Adding The Fun To Our Days

Its not often that a day goes by without me thinking about what fun or adventure I can get up to with my girls.  I am always on the look out for the next bit of fun we can get up to, adding it to our Fun List for this summer or to just do while we are hangin' around at home.  As, I've mentioned before, I am just better when I have a plan for each day.   I can be just as excited about going somewhere to do something, or simply staying home and play games and colour - just as long as I am not spinning my wheels to figure out what we are going to do as the minutes of the day pass by.  To me, its kinda like coming home from work at 5:30pm and having a slow cooked dinner ready to go, vs coming home at 5:30pm and having no food in the fridge and having no clue what we will eat.  Yep, the latter is what a day without ideas for fun is like for me.  I just start spinning my wheels going no where and feeling yucky.

So where am I going with this?
We've had fun with keeping our focus on our list of fun ideas.

Here is what we've been up to....

4.  Plant a Garden
Not only have we planted our garden, but we are now reaping the benefits of having a small vegetable garden just outside our front door.  Its been so great to teach Kamille how to care for the plants and pinch off lettuce leaves for eating.  We eat fresh lettuce just for fun, we have had fresh lettuce on our hamburgers and we've had delicious salads, all compliments of our garden.

 Have it your way....

mine

kevin's 

karis' .  she preferred a fruit shake to much on her salad.  

kamille's - nearly gone before I had a chance to snap a photo.  it was like mine.   one of the coolest things about my kammer is that she looooves salads - garden, spinach and caesar.   the "asks-for-them" kind of love.  thats cool.  

7.  Pick wild blackberries by the bucket full
Well, it hasn't been blackberries just yet this season, but we've picked buckets full and eaten our fair share of Salmonberries.  Is it me or are they in full effect this year?  I don't ever recall seeing them any and everywhere. On our backyard trail, all around our trailer, and nearly everywhere in forested areas of town.  Incredible.

On this day we spotted them along the roadside and came back with containers to collect.

But the girls were more interested in dancing in the streets.

I have no idea...but the backdrop was awesome and the road was not busy!  

She strikes again! 

How you doing there Kev?
He came out prickled and scratched.

And the girls continued to make me laugh.
I told them to stand with their thumb up.  They had no idea what it meant.
What attitude in my little hitch hikers!

Well done Kev!

A few days later during a playdate with two of Kamille's friends......

The trail behind out home is incredibly full and lush...and offering Salmonberries!  

Fresh out of the oven, Double Chocolate Chocolate chip muffins and salmonberries.  YUMMO.

Totally blurry, but totally worth keeping.
Love her expressions!

14. Bike to the local Farmer's Market
Our local outdoor market is amazing.  It brings out a whole crowd of people, lots of familiar faces and lots of great vendors!  For the next few months we can always make this a Saturday morning destination.

Despite what this photo below looks, we all love riding bikes.  Its such a great way to get around our gorgeous town.

And there are no shortages of routes to take to get from point A to point B.  

By the time we got home, Karis was asleep with her head resting on my arm and her chin in my hand.  I don't blame her...wind in her face, warm sun, a swaying bike.....Would be awesome to be the passenger.

20.  Photography Kamille and Karis' art work (separate blog post to come)
This is just an ongoing thing.  I've written about it before here, but it was about time to get to the stack of artwork that has been piling up for a while.  My process is to sort through it, keep and photograph artwork that is meaningful and recycle the stuff that I can bare to part with.  Kamille loves to decorate her walls with it all.  Karis got into this idea for herself this time around!

21.  Attend a Roller Derby
TOTALLY AWESOME!  Our little town has its own Women's roller derby team and this past weekend Kevin and I had a date night.  I convinced him that it would be a good time - and he loved it!  I was totally into it, getting all reved up over the competitive nature of it all (shocker!)
I would have loved to have had my camera to capture all the movement and action, but I had to resport to Kevin's iPhone.  What I learned is that I suck at iPhonography.  Holy doodle, I was so frustrated with not being able to capture a good shot of the action.  ; )  However, I am grateful that Kevin handed over his iPhone to capture something though.

this is spot where I spent most of the night.  in the beer garden.  

I went up to get some different shots of the event.  

We saw some friends while were were here and had a great night of socializing in the beer garden.

Our team lost, but was it ever fun!

23.  Finger paint extravaganza
One of the local discount stores is going out of business and so a while back I stocked up on lots of craft supplies and things that were significantly discounted - finger paint included.  Now the idea of finger paint is purely fun for the kids, and slightly anxiety provoking for me.  For a girl that thrives on neat and tidy, finger painting is exactly NOT this.  I prepped our surface, made sure the girls were wearing distroy-able clothing (even though it washed off without any stains!).  I let go of my expectations and just watched them go to town.  They loooved it!

holding back so that I could get the picture!  tee hee!  oh the temptation!  

Finger. Paint.

Look mom!  Soooooooo messy!

The clean up bucket became the next bit of fun for them.
Yay for warm soapy water.

Back at it.

i loooooooove this shot.    

All paint....all fun.

Kamille was really into it.
We ended up getting a new sheet of paper just for her to play around.

The girls loved the way it sounded as the blob of paint squeezed out.

By the time she was done, the paint was nearly gone.

Karis found entertainment in watching from up above....

What awesome fun.

And not as messy as I might have thought.  

26.  Go to a local dance recital
Oh, it nearly broke my heart the day  Kamille said she no longer wanted to dance.  All good. I let that slide in lieu of her participating in other interests that were equally exciting for me to watch her do.  But earlier this month I took my girls to the dance school's end of year show.  Last year Kamille was in it, this year she and Karis watched it.  Oh my goodness, they were so cute.  They got all dressed up for the event and were so well behaved while they watched the entire show with 100% attention.  And just as I had hoped predicted, Kamille announced that she wanted to dance again.  In fact, both girls were totally inspired and I've been watching my girls dance their best moves for weeks since.  I love my little dancers!  Karis is hilarious to watch at this age.

(Again, not the best photos, but Kevin hooked me up with a card for my phone and I can now transfer my phone photos to my laptop.  I do hope that I can improve my phone camera skills!).  

29.  Rent and watch a movie from the movie store
It was a rainy rainy day.  I mentioned this before, but because it was #29 I mention it again here.  We rented Beauty and the Beast and Snow White.  After dinner, the movie Snow White was enjoyed on the pull-out couch with the girls, a bowl full of popcorn and jammies on.  Kevin and I snuggled up with our girls between us.  It was totally awesome and the girls were up way past their bedtime so it was really special for them too.

Since our original fun list was made, we've added a couple new ideas to look forward to.

31.  make fresh squeezed lemonade (Kamille's pick)

32.  go on a road trip (quite possibly to Kelowna!)

33.  nature scavenger hunt

34.  Whistler Farmer's Market

and the recently enjoyed....

35.  Bean Around The World cinnamon buns and park fun
These cinnamon buns are nothing short of incredible.  Its not very often that we indulge for our morning snack but its definitely a treat not to forget about.  On a gorgeous Monday morning, Stacey, her boys,  and me and my girls picked up our Cinnamon bun deliciousness and headed out to one of the best local parks.  The kids had a great time and just as hoped, Stacey and I got our chance to catch up on all the details of our life!


Well, school is officially out and "summer" is ON!
While I wait for our weather to turn up the heat, I anticipate all the fun that is still to come!