Wet and Wild Sunny Days Sort of Fun

The way I organize my summer is that I do my very best to fill Sam's social calendar with all his/my long lost friends and on the other days I send him to school to play with his best buddies.  So far we've been incredibly busy and having lots of fun adventures with great friends.

A park pirate!

Splish splashin' at the Airdrie spray park with our buddy Sawyer!  He sure is brave for a baby in COLD water!

Sam waited and waited and waited for this to dump on his head!

Maybe the idea of the big splash was more fun that the actual water...

Baby Sawyer hardly a baby anymore... busy busy bee came for a nap and backyard play.  Needed a quick pic of these three pals all together!

On a different day this summer we invited some of the local ladies over for a pool party.  Lots of water guns, sprinkler trampolining and water sliding fun.  Oh and SNACKS!  Don't forget snacks!

Spencer heading into the cool watered kiddie pool.  I had to fill it twice with all the filling water guns and splashing!  Little bit too cold for our little buddy's liking!

Sammy and a herd of pretty ladies!  Not many pics were taken... the mommies were having so much fun chatting without having to intervene too often that we just enjoyed the sunshine, listening to all the giggles and some relaxed time together.

This summer has been so great and I'm only a couple weeks in... a parade, fireworks, 2 beach days, 1 splash park, a pool party, a birthday party, 2 hours of private gymnastics lessons (thanks Auntie Ang... that was awesome!), 2 awesome movie dates and a bunch of great visits with friends.  Summer 2013 has been just lovely so far!

Back Yard Fun!

Sunny summer fun in the backyard!

Sam followed this little bee around the yard.  They bumbled around together for 10 minutes or so!

Chalk on trampoline... fun and an awesome result!

Boy in a bubble!

Look Out Summer 2013

After the craziest work year of my life, I'm ready to enjoy some summer time with my friends and family.  Time to reconnect with people that I didn't see enough of over the past 10 months, quality time adventuring with my boys and remembering to pause and enjoy the time off.
Summer '13 started like this...

This spring we did an awesome science experiment... we grew caterpillars!  It was cool to watch them grow over night and one by one build a chrysalis.  Soon enough we had 5 beautiful butterflies.  I was nervous to let them go, as they had become a real highlight for Sam to check out each day.  On release day, Sam took off the lid and as each one flew away he called out saying "Bye buddy, find your new home."

One of Sam's buddies. 

After the butterflies were gone, Sam took the chance to get an up close look at the empty chrysalis.  This kiddo loves science!

Content

HAPPY!

Patient

Curious and gentle

Proud

This summer has brought a lot of rain.  This storm brought the most perfect rainbow.

Peace

A Snowy March Weekend

There isn't much my 3 year old loves more than a play outside.  The sun was shining and the snow was fresh, so we headed out to play in the yard. 

After many attempts to build different snow-somethings, Sam finally left me alone long enough to finish my turtle.  He loved it!  Unfortunately my snowman, snowpuppy, snowcar and snowfort did not earn enough of his respect and was trashed before I could come anywhere near completing them.

My little pirate.

Sam worked and worked on this snowball.  I tried to warn him that it was going to be very heavy...

... but he lifted it anyways...

... and then it showed him who was boss.  He then jumped on it and ate some of it.  He wasn't going to let it get the best of him!

Loves eating snow... yuck!

Happiest little boy in the world.  LOVE.

June Days...

Been a busy month... just feels like there is so little time to pull out the camera and capture the fun we have.  That is until Shaun bought me a new camera.  I thought I loved my old one, but this has brought it to a whole new level of love!  


Working boy...

The seed whisperer

Planting our tiny pumpkin patch... cross your fingers for us.

Sam hard at work watering Mommy's new flower garden.

Who is who at the zoo?

Seriously, how great is this sign!!!

Sam herding turtles!

Sam bravely wanted to talk to the peacock and got VERY close.  Mommy was busy trying to get a good shot and didn't realize how close he was!

When babies attack!

May Days... Return to Blogging

May has been a busy month.  So much going on with school, Sam, life that I lost my love for photos for a while and got in a funk.  Fortunately, I'm back.  This BEAUTIFUL sun shiny weekend has pepped me up and I'm ready to record life once again.
We've been up to all sorts of things this month.  A BIG first is that my little baby is in a big boy bed.  It's been a battle.  Big boy bed has brought back bad habits:  First it was to sleep through the night, then it was to stay in bed until a reasonable time (I'm talking sometime after 5:30am, that's not so much to ask is it!!?!?!) and we are onto what I hope is the last battle... going to sleep all alone.  Last night I put him back into bed 27 times, not kidding.  My advice to you, if you are building or buying a home and you have a toddler - make sure you have door KNOBS not handles.  He has been able to open any door in our home since before he was one.  No huge issues up to this point.  I love seeing his sweet face as he wanders into our room in the morning all by himself.  Where the problem lies is at bed time he likes to coming FLYING out of his room.  As I escort him back to his bed, he pretends that he has lost his bed and looks for it in every room down the hall until, alas, there it is just where he left it.  Exhausting at the time, but easy to laugh about only minutes later.  He is a handful, but this too shall pass.  


Now, onto some May highlights...
#1) Shaun's mini Triathalon.  He's done this race 3 or 4 times in the past and each year he gets better!  His goal this time was to be in the top 50 (over 300 racers), and he came in 57th.  Not too bad for an old guy!!! :)

Bright and early at the race.  One pre-race shot... Sam still in his PJs

Waiting at the pool to watch Daddy swim.  This is the face of Shaun's #1 fan!

Getting restless (and maybe a little wild)

Chillin' on the bike course waiting to see Dad.

At the finish line with our favorite racer!  

#2) Planting our vegetable garden.  I'm definitely not the only one in our family that loves to put seeds in the ground and wish for the best.  Sam was a great help as we took some time to plant peas, carrots and radishes.  Tomorrow - pumpkins and sunflowers.  Yay!

The Connolley family fun center!  All sorts of good times to be had in Sam's yard!  Now if only that fence was finished... anyways, back to this post.  Sam is getting instructions on how to help mommy.  I poke the holes, he drops in the pea seeds.

Goooo team Connolley!  Can't even wait for these to grow grow grow!!!  Now cross your fingers for me that there will be no more frost this year!

#3) Daddy builds us a flower bed.  Shaun often will wake up in the morning to a list a mile long of things that I really wish we had.  Not expensive things.  TIME CONSUMING things.  Sometimes he probably wishes that he never showed interest in building stuff because I always seem to have one more project for him.  He's so amazing though!  From landscaping to craft tables, flower beds to garages, decks to refinishing the interior of our VW van... he does it all.  And generally with a smile on his face.  He's not the quickest worker (it could be that his day job is really getting in the way of my to do list!) but I know for sure that it will be done perfectly!!!  You may ask yourself, how many times can one board be leveled and the answer is there is no limit!  Love you Shaun for all you do!

So, I give Shaun the task of building me a backyard flower box.   Sam and I head off to a birthday party and return to a well designed matrix to be sure the flower bed will be level.  In less than a minute, Sam had not only kicked dirt all over,  moved the board around but also managed to snap the string Shaun was using to mark the height of the bed.  Sam's good at what he does!

Hobby - baby parkour.  Love to jump regardless that level of danger the landing could be. 

WILD BOY!  Needless to say, Shaun is now outside in the dark finishing off as Sam seemed not only to slow down the building of the flower bed but maybe even move Shaun back a few steps.  Two things are definitely true about Sam... never a dull moment and we love him more than anything!