Must-Haves for Summer with a Toddler

// one // two // three // four // five // six // seven // eight // nine // ten // eleven //

one: I am in love with this little dress from Osh Kosh. It is so light and airy - prefect for those hot summer days! And can we talk about the color? I'm loving these chambray looks right now!

two: And these little short overalls from Osh Kosh are to die for!! Little girls in overalls; cutest. thing. ever!

three/four: You can never have too much sunscreen. With the weather being so hot like it is, I am all about protecting little ones' skin from the scorching sun! and BUG SPRAY! It is unbelievable how many mosquitos we have right now. Its horrific! Poor little palmer has bites all over her, even after using the bug spray. This is certainly a must-have - gotta protect their skin!

five: I am loving my cloth diaper shells again for the water. They are light and waterproof making them ideal for that day at the pool or lounging in the yard. And, can I point out how cute these prints are?

six: These pools are perfect for toddlers! They are shallow, allowing them to sit and play. They have a canopy for shade from the hot sun. And, you can attach your hose to them and it has a little spray feature!

seven: Rashguards! I love these, especially for a whole day at the pool/spray park/backyard. Along with the sunscreen, these are a must for protecting little arms from a sunburn!

eight: These little flip flops are the greatest. With a price tag of $2, you can't go wrong. They are perfect for running around the splash park or a walk to the park. Easy to keep on with the elastic back. Palmer actually reaches for these most often these days!

nine: If we are going to be outside for a long period of time, I always make sure to have a hat on Palmer. This one is our most used, but if we are going to be out all day (like in Mexico for example) I try to use one with a chin strap. Palmer likes to pull them off once in awhile.

ten: We love our water table. Palmer will splash and play for ages in it. She is a water baby, for sure!

eleven: And most importantly, when we are going to be in the hot sun all day, I make sure Palmer downs a lot of water! These are our most reached for cups! We also like the ones with the handle for little hands to hold!


And there you have it! Our summer must-haves for toddlers!  What is on your list? 

Playdates

Finding time for play-dates is difficult for us. With the majority of my friends being shift-workers too, and me being full time, I find it is hard to arrange a time to meet up.

Yesterday, we were fortunate enough to be able to be outside enjoying the hot sun while having a play date with two sweet girls and their mamas (both of which also do shift work). These girls are just the cutest together! I'm hoping there will be many more outdoor summer fun with these ladies.

(Photos courtesy of Tawnya)

Today, while its not so hot out; in fact, its raining again today, we were able to get a morning indoor play-date in with another friend of ours. It would have been nice to be able to get outside, but I know there will be many more chances for that this summer!

I find that with Palmer going to the day home most days, she is very easy going. She knows how to share and play with other kids. She's not too shy and warms up to people quite quickly. I think interaction with the other kids there has had a huge impact on her. Its' nice that she has interaction with kids of various ages and I find Palmer plays so well with other kids (except yesterday when she pushed Little S! Sorry! ). allowing Palmer to be social with other children will help her so much as she grows. It's so important for kids to interact with other kids, that's why I'm grateful for the little friends Palmer has. Although getting together and making plans can be challenging at times, the outcome is so worth it. Watching Palmer play with her little girlfriends (and the handful of boyfriends) just melts my heart!!!

Weekend Wrap-Up

Friday for us was pretty chill. Mitch and I both worked Friday, which ended off our long work weeks, so we kept pretty quiet Friday night. We went for a bike ride in the evening, and we were all in bed by 10pm! I needed to get a good sleep for my race on Saturday.

Saturday morning, I had my race, you can read about it here, and Mitch golfed. Then we did some house and yard work, followed by dinner and some much-needed well-deserved drinks at the in-laws!!

And once again, I was home early, in laying in bed, enjoying the book I have been trying to read for the past 3 weeks.

SIDENOTE:  I don't know about you, but I find it very difficult to sit down and read with a toddler!?! I can't read while shes awake...Palmer is like a little magician, I swear! She is now getting herself out of the highchair and standing up on the tray, so I can just imagine then things she would do if we didn't have our eyes on her for 2 minutes! And not only that, I wouldn't be able to concentrate enough to get through more than a page or two, I'm sure...I'd be re-reading the same sentences over and over!

Today was a good day! Mitch headed out early for another round of golf while Palmer and I enjoyed some breakfast, cartoons, and relaxing around the house. Around noon, the two of us headed downtown for some Father's Day shopping, then headed to the golf course for lunch and to watch Daddy come in from golf.

Then, we headed to Home Depot for a few things, and home to enjoy this beautiful weather with sprinklers...

...supper on the deck...

...and a nice family bike ride to Tim's...

Great Weekend!

Hello June

I cannot believe how fast May flew by! The good news though, is that June, more often than not, stays warm (not often coming with snow like May sometimes does).

With this new month, I want to be able to be a little bit more organized in our meal planning. We are a busy family (as I'm sure all of you are too); with Mitch and I both working full time, Palmer at the dayhome most days, spending some much needed outdoor time together and getting Leaf out for a couple walks a day, meal planning and cooking is the last thing on my mind.

Daddy doesn't like his picture being taken!

 It has actually been a little easier since Mitch has started his new job simply because the only meal we really have to worry about is supper, other than on the weekends and days off.

My June plan, is to sit down every Sunday, think about what groceries we have and plan out meals for the week. Ideally, I would like to only do one Costco shop every month, and do a 15% Tuesday shop, with just having to pick up a few things maybe once a week, like fresh produce and milk.

