Summer

The end of school was not photographed. Everyone in the family took turns with a stomach virus. Everyone except me, that is. Lucky, right? I just got to take care of everyone else. So that meant missing Logan's pre-school graduation, Avery's end of the year piano recital, (he was able to go, but no else in the immediate family did), Jacob threw up on his class trip and Avery and Izzy missed their last days of school. Thankfully it was a pretty short lived virus. 

July consisted of beach days, Seafest festivities, and playground fun. 

In August, the Southwest exhibition rolled around. I'd been wanting to put Izzy in the beauty pageant they have, and to my delight, they had added a baby pageant as well. So I entered Meghan, and she WON! She was the cutest 13-24 month old. So fun! She won a huge ribbon, a TupperWare snack container (LOVE TupperWare) and a J.R.Watkins baby care set. Not a bad haul.

Meghan with her ribbon.

 Izzy's pageant consisted of a modeling segment, where they had to model their favorite hockey jersey or school team colors. Brian has jerseys of all sizes for Pittsburgh, so that was the obvious choice.

Izzy in her Penguins get up

 Then there was a talent portion. I debated long and hard about this one, and almost didn't enter her. Not to say she's not talented, but the things she IS talented in are hard to showcase. She doing really well in figure skating, but hat's not really an option on stage. She is a bit shy, so singing was not something she would do. She quit dance lessons after a season, she didn't love it, but she loves to draw and paint, so I made her an artist's beret, and smock, picked up a palette and some easels at Dollarama, and had her showcase some of her best drawings, set to classical music. I thought it was original.

                                Artist Izzy                                    

The last part of the pageant was a party/formal dress. I chose a bright red number. She looks best in bright cheery colors (she's a type 1), and found hair accessories to match and painted her nails. I took her to have her hair done, but it was so humid, by the time the pageant rolled around, most of her curls had fallen out. But she still looked pretty cute, I must say.

Beauty

 There was also a photogenic competition, where you had to submit photos in advance. Izzy ended up winning "Miss Photogenic", but was disappointed that she didn't win a crown or sash. I must say, I was disappointed too. She won some cash and a gift card though. She said she had fun and liked it. Not sure if we'll do it again next year. I found it pretty stressful, and it wasn't well organized, but we'll see.

The winning photo

The winners

 We had a university student living with us from April to August to help out with the kids. I can't find any pictures of her. I can't believe it! We took her to the city so she could catch her train home, and made a pit stop at the temple to take some pics.

Halifax Temple

 Logan turned 5 on August 18th, but we celebrated on the 13th, because we were going to be on our roadtrip. More on that later. He wanted a Mario cake, so I found this idea on Pinterest. 144 mini cupcakes, assembled to look like an 8 bit Mario. I liked the fact that there would be no cake cutting.

Mario cake

Opening presents

 I found a ton of ideas, but one can only do so much, especially for a five year old's birthday. The kids won't really care or notice , so why go through a ton of work. I created this "wall" on the clothesline though. The kids had fun running through the coins, and beating up the boo balloons.

Boos and coin wall

Finley, Emmy and Meghan on the trampoline

My sister and her twins as well as my parents came down to celebrate with us. Thank you, thank for all your help!!