A visit to the park and a first haircut

Although we have a little slide in the backyard it doesn't compare to the 'slide' (her term for the playground). Here are a few pictures of Sarah at her favourite place - the park up the road from our house.

Sarah likes to do circles around objects like poles, trees, etc.  I think she likes the dizzy feeling. 

Sarah has an imaginary friend named Ella and Ella loves being pushed in the swing.

However, on this particular trip, her little baby (her name for it) came along for a ride and a swing. Little baby loves to take a bath with Sarah and gets to go to bed with her too. These days her bed is so full of her 'friends' that there's hardly any room for Sarah!

There was a pretty neat contrails 'x' in the sky that day. Look carefully and you can see the airplane that I put in for scale.

Sarah pretending to 'sleep' in the swing. She loves underducks these days - the higher the better. I think we have a dare devil on our hands!

Sarah's a big fan of helping make cookies. She gets up on her stool and empties the cutlery drawer beside the mixer... Very helpful. On the day that I took these pictures I put one of my aprons on her and she leaned over too far to look inside the mixer and she fell off her stool.

One of her favourite things to do is to push her friends around in her 'pop pop'.

This weekend, three weeks before her 2nd birthday, Sarah got her first haircut. It was a beautiful day so we took her out on the deck with her stool and a towel and off we went. She was very good at sitting still. A bit of work on the back and the bangs and viola, she's done.

It was very uneven in the back so it just needed a bit of layering and shaping. In case you're asking, the answer is no...I don't have any haircutting experience.

I know I'm very biased, but I happen to think that she's a beautiful little girl!

Corn maze at Boonstra farms

Yesterday afternoon we went on an adventure to the corn maze. Its near Stonewall, about 3/4 hour North of our house. Sarah had a great time tripping through the kids maze!

She also had a lot of fun at the petting zoo too. She really wanted to pet the pony, but she wasn't so sure...

There were swings, slides a sand pile with toys as well. Sarah's really starting to enjoy making 'sandcastles' as she calls it.

Dale found the flying boat and had a bit of a rest.

We also went on a hayride behind the tractor (Sarah loves tractors!). We better sell up and buy a farm - Sarah loves them!

Sarah got to go on a bit of a ride as well. 

To top it all off we had a picnic supper on a perfect summer/fall evening. Wow. We couldn't have had better weather or a better time. We're definitely going back next year.

Weekend of 12-14 September

I went away for the weekend for the first time since Sarah was born a couple of weekends ago. No - I didn't go the spa with my girlfriends...I went on exercise with the Navy. I made a bit of money instead of spending it. Actually - it all went well. I was busy enough that I didn't think about Sarah and Dale too much and they did just fine without me.

They went to the annual base fall fair where Sarah went on a pony ride, went fishing (and caught a snake) and was given a firefighter's hat.

The exercise that I went on was Chippawa's annual September one. I didn't go last year because I was still nursing Sarah. The exercise was held at Falcon Lake which is near the border with Ontario in a provincial park.

I took a few pictures early in the morning on Saturday before we got started.

We had a crazy thunderstorm in the afternoon on Saturday and everyone had to come back in off the water. We had a few close calls - one or two people felt the static electricity run through them. Here's a picture of the divers coming back in to shore.

My boss, the XO, decided to take a boat out to see what the divers were doing...here he is. 

The adventures of Manni Bear with Super Sarah and her wardrobe changes

Sarah likes to be fair with her stuffed animals. She rotates who her 'favourite' is which is very magnanimous of her, really. One of her most favourite, though, is Manni Bear. He's a Gund and was given to her by my cousin Johnnie and his wife Mary. He has the most expressive face. He goes everywhere with Sarah and she puts him in the most interesting situations. Luckily he seems to be a 'go with the flow' kind of fellow.

There's the Ikea toy container. Sarah likes to climb in there with her Manni Bear. 

We tied a towel to one of the toy containers in it's collapsed state and that made for some great fun for both Manni and Sarah. She took him on a hayride.

Sarah and Manni used the same toy container as a flying saucer. 

Manni bear can sometime be seen on the potty. One of Sarah's (and Manni's) favourite books is a 'row row row your boat'. Here's a picture of Manni taking a moment with his favourite book.

One of Sarah's other favourite things is her green blankie (she pronounces it banky). 

She plays the part of 'Super Sarah' with her blankie - it must give her extra special powers.

Sarah has become more and more involved in the decision making process with regards to what clothes she wears and how these days. It makes for some interesting and prolonged discussions ('you have to wear pants when you go outside', etc...).

.

One of her favourite get-ups is wearing her rubber boots without pants.

She's recently become quite attached to her sunglasses (she calls them sunglass).

I went shopping on Saturday at the second hand toy and clothing sale near here. I went alone, which was a good idea. It was held in an Elementary School gym and it was packed to the rafters with tables of clothes and toys. I can't imagine being able to get anything accomplished with Sarah along for the ride. Above is a picture of Sarah with her new (to her) boots and her sunnies.

Here's Sarah posing with her new (to her) shoes, and hat. Of course - no pants. Seeing a picture of her like this makes you realise just how skinny her legs are. Little miss chicken legs!

Below are a series of pictures I took of Sarah a couple of weeks ago with a winter sweater on. I thought they were cute enough to share.