Coupon Crazy!!

Ok, so after I had my kids I was a bit of a coupon crazy mom. I refused to pay full price on things like diapers or wipes because you can ALWAYS find coupons. Well I had kind of fallen out of that scheme until I saw a website on the news. It's called Smart Canucks. It's AMAZING!! I can't believe how much of an idiot I have been. I didn't realize just how much money I could save doing this. I have saved a ton this week alone thanks to smart canucks pointing me in the direction of great coupons and great sales any ways to combine them.

For example, this week I saved 59.18 just for using coupons. I had a 25% off my entire purchase at Old Navy including sale items. That saved me $32.38 on Emma's back to school clothes. Plus another $6.00 off $26.00 at Zellers. This could get very addicting very quickly.

The funniest part was seeing my excitement when the smart source coupon clipper showed up in the mail today. Now I am off to figure out the best way to organize all my coupons and what to do with the saved money.

Thump, Thump, THUMP!

Do you hear that sound? "Thump, thump, THUMP!" That is me. Banging my head against a wall. OMG, Natalia is driving me CRAZY! She is such a pest right now. All she does is bug Emma. I swear she knows every button to push to get a reaction out of her and she uses them over and over again all day. She will sprint into Emma's room, grab the nearest item and run, while Emma just stands there and screams. OMG, I am so tired of it. You have no idea. If Natalia knows Emma is about to sit somewhere or do something she takes off running like a bat out of hell and makes sure she gets there first. Of course this leads to more screaming and crying from Emma. If Emma finally stands up to Natalia or we catch her in the act and give her shit Natalia will throw herself of the nearest piece of furniture and scream and cry into it. Is there a crime against having your child's voice box removed? Because right now I would happily sign her up for that. Or better yet, some sort of sound barrier between me and the kids. One that I could turn on and off as needed. Something like the Muffliato spell in Harry Potter. Oh how I wish I had something like that.

Tonight was one of those classic bratty little sister moments. Emma was sitting on the floor listening to her mp3 player and not bothering anyone. Natalia leaned over and yank the headphone out of Emma's ear. Just to be a brat. No other reason. URG!! Luckily Daddy caught her and she got in trouble.

In Natalia's defence, it's got to be tough when you receive mixed messages like this from your big sister.



It's not much of a "Happy Party" when you are constantly being told to "Stay Out" of the venue, aka Emma's Room.

To add to the frustrations around this house is this awful summer weather. It's so wet,yucky,cold and very unpredictable that it's tough to do anything with the kids. They are bored of being stuck in the house. They want to get out and do stuff but it always seems to be storming. This was the weather around here the other day.



Hail stones, the size of cherry pits, pelting our house. Not to mention the crazy thunderstorms. Just this morning we had one that took out the sensor in one of Gerben's coolers at work.

At least on Monday we did get out of the house for a bit. I took both the kids to Burford to meet up with some friends at the local splash pad and playground. It's awesome and the kids had a blast. Seeing this new splash pad and playground does make me miss a little bit of Burford. It would be fabulous to have this close to home but them again, it makes a great day trip.







Today, Emma had a classmate over to play. It was nice because adding one extra kid to the house cuts down on the fighting significantly plus gives the girls something different to do. They spent some time in the pool but the majority of the day was spent crafting. We did tons and tons of shrinky dinks and of course make beaded necklaces to hang them home.

Tomorrow, Emma has 2 more classmates coming for a visit. I am hoping that goes as smoothly as today does. Then on Monday, she starts 2 weeks of summer camp. It is going to be so good for her to get out of the house but I will need to find things for Natalia to do as well.

On a final note, I just have to share these pics with you. They are of a very cool leaf that was on my patio step this morning. It had really weird furry water drops on it. I strongly recommend clicking on the image for a larger view. It's cool.

Photoclub at the Fergus Auto Wreckers

So much to my surprise photoclub did happen last night at the Auto Wreckers and in all honesty the weather turned out quite nice. When I first got to the location I was immediately lost. I had no idea what I was going to take photos of. This is so far out of my element but after walking around for a while I managed to find stuff that captured my eye and in the end I had a ton of fun.

