Tiegan's most favourite dress

Tiegan's most favourite dress
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

I have no idea how I managed to get this shot, it was rather a fluke, but I really love it. It very much captures the stage Tiegan is in right now, with her favourite dress, her constant motion and a very quintessential Tiegan expression!!!

I've uploaded a bunch of new photos to Flickr in case you haven't checked them out, including an outing to get cookies at a local bakery, Kea's recent dental work to get a cap on her root canal and our day trip over to Bowen Island for their annual Children's Festival.

Spring Colds

Hello! We've all been struggling with a brutal cold that seems to be raging its way through all of our friends - just keeping us all low-energy with lots of muccus and a lovely chesty cough. Kea and Jamie seem to be over the worst of it, Tiegan is hanging on to it for the long haul, even poor Ryland has his second cold in his short little life and yesterday it finally hit me with a venegance. Ugh. I'm always the strong one who never gets sick and takes care of everyone else, so I have no patience for being sick!!! Though I have to admit, it was kind of nice to be able to flake out on the couch most of the day, resting and reading! I read one book cover to cover (Ami McKay's "The Birth House" - I really enjoyed it and HIGHLY recommend it!!!!) and even started another book ("My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult) which I was enjoying (was intrigued/haunted by) enough to stay up way too late last night reading - not great for recovering from a cold, but a great salve for a mind that has been under the fog of new babyhood for too long!!!!!

Today I'm forced back into the saddle, ignoring the sore chest and achiness as Jamie is off to Toronto for three nights for work. We shall see how single mothering goes this time - it can be fun or it can be torture, all kind of depends on the moods of the kids!!!!!

Our new wheels!

Our new wheels!
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

Okay, so after agonizing over what we're going to do sans wheels, and then realizing that we'd been over a week without the car and seemed to be managing fine, we've decided to try seeing just how long we can go without a car at all!!! First of all, we have some great strollers that make it easier to walk all over the place and most of our activities are nearby. We live in the city, so there's a half-decent transit system. We've been looking into the car co-op and there's a car parked at the end of our street, and a minivan about 4 blocks away. And there's a Discount car rental 3 blocks from our house that we can opt to rent from when need be......so wish us luck on living car free at a stage when we could easily 'justify' buying a mini-van!!!!!!

So, it started with the door handle to the drivers' door becoming really sticky and eventually falling apart so we could no longer open the driver door from the outside. Instead we had to reach around from the back door to open it from the inside - you can imagine how much fun that was at 9 months pregnant!

The oil has always burned stinkily, the muffler rattles noisily and the windshield wipers barely work.

Then the rearview mirrors started popping off last week, another sign that our car was dying a slow, drawn-out death....

And then yesterday it gave a grande finale for poor Jamie on his way home from work....his legs and feet started feeling really hot, and coolant was spitting out at him. Then the car began to fog up on the inside to the point that he could no longer see and had to slam on the brakes. He stepped out to push the car to the side of the road, only to discover he was soaked up to his ankles by a puddle of coolant.

I don't think duct tape is even going to fix our Jetta this time. It's official, we need a new vehicle!!!!

The question is, can we live with ourselves if we succumb to a minivan?!!!