final beach pictures

Landon's belly flop that ended the "Landon tossing" fun!


And look at that sandy face ... too funny!

These ducks came by the beach late in the day as the sun bathers packed up. They knew what they were doing! Someone had dumped some cheesies on the beach (and chosen not to clean them up), so we fed them to the ducks (I know - don't feed the wildlife!! They were going to get the cheesies anyway, we just participated in the fun).
Then Arlan would "shoo" the ducks, which we have a video of because it was priceless! I'll see if I can get that loaded up on here as well :-)

More beach

We spent a couple of days on Juniper Beach in Kalamalka Provincial Park. The water was glorious, the beach smaller, and the water got deeper much quicker which meant we could really throw Landon high in the air (like dad's doing here). Landon thought that was fabulous, until he did a belly flop with mom!! lol















At first Landon only wanted to swim with "floaties" or water wings on (like in this pic with dad). But on the second day (which you see here in this smoky picture) he discovered that swimming with his life jacket was even better. He would even lay on his back "floating" ... told me he was sleeping there!
Despite the smoke, this picture is pretty nice and is making me miss the beach :-(

You can sort of see here the beautiful colour of the water through the trees. This was taken on the path walking to the beach and is of Jade Bay (the side of the point where boaters pull up, we didn't swim there due to that, preferring Juniper Bay as it's buoyed off for swimming).

Some beach pictures

Arlan playing in the sand. We were SO happy to have the happy HEALTHY Arlan back!

Two busy boys -- making holes and filling them up. We only had one pail (silly silly parents), but luckily someone left behind their broken sand pail which we scavenged and the boys loved all week!! One person's garbage is another's treasure...


The view on the beach at 7 pm - how lovely! We would head to the beach in the morning, go back for Arlan's afternoon nap, and return to the beach between 5 and 6 for another hour or 2. Gotta love that!

Davison Orchards - Vernon, BC

Hanging out with the trucks in the play area. All the fun stuff to see & this is where he wanted to spend his time (surprise surprise)

heading out on the orchard tour - the tractor pulled about 7 cars behind it ... plenty bumpy and dusty, but a pretty cool tour 9in my opinion, Landon wasn't as impressed)


"driving" the old truck in the play area. It was so hot he didn't last long ... see his red cheeks??
the "market" ... full of yummy things like homemade bread, pies, ice cream, real apple juice, plus the produce of the orchards. Not to mention the toys (yes, Landon and Arlan each got a toy, even though Arlan wasn't with us as he was still sick at home with dad ... I'm so weak).

A cute sign leading in to the petting zoo. I can attest that it was the parents and grandparents that had fun ... the kids were all like 'meh'

misc holiday pics

Reading stories to the boys before bed. Landon slept in the top bunk almost every night (some nights he was so sleepy after stories that he'd stay on the bottom to go to sleep, we'd lift him up top after). Either John or I would sleep in the bottom bunk, then other in the 'master bedroom' with Arlan. Why? The master bed wasn't as comfy as the bunk bed, but the bunk bed was too hot for both of us to sleep. oh yeah, and John was snoring every night!
The boys playing piano together. Arlan loved the "demo" song on here, Landon would cover his ears. But they both enjoyed making noise ...er I mean music on it!
Mom and Arlan - as you can see here, he was fully recovered from his illness and being a stinker again!
Landon had fun spraying dad with the water gun. The weather was so gorgeous, even into the evening, that we didn't mind getting sprayed with water at all!

The view from the balcony of the house we stayed at on Friday July 23 in Fairmont. On the beautiful Fairmont golf course. Saturday morning I was awoken by a golf ball hitting the wall right beside the bedroom window!

And we're down to the wire...

Our last night on vacation in Vernon - it has been INCREDIBLE! We have absolutely loved this week, and are already planning to be back here for TWO weeks next summer! The boys had so much fun swimming and splashing, Landon went kayaking with dad one day and learned how fun boogie boards are today. The "weekend of sickness" is a distant memory given all the fun we've had since then - thank goodness!! Next year we will do more exploring through the Okanagan with 2 weeks to play with - we noticed today that the boys would benefit from a break from the beach. But with only a few days to hit the beach I didn't want to lose any of them!! We took a pile of pics, and I can't wait to go through them and post some for everyone to see.

So tomorrow is the trip home. I'm thinking it won't be as peaceful as the trip here when all three boys slept for most of it (2 due to illness, the 3rd exhaustion due to the first 2's illnesses!!). But we'll get up and hit the road as early as is possible for a family of non-morning-people, and we'll survive it.

That's the last post from Vernon...until next time...