I know this menu planning might be hard to stick to for awhile, but I know it will save money, time and be much easier for our family. Who doesn't hate coming home from work and trying to figure out what to make for supper. I'd much rather be looking at this face!!!

And, with this new month and wanting to enjoy the outdoors, I think there will be a lot of BBQing going on! I'd like to also use the slow cooker about once a week - definitely saves time, and its nice to come home
to supper already cooked for you!

Does anyone have any good BBQ recipes?? How about for the slow cooker??

Springs Looks for the Little

There are so many cute spring outfits in the stores right now, it is seriously taking everything in me to not buy Palmer more clothes! Not just clothes either. Now that she is running all over the place, she needs shoes, and trust me, there are a lot of adorable and practical shoes out there too. I mean, look at those little silver sandals. How cute are those???

| here | here | here|

I am LOVING the Joe Fresh styles this year (and always)! They have such cute clothes at affordable prices. Palmer has a few items from there already and I absolutely love them on her!

Old Navy is always a great shop too, and they often have great deals on (40% off), can't beat that (for Mama and Little)

I love that now that Palmer is getting older, there are a lot more colors to choose from other than just pink. When she was just a baby, dressing her in pink was a given a)because she looks so darn cute in pink and b) so people could tell she was a girl (and even then people still called her a boy). Now there are so many cute clothes that aren't just pink! I love it!

Now, if only I could find some of these outfits in my size....

Weekend Wrap-Up (in Photos)

We spent the weekend away in Saskatchewan, camping with my parents. We got there Friday to some gorgeous 30+ degree weather. Saturday was kind of a bummer because it was a little windy, too windy to go to the beach, but Leaf still had fun swimming in the River. The weekend ended today with us getting home around 4:30pm. Just in time to make supper, go for a family walk, pack lunch for tomorrow, and will be catching up on our usual Sunday TV (breaking bad and Big Brother).

Here are some pictures to recap our weekend:

The Saskatchewan Landing.. This is where we went camping

Walking with Leaf and Uncle Troy

Leaf after swimming | Mitch hiding from the camera and/or mosquitos | Uncle Troy

We use to bath in this tub while camping when we were kids!

Palmer also met Great Grandma Baldwin for the first time!!

Weekend Wrap-Up and Blogging Overload

This weekend we kept pretty close to home - nothing to major happened at all. This being my last weekend of maternity leave, I wanted to enjoy family as much as possible.

Mitchell was playing in a golf tournament over the course of 3 days, but was still home enough to enjoy some family swimming in the backyard, some froster-swirls from Mac's and a walk around the lake.

Other than that, I really have just been trying to get the house in order for my return to work in less than 20 hours!!!  And, trying to get rid of all these pesky fruit flies we have accumulated over the past few days/weeks??  (I created a contraption to capture them - I will spare your the grossness and save myself the embarrassment and not show you a picture. Instead, I will post this one: )

"Mommy, get this thing off my head!!!!" I'm sure is what she is thinking!

We had a delicious supper last night - homemade burgers and homemade fries. So yummy! Getting in another good BBQ before summer turns to fall!

This morning, we all slept in - until 9am!! It was super-fantastic! Despite Palmer being up a couple times in the night, just needing a cuddle (which has never happened before), it was a great sleep! I always love getting to sleep in!

Then we all enjoyed some pancakes for breakfast! Palmer seemed like she enjoyed her first taste of them!!

With all that being said, now that I am going back at work full-time and my time with my family will be decreased, the amount of blogging done will decrease, but I think this will be good. It will get me back to why I started blogging in the first place; to share stories of our little family with our family and friends, near and far. I think for awhile, I got too deep into blogging, finding new things to blog about daily, even several times a day, which watered down my posts. 

While Palmer was napping, I would blog. 

While she was in bed, I would blog. 

While she was spending time with Mitchell, yup, you guessed it, I would blog. 

The more I blogged, the less personal I got. I truly think people enjoy reading about Palmer and our family and the various things that happen in our lives, but I cannot share every life event on this blog. And now, between enjoying my family and working full time, I simply cannot put so much time into my "hobby." My initial intention for this blog was for it to be a casual place to share memories and thoughts, not the two or three times a day posts that it has become!

Of course, I will continue to post, sharing pictures and stories - just getting back to the reasons I started this blog in the first place. 

What We Did Wednesday

With summer just about over and me heading back to work soon, weekdays spent as a family outside are going to be few and far between. So today, Mitchell, Palmer and I took full advantage of that.

We started our trek by heading over to Tim Horton's for some coffee to go. I tried some Vanilla Bean Iced Latte. Super delicious! We sipped our coffees on our way downtown to Alpenland to look at Chariots/bike attachments (and maybe even a bike for myself). I am hoping we will have some kind of bike attachment for Palmer for next summer so we can enjoy family bike rides. The Chariot brand though is soooo expensive. Great quality and hold their value well, but getting started is not cheap. I'm going to have to start looking on kijiji or something - find ourselves a good deal!

After browsing the store for Chariots and bikes, we headed out to Broxburn Farms. 

We started our afternoon there with some berry picking.

We were only able to pick strawberries today, but we sure got a lot of them! And they are so delicious too! The lady there told us that the raspberries were slim-pickins this week and that we would have better luck if we came back next week or so.

After berry picking, we shopped in the store for some other fresh, organic produce, then headed over to the cafe for some lunch. Everything they have in their restaurant is homemade and fresh! I wish I had taken a picture of our lunch. The two of us shared a Chicken Bacon Ranch Wrap with some homemade Red Pepper Cream Soup and some Chorizo Sausage with Homemade Gouda Perogies. Both were really good.