Here's some Opera House pics!

Aaron took this one, I think it's a Harley though...that would only make sense?!

The "Heart of the Ocean" Titanic jewel and nudie pic of Rose

An Alien from the Alien movie

Mitch in the cage

Les and her Grog

So, I was perusing my friend Nat's blogs and seen she had some new links so I was checking them out and came across Julie's blog which was entitled something about 3 more days in Chatham or something like that - so I was totally excited about coming across someone from the Miramichi and commented about our holiday and how cool the Opera House. A hidden gem in the Miramichi. Well, the joke was actually on me and Julie was moving from Chatham, Ontario....haha...so I had to post a couple pics from the Opera House to show what the heck I was babbling about.

Enjoy Julie!

These 3 words will save you some money....

SKIP MIAMI VICE !!!

What a huge disappointment that movie was, we (Aaron, Leanne and I) didn't even stay until the very end. The story line was weak, there was no kick-ass 80s music, even the sex scenes were lame! Aaron got to pick the movie and he totally regrets it, he said it's probably not even worth the five bucks to rent it.
The rest of our evening was great! The three of us went to to check out the showhomes in the neighbourhood, ouch, they're not giving them away! And then we headed to The Keg for dinner and to look through our photo album of our trip. For those who didn't actually see Hunter in action and carressing the chandelier than apparently he's pretty hot.
So, Auntie Brenda wants to know about the bus...well...apparently it started off as Mom's idea to have the kindergarten rope tow where you all grab hold of the rope so you don't get lost and then it was JJ's job to purchase the rope and tie all the hand-holds onto and put it into action. "The Bus" debuted at April's Stagette when we all stumbled over to Jake's (?) for drinks and karaoke...Sweet Caroline never sounded so good, right Ladies?!...and then the guys crashed our party and we took the bus back to the hotel. The next night we headed to the Opera House for some grogs and to watch Mitch dance in the cage and we took the bus over. We also got pulled over by the Miramichi police while "riding the bus" to the bar. Aunt Bee has pictures of that but we haven't seen them yet. The bus was coat checked at the bar and ready and waiting for us to take it back to the hotel. So there you have it, the story of "The Bus".

Here's the bus!

The last weekend of August...where did the summer go?

At least there's still one more long weekend before Joseph goes back to school. The bus phoned this evening to give us his pick up/drop off times for this year and it's better than last years! 7:20 pick up and 12:25 drop off. Last year it was 7 :00 pick up and 12:35 drop off. So it looks like Joseph won't have to get up until 6:45, yeah for him! I don't know about you guys but 6:30 just seems a little too early for a 4 year old to me. Although for a long time he'd get up at 6 on his own, although that was totally his doing, I would have been happier if he'd slept until 7 especially on the weekends!
We've already decided to go to Morinville for the long weekend. We're going to have a very busy fall and aren't sure when we'll get a chance to go. Aaron works 3 weekends in a row in September and then is taking his CPR/Standard First Aid on the next weekend. And come October the boys will be in their skating/swimming lessons.
I actually discovered tonight that the Family Leisure Center across from Southcentre Mall offers an annual family pass for $615! That includes the wavepool/waterslide, drop in fitness/deep water classes, skating/adult shinny hockey and the fitness room and indoor track. So, it looks like we'll be switching leisure centers to this one which is actually closer for us too! The center we have been going to is $650/year per adult and I think the kids were a couple hundred each as well. Ouch! That's a lot of money we just about wasted!

Bunco Bunco Bunco...

Can you guess what I did last night? Yep! It was Bunco night at Christina's. We ended up being 1 person short so we had to play with a ghost player. It was pretty weird, and I kept referring to the ghost as a "he" and everyone else called it a "she". I suppose the ghost should have been a girl if they were in our group...anyways it was another fun night. I didn't win any prizes but had a good time anyhow. I brought Andrea with us to sub and she had a great time and is going to sub for Shannon for September's game.For those who haven't tried it yet, Bunco is addicting!

Mom and Dad stopped by this morning to drop off Alex's birthday gift. Once again I think they got the coolest present...well the wet suits were pretty cool too and so were the Cars cars and the fire engine scooter...okay Nannie and Papa picked the coolest bedroom accessories! They bought Alex 4 framed pictures for his bedroom wall, Toy Story, A Bug's Life (with a rhino beetle just like Papa's tattoo), Monsters Inc and Shrek 2. Alex was totally excited about them so I'm sure Aaron will be putting them up before Ultimate Fighting tonight.

I almost missed Stampin' Night!

