Jessica is here!

On Friday morning around 2:00am, Gerben and Emma took off on a 14 hour drive to North Carolina to pick up Aunt Jess for the week. Emma loves going on these special trips with Daddy. She gets spoiled rotten with goodies and she also gets his undivided attention. For me it's also a break because I get to spend some time with just Natalia. There is no fighting and no screaming amongst the kids. Unfortunately, Natalia starting coming down with the same illness that Emma had last week and she wasn't feeling the greatest. Luckily, all I needed was a dose of Advil and she perked right back up. Gerben, Emma and Jessica arrived back in Brantford around 3:30 on Sunday. Their drive when very well and we have settled down for a nice week of torturing Jess with Barbie, Barbie and more Barbie. Of course we also have to throw in some Dora for good measure. The famous mini-golf match between Jess and Emma hasn't happened yet but I will be sure to post the results when it does.

Hopefully, I will have to photos to post soon. We haven't had Jess in the pool yet because of all the rain but hopefully tomorrow. We are all looking forward to our visit from Kenneth, Mariska and the girls on Friday. You know I will have the camera out then.

It's been a busy summer so far

I cannot believe that we are creeping up on the last week of July so soon. It's not going to be long and Emma will be back at school. Last week, Emma went to a paint and play day camp. She had a blast. They did some cool paint projects in the morning and then went to a gym and a bakery on the afternoons. Emma was just beaming each day when I picked her up. She told me that she wishes she could go everyday. Unfortunetly, she did miss one day because she was quite sick and fevered. She seems to have perked up now which is good.

On Saturday, Amy and her family came for a swim and a BBQ. Everyone had a great time. The pool was a balmy 27 degrees so we all stayed in for a long, long time. I cannot believe how much the solar blanket helps with warming the pool and keeping it that way. I will post some photos at the bottom of this post.

On Friday, Gerben and Emma are taking off on the long drive to North Carolina to pick up Aunt Jessica for a week. Emma is so excited. I think she has Jess' week totally planned out. I hope Jess is good at mini-golf 'cause Emma plans on taking her.

Baby it's hot!

Oh man, for a house with air conditioning it sure doesn't feel like it tonight. I had trouble getting both kids to bed. They were complaining of being too hot and honestly I am too. They both now have fans in their rooms and a cool sheet so I hope I won't hear from them again until morning. Emma had her dance festival this past weekend and she did wonderful. I cannot believe how much fun Ukrainian Dance is. I watched almost all of the 15 performances throughout the weekend and I found it really exciting each and everytime. The little kids did great for a bunch of 3-6 year olds. It's actually quite comical watching them. It's a bit of cute chaos. I am attaching a video. I apologize for the crappy quality but I don't have a real video camera. This was done on my small digital camera. Emma is mostly to the far right of the screen as you are watching. Enjoy the show!