Back to School September 2015

Today all four of my kids headed back to school. Hudson's at his first day of Grade One, with the same teacher Maira had in Grade one. Maira is in Grade Three with a teacher who's brand new at the school. Connor is starting Grade Six, his last year of elementary teacher. He has the same teacher Shae had in Grade Six and Shae and I are both a big fan of hers so I'm really happy for him. Shae (sniff, sniff) is starting Grade Twelve. Here is an adorable picture of her when she was four years old, thrilled to be heading off to her first day of kindergarten. Look at those cheeks, I want to eat her up! Her backpack was half as tall as she was!

And here she is, heading off to her last year of high school:

She decided she wanted to dye her hair purple for the first day but she didn't want to bleach it first and her hair is so dark that it didn't show up much (darn...) 

And here are my other three cuties, all set for their first days:

Camping at Slave Lake 2015

We hadn't been to Slave Lake for a few years and it was a treat to go back. The weather wasn't as warm as we had hoped so we didn't do much swimming but the beach was still lots of fun.

I have to explain this picture. I've talked before to the kids about going to Seal Island when I was young and about how I sometimes helped harvest seaweed on the beach. I told them how we would collect it and lay it out to dry and then sell it on the mainland. So when Hudson discovered seaweed at the lake, he was so proud to show me and wondered how much money it was worth.

Hudson's "parcour" course:

Our last night, there was a thunderstorm and we discovered a leak in the seam of our tent right above my head. But that was no problem for a tarp pro like Jess: he got out and rigged up this tarp over our tent in the middle of the night and in the middle of a storm. Not bad, eh?

Hudson entertained himself for a while watching a squirrel. He just sat and watched it like he was watching a movie. Which is why I love taking the kids camping!

Spartan Race

Connor and I ran in a 5k Spartan race at the end of the summer and then he joined Maira and Hudson in running the junior 1k version. It was a tough course at a ski hill so there were lots of big hills but it was lots of fun.