That's never happened before but I'd completely forgotten about stamping class until about an hour before it was time to go. Usually I've gone through the catalogue a few times and got my order together and planned an easy dinner/cleanup. No such luck last night so everything was a bit of a rush but I made it.
It actually turned out to be 3 really time consuming techinques so it was a later night than usual. I came home to discover the boys went to bed 5 minutes after I left so Aaron had a quiet night to himself.

Tonight we took the boys to the Leisure Center for some wave pool/waterslide time and had a lot of fun. Joseph has quite a few sets of goggles/face masks and is totally interested in swimming under water. I'm not as comfortable with it as he is because sometimes he seems to have been under forever! He also tried out his new wetsuit from his cool cousin Lucie! He loved it! Lucie always picks out the best stuff for my boys!

I've got our bedroom just about decorated how I like it, I think we'll have to get shorter curtains and replace our wedding picture frame with something a bit more rich toned, it's currently silver. I'll get the candle holder soon too. Aaron laughed at Dad's girlie jewellry box but won't he be surprised when he finds one on his dresser this weekend. Haha! I've also got some family history stuff to copy for Mom and send a big thank you card to my Auntie Bebe for sending some pictures to me via Mom. There's an awesome wedding picture from my Nannie and Papa's wedding! Can't wait to show everyone!

Thank goodness it's almost the weekend and it's almost time for school to start! Joseph's just about counting the down the days, as am I! We've also got the boys signed up for skating lessons this fall. And are thinking about the next swimming classes for Joseph and starting Alex on swimming. Why not jump in with both feet?!?

Gotcha Auntie Arlene!

Troy and Uncle Fidele par-taking in the time old Beck tradition of drinking...I'm really not sure what it is that they drink...scotch? Auntie Arlene will know!

Troy and Nicki cutting the cake

Cindy and Dan

Aaron and I -I think I have one self portrait from every outing -is that weird?

Here are a few pictures from the latest Beck wedding, Troy and Nicki got married in St. Thomas a couple months ago and had a celebration here on Saturday.  We got to watch their wedding video and it was beautiful, there was no wind so you could hear them really good and the waves in  the background...sigh...for one of our anniversaries we have to go somewhere tropical!

Plans for the next Beck reunion are now underway.  Uncle Dennis and Auntie Debbie are hosting a camping holiday reunion on the August long weekend of 2007.  Now that the boys are experienced travellers with flying we'll now put them to the test of the long haul drive to Manitoba! Good luck boys, just be thankful that you can watch movies, Heather and I were never so lucky!

Our sweet new bedroom suite!

After many many years of talking about we finally took the plunge and treated ourselves to new bedroom furniture. It all started when we came home from holidays and had the worst sleep of our lives on our bed, I tell you Monica and JJ's air mattress was much more comfortable and we didn't wake up all stiff and sore. So that was definitely a sign to get new mattresses. But once we got to the Brick and picked it out we thought we'd price out the furniture and it wasn't as much as we'd expected and we'd saved enough holiday money to break even and still have a bit left over so we thought , why not? Mom and Dad even got a brand new queen sized mattress/box spring for their boudoir. After making them replace the twin beds for my boys I knew I'd never live it down that we got a new set and they still had a 15 years + set. We didn't get a chance to paint the room before delivery but got the carpets/walls washed, now we just have to accessorize a bit and we're set. Little does Aaron know but I've ordered three huge glass/copper candle holders from Partylite...we'll just call it an anniversary gift for myself, ha ha!

Another set of pics!

Melanie and Jimmy -which appears to be missing the bottom bit, sorry guys I'll do a do-over later...

Me after drinking the grog and Auntie Jen looking like "what the heck was I thinking?" was going through her head

Heather, Papa and Alex by the Alexander Keith brewery

Aaron and Dad at Peggy's Cove

Auntie Anne and the Beck clan

The boys at the Ripley's exhibit for World's Tallest Man

The boys touching a piece of the Berlin Wall (and Alex running away while I was taking the pictures)

Mommy and the boys at Woodleigh Replicas in PEI

KC. & JoJo (get it?!?) and Les and Alex watching the buskers at the harbour

Me and my boys in front of the Titanic Exhibit at the Naval Museum

A kaleidescope look at our holiday

Here is Aaron in Peggy's Cove

The Beck's in Peggy's Cove

Here I am getting some special attention by the entertainment at the stagette

One of the highlights of the stagette...who knew it all started out as a joke?!?

The cousins...please note that Joseph and Alex really are the only boy cousins!

Joseph and Alex at Ritchie's Wharf the evening of Henry and April's wedding. I think it's my new favourite picture.