I did learn a big lesson on this shoot. Before you head to a location, think about your footwear. I don't think it was smart to wear my croc sandels to a autowreckers. The ground was very muddy and wet and full of broken glass. Oh well, I survived with no injuries, lesson learned!

Canada's Wonderland

On Sunday we decided to take the kids to Canada's wonderland. We all had a blast. Emma is turning into a roller coaster junkie. She LOVES them. Natalia had fun on the kiddie rides but I think she is quickly growing out of them. Both kids just squeeked by their hieght requirements which allowed them the most bang for our buck.
Natalia was able to ride some things all by herself and Emma was able to go on the faster roller coaster rides.

Natalia loved the Flintstones Merry-go-round. She insisted to ride on the flamingo aka Dino.

Emma's favourite ride, "The Silver Streak!"

Happy 60th Anniversary!

Today we were off to Fergus to visit family and help to celebrate my Grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. Congratulations Gramma and Grandpa we love you both! You are a huge inspiration to everyone in our family.



To celebrate this huge milestone, our family held an open house in Fergus. The venue was packed! There was so many people that came out to congratulate my grandparents. It was fantastic!

I captured a few pictures of my neice and nephews while I was there. They are such cuties and I really wish we got to see them more often. I think it's time I scheduled a pool party and invite them over.





After the open house we all headed to Elmira for dinner. The kids needed to wear off some energy so we decided to stop at a park on the way. Gerben decided to follow the route the gps wanted us to go instead of the way I would have went and it totally worked in my favour. We got to stop at the super cool "Kissing Bridge" in West Montrose. It's been a long time since I have been there and it's just as pretty as I remembered it.



The last stop, of course, was the park. The kids were thrilled to get to run around for a bit and I was thrilled to have a pretty little spot to take a few pictures. Gerben and Emma even let me capture a few shots of them.






Awe, it's so nice to capture some beautiful shots and edit them to the super saturated feel that I love so much.

Tomorrow it's off to Canada's Wonderland. I am going to leave my dSLR at home and just take my point and shoot. Wish me luck! I am sure I am going to kick myself for doing that but I really don't want to deal with the worry and weight of carrying around my dSLR.

I'm in such a photo rut!

I'm in such a rut lately that I don't even feel like pulling out my camera. But, today was photoclub so I had to.

Just before leaving for the Railcar Museum, our photoclub destination for this evening, I pulled out my gear to get ready and remembered that I wanted to get some photos of the gorgeous Gerberas that Aunt Karen and Uncle Jack brought for Emma the night they saw her dance. The colour of these flowers is amazing. I LOVE gerberas. Emma does too because she was really worried I was going to ruin them when I was photographing them.

Here's my favourites of the batch.





I took a ton of pics at the railcar museum but these are the ones that jumped out at me. I ran a vintage action on them. I'm not totally sure I like it but it's ok for a quick and dirty edit.

Another School Year has passed

It's hard to believe but another school year has come and gone. Emma completed grade one with flying colours and even made the honour roll. We are so proud of her. She keeps telling up that she doesn't want school to end and that she wishes she didn't have summer. I am sure she will feel differently after she sees all we have planned. With all the stress that we had at the end of kindergarten it was so nice to have a smooth ending to Grade 1.

This is Emma on her first day of Grade 1.



And this is Emma on her last day of Grade 1.



To end the school year I decided to have a little pool party for all the girls in Emma's class. They had a blast. The best part of the day was getting to push Gerben into the pool. He was such a great sport about it and I am sure the girls will be talking about it for weeks to come.






For the next week we are also lucky enough to have Miranda and Kirsten staying with us while Mariska and Al enjoy a trip to Cuba. The girls are loving every minute of it. We have spent every day in the pool since they got here. And to Gerben and my big surprise Emma has also broken free of her fear of the diving board and look at what she is doing...



So far summer has kicked off with a bang. I can't wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store for us.