We live in a beautiful city when it isn’t overcast and rainy…

This is a view of downtown Vancouver from the North Shore

I know we have said this before but there really is so much fun stuff to do where we live.

Now that Claire & Rhys have gone from two naps a day to one nap a day we spend longer periods of time out and about which is really great because a lot of the community programming runs in the morning when they used to nap. Now we can take full advantage!

From Claire & Rhys’ perspective….

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Story time at the library

Excavators and garbage trucks are a huge hit!

Farmers market at the Quay

More excavators to Claire & Rhys’ delight!

Rhys playing peek-a-boo inside a favorite playground train:

Trying on each others their new toques:

Claire trying a french fry for the very first time & liking it way too much -oh-uh! back to our healthy food:

Helping steer a gigantic shopping cart at Home Depot:

The cooler weather is here and Claire & Rhys are embracing the changing seasons and their changing wardrobe (we love gum boots!)…

Boots aside, the days are still dry enough to have adventures that are less prepared and just as spontaneous.

It was raining last Sunday and after a wet mucky visit to a new park in the morning we decided after Claire & Rhys’ mid-day nap that we would go to the library and stay dry.

There is a great library very close to us which we make great use of. The kids area is really cute with a big tree, games to borrow, dress-up clothes and of course lots of books to read.

Claire and Rhys are voracious book lovers! They don’t read yet so looking at pictures and having books read to them is great fun.We love it too – in hopes that they grow up as nerdy as we are 🙂

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Early morning story time at home

Disclaimer – I took the photos this time on my iphone and that is why they are nice and blurry 🙂

The weather is changing and fall is upon us. This is my favorite season…leaves changing, cozy sweaters, hot cocoa, cool weather.

Last week Jimmy and the kids went to a local park. Claire & Rhys sat next to each other on a tree root for a very brief moment and Jimmy was able to capture it. Toddlers move so quickly and hate to sit still….makes for some tricky photo ops:

Jimmy recently had an evening off and attended a Vans sample sale at Antisocial skate shop in Vancouver. He doesn’t often go out at night because bed-time can be a tumultuous time for Claire & Rhys because they don’t like sleeping most of the time – it takes two of us to coax them into it 😉

This evening though they fell asleep without any struggles. I had some nice one-on-one time with them which was nice and Jimmy enjoyed seeing friends and having a few beers. He also picked up some really cute kids shoes some of which will match his vans 🙂

Here is a pic of the new high tops for Claire & Rhys…. very male looking shoes indeed that is why we went back to the sale on Sunday and I picked up some very bright pink ones for Claire. I never thought I would be that Mom to go super girly but I am drawn to pink for some reason.

We recently purchased a double chariot from a family in our twins group for a bargain price. I am sure that it was never used – it is in excellent condition. I jumped at the opportunity without really thinking it through…. Turns out we only have our two old retro bikes which are not ideal for towing a chariot bike trailer!

We gave it a go last weekend on a nice flat trail in West Vancouver. It was so much fun! I think the kids enjoyed themselves (they even seemed okay with new helmets) and I realized how much I miss biking. Jimmy skated next to us which Claire & Rhys loved to watch. I now want a more burly bike to tow the chariot and to hit some more bike trails with our family.

Here are some pics from our first chariot adventure:

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I like some of the photo apps that I have for my iphone. The photos always come out pretty neat.

Some candid shots from the park using Hipstamatic: