Woodland Antics

I'm pretty good about taking and organizing photographs but actually printing hard copies is something I need to improve on. The one benefit of my slacking is, family portraits created by Reed & Fiona are displayed like the masterpieces they are... a gift from Fiona on our nightstand 

As the 3 year anniversary our of adventure in Australia approaches I find myself thinking more about all we've done and how much the kids have grown since our departure from Canada.  Reed was five & Fiona four. The age where we let them loose to navigate the world on their own for portions of the day.  I often kid that we're raising Australians.   The reality is Fiona has spent more than half her life living outside the U.S. She doesn't remember ever living there.  A few of weeks ago, at the end of the day, I remembered it was the 4th of July and mentioned it to the kids. They asked me, "What's the Fourth of July?"  I told my American children, it's a lot like Australia Day but in America.- It was a sobering conversation. Today as I looked through some old pictures from our final days in Quebec I found a video I made of our last time fishing on the Becancour River in front of our house. (Boy do we miss that place) Here's that video I made b...

 I'm loving the age gap between the "big kids" and Clayton. During the day it's just the two of us. Come afternoon the house swirls with commotion. Eating it all up is King Clay! Here's a video of Clay this morning doing his thing...

Fiona was so proud of the picture Clayton made on the Ipad "all by himself". She told him, "it's so good that mum will put it on the blog." I'd hate to make a liar of her... Clay is one lucky baby to have the coolest siblings around.

The other morning I was running late to bring the kids to school. I couldn't find my keys anywhere. I text Ryan to see if he had any idea where they might be. A few minutes later I sent him this picture... Found them!   The spare set was in the car. Good Grief! ********************************* Here are some random pictures from a bush walk we took last July. I love looking back and seeing how much they've changed. Fiona's lost her two front teeth, Ryan's a little more handsome and Reed straight up looks older. Clay wins the prize for the greatest degree of change in a year.

This series of photographs from Thailand is priceless.

Hello! It feels like forever since I've spent time in this space. The crazy thing is I've had posts to share but never clicked "publish". Before I share them, here are some pictures from today. A random Thursday in our world...  It's a weekday so most of my day is spent with this little 6 month old.  I couldn't choose just a few pictures of him so here's a boat load. I love them all for different reasons.    This guy is all over the map now! He's mobile and curious about everything. He's loved those fingers from go.  To shake things up a bit I made a video for the big kids to watch on the ride home from school. It was just a different way to let them know what I expected them to do this afternoon. When Reed got in the car I said, "I made a video for you."  He said, "Are you having another kid?" One of the chores they had to do was spend time reading to themsel...