Well new month same old story....too busy to write!!!  Summer is finally here so it makes doing anything useful or productive (especially if you have to stay inside all day sitting at a desk when the sun is shining and the weather is beautiful).  We started out the summer by welcoming our 4th niece Alivia Rian Shortridge.  She is just so precious that we both take any chance we have to spend time cuddling and holding her (this baby stage only lasts so long).  It also has given us lots of time to spend with Aidan, Emma and Jorja as well, which is one of our favorite things to do. 

Every year we have family camping with just Tyler's siblings (Lorelle usually takes the lead and gets us all organized, so thank you Lorelle) so we planned to go camping the weekend of the 8-11th as our family had a few other milestones to celebrate that weekend...including celebrating a few birthdays.  Happy 8th Birthday Aidan, Happy Birthday Brandy and Happy Birthday Tyler!  We were so excited to go camping and bought lots of yummy snacks, loaded all of our camping gear up and headed out to the lake.  We were so excited to set up our tent and get camp ready, not even the few mosquitoes that were present could get us down.  No Way!!!.  Brandy and Cory were driving out from Calgary so we were anxiously awaiting their arrival when the mosquito's got a bit worse, then worse and worse.  Nothing worked to repell them!!! Not bug spray, citronella candles, not extra layers of clothing (they bit right through) not the heat, nor the smoke from the fire!!!  The only thing that worked was our screen house that we brought and set up but really who wants to sit in a screen house in sweaters and sweatpants all weekend. We were all starting to go crazy but keeping a happy face to try and push through....maybe tomorrow would be better.

The kids before the mosquitos were too bad.

Fat chance!! We quickly realized we were going to have to call this years family camping trip early on account of the mosquito's and head home.  Poor Jorja must have had about 100 bites of her head and Emma's kept swelling up!  All was not lost though, we decided that we would still spend the entire weekend together and we packed up our coolers and headed over to Ryan and Lorelle's for a weekend of hanging out, playing games, watching movies and......you guessed it EATING!  So it ended up being fun and worked out as Gennessa And Tom came over and stayed as well.  So the moral of the story was it is not what you do that's important it is who you spend it with that counts!

Lorelle and I got together the week of the camping trip as she wanted me to show her how to use fondant to make 2 birthday cakes (1 for Aidan's birthday party with his friends and 1 for us during camping).  So I talked Lorelle through the fondant process and she created 2 really cool star wars cakes.  She did a great job and we had a blast doing them together.

Lorelle's Chewy Cake, made with fondant

Lorelle's Storm Trooper Cake, hand cut out of fondant

The rest of the summer looks busy as we prepare for my eye surgery in August, getting ready for Cory and Brandy's weddings and celebrating even more birthdays we have 7 more in July and August alone.......and hopefully seeing each of you!

Michelle