picking dandelions

picking dandelions
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

The kids and I had a lot of fun with a lawn covered in dandelions next door - the girls were determined to spread wishes far and wide (luckily on said neighbours' yard rather than ours!!!!!) and I had a lot of fun snapping photos. I've uploaded some of my favourites onto our flickr account, which you can access by clicking on this photo of Kea.

art recognition

receiving recognition (a classic shy face!)
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

Kea has been our budding artist from the very beginning - she fills book after book with her intricate drawings of people, animals, scenes from books and favourite movies. Tiegan, on the other hand, begrudgingly takes art classes as they're right before her true love, the dress-up drama class. For her, the art is MUCH more about the process than the product and although I can always accost Kea to produce gift-worthy art, Tiegan is less obliging. One year I gave her a canvas on which she drew a great stick figure representing Grampa, and before I could snatch it away from her, she proceeded to paint over it with about 6 layers of dark blue paint!!!!! Every once in a while there's something that *I* recognize (like a bunny or a cougar) and I've stashed those scraps of paper away but for the most part Tiegan's art work consists of darker and darker scribbles over top of each other until the paper rips, and then moving onto the all-time favourite of body painting.

Now I do recognize the huge value of the process and I realize that she is probably saving us a lot of money in therapy by working through her aggression with the black pastel, I just give you this background as a way to explain why we were chuckling when it was Tiegan's art (of course!) that was chosen by HSBC bank as outstanding at the year end show! It has been professionally framed, will hang in their office for a year before we get it back, Tiegan got an award and a small gift bag and has also received a free art class at Arts Umbrella. Perhaps she will be the next Pollock, and we're just baboons when it comes to appreciating 'real' art?!!!!

Luckily, Kea's class had displayed their art work at a local art gallery downtown the week before, so both girls felt equally celebrated!

Happy Summer Solstice!

Happy Anniversary!!!
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

Yup, we're still here, and as busy as ever! I've been taking photos and stockpiling stories, but will wait until our current company leaves before dedicating the time to update a little!!!!!

We've just returned from Seattle, where Jamie and I celebrated our NINTH wedding anniversary! Crazy that it was 9 whole years ago that we all gathered in the rain to celebrate - and that we've been together for more than a decade! Crazy. But fun:-) We were able to go out on a date, with Gram watching the kids, so we browsed uninterrupted through a local bookstore, wandered around the funky neighbourhood of Fremont taking photos, and then went out for Thai food - the whole while dreaming about the direction the next decade of our life together will take us!!!!!!!

Hope everyone is enjoying the first days of summer, and I'll be back soon to do a big update. Both on flickr and on the blog!

It's a girl!

It's a girl!
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

And today we spent the afternoon at the aquarium, checking out the new baby beluga. So sweet! We watched it swim round and round with her mama, watched her nurse a couple of times and come up for lots of breaths of air, and we learned all sorts of information from the great aquarium volunteers there! It was quite a magical afternoon, spent primarily with the belugas but also checking out a few of our other favourite spots - more photos on flickr!

Oh, and I found an even better Youtube of the birth, this one from the aquarium itself - enjoy!

Happy first birthday Etta!

Trying Etta's new dress on Ryland, the only one year old in sight!
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

Our friends Kip and Brenda have adopted a second child, little Rosetta Vanessa, and today she turns one year old. I've always wanted to learn how to sew with elastic thread, and this was the perfect excuse to try it out. I used a tutorial that I found online, and it really was as easy as it looks - take a tube, stitch on the elastic thread and add some straps. And doesn't Ryland just look oh so sweet in it? I think I'm going to have to whip up a few more of these dresses, in the size 5 and 8 category! Once I get a bit more free time - one more wall to side, one more wall to side!!!!!

As you probably guessed, life is busy busy busy as we work on finishing up the house (Jamie's finished up most of the trims, and we're now up to our eyeballs in siding and sawdust!) I spend a bit of time on the computer in the evenings, but it's usually on the laptop upstairs and so even though I have a few new photos to upload onto the desktop and therefore onto flickr, it'll have to wait for now.

We're excitedly planning a trip to our beloved aquarium this Friday to see the new baby beluga, born yesterday afternoon. That would have been an exciting time to be visiting the aquarium!!!!!!

Jamie continues to obsess about the Barth, looking up various practical and not-so-practical websites in his dreaming and planning for our upcoming trip. We're going to a talk on Sat by another family who is living in an RV and setting it up to be as green as possible, so we'll be bringing about a million questions to them! And tonight he's been showing Ryland this catchy video!!!! Of course, I'm wondering why we wasted our money on a Barth, when we could have just picked ourselves up a little rv like this one Perhaps for our next trip!!!!!!!!

Vancouver Children's Festival

spot the pirate!
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

I'm just in the process of uploading a bunch of new photos on our flickr account, and I realized that I hadn't even blogged about our fantastic time at the Vancouver Children's Festival in May. We saw a great puppet show , danced to some gospel music and watched First Nations dancers . We really lucked out with the shows, the kids were enamoured with all three of them - and when we weren't enjoying a performance, we were making kites, practicing circus skills, feeding ducks, painting faces, playing in a huge sandbox, eating treats and having a great time!

Slogans for our life these days.....

So, Jamie celebrated his last day of work on Fri, with a slideshow of his 10 years there, many stories and lots of hugs. They sent him home with a steering wheel cover, a dancing hula girl for the dashboard and best of all, a couple of solar panels for the Barth!!!!!

Best of all, though, they gave him a goodbye card which all of his coworkers signed - and one guy put down, "May the Barth be with you" which we have now adopted for our family slogan! I wonder if we could paint that along the front of Bartha?!!!

The other day Jamie was talking to the girls about how we'd have to eliminate a lot of stuff before moving into the Barth, and he jokingly claimed that they'd have to get rid of all their toys. Kea sighed with a knowing eye-roll saying the classic, "Daa-aad" and he said, "Yup, the next year is all about boredom." to which Kea responded with, "Dad, I'll never be bored. You CAN'T take away my imagination." and off she bounced. So classic - I think that also has to be one of our slogans now!!!!

So ya, Jamie's home full time now and other than torturing our children and creating neurosis about waking up to no more toys, he's filling his days with trims, trims and more trims. Soon we'll branch out to touch-up painting and siding, and then hopefully soon we'll be done done done with fixing up this house! In time to sell it - as I think we predicted it when we bought it 6 years ago!!!!! Perhaps things will be different with the Barth - it is a much more manageable size, at least!