Well first I'll let you all know that the photos aren't uploading as smoothly as possible hence the kaleidoscope of shots rather than having them in some sensible order. There will be more to come though! Here's a glimpse of our activities on holiday:

Tuesday - we arrived in Halifax and went to Auntie Anne & Uncle Derek's house, then carried on to do a tour of JJ's ship HMCS Athabascan, Aaron also got to see real submarines and then we walked along the harbour a bit and took in the view of all the water

Wednesday -we headed to the Miramichi, taking the scenic route by St. Hubert for some chicken and then went to Uncle Paul & Auntie Cheryl's house where the boys could run free. I'm not sure what the big fascination was with the ditch but at any given time you could find my boys there, although on the last day we were there they actually found a frog. Gross!

Thursday -Aaron and I took the boys to collect seashells and got absolutely dumped on, I couldn't believe how much it rained but we endured it anyhow. Thursday night was the stagette which was an all around good time! We played games, had Hunter do performance after performance after performance, and headed out to do some karaoke. I really shouldn't be in charge of the microphone, although I'm not a good singer I gave it my all with the rest of the ladies to Sweet Caroline. The guys crashed our party at that point but like I said a good time was had by all!

Friday - We decorated the hall in the afternoon and then did laundry at the laundromat (woohoo) and had a fabulous dinner at Uncle Paul's & Auntie Cheryl's before the wedding rehearsal. I did the first reading at the wedding so I got to attend the rehearsal as well. Much much later that night the youngen's headed to the Opera House for some drinks and dancing. I'll tell you about the Opera House another time.

Saturday- The wedding day was a huge success! Everything went off without a hitch, the bride was stunning, the groom cleaned up very well and the wedding party was hot! The cutest had to be the three girls though, they were so adorable!

Sunday-We headed to Cavendish, PEI for our anniversary and stayed in a cottage by the ocean. We went to an amusement park that night and checked out the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum -pictures to come later-.

Monday - We actually went to the beach and let the boys frolick in the waves, Alex was way more interested in chasing seagulls but Joseph sure enjoyed the water, it was really warm too, plus 18! Then we headed to Burlington to go to Woodleigh Replicas where they have 30 or so miniature castles, cathedrals, famous buildings...it's on quite a few acres so the boys could run wild and burn off some energy before heading back to Halifax.

Tuesday-JJ the girls and my family headed to the Halifax Naval Museum which was interesting for the adults but a bit dry for the kids. After lunch we headed to the Discovery Center which all the kids loved! Tuesday night Moncia, JJ, Auntie Anne, Amy and Mitch (from Boystown, hee hee) took Aaron and I out to a Mexican restaurant for dinner which was a great time!

Wednesday-Aaron and I took the boys and Kelsey and Caitlynn to the Halifax Harbour for tattoos and to watch the buskers and then we kind of hung out and unwinded before heading to the airport for the journey home which I've already mentioned and don't care to rehash...

More pictures to come!

Aaron's favourite one liner from the trip was when he said to my cousin Mike who lives in PEI so there's water all around you?! And Mike replied 'well that is an island'

A pathetically quick update!

We finally made it home! For those of you like myself that don't travel often - MAKE SURE TO CONFIRM YOUR DEPARTURE TIMES! I almost made Aaron promise to not tell anyone but then he said "is this blog material, or what?"
I printed off our itineraries right from the website and apparently the flight changed from 19:55 to 17:55. Because we had the print out showing the previous time the airline tried their best to fit us on the next flight to Toronto but that just didn't happen so we caught the 22:00 flight at no charge to us. We just had to hang around the airport for an extra 3 hours. And with two tired little guys let me tell you it was not pretty!
So we arrived in TO at 12:15 ish and then caught the shuttle to the hotel which was not just down the road like we thought but a full 15 minutes through half of TO, on the other side of the 401...I was beginning to panic and thought our lovely shuttle driver could be the next serial killer, and the hotel was a dive to top it all off. The bathtub had the leaky faucet/rust stains and the ceiling was cracked and the area by the elevator smelled like crap, literally. If it weren't for the fact that we were totally exhausted and ready to pass out for a full three hours before hitting the road again for the final leg of our trip I think we would have rathered spend the night at the airport. I should never have watched the movie Hostel, I'm sure I slept with my eyes open!
But we did have an awesome holiday!!!!!!!!
I don't even know where to begin so I won't today. I think it'll take a few days to get it together first. We've got a family dinner tomorrow night and wedding Saturday night, there's just not enough down time!

Another successful party at the Beck's!

This was taken at 10:30 last night after the last guest left the boys finally crashed!

The big candy grab after we finally got the pinata opened!

Alex and Daddy trying to get the pinata opened!

Alex's first attempt at the pinata

Aargh! Alex's Pirate-y birthday cake! Yummy, chocolate with chocolate filling!

The gift opening fiasco, last year Alex showed no interest in opening gifts and this year he couldn't open them fast enough and of course they were in no particular order so we're not positive on who gifted what yet. 

So the party ran from 4 til 10:30 we had 33 people come, it was a great turnout and a lot of fun! A lot of people did comment that something seemed to be missing? Oh yeah, could it have possibly have been Nannie and Papa?!? Oh course it was! Jeff took over BBQ-ing to fill in for Dad and I oohed and aahed over all the cute babies for Mom.  We had some newbies to the Beck party list and I think we'll keep them on our list, Andrea, Victor and the two boys and our neighbours Anita, Greg and baby Aiden.  Dad would be proud of Aaron for taking Victor for a trip around the world, well the rye & coke world anyways. 

Anyhow it was an awesome party! We've definitely added pinata's to our party list, it was so much fun, all the kids had a turn and still couldn't break it open!

Today is holiday day! Yahoo! We're planning on taking the boys to the Leisure Center to do some watersliding and maybe they'll have a little nap this afternoon.  It could be beneficial or it could totally backfire but we're willing to take our chances!

Calaway Park was a blast!

Oops! This pic didn't finish uploading...

I think a good time was had by all! Aaron over shot the Calaway turnoff when we took a shortcut so it took a few minutes longer to get there but the kids were watching Garfield and were totally oblivious to the sidetrip. I think they lasted about 4 hours and went on a ton of rides, log ride, airplanes, trucks, ride on cars, the berries, swings, carousel, a big spinny up and down thing, and little kid roller coaster. Not too shabby for two little boys and four little girls! We hit the log ride first to avoid a long line up and were completey soaked from head to toe and then did the berries, I think the adults spent the rest of their day recuperating from the berries. Aaron would stop spinning the berry and Alex would yell to him, "drive it Daddy, drive it real fast..."

Only two more sleeps until our holiday..............................................................

Small world syndrome strikes again!

Our new babysitter Julia is from Dartmouth and has been out here in Cowtown for 2 weeks now, and tonight there was a new girl at Aaron's barber shop and she's from the Miramichi (Aaron said it started with a B, maybe Bathurst?!?)
Do you think we'll meet anyone from Calgary while we're East?

Wow! What a hail storm!

Here's looking down our street, the fire trucks had just left after trying to unclog the storm drain.

Here's Aaron's truck, he was cringing while watching the hail come down -another reason why we're building the garage next year.  Surprisingly enough I don't think his truck was damaged.  Two years ago we had some siding replaced due to another huge storm.

The birthday party was LONG and LOUD! But, a success none the less. Alex got some awesome gifts from his playmates and everyone had a fun time playing games and kicking balloons around (that was the most exciting game). 

We have company coming tonight and then we're off to Calaway Park tomorrow morning, Sunday we're hosting Alex's birthday BBQ and then Monday I'm taking the boys to the zoo so Aaron can stockpile some sleep for our all nighter flight.  I usually only sleep for 6 hours/night so I figure if I can sleep most of the Calgary/Toronto flight then I'll be okay. (Providing the boys also sleep on the flight, hence the afternoon zoo trip to wear them out..hopefully we can keep them awake until we leave though.)

Today I only have 1 dayhome boy for the entire day and another for 2 hours so his parents can pack un-assisted.  And they're all 3 so for now they're playing in Alex's room which is a really big treat for them because Joseph and Alex have non-dayhome toys in their bedroom toy boxes.Grandma's taken Joseph to Zoo Camp and is picking up Alex for a trip to the zoo as well. It's so quiet around here it's almost like today's Day One of summer holidays!

And what was I thinking?

For some crazy reason I just realized the other day that today is Alex's dayhome birthday party so I invited the Busy Bee Alumni to come as well...aaaaaaaaagh! That equals 8 little wee ones )2 to 4 years old) running around on a sugar high and 1 Lesley. What the heck was I thinking? Auntie Kathryn has graciously volunteered to come over this morning to help with lunch/cake and 'animal control'. That's got to be what being a best friend is all about!
I'm sure we'll have some interesting pictures to post later today, i.e. cake frosting on the ceiling, a toy filled toilet or just the classic Alex covered in vaseline?!? What does my day have in store for me? Other than Bacardi Breezers chillin in the fridge for after home time!

They're almost there!

I've talked to Mom and Dad everyday they've been gone, left at 4 AM Friday and they'll be at Uncle Paul's this afternoon. Dad brought his laptop but has been unavailable to blog. I'm sure they're both disappointed, they totally planned on blogging their way East. I can't wait to hear all the stories of their journey, Mom already told me about Hop Along Dad "running" across the divided highway to get a pic of the truck/trailer in front of a Saskatchewan grain elevator...silly Daddy, Trix are for kids!