Charlie graduated from preschool today:

It was a pretty fancy event; at least a hundred parents and grandparents attended the ‘ceremony’, which consisted of a couple of musical performances by each class, then diplomas being awarded to each graduate:

Charlie’s class sang one song, and performed ‘5 Green and Speckled Frogs’ on their instruments.  You can check out the mayhem in this video (listen for the twins’ shrieks in the background):

Unluckily for us, the ceremony started at 1pm, which is also the boys’ typical naptime.  I fed them a picnic lunch in the park before we went, but they were not impressed with having to delay their nap (although they did clap nicely along with the rest of the audience).  When they got too restless and miserable, I brought them over to the preschool’s indoor playground, which was a big hit.  See if you can spot Eli and William:

To make our day even more exciting, we had just arrived home from Charlie’s graduation when the phone rang; it was our friends Leah and Ondrej, who are driving from Halifax to Ontario to their new house in Guelph.  Their kids are almost the same age as ours (Luka is 6 months younger than Charlie, and Malin is exactly 3 months younger than our twins), and the two girls immediately rekindled their friendship over dress-up clothes in Charlie’s disaster of a bedroom (that’s Malin in the blue shirt):

Now it’s 4pm, the boys are still sleeping, Charlie is having ‘quiet time’ in her room, and I am taking a moment to relax.  My husband is in Halifax today at a conference, and we won’t see him again until we arrive in London, England on Saturday morning.  My mum arrives at dinner time today, which is a huge relief – it’s a lot of work parenting solo, even just for one day! 

We’ve been suffering through a heat wave for most of the past week; temperatures today are supposed to hit 41C (with the humidity) and since we don’t have air conditioning, our apartment is at least as hot as it is outside.  During the day, we’ve been spending lots of time at the shady, breezy secret park, where the heat is more bearable.  Nighttime is more challenging – no one is sleeping well, and today my mission is to go out and find fans for all our bedrooms.

This morning, I brought Elijah and William over to their friend Ayden’s house so they could play in his backyard.  We broke out the hose and stripped all three boys down, and they had a blast:

Ayden’s mother, Gail, thrilled my boys with her bubble machine:

William looking pensive (worn out from running around the garden for 2 hours):

The boys loved being outside and playing with the water – we don’t have a backyard of our own, so this was a novel experience for them.  When we look for a house next year, a garden will be at the top of our list of requirements!

In other news, Charlie is getting freckles:

Now that it’s June, we’ve been winding down all our activities.  Playgroup for the twins is over, as are Charlie’s soccer and swimming classes at the Y, and her preschool ‘graduation’ is on Thursday.  Here’s a short video of Charlie’s last indoor soccer ‘game’ – she’s playing defence, which mostly seems to involve waving and pointing at me, doing a pirouette, then looking grumpy when the other team scores a goal:

We leave for England on Friday night, but my husband leaves for a conference in Halifax on Thursday morning, so we’re well into packing mode these days.  We’re all very excited about seeing family and doing the tourist thing with the kids, but right now I’m most looking forward to escaping this heat and humidity.