Happy Third Birthday Natalie!

Three years old! Where oh where does the time go...

July 1st birthday - means a Canada Day celebration at the park complete with train ride, magic show and horse carriage ride

A new fiddle

A new bike

Visits from family

Happy, Happy Day

Here's our munchkin waking up on the morning of her birthday walking through her birthday streamers (our annual tradition).

It's been so long...

So much has happened since Christmas that I couldn't possibly cover it all in any detail in one blog post. So here's the short version...

We're pregnant!

With Twins!

They're boys!

They're due to arrive September 1st.

I have SO much to get done over the next few weeks that it gets a bit overwhelming at times, but I'm trying to stop and enjoy the calmness of this pre-twins phase. We've had some great weather the past few days so Natalie and I have been enjoying popsicles, playing with water on the back step and of course learning to drive her tricycle. She's such an amazing little kiddo, so happy and sweet!

Here are a couple of pics and a video!

In the Holiday Spirit

Who would have thought that a trip to the grocery story would put us in the Christmas spirit but today's trek out pick up some weekend goodies did just that. There were carollers, elves, and samples of goodies galore. Natalie even met Elmo - she couldn't take her eyes off him, as you can see.

I'm a bit of a Christmas Cheermiester - I thoroughly love the holidays. We've been listening to Christmas music, making Christmas crafts and baking cookies for a couple of weeks now. And while my mom was here last weekend we even donned our silly Christmas hats and strolled around the neighborhood enjoying everyone's decorations. I love having a mom that knows how to enjoy the little things.

This weekend we'll be taking our family Christmas photo, singing some Christmas songs to the music of Dan's guitar and hopefully joining the Halifax Art Gallery for Gingerbread Sunday!

What are you doing to get into the holiday spirit?

Bee-Nastics!

Natalie love, love, loves her gymnatstics class. Here's a little taste of the fun.

Besties

Nap time is always better with friends.

Say that again...?

I was just reading an article on the Canadian Parent website about writing down all the funny things your kids say so you don't forget them and thought it would make a good blog post to share some of Natalie's favorite sayings and mis-sayings.

Ham-ga-burger {hamburger}

The libaby {the library}

"Look mommy, I'm doing something really good."

"Super, calla, fra..gahlish..." {supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - someone loves Mary Poppins right now}

"The yitsy, bitsy, pider"

Yimnastics {gynmastics - she's loving her new gymnastics class}

mommydaddy {all one word, when she's excited}

I'm sure I'll think of more. I'll add them to this post as they trickle into my memory. I know they'll be so much fun to read even just a few months from now. :)

Chocolate chip cookies and a hurricane

High winds, driving rain and ten hours without power - that sums up our first experience weathering a hurricane here on the east coast. Hurrican Earl struck early yesterday morning knocking out power to over 200,000 homes. But other than a few toppled trees in our nearby woods Earl took it fairly easy on the McMahon household. In fact, it was actually a fun day. We watched a few movies on our laptops (hooray for charged batteries), had a BBQ in the garage and sipped some beer by candlight.

And thanks to the power outage our lovely neighbor Karen shared some of her to-die-for potato salad since she wasn't sure it would survive the night in her powerless fridge. Don't you love how a good storm gets the neighbours out and chatting?

So to repay the favour, and appease our craving for chocolate Natalie and I whipped up a batch of Secret Ingredient Chocolate Chip cookies. I found the recipe over at Buns in My Oven - you should check out the site, it's adorable and the recipes are fantastic - especially these cookies. This was Natalie's first time mixing up a batch of cookies and she loved it, especially when she got to dump in the chocolate chips. They're baking in the oven as I type and they smell so yummy.

Here are a couple of recent photos, including one of our hurricane BBQ.