Family – Page 3 – wee little lovelys

Snow day!

December 8, 2016

The house we live in has a giant front & back yard. There is a slope along the side of the house that runs from the back to the front. One morning in December we woke up to snow! It does not snow very often in Victoria so when we saw that it was frozen and cold we knew it would be an epic day to sled.

Our van was iced in the driveway so we couldn’t get out anyway to take the kids to school. So….I booked a day off and the kids took a snow day! Sadly, Jimmy can’t take days off work since he is on-call with the school district.

At 6am we bundled up and headed outdoors to sled. The day was great…lots of sledding, building snowmen and making snow angels. We took regular trips inside for hot cocoa and to warm up. Claire & Rhys both said “best school day ever”!

Jumping for joy- no school!

Somehow Rhys had Claire pull him up the hill each time!

Videos- click to open:

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Miller December birthday celebration

December 4, 2016

We have quite a few winter birthdays in the Miller family and we like to get together each December to celebrate by doing something fun.

This year we met up for a walk around fisherman’s wharf and to the Laurel-point Inn for the gingerbread house competition.

First hockey game!

November 20, 2016

My co-worker was selling tickets to a Victoria Royals local hockey game as a fundraiser for her sons hockey team. We mentioned many times to the kids that we should go see a live game even though none of us are huge hockey fans. Live games are always a good time so we bought some tickets and had a fun family night out!

We didn’t realize we were sitting in the family area where no beer is allowed. While sipping on a cold brew security came over and Jimmy & I got into trouble 😉 We had a good laugh afterwards.

Thanksgiving

October 11, 2016

Jimmy’s sister Wendy & I typically split up the holidays and decide which ones we host. This year I hosted Thanksgiving and Wendy hosted Christmas.

When we were in South Africa away from all our friends and family we all missed these holiday events. Claire & Rhys particularly missed their extended family. When we traveled through Australia on our way back home from South Africa they LOVED spending so much time with their great Aunt Christine & Uncle Mike in Perth. Family means a lot to us and we cherish all the time we spend together.

I love Thanksgiving and having family come together for some shared laughs and good food. It was a nice sunny day this year and we had a great gathering.

Vancouver summer trip

July 30, 2016

Last summer we traveled to Vancouver for a mini vacation. We wanted to spend time checking out all the fun tourist things and to visit old friends. We stayed downtown for two nights so we could catch the sky-train and walk around the city. We visited the Aquarium, did some shopping, visited Science World and had a blast.

After our stay downtown we drove over to North Vancouver to stay with our good friends Faye & Niels. I have known Faye since my first year at University. She was my roommate in residence! The University placed us together randomly and have been friends since. We had a great two nights spending time with Faye and her family. We also visited with our friends and the kids surrogate grandmother, Evelyn, who was our neighbor in our old condo building when we lived in North Vancouver. We spent some time with her and her boyfriend Barney. They were so sweet and it was nice to catch up on all the condo gossip 😉 We also had some time to have a picnic with our South African friends Kim, Ryan and their two sons Kye and Fin. We spent a lot of time together when Claire & Rhys were babies as Kim and I worked together and had an overlap with our maternity leaves. We used to swap child minding which I miss so much! A bonus of staying with Faye & Niels is we tagged along to another friends big BBQ so we were able to see lots of old friends and they have the best backyard that Claire & Rhys made the most of.

We had a great trip and we are excited to make it an annual summer adventure.

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Science World:

Aquarium:

Lions Gate Bridge to West & North Vancouver:

Faye & Niels home:Faye & Nield

Evelyn & Barney:

Kim & Ryan clan:Kim & Ryan

Lisa & Sean’s BBQ…best backyard for kids:

And of course….Jimmy found a pool to skate 😉

Spooktacular Thanksgiving

November 2, 2015

The Miller clan gathered together for Thanksgiving this year. It is turning into a bit of an annual tradition… a visit to Galey’s farm followed by a yummy potluck style dinner at our home.

Galey’s farm has train rides with silly Hallowe’en decor along the way, a hay-ride to a large pumpkin patch where we pick out pumpkins, a petting zoo, a large corn maze and a haunted house area which Rhys refused to go to this year- too scary!

We always so much fun getting the family together and sharing some laughs. This year was a bit different because it was pouring rain when we were at the farm and we still had a great time.