Only one week past the kids' second birthday and we seem to have already seen a dramatic increase in the number of tantrums per day.  I'm not sure if the kids have some sort of biological switch that just turned on or if I'm counting more carefully now that we've reached this fateful landmark. This picture of Matthew, taken this evening, gives me something else to wonder about while counting down the days until their next birthday.  His future profession: skyscraper architect, ICBM engineer, urologist?

Matthew and Calvin celebrated their second birthdays on Saturday with their friends in the afternoon at the Southland Leisure Centre and with their family in the evening.  Thank you to everyone who attended and provided such wonderful gifts for the kids.

While managing the logistics I had little time to take pictures.  I will post what I do have as soon as I run them through Photoshop.  If anyone else snapped some great photos please email me and I'll give you instructions to send them to me.  Until then you can download a short video from the party.

Our plans for Halloween involved 150km of driving and secret visits to three grandparent's houses and an aunt's house to show off our Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion, but Scarecrow hasn't been feeling well so we shelved those plans and spent a quiet evening at home. The kids looked so cute in their costumes that we had to take some pictures anyway.

Not-so-cowardly Matt giving a big roar	Scarecrow saying "Boo!"

Nicole provided ten more pictures of the kids from our trip.  They are the first ten you see in the Nanaimo 2006 section of the Gallery.

We're back from vacation refreshed and with a renewed commitment to keep this website updated -- doubly so after the embarassment of forgetting to renew our domain earlier this month!

We spent last week in Nanaimo, B.C. introducing the kids to Mike's grandparents, their great-grandparents for the first time.  The last time we saw them was exactly two years ago when Angela was near full term and they visited Calgary.  Mike's mom, his sister, and her fiance Cory made the trip as well. We rented a big house overlooking Departure Bay where the ferry from the mainland to the island docks.

For anyone travelling with young kids we highly recommend renting a house as this was one of the most relaxing vacations we have taken in a long time. The house was nice enough to be comfortable without being so nice that we were worried about the kids damaging it.  The kids had their own bedroom with rented cribs and we were able to maintain their sleep and nap schedule without any upset. All for less than the price of a couple of cheap motel rooms. It was a delight!

Edited pictures from the trip are available in the Gallery. Everything is cropped to 4x6.  If you need a different size for printing let us know and we'll see what we can do.