Just testing to see if I can find a way around having to pay for more storage for photos on the blog.  We've maxed out our free storage for photos, so we either can it, pay up for storage, or I sign in as Ann-Marie and post from her account!  Last option seems best...  We'll see.  In the meantime, here's a picture of one of our hens enjoying their nice, heated, weatherproof coop and run. 
Lay on, hens.  Lay on.

I'm working late tonight, and just got this note:

"Happy birthday dad"
Love nick

Thanks Nick!  For the uh... intergalactic..sea turd... I think?

November Randoms

A few randoms from the past few weeks:

Tobin is better than me at maintaining a smile when the photographer is taking 100 photos...

It snowed...

 ...and this is what they spent the rest of the day doing.

 Whenever I bring a new hat home it seems to disappear into the boys lair... which in this case was probably a good thing

FIRE TRUCK RIDE!!!

Yeah, I thought it was pretty exciting.  Or as Nick would say 'tesighting'.

Tobin's class took part in a drawing contest put on by the local fire department.  The topic was to draw all the fire exits in your house and what you would do in a fire.

Said drawing:

Arrows indicate fire exits, figure crawling along the floor is a human escaping the fire.  Structure to the right of the house is the muster station. Revised: I realized that he drew the raised garden beds, and the chicken coop, partially obscuring the tree which was the muster station!  Pretty awesome eh!

And he won the contest!!  So today, he and another little girl from grade 1 were picked up from their school, in front of all their chums, by Revelstokes biggest fire engine.  They went for a tour of the town, passing by their houses and their parents work, honking horns and siren-ing all over town.  Tobin was pumped.  A little shy about it all, but pumped.

 

Then they went back to the fire hall and had a first class tour, sitting in all the fire trucks, climbing the tower, eating pizza with the firefighters.  Awesome.

There they go!

And this afternoon he drew this picture to thank the fire department

Halloween

Ahhh, yes the ghouls were out in full force tonight, screeching and wailing and carrying on.  And that was even before dinner was finished.  Nick almost missed his second real Halloween because he's really finding his niche as screaming-hell-child-who-refuses-to-listen.  Great fun times, for realz.

I took two pictures tonight in between holding the umbrella, carrying Nick's costume and helping up and down stairs

They can be really cute, when they're still, and quiet like in this picture.

At the office

Kindergarten

Pretty light on ye olde blog posts lately... I've been meaning to put a pic of Tobin off to his first day of school up for awhile now, so finally here it is!

He was SO excited!  He had his backpack full of supplies, his jet fighter dress shirt and his favourite shorts all picked out for the day.  He's been loving it too, which I just can't relate to actually.  I'm always amazed how excited kids are about going to school.  I guess the jaded, slouchy part will come later...
Anyway, for now it's fantastic.

Incidentally, we finally managed to get them to wear pants for the first time since May.  Nick would still be wearing shorts to preschool if he had a choice, even though it's 3deg and raining out.