dom & Emilia even went up to the front with all the kids! That's a first. Towards the end they started getting antsy though. Dom wasn't sure what to do with himself so he started biting Emilia's shirt and tugging on it, and then pretending to sniff her butt and waving his hand around saying, "stinky!" That's just what the congregation wanted during the prayer, Dom...I'm sure of it.

Sunday night we had our first Halloween crafting night with S&A. We had dinner together and they put Phoebe down. It was almost like the good ole days haha. Better than last year where we both had little babies anyway! :) I have a picture of the chaos that was my kitchen/dining room, but I don't want to post in case Dave has feelings about anything being revealed prior to Halloween haha.

I took the kids over to Katrina's new place for a playdate with her kids this week too which was really nice! I didn't take any pictures, but finally by the end of course all the kids had settled in and were off playing. Dom played hockey with Sam & Henry in the basement and is now asking if we can get rid of all our stuff and turn our garage into a hockey room.

Dave became a handy man and replaced the light above our island! We'd been watching this light fixture at Costco for over a year. It started at like $150, and went down to $90, then down to $70, and then it was $50 the other day when Dave went. We figured heck. Why not give it a try! I love it!

Goodbye ugly lights from 13+ years ago!

Another thing I've been wanting to get for a really long time. These nylon knives! The kids are involved in making their own snacks and veggie plates now and it's a great thing for keeping them busy.

Studies show if kids are involved in the cooking process they're less likely to be super picky about the food. Wish me luck lol. It's NOT my natural state to invite them to help in the kitchen. Cooking is my sacred time.

Don't let Dave critique the framing of this picture. Yikes.

I've been trying to be intentional about taking quiet time for myself while Eva is napping. Dom and Emilia know the drill, and they'll usually just play nicely together. One day I gave them my old phone to play hockey goal horns on and came back to dozens of bad selfies haha! I guess they figured out the camera!

We've been eating with Jesse and Kirstin a lot lately which is nice. It's kind of like an unofficial shared meal plan. I almost always cook too much for our family, and Kirstin hates cooking for two people so it works out great. This week I took old pork chops and chicken thighs out of the freezer and made pulled pork/chicken in the crock pot. SO good. The next day we had the leftovers on croissants.

Sometimes she reminds of Phoebe from Friends with her bike. Emilia actually does ride it most of the time, but sometimes she just likes to walk and pose with it.

This week I was also at work 3/5 days. I worked in the office regularly on Wednesday, we had a board meeting Thursday, and then I was back at the office for 4 hours yesterday because I'm so behind on work and needed to print things for some events coming up. Thank you Dave for accommodating my schedule!!! Having more work time to use my brain and be a grown up is key for my mental health. I've been missing that a lot.

Last night we went off to Steph & Brent's for their combined birthday party. We got to meet lots of their friends, have a couple drinks, and I got to cuddle baby Haddie! Oh she is the most precious thing. I can confidently say I did not get baby fever and am happy I got an IUD this week too though! Haha

I cannot believe in 3 days Dom starts Kindergarten!!! In less than 3 weeks Dave is off to Montana for 8 days (SEND HELP!). I've been mentally preparing for KG for a while now, so I feel like it will be less of an emotional shock for me, but we'll see. We went to the new student orientation this week for Emilia's preschool and Dom's KG. Got to meet the teacher, see the classroom, etc. He's pretty nervous about meeting all the new kids, but is also excited (mostly about the fact that they might get to play sports haha). We also found out a boy from our church is in his class. They don't know each other yet, but I bet they'll become besties!

Some other moments.

Dom often keeps Emilia up late and wakes her up early, so she went to sleep in our bed and we transferred her one night. It worked great and seems to have sort of reset Dom as well. They've been sleeping better since!