amare

our neighbours hosted a birthday party for their niece, a very cute two year old that has become fond of kai.  how. very. cute.

  

ferry time!

we leave today for vancouver island to spend time with family.  i won't be posting while i am away.  do have a really good week!

image taken last summer on our way to vancouver island

our refuel picnic

6 pieces Buttermilk marinated, Polderside Farms heritage breed Red Bro Fried Chicken +
two sides, coleslaw and greens +
two biscuits +

two sodas (we substituted the sodas for more biscuits!) =

yumminess

pedalheads

kai was in bike camp this week. he tells me it was his favourite camp.  he progresses through the levels nicely each summer.  however, i am not too sure i am ready for him to try mountain biking - this is only two levels away.  yikes!

on the other hand, biking is perfect in many ways.  because of this i love that he loves biking! 

palm vs tulip

I have been wanting to wallpaper one of the walls in my bedroom for awhile now.  browsing the web for ideas i came across this temple tulips wallpaper pattern.  i love it but i think it's a tad too bold for me and not sure how well it would work with the featherhead.  i was thinking of palms but have yet to discover one that i love.  so perhaps i should be a bit spontaneous and go with the temple tulips?  those that know me are probably shaking your heads, you know that i cannot possibly purchase anything spontaneously! i will wait.

summer dressing

don't these photos shout out summer fashion?   these women make summer style look easy with a few special pieces: a dress, a sandal, easy hairstyle, and minimal/fun accessories.

       

        

       

        

all images from the sartorialist

guest post (cherry pie)

the following post is from my hubby writing about cherry pie!  enjoy.

hello there, i am connie's hubby stefan. as you may have read in one of her posts, i like to cook. and bake. and eat what i cook and bake. i like doing this since there really isn't much of an excuse not to use the incredible things that come from the farms and ocean around here. summer is a favorite with fruit season in full swing.  cherries are one of my favorite and the season has just begun.

quite a few years ago i took a cooking course, a condensed version of the professional program held at dubrelle.  one of the things i learned to do was to make pastry. once you have had your hands in a bowl of butter and flour and transformed that into pastry, you are set for a life of wonderful desserts.

when connie and i both bought cherries on the weekend and we had what seemed like a small orchard worth in our fridge i decided the only way to tackle this was to make cherry pie. it took some work, pitting, halving, macerating, pureeing, pastry-rolling and pie filling. i now have a very good looking pie sitting in the kitchen, waiting to be devoured by this little family.

i love it how connie and kai enjoy what i cook for them. i am not much of a handyman. i can't make connie any furniture like some husbands seem to be annoyingly good at. nor can i construct tree houses for kai, like some over achieving fathers are fond of doing and pointing out to their hapless peers. but i can cook for them and enjoy the pleasure it brings them. and that makes it all worth it.

stefan

perfectly lazy

what a lazy weekend we had.  so lazy that i hardly picked up the camera - wish i has more pics to show you. 

on saturday, my boys had a 'boy day' that began with breakfast at medina, a local brunch place that is always packed full; a visit to the mining museum in squamish, some video game playing at home, and then dinner at refuel (a restaurant mentioned many times already in this blog).  i love that they do this.  i feel guilty that i get to spend lots of time with kai because i work on a casual basis so days like this are so needed. 

waffle at medina, image from here

mining museum, including a train into the mines; the two images from here

the burger and beer special at refuel (beer for stefan only); image from here

while my boys were away i went to a hot yoga class, window shopped (well, i did buy some moccasins!), organized stuff in the house, read a few chapters of a book, and missed my boys!

my new and very cute clark originals; image from here

sunday involved more hot yoga, pillow fights, garden clean up, eating tasty salmon wraps, and playing a new board game, pirates by ravensburger that stefan picked up for kai.  It’s a lot of fun to play!

going to the circus

i work full-time hours for a few weeks this summer, all taking place consecutively this month. for kai this means camp.  he spent his first week at the community centre, going on daily outings to swimming pools, parks, exploring the city.  this week he spent time at circus camp.  he thrives on this kind of activity.  i think he may be part monkey.  the performance was impressive, in just 4 days they put together an awesome show, the sea adventures.  i mentioned kai’s participation in circus here.  i love that it allows him to use his brain differently and having fun while doing so.  he will continue with the circuswest program for the 2011-2012 school year as well.  it will be his second year in the program and i am hoping to see him ride a unicycle unassisted by the end of it (no pressure, really).

kai is the one in the red jumpsuit.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

afterwards we spent time at the playground. but seriously, why isn’t he tired?

 

 

 

 

  

 

kai in the kitchen

kai has been in the kitchen with stefan since he was very little (he likes to remind me that he is a big boy these days!). he has always been curious about what stefan's cooking up in the kitchen.  he knew what a shallot was from the time he was 2 years old.  stefan lets him smell the different herbs and spices he cooks with.  and to this day kai has a very keen palette.

image taken in august 2006, kai is 3 years old (his hand is awfully close to the pot, not smart!?)

image taken in 2005, kai is 2 years old and helping with the clean up

so, it shouldn't have come as a surprise when stefan found him cooking up some eggs this morning!  on his own.  we were still asleep!  stefan walked into the kitchen to find a boy stirring six well mixed eggs in a pan on very low heat with the timer set to eight minutes.  

i love that he wants to cook.  perhaps one day i will have both my boys preparing meals for me!

update: in august kai spent a few days perfecting his scramble eggs and on august 26th he made the perfect scramble eggs.

cookie

cookie is our hamster. we’ve had her since november 2010.  while stefan was away on a work trip, kai and i went to find a hamster (actually, we dropped him off at the airport and went directly to the pet shop).  

image taken in november 2010, when we first brought cookie home.  kai wanted to sleep with her.

stefan was worried about having a hamster in the house with two cats and rightly so. however, my thinking was that with some good rules, we could prevent any accidents from happening. so far so good; the hamster is alive. the cats don't bother her anymore but certainly they were very curious at first. 

 

cookie makes us laugh with her acrobatic antics.  her smallness makes everything she does very cute – drinking, eating, storing, sleeping, etc.  because hamsters are nocturnal, kai spends time with her early in the morning before she’s off to bed and at dinnertime just after  she makes up to start her day. such a little thing has put big smiles on our faces!