No excuse

I have absolutely no excuse for the delay in posts. I mean, life is busy as usual, but nothing major to report.

Here is my quick summary of life today, as we know it.

• Renovations on the front of our house are to begin on the 20th of July. We've actually hired a company to do this for us. We'll have a new deck, new porch, new steps, railings (not new, as we've never had them...), a new front door, a new front fence, a new-ish garage and a driveway that is long enough to park our car in without it hanging over the sidewalk 6 inches. I think the sidewalk snowplow guy will do a dance of joy come winter.
• We've booked our flights to Missoula. We leave on the 21st of August and return the 16th of December. It's all becoming quite real, all of a sudden.
• Sammy has a cold. Boo! It's like last summer all over again. He got sick at this time last year and then ended up on a puffer for all of August. Let's hope he gets better very quickly.
• Charley has been for a check-in with both his cardiologist and his speech therapist. Can you say "Glad-I-live-in-Canada-and-don't-have-to-pay-for-this?" He's still got major clarity issues in the language department, but excels everywhere else. Sophie isn't worried about this at all, and thinks he'll have it all figured out in the next year or so. Re: the ol' ticker, he had his annual check in for the heart stuff (ultrasound, ecg, etc.) and we don't get the results until next week. I'm pretty sure he's fine there too. Funny thing: They did his height and weight when we were there and he's grown 2 inches since his birthday but gained 0 ounces. Hmmm, taking after mummy and her "Biafran" youth. (That's what my granny used to say to me. Not so true these days...)
• Chris is busy, busy, busy. He's set himself up a staggering to do list to accomplish before we go, and I'm not quite sure how he will manage to tackle it all. He's also decided to do the demolition on the front of the house himself (rather than pay mucho $$ to the company to do it) so add that to the work load. He also has less time to do all of this, as he's driving to Missoula. We're flying out, but he's bringing the car and a car's worth of stuff. He'll have to leave 4, or so, days ahead of us so that he's there by the time we land.
• Uncle Phil, who is living here while we're gone, is giving up his apartment come August 1st, so we'll be living all together for a few weeks. Poor, poor him. Oh well, then we go and he gets a big house to himself for 4 months.

That's about all from here. I don' t have any pictures of note either. We just haven't done anything too exciting the last few days. Here's what I have for you:





Yes. Kismet has a shirt on, but Sam doesn't. Says it all... Let me say that putting Charley's shirt on Kismet provided at least 10 minutes of hilarity for the boys.

Making a Super Kitty mask? 10 more minutes of hilarity. Yep, parenting is all about keeping boys entertained for 10 minute intervals, 12 hours a day.




Sam's 10 minute happy spell? Riding in the new umbrella stroller INSIDE! So, so funny, for some reason.





Ol' powdered donut face.

You may remember this piano toy from 2 summers ago when Charley was the same age and obsessed with it. Hard to believe how life has changed and grown since then.