Stampede Breakfasts

During Stampede Week, Calgary has free Stampede Breakfasts all over the city, hosted by local communities, or a neighborhood strip mall, downtown businesses, or a huge mall or grocery store. We went to 4 Stampede Breakfasts and 1 Stampede Dinner. It's a fun experience - the live music, dancing, and lots of people getting into the festivities. They are all over the city. Each day you could have your pick of several breakfasts to attend - for breakfast or dinner, although breakfast is the bigger deal. The quality of food varies, and normally I don't think I would stand in line 5 times in one week just for a free breakfast, but it was fun this time :) My favorite part, however, was dressing the girls up in their sparkly cowboy boots. Amazingly, Erin has 3 pair!!! Elaina has 1.

Stampede Dinner #1, the night we arrived:

Elaina with Nanny M and Papa

This is how Erin eats a hot dog.

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Stampede Breakfast #2 at the Community Centre in Braeside, the neighborhood where I grew up:

Krista has been one of my best friends since we met at age 4. We lived 4 houses away from each other from the time we were 4 until I moved away when we were 16. Now we've each got little ones and we seem to just pick up where we left off each time I go home to Calgary

Mom dancing with Erin

Krista two-stepping with Elaina, and my Mom two-stepping with Erin

Krista dancing with Elaina

Checking out the fire truck

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Stampede Breakfast #3: The Dental office where my cousin Andrea works

My cousin Andrea, with the girls.

Isn't she cute? :)

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Stampede Breakfast #4: At a Mall in the city. It was the only Stampede-sponsored breakfast that we went to. They tend to have long lines and huge crowds, but also great activities for kids.

Mom and the girls

Me and my sister Heather

Elaina, waiting for her pancakes

Erin on the pony ride

Elaina on the pony ride. The girls LOVED this!!

Petting zoo, which of course they both loved as well

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Stampede Breakfast #5: The day that we went down to the Stampede grounds my Nana's church sponsored one for the community. Elaina made friends with a couple strangers who taught her how to line dance along with the other adults.

Erin & my Nana at her church's breakfast

Elaina and Erin, line dancing

Dying

Elaina has been very curious lately about the topic of dying. I'm sharing a few funny conversations we've had lately about the subject.

*While we were in Canada she was figuring out the relationships between her family members (another topic she's been curious about: how family members in her life are connected to each other). She was talking to my Dad about it, and he was telling her that he is her Mommy's Daddy, and that Opa is her Daddy's Daddy.

She then asked "do you have a Daddy?"

He said "yes, but he died."

"Oh, why did he die?"

My Dad answered, "well, he was old."

Elaina thought about this for a minute and got a concerned look on her face and then asked him "are you old?"

My poor Dad! I guess his grey (white??) hair can't fool even a 3 year old :)

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*Today Elaina was explaining to me that her Kitty is 6 years old and her Puppy is 10 years old. She immediately clarified, "but he's not old" (as if 10 is old, and about ready to die!)

She added "kids don't die" and then thought about this for a minute and asked "do kids die?"

I told her that sometimes kids do die, but it's not very often.

Her next question: "oh, when kids die, do they go down the drain?" (Unfortunately she remembers when her pet fish died and we put him down the drain....I guess we shouldn't have let her know about that part!)

No, thank goodness Elaina - we go back to live with Heavenly Father, instead of the drain :)

Swimming Lessons

I enrolled Elaina in swimming lessons the first two weeks of June. A couple of her friends were in the same class and they had a blast! They practiced kicking, using their "scoopers" (hands), jumping off the edge and swimming back to the wall, and on the last day they jumped off the diving board.

Jumping off the diving board

Ok, so she was kind of thrown off the diving board, at least it didn't scare her to death, like I thought it would. She still went back again and ended up doing it 3 times! (Each time Elaina would go, Erin was standing beside me saying "Erin's turn. Erin's turn").

Here is a video of my brave little girl!

Elaina and her certificate

Erin and I had fun in the kiddie pool while Elaina did her lessons. We've been swimming almost every day this summer - it's a good way to escape the heat and keep the girls happy, but it wears us all out by the end of the day!

Lake Conroe

We had so much fun with Mike's family when they came to visit. Those that came were: Mike's parents, his sister Staci, his brothers, Jonny and Steve, and Steve's fiancee, Ashley, who I got to meet for the first time (and we all love her!)

They stayed at Montgomery, which is an hour away, and located beside Lake Conroe. One day my in-laws rented a boat and a wave runner, so we spent the day skiing and tubing. We all had such a great day!!

Mike on the wave runner

Elaina had such a blast that day, and was so brave on the tube!

Here she is with Ashley

Me and Staci going tubing

How hard is it to get a good picture???

This is another photo shoot I did with the girls. I want so bad to get a cute picture of the two girls together but never have much luck!! I want both girls smiling, both girls looking at the camera, and not doing anything weird with their hands. It doesn't seem like too much to ask, but for some reason I guess it is.

So I keep dragging them out - bribing them with candy, and threatening them with time out. The girls aren't happy until it's over, and I'm only happy until we start taking pictures. This is usually what we end up with:



And then at the end, the little diva inside Elaina came out. I was laughing so hard when I was taking these pictures. What attitude!
It's so hard to be mad at them when they're so stinkin' cute, even in bad pictures. Here is one that is ok:

Random Summer Fun

Erin at Chuck E Cheese:

We love the Children's Museum in Houston:

Erin got soaked!

Elaina playing vet: I don't think I'd ever want her to give me a shot!

Erin's very own Linkin Logs Tower. Surprisingly, she actually liked being in there...for a little while!

Fun Photo Shoot in the front yard: