September Long Weekend

We began the weekend with a wiener roast on Friday night.

 Everyone was HUNGRY!

 S'mores!!

On Saturday, we headed west out of town...

 caterpillars

 Watching TV.

 On Sunday, we headed south to the International Peace Garden. 

We picnicked at an insanely quiet spot.

It was so quiet.

And peaceful.

And then the Bergmann's came along.

The frogs and turtles hid...

 The longest undefended border between two countries!

The Peace Towers.

 

 I love the flowers at the Peace Gardens!

The Last Week of Summer Break

 The Last Slurpee.

 On Monday we went to Tinkertown, but I didn't bring my camera. 

Caleb's favourite ride was the bumper cars (again). 

Joshua and Andrew went on the Scrambler several times together. 

Natalee liked the little boat ride and the carousel. 

Wyatt liked all the little kid rides, but he was pretty tired. 

He still liked the car ride that he liked last year.

On Tuesday, we took a short little trip out to Falcon Lake. 

It wasn't hot, but it was warm enough to hit the beach!

 The boys invented a game that they called Candy's Chicken...it was really messy to say the least.

 Then the best part of the day (in my opinion) was the ice cream!!!

I think Natalee liked this part of the day the best too.

Her favourite ice cream - rainbow!

 The boys fished off the dock but didn't catch anything.

 Yeah, we had been talking about the ice cream at Falcon Lake for a year already.

Good times.

Ummy ice cream.  :)

BTS 2011

I have a bunch of pictures to post from the last couple weeks of summer, but the weather has been nice and the last thing I want to do is sit inside!!  So here are our Back to School pictures for September 2011.  The Last Days of Summer will be coming shortly...

 Left to right:

Natalee, Nursery (afternoons)

Joshua, grade 4

Caleb, grade 5

Andrew, grade 1

 Wyatt and the school supplies. :)

 Walking to school down the back lane.  Everyone was excited this morning!

This little girl has been beyond excited for the start of Nursery school! 

She only had a 10 minute interview this morning. 

On Friday, she goes to school for 1 hour, and then her regular afternoons begin next week Monday.

Lego Castle

 I've earned some praise from my boys for being the Mastermind behind this creation.  :)

Above, in the process of building...

(it didn't even take us 2 full days to build this)

 Inside...

 Inside the front door. 

Just above the blue pillar, there is a black spiral staircase going up.  Sweet!

 Finished product, front view.

 Inside the castle.  The boys moved the table to the second storey.

 Caleb was in charge of "the weapons/dressing room".

 Rear view. 

One of the boys made the coolest thing for above the back door. 

You can't see it very clearly in this picture.

 Side view.  You can kind of see one of the balconies between the 2 white window panels.

There are also 2 balconies on the front, which are too hard to see.

Caleb made the white tower in the center, for the cannon.  :)

"No thanks" for the Birthday Stings

 The night before Joshua's REAL birthday party (ie. cake!), he had a very unfortunate incident.

We were all outside in our backyard, and the oldest 2 boys were playing football.  I guess the football or a boy hit a wasp nest and suddenly, Joshua's laughing/screaming...no, hysterical, on the ground.  I didn't know what was going on at first! 

And then I saw the wasps swarming him.  It was a frightening scene, and since I've been a victim to two wasp swarms/attacks myself, I knew exactly how he was feeling.  Within 30 seconds, we had him in the house (while trying to round up the younger children who were in the tent, totally unaware of any potential danger of the now very angry wasps) and I had given him an antihistamine.  I called Health Links and they told me to put on a meat tenderizer paste for 20 minutes, which didn't help, and that I could also give him Tylenol, which I also did.  And ice.  We iced that eye a LOT that evening, but it didn't really help.  It was practically swollen shut within an hour of being stung.  (Aside from his eye, I was able to find 3 other "sting sites" on his head).

"Giant donut".   Mmmmmmedicine?  :)

 Friday evening (the evening of THE wasp attack), Mike went to the store to buy some poison and sprayed the nest.  The next morning, he was able to safely cut the vines (hanging on our fence) and remove the wasp nest, put it in a garbage bag, filled it with water and tied it shut.  Several hours later, we took a look at it.  The white things are wasp larvae.  Yuck.

I think we were very fortunate that only one of us got stung and that it didn't happen when any little one's were outside in the back without an adult supervising them.  Yikes!

 Caaaaaaake!

Rootbeer Float cake!

It was delicious, very chocolatey and just a bit root beer-y. 

If you're considering making this cake, I would recommend using less cocoa and

more rootbeer in the icing.  Some how.  Or, perhaps choose a higher quality Root Beer. 

Someone suggested Virgil's.  Am not familiar with it.

The birthday boy thoroughly enjoyed his cake!

 Sunday - killed about 47 wasps using 2 of these traps.  :)

Joshua's Birthday in Fargo

 And Joshua Ryan Isaac Bergmann turns 9.

In the afternoon, we hit a pool with waterslide in Fargo, but after the heat we had been in, even

27-28 degrees Celcius was not hot enough for us to spend any length of time in the water. 

We were shivering!

 Burger King, as per the birthday boy's request.

 Joshua and his older twin brother.

Ice cream "cake" from McDonald's.  The real cake is yet to come.  :)