We have finally started the renovations on the girls bedrooms. We are (I am) painting and putting laminate flooring down. The biggest challenge was cleaning out their rooms. As you can see from the pictures that is no easy task. Below is Angela and Claudia's room.
Here is Gillian's disaster area.
I'll update the renos as we go.
Claudia and Angela are pretty good about getting rid of stuff they don't need, Gillian on the other hand has the pack rat gene. We compromised and she had her picture taken with her stuff, let's just say we didn't take too many pictures.
Angela posing with some of the art she had on the walls.
The girls wanted to keep the animals that were painted on the walls.
Claudia found one of her old t-shirts and wore it for the rest of the day.
The beds have been unbunked and most of their stuff has been cleared out. Man what a process.
I am at the wall prep stage. The girls are switching rooms, so this will be Gillian's room.
Gillian picked Benjamin Moore 2077-50 "Pretty Pink".
The girls are sleeping on their mattresses in one room. This will be Angela and Claudia's new room.
Angela and Claudia agreed on Benjamin Moore 2066-40 "Rocky Mountain Sky".
Took a break from painting today and headed out to Scarborough for Easter Dinner. There were 19 of us for dinner, there was the adult table, the kids table and the littler kids table in the kitchen. Finished the first coat of Gillian's room, in the paint can it looks like bubblegum, on the walls it looks like this.
This is Angela's weekend of birthdays. She had her first cake at Grandma and G-pa's.
Gillian was Emi's best buddy all night.
Started painting Angela and Claudia's room. The two of them have been eagerly waiting for their room to be painted so they could help. They helped with some of the first coat.
Claudia's turn.
Angela's birthday finally arrived and she was able to open her presents. It was first thing in the morning since everyone was off for Easter Monday.
Checking out one of the books she asked for.
Put the final coats on Angela and Claudia's bedroom. I let the two of them paint the first coat on their closet. Here they are busy painting.
Angela in front of the finished job.
We had the floors in the girls bedroom installed on Thursday. The rooms are almost done and we will be able to start moving them back in. Here is Gillian's room with the floor.
I replaced the original sliding closet doors with new ones that match the bedroom doors. Here is how Gillian's turned out.
I installed the same doors in Angela and Claudia's room as well. The next step is to redo the inside of the closets. In the afternoon, there was a fire truck in front of our house.
It turned out they were at a couple of houses down from us as first response. Eventually an ambulance showed up.
They ended up taking an older gentleman off to the hospital. Angela and Claudia were out on their scooters the entire time they were there.
When the firemen were leaving, one of them told the girls how happy he was to see them wearing their helmets.
Did you participate in Earth Hour? We did, here are a few of the things we did during our hour of darkness.
The girls had dessert. The light you see in the background is from a rechargable night light from IKEA.
Gillian with the nightlight.
One of our candles.
Claudia and Angela half faces.
Claudia holding the power in her hand.
The evil wizards.
Did you hear about the City Council in Canton Ohio, they want to increase the fine for residents not cutting their grass. A second offence could result in jail time. Part of the Canton Repository article is below;
City Council wants to beef up its existing high-grass and weeds law by making a second offense a fourth-degree misdemeanor, which is punishable by a fine of up to $250 and up to 30 days in jail. In the spring and summer, it's not uncommon for council members to field complaints from residents about overgrown lots owned by individuals or banks and corporations that ignore the law and notices in the mail. More than 8 inches constitutes high grass or weeds, according to city law. First-time violators now face a minor misdemeanor, which carries up to a $150 fine and no jail time.
Good thing our neighbours don't live in Canton. Here is a picture of Angela and Claudia in the tall grass. Usually they cut around the May long weekend, perhaps it was too early, too cold or too short, well maybe by the next long weekend.
We have a house guest this weekend, we are looking after Bella. Bella is Sue and Mike's dog from across the street.
Claudia and Bella on the couch.
It didn't take long for the two of them be be sleeping.
Playing with the camera around the house.
Gillian
Bowl of strawberries. Mmmmmm.
The cats we picked up at the Japanese pavillion at Epcot.
Here is picture of Claudia helping Gillian make brownies for dessert. We had company over for dinner.
Angela waiting for our company.
Our friends Dwight and Susanne were in town this week and had some time for a visit. We haven't seen them since 1997, they had never met Angela or Claudia. They're still living over in Germany. It was good to catch up with them. Hopefully it isn't another 12 years.
We are dog sitting Bella for our neighbours. Bella will be with us for a couple of weeks, the girls are quite excited to look after her.
She is a good dog, she sleeps a lot and doesn't bark.
Happy Victoria Day, we had a fire in our chiminea and the girls roasted marshmallows. Or as a guy at work called them "sweetened cotton balls", this guy is originally from Bulgaria, he had his first marshmallow recently and he is 25.
The girls had friends over to roast marshmallows.
As with all good fires, there comes a little smoke with it.
Sue and Mike brought over some sparklers for the girls.
Claudia.
Gillian making circles.
The rain and wind passed through today and it probably went through where the girls were camping. I took a picture out the front after the weather had passed.
This injured bird was on our front lawn. It must have fallen out of the nest, but the mother was still feeding it.
The mother.
Gillian went down to the CNE Air Show on Saturday and she said it was really good. I was down at Spadina and Adelaide on Friday afternoon for a meeting and saw and heard them practising. Over the weekend we saw a few planes from our backyard, but I didn't get any pictures until Monday afternoon. Here is Fat Albert, the US Navy C130 Hercules that travels with the Blue Angels.
Here are the Blue Angels, they are like the Snowbirds. The Blue Angels are based out of Pensacola Florida.
A couple of fighter jets flew over the backyard as well. They were routing most of the commercial airliners to the south East-West runway during the airshow, so it was pretty quiet for most of the afternoon.
After a longer than usual summer vacation the girls finally reached the last day of summer holidays. Angela and Claudia are looking forward to heading back to school to see their friends and find out who their teachers are. Gillian is a little nervous heading to her first day of high school.
Claudia hanging around with Chloe.
Chloe looking pretty relaxed about the first day of school. Her first day is on the 15th when she starts puppy training school.
Angela is so relaxed about school she can levitate herself.
Angela and Madyson bouncing on her trampoline.
Chloe ready to do some sweeping.
We got our tree up and decorated. We discovered that some of our lights didn't work, so Susan went to buy a new string of lights. The new ones were LED and once we got them on, the LED's made the tree look green and the old lights made the tree look brown. Of course that wouldn't do, so the old lights needed to be replaced. For the first week or two, Chloe thought the tree was her personal chew and water station. If she wasn't trying to drink the water, then she was either chewing on the branches or stealing the ornaments at the bottom of the tree. She is either getting better or we have now moved all the ornaments from the bottom of the tree and there is nothing left.
A blog to share memorable or not so memorable moments of life with our
family. 
