'Holy hail....' - 31 May Pinawa MB

Quite the dump of hail in Pinawa on 31 May!

The deck was nearly covered in 'larger than pea-sized' hail after the clouds opened and dumped this along with a ton more rain... when will it end...? Craziness!

Kelly and the mighty tarpon

Kelly claimed that he was hesitant to lean too close to the water so his glasses did not fall in... but you can be the judge given the flinch at the end... :)

Rick braving the feeding of the tarpon

Rick Cunjak braved the feeding of the tarpon... not that the tarpon are that menacing but the pelicans sure can be. Daniel got bit right beside the eye one time when they were trying to get at his bait fish bucket - they are bold!

Rick was brave though and didn't lose any fingers in the making of the video.

Sandy and Steve fishing day

Steve and Sandy went out for a full day of charter fishing and got an amazing haul!



Sandy with her mahi mahi - bull dolphin fish.





For all those fish biologists out there that can ID this fish by sight, you can get your chuckle over what Steve is holding in his hand...

S & M hit Key West :)

Sandy and Michelle were not happy to just WALK around Key West.. oh no... we rode around Key West in STYLE!

I had so much fun and to me the funniest part was when Sandy said to me.. after we had tottled away from the scotter rental place... "you know when he asked us if we had driven one of these before, and I said 'yes', I lied...". FIL - I had to stop laughing to explain to her that if she would have told the truth and said 'no' - they would not have prohibited her from renting a scooter, they would have merely given MORE instructions... :)

Well she lived to tell the tale - phew!

Catch up again...

I keep lagging on my posts - is has been busy here, we had a whirl-wind visit from Miss Sandy Brasfield! I have not seen Miss Sandra D since Nathan was a little guy so we had lots of FUN!

My camera had dead batteries so I am relying on her pics - here are some, and I will get some more and post them too when I get the chance.

Sandy bought some cool boy-type eggs (baseballs, footballs, soccer balls, baseballs) and I had some funny faced plastic eggs to fill with candy and cheerios... and there were lots! We hid them on the deck and down on the beach - mostly not-so-much-hidden so Daniel had a fightin' change against Mr. Nathan who ran full tilt looking for those things!









Sandy wins for the Artsy Shot of the year - Daniel playing with some drink decorations at the Islamorada Fish Company. Check out that reflection on the glass table!

Beautiful sunrise shot - March 2010

Great sunrise pic taken from the deck - it will be hard to leave this view behind and head back to Canada at the end of April.

Boys and the ice cream truck

The "ding-a-ling" as Daniel calls it (ice cream truck) comes around now and again so the boys were happy to finally get their hands on some cool ice cream after mean mommy keeps telling them 'no'... since it always seems to come around at supper time!



Nathan had Batman and Daniel had Scooby-Doo.

Daniel is growing up

Daniel looks like he might be an intellectual when he gets older... (pipe cleaner glasses).



Daniel has some sounds that do not come out quite right... here he is saying "Daddy Dump Truck"... makes me giggle every time :).

catch up on lost blog entries...

I gotta catch up on my blog entries... been lazy lately.

Grandmaman ("grandmama" - my mom is French) is visiting from Nova Scotia and the boys are loving the change from tough mom to fun lovin' Grandmaman!



Here they are making cranberry and orange muffins one morning.

Marni's sunrises

Marni has been waking up early and getting some great pictures of sunrises off the back deck.



Apparently this happens each day - you just gotta be up at that hour.

Marni's big adventure continues - Sunday

Marni is still waking up super early but a little bit later and later each day, we are making progress.

I got up and found her on the deck sorting the shells that she has found on her beach walks - she had them nicely lined up by species ...



Then Marni and I went off to the Theater of the Sea. Great place not far from where we live that has parrot, dolphin, and sea lion shows and fantastic mangroves and other lush flora (Marni knew lots of the flowers and plants from the species in the Biology Link :)).



This is a funny boat that is a 'bottom-less' boat, people sit around the sides and you toot up a lagoon and one of the dolphins joins along and does a couple of tricks in the middle of the boat as we are moving along through the water.






We finished the day by taking the kids and going for dinner at the Islamorada Fish Company where she clearly was enjoying her 'Pirate's Painkiller" drink :).



Took some pushing form me but Marni put her hand up to get a kiss from a sea lion!

Marni Turnbull - historic visit

An historic event is unfolding here in Florida - Marni Turnbull is visiting from UNB - she is someone that has just NEVER taken a break and never taken a vacation.

I will try and document this event as best as I can, but I also have to spend my time making sure she does not spend much time without a drink in her hand and is doing something unrelated to work... it is a rough job but I am up for the challenge!

It is TOUGH! She will not leave our dishes alone, we are true believers in air drying and leaving them in the rack, sit down Marni.... seriously.



She had been waking up super early (that internal alarm clock needs to be shut off) but we made significant progress today when she took her watch off after realizing that it DID NOT MATTER what time it is....

Her first big adventure was accompanying me to the hospital with Daniel who needed some glue to put his chin back together (Daniel is fine and giggled and laughed through the alcohol cleaning and the should-have-stung glue process) - and so I had to up my game today and we spent lots of time walking up and down the beach collecting shells and then made her a margarita.



