july recap

okay, so doing a bit of catch-up blogging here:

heather, tirza and i finally got our kiddies together for a bbq at adam & tirza's. there was much fun had (after nathan's requisite 30 minute warm-up). they set up a small inflatable pool in the backyard for the kids, but nathan didn't seem interested to try it out. instead, he spent all his time by the water table! he loved it! we might have to invest in one for next summer. hopefully by then, our backyard will be done.

i think nathan might've been trying to pour the water over kian's head at this point. :oP

another big favourite (as we've known for a while) is the playhouse. any time we go to anyone's house or a toy store, he makes a beeline for the house and spends loads of time in it. he opens and closes the door, goes in and out, and repeats. he can definitely spend at least a good 30 minutes doing that. i'm thinking it'd be nice to have one at home to keep him occupied while i get dinner ready. we've been keeping an eye out for a used one of kijiji, but they get sold really quickly. anyway, the house seemed like a big hit for all the kids. at one point, all 5 of them crammed themselves in there. it was a tight fit, but they all got in. here's a photo of just nathan in the house with heather's two girls:

playhouse fun!

i definitely saw the advantage of having multiple kids that day. once nathan warmed up, he just ran off and played with the four other kids. they had so much fun and we didn't have to entertain them ourselves. and mya was such a great helper. i told heather that if mya wants a babysitting gig in a couple years when she turns 12, we would absolutely hire her. i guess being a big sister gives her a lot of experience, but she was constantly entertaining the little ones and then cleaning up the toys afterwards!

with nathan being pretty active, i've been looking for activities for us to do on my fridays off. one of the new places i've discovered is chapters! they have a large kids section with lots of toys and a thomas the tank engine train table. it can get busy, but nathan can easily spend 45 minutes in there. and fortunately, it's never that hard to scoop him up to leave and he doesn't ask me to buy him anything.

"shopping" at chapters

then today we went to our annual church corn roast. this was the first one that we were able to attend and it was a pretty good time. we didn't get a chance to ride on the wagon, but maybe next year. again, nathan had a blast playing in the playhouse and spent most of his time defending his territory, so to speak. he was easily the littlest one playing in it most of the time, but would stand at the door blocking anyone who tried to get in. the older kids could've easily knocked him down to get through, but they were nice enough to just let him be for the most part. the firefighters also came with their truck and so nathan got the chance to explore the inside of the truck and check out all the gear. what boy doesn't like a fire truck, right?

posing on the front of the truck

with daddy inside the truck!