Thirty, He's Thirty Years Old!

That's right, my younger man is no longer so young. On Monday Kurt turned the big 3-0 (by the look on River's face in the above picture, he is just as appalled as you are). Way back when, Kurt dreamed of having a huge outdoor bash complete with Cuff the Duke playing a concert for him. Unfortunately they were booked for the evening of our party and we had to make alternate plans. We ended up having a great party with friends and family. My family even made the trek from Kingston, yay for braving the crazy roads with all the cottage traffic.

The theme of the party was "Kurt's Favourites". This meant pie instead of cake, as well as a campfire (despite the torrential rain...it eventually cleared up). Also, I asked everyone to wear shirts depicting either a band/music festival or beer. The best was Jeff's shirt which he made out of duct tape that declared "Tom Petty drinks Budweiser" - he won the imaginary prize for best shirt (second place to Danielle for her kickin' Pink Floyd shirt, honorable mention to Paul for his vintage 'Diamond Rio' shirt). Everyone also contributed to the "Top 30 Great Things About Kurt at 30" list which was both hilarious and heartwarming. Not to be outdone, Ang rewrote the words to Sublime's "What I Got" and had Kurt sing it, well done Ang.

The party didn't stop there though! The festivities continued the next day when we took off to a friend's cottage for a few days with Kurt's parents. Even though it rained (again), it didn't matter. It was awesome to be on the lake, go fishing and paddle boating, and enjoy another campfire. The boys had a great time, it was fun watching Jude fishing. With the first fish caught he was torn between being really excited, but also a little afraid of the fish.

All in all, I would say it was an awesome celebration of the 30 years God has blessed Kurt with.

Camping at Grundy

Well...we survived camping with two babes under the age of two and we had tons of fun! We had a blast camping with some friends at Grundy Provincial Park with lots of kids, sun, lake, campfires,late night swimming and a beer or...two.

Pictured above is a smattering of some of the children we camped with, it was impossible to get them all together!

Despite the large number of people camping (8 families) all together we had some great wildlife sightings right on our campsite:
raccoons...many many many raccoons (somewhere between 6 and 20)
pileated woodpeckers
red-tailed hawks
catbird
loons
dragonflies swarming an ant migration (creepy and amazing at the same time)
and....a bear...luckily he was more interested in the raspberries than our coolers

The boys had a great time, Jude enjoyed having so many people to play with...and so many people to mooch food from. Below is a montage of Jude eating on our trip. He did do other things like swim swim swim swim in the lake,dig dig dig in the sand,and kick kick kick balls but I don't have those moments recorded on film. Turns out having two babies on a camping trip is a little busy.

Figuring out how to eat watermelon for the first time...and learning the green part does not taste good!
Wait a minute...I thought the Huizengas only had daughters...oh wait, that's Jude being a mooch.
Moat-meal....mmmmm....I mean oatmeal.
1st Juicebox, it was love at first sight.

River also enjoyed having lots of kids around to entertain him, it was fun watching Jolene and River interact (well, as much as two babies will interact with each other). He wasn't super interested in the water but preferred to stick his hands in the sand, he only ended up consuming *small* amounts of sand.

Kurt organized a game called "Beers of Ontario" (or B.O. for short...). Everyone brought a beer brewed in Ontario and we rated each in a taste test. We declared Great Lakes Brewery's "Roundhouse Ale" the winner. The worst was "Mad Tom"...really really gross.

Can't wait until next year already!