This summer is flying by – it’s been a busy one.

The 2nd last week of July, we rented a cottage with friends. It was a small cottage on a nice quite lack north of Toronto. It had a little beach and sandy lake access which was great for the girls. It also had a shallow entrance so we just put Izzie and Lilo in life jackets and let them run in and out.
It was a relaxing week of sitting by the water, playing with bubbles (the girls were obsessed) and reading magazines. We also had an afternoon of finger (body) painting. Kelly brought some big paper from work and we laid them by the dock and let them go to town. Izzie thought it tasted good and Lilo loved the feel of the paint on her belly as she jkept rubbing it with paint. It was cute since Lilo was putting one hand in red and the other in green so when she was rubbing her belly it was half red and half green. Kelly was taking pictures so I will post them later.
Also this week we figured out the trick to giving Isla a bottle – don’t touch her. So I just assumed the best way to feed her a bottle is to hold her like she’s nursing but no – she doesn’t like that. The way we got her to take the first few bottles was having her sit in her vibrating chair. Later she would take the bottle sitting on your lap facing out. Whatever works, it’s just nice to have the ability to leave her now for more than a few hours.
We came back on the Saturday and stayed to play our baseball game Sunday night and then off again. (Rob and I played in a co-ed slo pitch league. It’s a new league for us this year but we have been playing for about 8 years now. Since it’s a new group of people on our team – 2 teams blending together – we haven’t won many games, but we’ve been close and we’re having fun.)
On Monday we went up to Rob’s sister in Huntsville for the week. Rob and Steve did some carpentry work for them – they tore down a wall in their basement, added some lights, wired their sound system and re-drywalled. It looks awesome.
While they boys were working hard – the girls went out and played. Kelly and I took the girls to the park which on the map looked close and it was but, boy is it hilly there and it was hot. It didn’t seem bad on the way there but the way home I thought we weren’t going to make it. I think we both seriously thought about calling the guys to pick us up – but we powered through and made it home. Pushing that double stroller with 45 lbs of kids in it is a work out. So we decided that next time we went out, we would drive.
One day we did a little shopping downtown. They have a neat little strip with lots of neat stores. Funny, that the dollar store was the most exciting shop. We were those parents that bought our kids recorders and let them play them in the store and down the street.
The weather was a little rainy that week so it was hard to get out at times but we still ventured to the beach and it cleared up after we got there. We were the only ones there at first but once the sun came out it got busier. We really wanted to tire the girls out since they weren’t napping much this week, so we let them chase the seagulls. Not sure if the other parents appreciated that since they were trying to keep there kids close by and well behaved and here are our kids running around like crazy.
We also decided to eat well that week – so Kelly made some homemade ciabatta bread one night, we had steak, lemon meringue pie, zucchini bread, seafood stuffed catfish, homemade hamburgers and tried this new recipe for lemongrass beef skewers with a rice noodle salad. It was all so yummy.

Side note about lemons and zucchini.
- The day we left for the cottage Kelly made a lemon wedding cake and she over estimated that number of lemons she needed, by about 40 lemons. So we had lots of lemons to use. Steve made 8 batches of lemonade at the cottage and then we made lemon meringue pie and still had lemons left.
- Our garden at home has been doing great (I’ll post pictures at some point) and our zucchini was going crazy. I gave a bunch away and still had tons and huge. I guess I should have picked it earlier but I had some as big as my calf. The bigger ones were a little spongy inside and seedy but if you took that out then it made great zucchini bread. I still have tons so I hope I have time to make more bread.

The boys had some issues with humidity and drywall mud drying. Kelly and Steve stayed longer to finish things up. Rob, the girls and I were off to our 3rd location.
We had a pit stop at home for about an hour to re-group a bit and then off to Kingston to Rob’s parents. We stayed with them on Friday night and then went to Rob’s high school friend Laurie’s cottage for the long weekend. We brought the girls for the Saturday to meet everyone – of course this was the rainy day of the weekend so we had fun trying to keep Lilo inside the cottage. After a few hours we got back in the car and met Rob’s mom have way to drop the kids off for the rest of the weekend. It was a weird feeling being away from them – since Isla just started taking the bottle, I hadn’t been away from her for more than an hour. But she did well but we were both happy to see each other on Monday morning.
The weekend without the girls was a lot of fun. It was the fishing derby weekend at the cottage where all the cottage in the neighborhood get together for dinner. Then we had fire works and some music by a fire. The next day was the horse shoe tournament – Rob got paired up with a good partner and were making a run for the gold but lost in the semi’s. That evening was a little mellower since a lot of people left but it was fun to play poker and hang out with the old gang.
We went back to Kingston on Monday and hung out at Rob’s parents for that day and evening so we didn’t have to fight the rush back to the city.
The rest of that week was short and busy. On the weekend I went to Kelly and Steve’s for an indoor bbq (damn rain). We had 5 kids running in circles all evening. Rob went to a stag and was home late.
Then Monday the girls and I were off to Winnipeg. I flew by myself with both girls and we all survived – now we’re back and trying to get back at it. I’ll post more about that visit soon.
Pictures of everything to come – I don’t have any here at home right now.