Summer Bucket List

Summer has arrived! And I already see how quick it is going to fly by with all our plans. Renos will take up a lot of our time, but with a few months stretched out in front of me I hope we can relax too! There are certainly plans for some of that...
Our family camping trip is planned for a week in July. Last year we rented a rather rustic cabin at Onaping Lake, but this year we are depending on Brad to find us a spot to park the trailer and rough it a bit more. Hoping for some good beach and fishing weather for that.
We also have to find some time for a visit to my sister and brother in Ohio before their lives go seperate ways. And Brad's sister in Belleville needs a visit to, since my work interfered with our last set of plans to get down there.
With all this stuff going on I started feeling like September and another school year was just around the corner. I have a semi-permanent job to return to for the first time this fall and Emma will be off to junior kindergarten. I wanted this summer to be a memorable one and happened to see a summer bucket list that caught my eye. We've decided to start our own tradition!
I included a few big ideas like an amusement park visit, voted for by both Emma and brad, and celebrating our eighth anniversary. Others are simple things that the kids love to do, but I never join in on. I thought why not have fun doing them once or twice together. So we included rock hunting and picking flowers as a fun family activity. A few of our clothespins ( I'll explain in a bit) are just plain fun, like making mud pies and eating dirt cake. A few are things we would already do, but will help is remember the summer better, like writing letters, laughing, and taking photos.
I painted a bucket I got from the dollar store, and wrote out each item on the list on a clothespin. Right now all the clothespins are attached to the top of the bucket, but as we check the item off our list, we will throw the clothespin inside our bucket. Pretty simple, but Emma was already jumping for joy at how fun the ideas sounded!
And tomorrow we are off to throw our first clothespin in the basket with a visit to my parents! I'll keep you posted as to how that and some of the others turn out!

House update...long while coming!

I know I haven't posted in awhile... Okay several months, but I do have some excuses! Firstly, I had this cute little post about moving out of our house and onto making memories in a new one. Then it disappeared and I got really frustrated! I was waiting on a picture of the kids in front of the old house, that I never ended up taking and voila post disappeared into the recesses of my phone. So much for the blogger app!

So in addition to moving out of 380Limit St. I've been working full time, since April.  However, when I started it was only for a 5 week term. The first month turned into two and now I'm working until school's done! But no complaints, we sometimes have to run with the cards we're dealt!

Renovating certainly takes time, and I think we are going to have to push our deadline of moving into the new digs back. End of June just isn't looking so promising. But we have gotten a lot accomplished other than just ripping and tearing! We bought a kitchen off kijiji for a good deal (granite counter, fridge, and stove included)! Plus our drywaller has been moving things along. We are in the midst of mudding and sanding!
My dad's been up to do a lot of work, too. After ripping five layers of flooring out of the kitchen and bath (an addition on the back of the house, he decided we needed to remove the old floor joices and install new ones! He's also done a bunch of plumbing so we can have a master bath upstairs! There was some jacking and a beam to be put in downstairs, which he oversaw.

Next move is to get the kitchen ready to drywall and start the verandah around the front so we can get windows in without worrying about them being damaged. I'll try to keep everyone updated!

Stairway and front entrance

Master bedroom looking into master bath