Angels or Devils?

Where do they learn to do the head tilt?

Brooklyn and her friend Jaden..trouble waiting to happen...

Justin Is Growing Up

Anyone who has young kids is undoubtedly familiar with Dora the Explorer and her best friend Boots the monkey. When Justin was going through the Dora phase (yes, preschool boys love her too) we bought an annoying CD of all the annoying songs from the show.

One of the tracks deep into the CD has Boots singing about balls..."I love my balls, my bouncy balls, I love my balls, balls, balls, balls, balls! My balls are bouncy, my balls are blue, I love my balls and you can play with them too"! OK, so if you're even half as immature as I am, you are snickering to yourself and wondering how they ever got away with that one on a kid's CD.

Fastforward a couple of years and now Brooklyn is the one into Dora and Boots. Tonight when we were playing, Brooks started singing the song and I joined in...and suddenly Justin burst into hysterical laughter. Deep, gut-busting belly laughs! He's 6 years old and he finally got it! That's my boy!

Happy Mother's Day

I sent flowers to Mom and Gretchen for Mother's Day...what'd you do, Bruce? Eh? Eh? Those lucky ducks in Nova Scotia had lobster today...I'm drooling just thinking about it. Can you believe a pound of bologna costs the same as a pound of lobster on the east coast right now??? Next they'll be telling me that Spam is a delicacy.

Today marks the beginning of the final week of P90X. I will give a full update at the end of the week on the results, and my overall assessment of the program. Tony kicked my ass again today, but I weighed in at just over 184.

A mini-wave of nice weather hit and yesterday I took advantage of the sun and did a major clean up in the moss-ridden back "yard" (a yard by Vancouver standards, a planter box by Canadian standards). Our little area was destroyed by heavy snow breaking down bushes, and a long dark winter lead to serious moss problems. I cleaned up all the patio furniture and put it out with the umbrella...and the kids decided we should eat dinner outside! It was warm enough with a light sweater and so we had our first outdoor meal of the year on May 9...that's actually the earliest date I've eaten outside in the last 15 years in Vancouver.

The Last of the Maui Pics

We have hundreds of photos from our trip, but now that we're back, it's time to get back into the swing of regular life. :(

1) The Marriot in Wailea had a great kids pool and these fantastic green waterslides. Justin wimped out initially, but once he discovered how fun it was, he was unstoppable. Brooklyn was too scared until near the end of the trip...when she finally tried it she was so excited she crammed about 500 slides into a few short hours!!!

2) The whole trip was more fun for the kids when we hooked up with Jessica and Jamie. Jess is like Brooklyn's big sister, and the two of them are the worst 5 and 3 year old fashionistas you've ever seen. Jess had more wardrobe changes than a Broadway musical and Brooks tried to keep up. She even made her Mom go shopping for more "fancy dresses".

3) Justin and I had a lot of fun at the beaches. The waves were big and wave jumping and body surfing was a blast.

4) Justin tried to take credit for building the sand turtle, but it was already there when we arrived at the beach! This photo is from Big Beach, where you can apparently see the odd sea turtle.

Elua Castle

The Lords and Ladies of Elua ordered the construction of a fine castle by the shores of the Pacific ocean. Lord Justin, Lady Jessica and Lady Brooklyn shoveled sand out of the hole while Lord Jamie did his best to shovel it back in. Nonetheless, a splendid fortress arose from the sands...only to be swamped by the raging surf. I made the mistake of jumping into the resulting hot tub, only to be swamped by all four of them!

Random Maui Moments

Some random pics...

1) We tell Justin he can take one lava rock home from the field of lava flows...and of course he picks the one the size of his head. Good thing they're light...but that sucker burned up valuable luggage space his mother would have loved to have had!

2) Justin and Brooklyn take a break from fighting to pose in front of the flowers at Matteo's in Wailea.

3) The kids loved feeding the fish at the Koi pond in front of the hotel. I've decided I'm not buying property in Maui until I can afford a place that has it's own Koi pond and a 100 year old Banyan tree.

4) The view from our garden level room at the Marriot in Wailea...in the distance you can see Elua beach, where there was particularly good snorkeling around the black lava rocks.

Little Rascals

Would you trust this crew of little rascals?

There's Always-act-goofy-in-front-of-the-camera-Justin, I'm-glued-to-the-big-sister-I-never-had-Brooklyn, Do-you-love-my-day-8-bathing-suit-Jessica, and Look-out-here-comes-trouble-Jamie.

This is the best picture I could get of these chaotic little critters!