flower update....

The grass around my flower tubs needs cutting (remember this is where I sowed the new grass seed???) but Lloyd didn't like to cut it because the lilies that popped through were about to flower and a few little Shasta Daisies also popped through and he knows they are my favourites so he left them to flower :) He also noticed two Hostas popping up so he left them for me to move which I haven't gotten around to yet - so it looks messy around my tubs yes, but you can see the basic effect of the tubs and the apple tree (that has no apples this year lol). This is at the end of our driveway kind of and greets you as you turn into our acreage.

My papery sunshine...

I can't remember what this flower is apart from they labeled it as a type of false sunflower (there are many different kinds of flase sunflowers though) and I have fallen in love with this one! The flowers are gorgeous from beginning to end - the petals are papery and remind me of pineapples to begin with! then they slowly open to look like sunflowers and they last for AGES! And they bloom all summer long! Just gorgeous and it seems to do so well even when you forget to water ot for ages! STUNNING :) The different stages of flower look gorgeous together :)

Pink lily....

Sammy's Sunflower

Sam grew this sunflower from a seed with Lloyd in a pot. We replanted it in the front flower bed as soon as we could and it did really well until one storm when it split half way up the stem. It had a cane supporting it but the storm had been too much for the cane.

We thought it was going to die but we were so sad and we tried to keep it alive despite the damage to the stem - there was literally just threads of stem keeping it alive but the sunflower kept going and shockingly it kept going and it grew a head and flowered! It didn't get very tall and the flower didn't get very big - all the leaves died off but it STILL flowered and Sam is sooooooo happy :) He LOVES his flower - as sad and pathetic as it looks :)

I haven't dared touch any f the thistles or weeds around his sunflower lately for fear of knocking the poor thing and knocking the flower! None of our other sunflowers have flowered as early - they won't flower for at least another month yet!

Baseball with the siblings

Another movie clip by Chris

Thank you Val!

The rest of our afternoon was spent sunning ourselves on Vals porch, the children playing in their pool, chatting, laughing, eating, drinking and generally having a lovely afternoon! K (Vals DD) and I both agreed that Val is getting extremely spoiled in her old in her old age (lol at the old age)!!! AND senile (she has started going to home depot for FUN when she gets time to herself!!!!!!)

TOO FUNNY!

Anyway - we had a lovely afternoon so thank you Val and everyone over at the funny farm ;)

I'm still a little hurt that Abby likes your place better than mine!! ;)

Fun at the farm!!!

Laurie, Sam and Abby were really lucky and got to go and meet Vals animals this afternoon - she has two donkeys and two sheep. It's been ages since we've seen them - I'm not even sure if we've seen the donkeys - I know we've seen the sheep before though....my memory is hopeless!

The children got to feed the animals 'horse crunch' which they obviously LOVED and they kept coming back for more!!!

The black sheep 'pepper' or 'shadow' was more shy and stayed back a lot more - probably wise with my three around ;) I think my three were more nervous of gentle giant Zorro than they were of the other animals!

There must always, always be a Zorro....

This is Sam with Vals dog Zorro...I just HAD to get a picture of this giant teddy bear dog with Sam. Isn't he just a gorgeous dog? I said to my crew that we MUST rent the Beethoven dvd series of movies so they can laugh about the drool factor and St Bernard dogs! They are great movies :) Zorro is so gorgeous - he was lying across the front step when we arrived and refused to get up for us so we all just had to step across him and he is NOT small! ;)

Lightning over Edmonton...

A colleague of Lloyds took these pictures during the storm earlier this week over Edmonton. The storm didn't come out as far as us but we could watch it from our bedroom window and could see all of the lightning. We couldn't hear any thunder but the all the lightning was amazing to watch - it didn't even rain here! Chris actually cycled home from his friends durng it and kept phoning us because he couldnt believe that it wasn't at our house and he was worried he wouldn't make it home in time but we kept saying it wasn't here and we didn't think it was coming here! Aren't these pictures great?

Playing with the children....

Davidson (or Harley as Lloyd is calling him already lol) seems to LOVE playing with the children :) he runs about and follows them and chases apples and follows trails of food. He is like a puppy compared to Charlie who is so much slower lol! Susie had him walking through the hoop again and again and he seemed to like that too :)

Our news :)

So this is our news :) It's probably not as big as all of you were expecting buts its big news for us and for Charlie especially :) Charlie has a new friend :) Please meet Davidson!!! Davidson has come to live with us all the way from......Leduc!!! :) lol :) We drove over to get him this evening and instantly fell in love with this darling little fellow :)

Isn't he cute? He's TINY compared to Charlie!

He's 6 months old and weighs about 40lbs. He's housetrained and such a sweetie pie! So cute to look at! Reminds me a lot of how Charlie looked when we got her! A lady on LP contacted us last week and asked us if we were interested in rehoming a piggy because her Sister had a pig that needed a new home. We were away at the time so we asked if we could wait until this week.

We've been looking for a friend for Charlie for a while now so this worked out perfectly! Tonight we finally made it over to Leduc to meet Davidson and bring him home :) He got back here and ad a nose around the front yard. He finished off Abigails apple and had fun playing with the children with a hoop.

We introduced him briefly to Charlie - but we want to do this very gradually over the next few days. He did meet Jasper though who looked stunned at how small Charlie was all of a sudden :)

I hope Charlie and Davidson get along well - we'll spend the next few days introducing them to each other gradually and spending time increasing the time they are together until they can be together all of the time. I don't want to just put them together straight away though in case there is any problem/ jealousy/ bullying or anything. there is such a size difference right now and Davidson is still very much a baby so he is sleeping inside in the mudroom right now and has his own bed and his blanket etc etc that he came with so he will feel at home.

It's been a busy day and I am so very tired now - I'm off to bed :) a new cat in the family and now a new piggy :) my parents always joke that with 5 children and all these animals, this place is a total zoo.......I guess they are right :)

Charlie, you've shrunk!!!!

Photo Shoot....

This afternoon I was booked to do a photo shoot in our community. I'm the Community League Photographer so whenever there is an event in the community I go along and photograph it for the League - for the website, for the scrapbook albums that the League keeps, for the display cases in the hall and for various other reasons.

They booked me several weeks ago to go along and take pictures today of the Summer camp. They said that they had (and I quote) 'A couple of Grandprix cars coming out from the races'.

Turns out this was 'a few cars coming out from Edmonton Raceway'!! Slightly different!!! But nevertheless, the children were thrilled and we had a great afternoon. I was a little disappointed not to spend an afternoon with sexy racing drivers - our drivers turned out to be 12 and 14 years old!!! But the kids loved that! So I guess that was good! W4e all got given free tickets to go to the races in August so I came away with a free family night out in August which is great!

I was there to take pictures of the daycamp kids meeting the drivers and sitting in the cars which I did, then we took group pictures in front of the three cars, they all got autographs, then they drove the cars down to the lake and we took individual pictures of each kid with their favourite car and it's driver with the lake behind.

Two hours in the sunshine, with the playground there, some great cars, the great team from Edmonton raceway who were sooooo friendly and helpful! It was just a GREAT afternoon!!! I took my youngest 4 with me and got some pictures and of them too :) and took some pictures of some of the daycamp leaders there too. A couple of other Moms came by with their kids and asked me to take some pictures of their kids too which I did - it was a nice afternoon - busy and hot but fun :)

I came back home, edited all the pictures and got them emailed back to the leaders 20 minutes early which surprised me :) I thought it would take longer!

So no sexy racing drivers and no Grandprix cars lol but the kids were happy and I got some fun pictures and Sam got to see Macks new paint job AND some cars with stickers instead of headlights!!!

Snapshots.....

The boys and the cars and Sam with Mack who has had a paint job since the movie and is now white :)

My little racing car driver!!

VROOM VROOM!!!!!!!!!

:)