I am happy to report to all of those Marni supporters out there that I have in fact witnessed what can only be described as "relaxing" by Marni - and the boys are loving playing with her :)

Here is Marni with her first time playing the Wii - finally getting the hang of bowling. (she didn't know I was taking a video...)



She is very happy and there is a fairly good chance that she will make sure she misses the flight home - but we are fine with that.

Spa day for the boys

In a desperate search for something to keep the boys busy and keep their attention for more than 5 minutes - we had a "spa day". They got their finger and toe nails clipped and filed - then some nail polish.

Nathan sat still for his toes to be done with real blue nail polish, but Daniel insisted on painting his OWN toes... so I was not about to have nail polish all over the house so I gave him some water colour paint instead and let him have at it!

Results were interesting to say the least!

Boys and a little baby gecko

The boys found the dried body of a super tiny little gecko (maybe 1.5in long) - baked into the deck, but being boys they had to check it out and investigate thoroughly.

It had no eyeballs anymore so Nathan said that it had "flung its eyeballs out of its head" because he knew that they could fling their tails off when they are trying to escape predation (the tail wiggles, the body remains still, and it creates a distraction for the predator to go after the tail... then it can get away and grow a new tail)... unfortunately he knew this from experience after playing a bit too roughly with a gecko one day :(.

Daniel kept saying "walk, walk" and then would say sadly "dead, dead".

Munkittrick visit - January

Kelly and Patty Munkittrick, from Quispamsis NB, were our next wonderful guests in January.

Patty helped me keep the boys busy each day (nice for me!) and they loved every minute of the extra attention.



We took a trip down to Key West - I had never been yet so it was good to finally see what was down there. The boys were pretty good - though by the afternoon they started going downhill so Kelly started offering them for sale to folks walking by on the street - the highest bid was $5. Interesting town - and we all stood at the most southern point of the continental US (though we could see more land past us which seemed odd ?).




Trip with Patty, myself, and the boys to Crane Point where they saw lots of local flora and fauna and got to dress up like pirates in one of the park's features.



Kelly and Steve went fishing a few times - I don't have the pics yet (on Kelly's camera) but I will post some when I get them (big catches were sailfish, bull dolphin (mahi mahi), king mackerel, and more that I can't remember).

Artsy shot - Kelly walking on the beach to search for shells at sunrise.

Boys hugging - Awwwwww....

Rare, rare moment of the boys being nice and cuddly with one another. They got matching PJs when I went to an outlet to find warmer pajamas when the weather got cold!

Cold snap - iguanas falling out of trees

I heard about iguanas falling out of trees when they air temperatures get around 5C - they go into a suspended animation, and then can fall out of the tree they are in....

So when BLee found a motionless iguana we figured it would be gone by morning when it warmed up,... but it was still there, guess the tree was too high, or he bonked his head on the way down :(.

Time to catch up on posts - BLee visit

We had our first 2010 visitor from Jan 5-13. BLee Williams from Saint John, NB came down to show Steve how to work some of his fancy equipment like a little remote operated vehicle (ROV) called "Ray".

The boys both had super fun with BLee - he has a boy Nathan's age so he knows what it is all about!

Poor BLee only had one nice weather day as he was here during the super cold snap down here in Florida - jackets had to be worn the rest of the time.

Daniel Interrogation

Here are Daniel's responses to a few simple questions... click play on the video.

What is your name?
What colour are your eyes?
What colour is your hair?
etc.

You will notice a few answers are repeated... his new favourite word is "eight" and although is favourite colour is "lella" (yellow) when we got the camera, everything became "red".

video to come....

Florida Booking calendar

Daniel - talking now...?

Daniel is starting to talk but sometimes things don't come out just quite right...

This is what he says when he wants 'Mommy to come to the beach'....

Daniel and mommy's favourite sign

Daniel learned a few words in sign language when he was younger and this is my personal favourite - I wanted to video it before he stopped doing it and started saying it - since he talking lots and lots these days.

Manatees returned to the canal

Waahoo... we saw the manatees again in the canal - here are a couple of the better videos. It was almost sunset so the light makes for grainy shots - but they are still cool!!!! There were 3 big ones out there swimming together.

Merry Xmas - Tante Andréa

This one took a few tries... :) can't post them all, but it took 5 takes.

Daniel showing off the 'tree'

Well I didn't want to spend $50US on a real tree brought down here from Michigan so this is our first tree so far (I have a second one but don't have pics yet.. they will come later).

Daniel is pointing out the features of the tree and showing off his counting abilities... 'one.... two.... one... two...".

Daniel's 2nd Birthday (Dec 6th)

Daniel celebrated his 2nd birthday in the sun and surf of Florida. Luckily we had some friends visiting so we had some other folks to wear sponge bob square pants hats! Mark, Lisa, and their little guy Riley helped sing Happy Birthday and eat some birthday cake and cupcakes (most adults ate the cupcakes after witnessing Daniel put the last candle out with a bit too much 'gusto' and saliva!).

Merry Xmas - Levesque's (lower)

Merry Christmas to Karine and Beatrice - have a wonderful first Christmas together! :)

Merry Xmas - Levesque's in Montreal (upper)

Merry Christmas to Tante Ghislaine and Oncle Andre - via Nathan.

Merry Xmas - Landry's

Merry Christmas to the Landry's via Nathan.