pool partying

This past week was full of a pool full of people (say that 20 times).  I think every day we had a bunch of friends over.  Monday night (Aug. 31) a bunch of the neighbour kids came over for a night swim.  One of them brought ice cream and toppings for a late night snack as well.  It was a full moon and there was some smoke in the air so the moon was bright pinky orange.

I started work on Tuesday, feeling very sorry for myself for having to go back into "real life", after two full months of summer with the family.  Pathetic of me, I know.  I'm spoiled.  

When I came home after my first day, I saw several cars in the driveway so I knew we had company.  There were four neighbour kids, Maddy's boyfriend, Mark, our friends and their three young kids, and our kids all in the pool.  At first, for a few seconds, I felt like crying.  I wanted to burst into tears because I felt so sad that I had missed out on the fun that they had been having.  Then I realized how ridiculous that was - because they were still here!  More fun was yet to be had.

I tried to throw Mia into the pool and it wasn't working, so I just grabbed her and jumped in with her...with my work clothes on.  After swimming around a little, I went to get my actual bathing suit on and enjoy our company.  Most of our time was spent watching all (ALL) of the kids attack Mark while he valiantly defended himself with pool noodles and boogie boards.  They also all greatly enjoyed his crazy pool entries - flipping and flying into the pool.

Our friends left for a little while to dry off and all that, and came back later for dinner.

On Wednesday Maddy had a bunch of friends over and Thursday Mia had a bunch.  Before, after and in between all of that, there were still plenty of neighbor kids around as well.  It was a week-long swim-fest.  It thrill my heart to come home every day from work to find a pool/house full of people.  What a blessing.

oma and opa

As previously stated, Oma and Opa came.  And there was much rejoicing!  We were all so excited to see them - it had been so long!  They spoiled the kids - of course.

For the first little while that they were here, we were rather busy (especially Maddy and I) with grad.... and recuperating from grad.  Later, however, we had a bit more time.  One night we had dinner at the restaurant Maddy works at (Irori - so yummy) and then went out for ice cream after.

On Tuesday Eric took them to the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg.  My sister Jodi gave them a tour.  It sounded quite fascinating.   I guess I missed out.  

The kids and I joined them later for lunch at the Forks.  We had a great lunch and then walked around there for a bit.  We came across a splash pad and I dared Cade to go in with his clothes on.  I decided to dare myself as well.  I did it rather quickly, so I didn't get too wet, but Cade took his time.  He was soaked!

After that we headed to the BDI (Bridge Drive In) - a Winnipeg institution.  It was a necessary introduction.  You could hardly claim to have visited Winnipeg in the summer without stopping here. Eric doesn't think it is all that, and perhaps he is right.  Their ice cream is good but nothing extraordinary.  What is extraordinary is they type of offerings they have, and the fact that it is the BDI - it just is because it is.

The visit was too short, but we are thankful for what we got.  It was fantastic to have them here and introduce them to our new home.

cyclathon 2015

The cyclathon happened and I pretty much missed it.  Thankfully I have a few pictures - none of them action, however.  

Cade, Mia and Eric all cycled while Lucy and I were in Winnipeg, taking Maddy to write her SATs.  Lucy really wanted to cycle this year, but it just wasn't going to happen without me doing it along side her, and I committed to taking Maddy.  She wasn't very happy about it but it ended up being a good thing.

It was much tougher than last year.  The conditions were much less favourable than last year so it was a little more gruelling.  And it ended in rain so the kids were soaked through with no dry clothes to change into.....  Their change of clothes was with the van in Winnipeg.  Not the best or most happy ending!

After the SATs, the three of us headed to Red Rock to join the others.  Cade was quite relieved to have some dry, warm clothes, although he was probably more happy to see his mom (okay, I admit that I live in a dream world....).  We made it in time for the program.  No big prizes for the Ackermans this year, but Cade still did come away with a great sweatshirt and Eric got a rose to plant in our yard (it is pretty much dead already.... we are no gardeners).

We all spent the night again (well, okay, again for all of them.... I didn't last year).  The next morning a friend pointed out a beautiful, dew-covered spider's web that I needed to photograph.

The day was filled with swimming, hiking, talking and eating.  It was a great weekend.  And I think Red Rock liked it too.... they raised a whole lot of cash (for kids to attend camp).

Next year, I'm riding!!!

party time at the canad…or not

Oops!  I forgot about this one!  It has been sitting there waiting for me to finish it for some time now - like three months.  Sheesh.

Sometime near the end February-ish my darling sister Kim and I took our little baby girls to Grand Forks for the weekend.  Okay, so maybe they are not so little and babyish any more….

The first night we went a little cheaper and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express.  It was quite fantastic.  And lesson learned - we should have just stayed there.  But no, we (okay, I) was drawn (sucked would probably be a better verb) in to the flash and pizzazz of the Canad Inn.  And it sucked too, just like me.

The girls loved the simple, quiet, smallish pool at the Holiday Inn - who knew?  And they almost despised the noisy, chaotic craziness of the Canad water slides.  Plus the price stunk.

The girls could, however, play with broccoli and their cups at the overpriced hotel.  That was a bonus.

(Kim was hiding from the camera….)

They could also make their bread rolls, that they ate only the insides out from, talk.  Quite fascinating.  (the phone wanted to focus on the real talker - Riley - instead of the noisy mouth of the bread-man)

Initially when we got to the Canad, we were put on this floor where we were the only people who were not part of a pee wee hockey team.  The very nice mothers whom I met in the elevator suggested that if we wanted sleep, we might want to request another room.  Either that or we could party with them.  We chose quiet.  So we asked to move rooms.  The second room was good up until about 2 minutes before the girls fell asleep, whereupon the power went out in the bathroom.  Kim tried to fiddle with various things but to no avail.  Since we didn't want the upheaval of moving right when the girls were finally settling down (emphasis: finally), we lumped it and showered in the dark (almost complete and utter if not for the flashlights on our phones).  

The problem was that the power was still out in the morning.  And the hotel only made suggestions on this we could try that Kim already tried.  It did not work.  And they did not apologize or even fein regret. Not pleased.  Needless to say, Canad Inn will never be on our list of desirables ever again - overpriced, under serviced, extra charging, crazy crowded place that it is.

Boy, that was a whole whack of negativity.

We really did have a fabulous time in spite of it all, however.  How can you not when with two crazy 9 year olds.  Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber are a seriously good time.

cleaning up and caching in

First, just a few pictures of the neighbour kids all in our back yard, jumping on the trampoline.  Fun.  Love it that there are all these kids!

A week ago (and two days) was the town's annual "Pick up and walk" event.  Churches recruit volunteers and put teams together to clean up the town - all the public areas.  We did it last year and it was freezing!!! - but fun.  This year was significantly better as it was pretty much a perfect day for it. We did it with one other family from our life group at church - everyone else was gone or busy.  We did the south side of town, right by the dump road.  Considering we were right by the dump road, we didn't get a whole lot of interesting items!

Shortly into our morning Eric exclaimed "I have to pee":

About half an hour later, he "had two pee":

Lucy also found a "4", but there wasn't anything very clever that we came up with that.

Eric cleverly thought of using some old ski poles as pick-up sticks.  They worked quite fabulously.  After we were done the highway area, we moved on to the A.D. Penner park.

After about two and a half to three hours of cleaning up, everyone headed back to the hockey rink (where we all started from) for a hot dog feast.  It really is quite an enjoyable time and it is pretty amazing how much better the town looks when we are all done.  It's a good thing.

The next day, Sunday, we did a little geocaching in the area.  We did five different ones.  And even the tough one we did quite quickly.  Spoiler alert:  if you plan to do some geocaching in the Steinbach area, you may not want to see these pictures.  We don't want to spoil your fun!

The first two were by this cool little creek area just outside of town.... right beside a car dealership.  But it feels like you are pretty far away while you are in the middle of it - pretty cool area.

Mia found that one pretty quickly.

The next one was further down just off of a path.  It took us a minute or two but Eric found the next one.  It took about a minute or two to open it as well....here's a little tip: lefty-loosy, righty-tighty...don't try to pull the lid off.

We forgot all about bringing along some little treasures to exchange in the caches but Lucy, not surprisingly, had a few little items in her pocket.  She left a shell and took a quarter.

On to cache number three.  It was in a different area and also just took a minute or so to find, once we were in the right area.  Cade found that one.

It was pretty breezy that day and Lucy, the sweatshirtless girl, was freezing.  Dad the hero finally sacrificed his sweatshirt for her.

Cache number four was found before I even crossed the little creek on the lovely somewhat stable 2x4 laid across it.

And on to cache five.  This one had a high level of difficulty but had a hint: 24.  Right away Cade had the right idea of adding up the numbers together that he saw on some electric/hydro/what-have-you box.  Surprisingly he mis-calculated.  I recalculated and discovered that it did, indeed, add up to 24.  So then we figured we were at the right place.  We looked around for a few seconds and that was all the time it took for Mia to find the cache.

It was just a tiny folded up paper in a little zip-lock bag behind the magnetized numbers.  Pretty clever!  And our family was pretty clever too - it took mere minutes for us to work together and find the difficult cache.

On the way home I challenged Cade to come up with a clever cache.  He said that he wanted to hide one so I thought we should do something cool instead of just a regular one.  I suggested that we have two different coordinates - one to locate a ball or spear or something and one to locate a target.  They you had to hit the target with the ball or spear to release the cache.... or it could even release the new coordinates to where the cache is!  It probably won't ever happen, but it'd be cool if it did!