She melts my heart...

Those were the words of one of the other Mummys at the school today as Bel ran past her smiling. She gets that a lot. There really is something about Isobel that words can't easily express.

I snapped this picture today after a totally impromptu (and not very steady-handed) face painting and couldn't get over how impossibly cute she looks! She melts my heart a thousand times a day :)

It's getting Spoooooky around here!

It was a dark, dark night, there was a chill in the air.....the wolves were howling outside my window...the floorboards creaked and .......I decided it was time to start decorating for halloween! Woooo!

I had a dig through the boxes we brought with us from Alberta and was happy to find my stash of spooky bits from last year including this orange berry wreath, a few nasty spiders and my faithful scraggy black cat. I've yet to carve my pumpkins, that's usually a halloween eve tradition in our house, but I did decide it was safe to put them outside before the big day. This would have usually been impossible in Alberta where they would have frozen solid and then been impossible to carve ( I speak from experience). I also went on a leaf collecting mission trying to find lots of dried up crumply old leaves to scatter about the place to generally increase the spooky mood. I've got a few more ideas up my sleeve that may or may not involve spider webs and bats but for now I'd have to say it's definitely setting the mood.

Inside we've had  a few little pumpkiny-squashy-type-things hanging around since thanksgiving that we decided needed a little more spooky character. Thanks to a little inspiration from the wonderful world wide web we transformed them into vampire squashes with just a couple of pins and some 99c teeth!

The kids love their new ghoulish little veggie-pals and have given them all names, Isobel's is called "Baby". Of Course.

To avoid any unwanted pin prick wars between the kiddos, I've put the Vampire veggies high up out of reach on the mantlepiece and I'm really liking this little bit of halloween in my living room.

The quality is not all that, easier and quicker to upload, hope you like it, Seb loved his Birthday.

Filmed with a Gopro 1080P

Its Neil blogging by the way.

Ralston's get lost....

I briefly mentioned in my last post about our activity full day to celebrate Seb's big 4 that we visited the pumpkin patch. Well, you didn't think for one minute that I'd let you get away without seeing a gazillion more pictures of pumpkins did you?? OF COURSE NOT!! Pumpkins gallore, Oh how I loved it! Hehehe! It wasn't just me that had fun, I'm pretty sure we all enjoyed our morning slipping over in the mud and selecting only the very finest orange specimens to come home with us. We got lost in a corn maze, yes. Actually lost. Don't think that just because you're an adult and think you're clever you can outsmart the corn maze! We couldn't.

A clue perhaps? Er, no. None of us were clever enough to think of leaving a trail of corn.

Can you spot Seb? He's not that tall by the way, Neil was lifting him up on his shoulders to see if he could spot the way out.

When we did eventually find our way out we had a wander around the pumpkin patch (technically not allowed until after you go on the hayride, naughty, naughty) and scoped out the best pumpkins to collect once we had a tractor to help us lug them back to the car.

Then it was time to hit the hayride! Yeee-haw! (I'm not sure why I think it'd necessary to talk like a cowboy in order to go on a hayride but it seemed fitting.)

Finally PUMPKIN SELECTION TIME!

Neil of course was forced to carry the biggest one I could find.

Once our Pumpkins were size checked and paid for, we loaded them into the car and just had enough time to check out the rest of the farm. We saw some emu's (but didn't stop there long because Neil's scared of Emu's), some very pretty looking corn and some cute, sleepy piggies before we headed off to our next birthday activity.

Did I forget to mention, I love pumpkins? :)

Seb turned four!!

Happy birthday! Hipedy-hip-hip-hooray!!

To celebrate we headed to nanaimo........stayed in hotel with a rather nice bathroom......

Stayed up extra late to watch TV. Woke up extra early to sing, pop balloons and open pressies.....

Pretended to be star wars characters....



Compared light sabers.....

Had an extra delicious scrummy breakfast....

met some spooky characters at the pumpkin patch .......

Hit the waves at the water park and generally had a super duper good time!

Thanks for letting us share your fourth birthday fun Sebbie-no-pants-mcgee! 

Love you monkey! 

xxxxxx