Conversational tidbits:

On being asked about Daddy...
"What work does Daddy do?"
"Daddy works in his office."
"What does he do in his office?"
"He works on the computer."
"Does he play games on the computer?"
"No. But Grace does."


Experiencing the first thunderstorm:
"What's that?"
"That's the storm; thunder and lightning"
"Will the storm do it again?"
"Maybe."
"Make it do it again Mommy!"
"I can't!"
"But I want it..."
(Flicker! crash!)
"What was that, Mommy? "
...

On the following rainbow:
"Its a rainbow! God make a rainbow for his promise!"
"What did he promise, Grace?"
"That he never leave Grace..."

We've had a lot of rain recently. Lots of indoor days. I'd like to say this picture shows the results of an afternoon with Daddy (fairly similar, to be sure!) but actually this picture is the result of any number of afternoons with Mommy this week...
At least there has been plenty of opportunity to practice helping Mommy clean up before supper/bed/bath/etc. !

The latest occupation in play: feeding the animals. Interesting that they don't use the play vegetables and fruit, but rather use their ball collection! Grace carefully "cooks" them in her "oven" (the shelves) on the yellow serving tray, waits for the oven to "ding" and then carefully serves them, admonishing the animals that they have to blow because its hot! And Jasmin dutifully acts out the eating.
When the indoor play gets too rowdy, we've taken refuge in the library... and sometimes the calm of books returns home with us...

First fruits from our token back yard garden. Not bad at all since I planted it in the Spring and haven't really been able to look after it at all this summer! There is promise of more there, and if I can persuade the girls not to dig up the carrots or pick the squash flowers we might have a respectable little harvest. An exciting prospect after 10 years or so without any!

Yesterday we took an early morning walk to the flower field (builder's ground left wild a year or so). We were enjoying exploring the flowers and the myriads of baby grasshoppers when suddenly a big truck ramps over the curb and heads for us in the field! About the same time, a digger that had been working at the other side of the field began coming towards us as well. Needless to say, we left in a hurry! Hopefully we'll get to enjoy the flowers a little while longer before they plow it all up. I guess we'll have interesting construction to watch soon :)
Here's the flowers we picked before being chased off by a digger and a truck:

Sunday was our church's annual picnic and baptism service. We went to Upper Canada Village. After a wonderful celebration and baptism (4 youth and 3 adults from two different churches), we had the afternoon to have fun together. Right near the end, the girls caught sight of the train...
We waited a LONG time for it to return so we could take it. All the same, we were quite unprepared when it did come. We managed to get on, but the girls were still only in their bathing suits! Half way through our ride, there was a rain shower. Jasmin was getting so cold she was turning blue round the edges so...
I let her share my shirt!
At the other end of the ride was the actual village: a historical working village... We'll have to go back some time to go in there; the girls were excited about the horse and barn they could see from our side of the canal! We got to see the "tame" catfish in the canal though. Never seen anything like it: so many fish all at the surface with open mouths waiting to be fed! The girls were fascinated and could have stayed watching for a LONG time.

We've had a few quiet days at home... enjoying activities not attempted with the cousins:

Cooking with Mommy

Driveway drawing..

...or roasting marshmallows over a fire.. (Mommy is puzzled: when has she done this to copy it?) She was cooking them, complete with warnings to Jasmin about it being hot and commentary on their crispness, stickiness, and yummyness!

Then a long-lost friend from PEI "dropped in" for a night or two. Grace and Jasmin were thrilled to have friends in the house again, but here Jasmin isn't so sure about having to share the bench with three others - especially without a drink like the others...

A new set of friends means a new set of fun things to do. Believe it or not, Grace actually started this one by grabbing a handful of pencil crayons and running to the bathroom saying "let's go get pretty!" (Again, who has she been watching? Not mommy!)

Random pieces of life for Grace and Jasmin in the last month (!)

Learning about dress up from their Calgary cousins

Swimming at the pool with NiNi

No longer afraid of being alone in the water - at least for awhile...

Studying how to dig with the digger at Brewer Park: the blond Fraser cousins

Sharing a ride at Brewer Park

Learning all sorts at the Children's Museum

Makes life with Mommy and Daddy look rather boring - almost surprised that they don't want us to go away again :o)

Just about a whole month has gone by without a post. We've been busy!
Michael and I took a short trip to Cambodia at the end of June, leaving Grace and Jasmin with Abba and Imma. They did wonderfully well having their parents away for 10 days, enjoying all the new things Abba and Imma and Uncle Jamie had planned for them. When we returned at the beginning of July, Grace and Jasmin were ecstatic to have us back though!

None of us had time to readjust properly as the very next day more Frasers arrived - from Calgary and Hamilton area. A full household: 7 children under 6 and 9 adults! Lots of fun :o)




We managed to visit Parliament, discovered a fantastic park (Brewer park, with a water slide and run-through fountains as well as lots of slides and climbing frames), have a BBQ with Michael's family, go swimming, browse the Byward market... a busy crew we were! We also had lots of time to catch up with each other over games of Settlers and cups of tea at home once the kids were in bed or taking a break with a video.






Now we are making our way back into "normal" life, having said good bye to everyone after a fantastic mini reunion (we were missing 3 siblings). I have lots more pictures but I'm having trouble posting them, so this will have to do for now :o)