Time to catch up!

We’re delinquent blog posters, to be sure.  In our defense, we are in our busiest part of the year.  My business is just now coming to an end, as Easter is done, and the Subkirke season is finished until the fall.  Wendy, however, is just ramping up – May is crazy for teachers.  However, we’ve managed to have a few adventures.

The weekend after Easter, we were able to borrow Al and Kathy Plantinga’s cottage.  It is about 400 metres from the cottage we usually borrow, and is more like a house than a cottage.  Very lovely.  Here is the view from the front deck of the cottage:

It’s amazing.  The stairs you see go up the dune, and then down to the beach.  It’s a long way – my obsessive compulsive nature makes me count steps.  248 one way.  I’d be in much better shape if I lived there all the time.

We had the good fortune of being joined by our friends, the Snappers.  They have two sons, one is quite close in age to Jan.  They had a blast, and came on walks with us, though they liked being carried as much as they liked walking…

We must have walked dozens of miles.  I love walking on the beach, and there are also great places to walk in the woods.  It’s all around a great place.  The beach makes for great photo opportunities:

Jan decided that every piece of driftwood we found was actually a dinosaur bone.  Here he demonstrates the type of moves and sounds a dinosaur might make, while standing on the “bone.”

And, apparently, dinosaur bones appear to make good places for silly reclining, too.

More recently (last weekend), we celebrated Jan’s birthday.  It started earlier in the week, on his actual birthday, when he opened a couple of gifts that Grandma and Grandpa Baxter sent.

Look out, world.  The dude has roller skates.

On Saturday, we had a bunch of Jan’s (our) friends over from church, and riotous hilarity ensued.  We played games, such as this one, where you tie balloons to your ankles, and everyone tries to stomp on them:

Ethan was the champ of that game.  But the most popular item of the day was bubbles.  I found “light-sabre” bubble wands, and a bubble machine, and I think the kids would have played with that for hours if we left it going…

All this was followed by Jan’s chosen lunch, hamburgers and hotdogs.

And, to top it all off, a Spiderman cake, with a Spiderman and Darth Vader candle.

Jan certainly enjoyed it, and so did we.  It was fun.

Other than that, I’m working to try to get the study finished.  I think I applied the last of the drywall mud today, so final sand tomorrow, hopefully get it painted this week!  Then the woodwork starts for the bookshelves.  I’m looking forward to it.  As I said, Wendy has a LOT of work in May, (a lot of extra curricular stuff,) but I’m much more relaxed now.