SPROUT!

I'll add video to this when blogger lets me...right now it is putting up a fight.  Sprout started crawling today!  He has been wiggling around a bit but not really going anywhere with any kind of real intent it seemed.  And then today.  He's doing the army crawl and he's getting good at it.  This means I can't just leave him on his own anymore and that he's mere moments away from scuttling around on hands and knees and boy do I need to do some baby proofing!

Me!

Just a quick picture of what I am looking like these days...since I'm usually behind the camera! 

Summer!

We have had a busy couple of days.  Yesterday we visited Fort Edmonton and today we went to the Alberta Legislature Building.  SO much fun.  And the days were SO beautiful that when I edited the pictures, I really only cropped.  The lighting was perfect and fiddling with it would have been a complete crime. 


We arrived at Fort Edmonton and the boys found out that there was a TRAIN and it was the first thing you got to do.  To their absolute joy we boarded the old train that took us to the Fort.  We got off and wandered around pointing out interesting things to the boys and their friends that came with us.  Animal skins for window panes, watch towers, no dishwashers or fridges!  One building in particular had glass windows.  The house was owned by the proctor of the forts of Canada and he was the second weathiest man in the country at that time.  He'd had the small, square panes of glass shipped to Canada from England in barrels of molasses.  Very interesting.  We walked further on and saw some 19th century homes and then the rain began to POUR.  We waited it out on a porch of one of the homes and then took a street car back to the beginning of our journey.  The boys were sad to leave and completely tuckered out when we got in the car.

 These were the bunks in the train.

 A carnival (complete with rides and a bearded lady) that we didn't have time to take in.

 General store.

 The house with glass windows.

 Just a quick note.  Notice the fluff in the air in the previous picture?  Well, Munchkin isn't picking his nose, he's trying to get the fluff out!

Today we went to the provincial legislature building.  It's a beautiful piece of architecture and I'm going to maybe do some family photos there sometime.  Next year maybe?  At the back of the building they have several fountains and wading pools that people can play around in. And so play they did...Little Dude, Munchkin and their friends had a blast and again the lighting was so perfect I almost shed a tear.  Because it was perfect...and because I don't know enough about photography (yet) to REALLY take advantage of such perfection.  *sigh*

Do you see what I mean by perfect light?  This one I didn't have to edit AT ALL.  It was perfection just the way it is.  I think Big E is about the best Dad around and he got lots of compliments while he was playing with Sprout from passing ladies.  Heehee...he's ALL mine ladies!!  The following pictures are self explanatory.

catch up

These were all taken today...we started off with some silliness in the morning.  Big E doesn't work on Wednesdays and so we all congregate in Mom and Dad's room before beginning our day.

 As you can see, the silliness is handed out evenly between all the boys!

 That evening we had soccer.  Little Dude is in his first ever experience with soccer this summer.  He's a bit luke warm on it until he's on the field, so I have a feeling we'll be back at it next summer.  We got his official soccer pictures today...I'll be scanning them in tomorrow.  He picked number 5 because that's how old he is now.  :)

Little Dude especially appreciates snack time at the half.  Little Dude had a little friend on his team and today only one player from the opposing team showed up.  So Little Dude and his friend played around with the ball for a bit before heading to the park.

Sprout has FINALLY discovered food and he's decided it's GOOD.  It has honestly only happened in the last couple of days and now he's eating with gusto.  Here he's munching on Mum Mum rice biscuits that turn to much with his gumming.  But his other favs are oatmeal, mashed potatoes/carrots (combined), french fries, bread and pasta.  He's becoming an eating machine!

 Here we are at the park.  Little Dude really wanted to figure out this mono-rail thing at the playground.

Little Dude's friend hanging out...literally.

 Gee...I think he's having fun!

 Figured it out!  And you can see for yourselves the kind of monkey Little Dude is becoming.  He will climb almost anything, he swings, he lifts, he has amazing stomach muscles and a six pack anyone would be envious of...I know I am!!

Then we got home.  We showed Big E and Munchkin the soccer pictures and Munchkin wanted to take his own pictures...but with my camera.  Um....no.  So then he hid behind the bed...and would only show me his feet when I asked to see his face.

 I did finally coax him to show his face...one eye at a time!

 Little Dude followed suit.

Ahh...finally a full Munchkin.  :)  With a flash, so the colour is a bit off...and I don't have my photo editing program on this new computer yet.  Yes, it's sad but true, our poor laptop bit the dust.  It was already missing its' screen (was hooked up to a monitor), sometimes wouldn't start and we would have to remove the battery, wait 20 seconds and then try again, sometimes the touchpad for the mouse would quit and we would remove the battery again.  ENOUGH!  We found a sale (something we've become pretty good at) and bought a CPU tower.  The laptop was lovely, maybe we'll have one again but I'm just so glad to have a working computer (and a working camera) again!