So bitter sweet the passing of time especially when you mark it with your kids growing like weeds! I cannot believe Claire & Rhys are now finished grade 2. They were in a split class this year and they did so awesome both socially and academically. There were some hiccups along the way and they both handled themselves so well. We are so proud of these twinadoes 🙂
Our annual last day of school tradition is to go out for dinner somewhere fun. They love these ice cream volcanoes at Milestones!
Every year in early June the municipality of Oak Bay hosts a fun parade, community party and fireworks- The Oak Bay Tea Party. They bring in a mini amusement park which is always fun except it will bankrupt you!
We normally avoid this event because Claire & Rhys don’t do too well with rides. Actually, let’s clarify that… Rhys does not do well with rides. He is always eager to get on but then he gets scared and sick feeling when it starts to run. We thought we would test the waters this year and give it a whirl. It went okay until the end when Rhys sat in a bumper car with Claire. She is a crazy race car driver in those things and Rhys was super bummed. Made for some funny photos though! Post-amusement park cuddles with Dad made it all better ♥.
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Happy times before the rise started:
Once the ride started- poor Rhys! He has to ride it out until it was over:
Cuddles with Dad ♥:
This was one of the best May long weekends ever. The sun finally shone a whole four days and the temperature was hot. Yay!
We did a lot of gardening, we re-organized the kids room so it was more ‘big-kid’. Claire is very much like me…she loves organizing! We had a sweet moment when she sat on her bed and said ‘this feels SO good!’. It was a success. Jimmy bought a slip-and-slide and we all had some fun in the yard. We even set-up the kids giant pool for them to splash around in. We also had a nice picnic and play with some friends. Jimmy got in a few skate morning sessions with his friends which he always enjoys!
One of the high-lights was going mini-golfing. We went to Mattick’s Farm mini-golf which was perfect as it is in the woods so nicely shaded. Rhys would hit the balls like he was playing hockey so that was pretty funny and Claire would sweep the balls into the hole. Jimmy won in the end..no surprise there as he is pretty good at golfing compared to the rest of us ;). it was a great way to spend sometime outside on a hot sunny day.
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Claire’s new reading spot in her updated room:
Twinsies:
Mini-golf:
Jimmy skate fun:
Easter was a bit more special this year with my Mom visiting for two weeks.
The weather was improving slowly to warmer days so she came at a perfect time when there was still snow in Alberta where she came from. My Mom and Dad love to garden so having her with us sure helped our wild garden. She weeded and prepped many plant pots and garden beds. I took several days off to spend with my Mom to organize for Easter and to just get out and wonder around Victoria. Claire & Rhys loved having a visitor as well. Nana is always up for reading, playing board games and having light sabre battles outside in pajamas!
We even headed out to Sooke where Wendy, Chris and Senna hosted a lovely lunch that brought all the Millers together. We got to play with some not-so-baby chicks, we ran outside in the sun watching Claire & Rhys have an epic easter-egg hunt. The Easter bunny went a little overboard this year! Our family got a hilarious board game from Wendy, Chris and Senna that was at the end of a very cool scavenger hunt that Senna organized.
We loved having Nana visit us and we had a wonderful Easter.
Beacon Hill:
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Saxe Point:
Easter morning:
Easter scavenger hunt for Nana:
Easter hunt at Aunt Wendy & Uncle Chris’:
Hilarious poopy head game:
Claire received her very first 18″ doll for Christmas 2016. She has since acquired two more dolls. Her American Girl doll was from Nana & Papa for her 7th birthday. Rhys has a doll too and it is really quite fun to set up a play area for the dolls and to watch as their imaginations unfold.
Her dolls: Claire (blonde hair), Clarabel (brown hair), Deanna (black hair) and Rhys’ doll is named Jim 😉
Claire ♥’s to set her dolls up in a scene. Here is the dolls having a dance party:
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:
Claire & Rhys turned 7 in December!
We organized a fun party at FiredUp! where they learned about ceramics and painted a design of their choice. We had a lot of kids from their class attend and I am pretty sure this will be the last combined birthday party so we made the most of it and had a blast!
Claire & Rhys received very cool science kits from Auntie Wendy, Uncle Chris and Cousin Senna for Christmas 2016. We put them away until weather got better and warmer outside as this was definitely an outside job! Well…we forgot about them for a while and found them one day in November.
Claire & Rhys are all about science so they LOVED working on these kits. Claire had a geode to crack open and Rhys had a shark fossils he had to chisel out. It was super fun.
