Family Vacation - with butterfly wings

Kyle and I took the kids on their first real family vacation. 4 days, 3 nights in Niagara Falls (Ontario). We - OK, I - had it all planned for some full (and fun) days.

The kids were very excited, we even had a count down on the wall in the kitchen.

Finally the day came, the car was packed. And we were off!

We are half way to Niagara, and Kyle turns to me "you packed his catheters and stuff right?" I said "Yes, you put the Halloween bag in the car, right?" "Umm, no."
Not again! But I learned something after forgetting all of Nick's catheters when we went to Ottawa in December. I have a backup pack in the car. 4 days worth, exactly. The ditropan was a bit of an issue. That was in the catheter bag (all neat and put together). I only had 3 doses with me. I collected my own information, contacted our nurse, got her advice (to go to a walk-in clinic, get a prescription, then to the pharmacy to fill it). But made my own choice to just go with what we had.

But after that little stress-bump, we arrived!
Our hotel wasn't going to be ready for a couple of hours so we went to the Butterfly Conservatory as our first outing.

 

The kids thoughts it was so neat! With all the butterfly's!
They didn't stay still enough for any to land close to them

 

But there was groupings of butterflies that the kids could really get up close and see them. They were so colourful! (Even though in the picture it looks like most of them were brown, the inside of the brown ones were bright blue.

We were able to get some pictures, with all the lush scenery.
This is Katheryn's newest pose-face. That tongues doesn't stay in!

And they were not that impressed when I wanted a picture with the kids. I didn't push it (thinking we'll have lots of opportunity in the next couple of days for a family photo).

Nickolas loved exploring, he liked the butterflies, but what really interested him was the turtle, and the waterfall! (Perfect for Niagara Falls)

They had a path, but also alot of places that connected the path by stairs. Katheryn of course always wanted to go up and down the stairs, and Kyle and Nick would just catch up.
But Katheryn really didn't want to be that far away from her brother!

When we finished in the conservatory, and the gift shop Katheryn really wanted to do some puddle jumping!

She soaked everything! But had so much fun doing it.
Her shoes were soaked for days. Luckily we brought an extra pair, because we were planning on alot of walking

Before heading to our hotel we stopped for some water-watching.
This is the whirlpool, and we watched a couple of boats full of people going through the rapids. Looked like alot of fun

Nick likes having his chair, but also loves when he just stand and move when he wants.

Katheryn LOVES her wings from the gift shop!

Except of course when she tried to fly between beds in the hotel room.
But in hotel rooms you are almost required to jump on the beds!

MRI time

It is that time of year again.

The yearly MRI.

We got the appointment card in the mail in June, but I didn't think much of it until a couple of days before.

But then I started getting nervous.

Last year Nickolas was not a happy camper after the anesthetic.

He screamed and cried the entire ride home.

And now he's 1 year older, one year more aware of what is going on. So then I started worrying about how he would be.

I wasn't sure if we should try to prepare him a little bit, or just go with the flow.
I decided to jsut leave it as "a trip to the hospital" and go from there.
Nick's brand new t-shirt had arrived, so I figured it was a perfect time to show it off.
And even though we could probably have carried him in and out of the appiontment, I decided to take his chair to let him move around if he wanted to.

Nick didn't really seem to notice that he wasn't allowed to have anything to eat or drink.
He wasn't too sure about the hospital gown, but we got in relatively quickly.
We even skipped the pre-sedation waiting room.

Nick had a little bit of time to look around and explore the sedation room (I don't know what it's called, but it is where he goes to sleep before he actually goes into the MRI).
He was excited that there were characters on the ceiling.

We brought his knight to see if it would help him explore the equipment and room.

  

After everyone was ready it was time for Nick to lie down. He was not happy.
He knew that something was going to happen and he didn't want it to.
He had a mask that went over his face with his choice of scent (watermelon).
He was afraid and crying, I touched him and kissed him and he slowly drifted off.

Then it was Kyle and me - distraction time for about an hour.
Since neither of us had eaten breakfast (since Nick couldn't it wasn't really fair to eat in front of him), we headed off to the cafeteria.
And then the gift shop.
Bad idea.
Between Kyle and I we both had armfulls of gifts and ideas to buy the kids. We put alot back, but did pick up something special for Nick for when he woke up.

It took about 15-20 minutes for him to really by awake, but he thought this new dinosaur was great!

We even got a small 'roar' out of him.

So now the dinosaur has a name Roary

Nick didn't want to let him go.

Pretty soon we got some smiles out of him.

And he drank a whole juice box.

So we were ready to go.

No tears, no crying. He bounced back amazingly well. So much better than last year.

We also got to take home the mask that smelled like watermelon. Hopefully we can do something about that fear about the mask right before going to sleep.

Now I just have to try not to stress about the results...

Family, family and more family!

The August long weekend means that it is time for our annual Philips Family Reunion!

I don't remember what year we started doing it, but it is the one time of the year when all of the family can get together, catch up, show off, watch grow and relax.

Kushog Lake is a beautiful swimming lake, BUT it is deep and Katheryn was well aware that she needs to be in her life jacket whenever she is close to the edge. (I may have stressed it a little too much, a week ago Katheryn woke up from a bad dream because she was near the water without her life jacket on).

The cottage hasn't grown in the last 50 years or so, it is a 3 bedroom cottage. But the family has grown significantly since my grandfather built it. So when we all meet in the year we camp it!



The kids love camping!

The water, the outdoors.

Katheryn didn't want to actually get in the water, she was just really happy to fill bucket after bucket of water and destroy sand castles. And following around the older girls (who were a huge, big help).

But Nick was the water baby! We swam and swam and swam. (It was alot easier once I got a noodle to help support us). There was a pirate ship on the lake!
Nick and I kept watching out for Captain Hook

Every family dinner needs to have our picture. And since we are too big to eat inside, what better place to set up our photo than with our dinner table!
I think we are all here, except Katheryn was in the cottage napping and we are missing 2 dogs (and Nick is hidden a bit).

The weekend was supposed to have a rainy day, so I made sure we had a bunch of fun things to do when we were stuck inside! The goody bag came out a little earlier and our craziness started to show a bit!

We also pulled out the badminton set and the 'kids' had lots of fun bouncing a birdie back and forth.

The cousins liked playing together, and teaching the younger ones!

The beginning of the weekend was a little bit hectic, with lots of clinging and crying. But by the end of the weekend we were more relaxed. Nick started to relax, and while I could never be too far away, Nick did take some opportunity to get into trouble (like colouring all over his face).

Or doing some exploring!

The cottage weekend was a huge success, the kids all had alot of fun, relaxing, exploring and playing with their cousins. It seems like 3 days is just not long enough.

But we'll take the time we have to breathe and enjoy the peace and tranquility.

Proud Mom

Just because

Love these kids!

The joy of being a boy...

Nickolas 'found' a mud puddle, and went right to it!
I thought for a minute of keeping him back, imagining the clean laundry that I had just finished...

But how can you say no to this pure joy!

Katheryn was very proud of her contribution to making the puddle!