2015 highlight's!

Our 2015 highlight reel, in pictures!  Enjoy :)

We began 2015 with a road trip to Calgary! We spent 1 night in a hotel and the next night we spent with friends at our friends Derek and Jen's house.  It was so much fun for the 6 adults and (as you can see in the photo above) for the 6 children!!

In February, we celebrated Emerson's 6th birthday with a few of her closest friends and family at Cineplex Odeon!

 mid-February: Blake and the St. Matthew's KC Storm participated in the Stan Gantar Outdoor hockey tournament.  There were some very cold games and some games cancelled due to the cold but we got all our games in!  Nothing like some good old fashioned outdoor hockey :)  The kids had a blast!

End of February: Emerson and Reese's 1st ringette tournament!!  A day of fun at the Timbits Beaumont Ringette Jamboree!  1/2 ice games, 4 on 4, no score kept, just good 'ol fashioned fun :)  Reminded me of the Friendship Tournaments I played in as a young ringette player!   They had a blast and also enjoyed the lobby entertainment - make your own noise makers, face painting and hair braiding!!  Right up the girls' alley ;)

 Family photo before heading to Church on Easter Sunday!  Easter Sunday service is one of my favorite services of the year.

End of April: Em and Blake in their spring concert at school!  It was an underwater theme and another great concert by our fabulous music teacher, Mme. Bujold!

In May we celebrated Blake's 8th birthday at Servus Place with a few of his closest friends and family!  Floor hockey and Pokemon were the main activities of his choice ;)

Blake's 1st year of Lacrosse!  He loved it and did so well!  The lacrosse season was from the end of April to mid-June. 

Mother's Day weekend Emerson and her dance group competed in a dance competition at Grant MacEwan.  Their dance was a tap dance :)

Reese's preschool graduation in May.  And also saying goodbye to Mrs. Chong and Mrs. York!  We've spent 3 years with these fabulous ladies and thank them for the time they've spent with Emerson and Reese, they've been absolutely wonderful and we'll miss them and Lago Lind Preschool.

Powerhouse Dance Recital - June 2015!  These cuties did so well, 2 of the best in their groups!

Cal ran in the Canada Day Road Race (15 km) and we enjoyed the Canada Day festivities at the legislature grounds!

 

 Our annual Smith/Cameron/Stecyk summer camping trip was spent at Ol' MacDonald's Resort!  The weather was amazing and we had so much fun!

Spiffed up in SK!  mid-July, attending my cousin's wedding!

 

Pedalheads Bike camp in July with the Hrdlicka's and Connor :)  Another great week of camp and Reese is now on 2 wheels!!  Our week at bike camp was followed by a weekend at Miquelon lake with our besties, the Hrdlicka's!

One of many great camping trips this summer - Here the kids are enjoying Grandma and Grandpa's tube and boat at Long Lake :)

Enjoying the last days of our summer vacation, at Pyramid Lake in Jasper National Park :)  We visited Mt. Kidd, the Icefields parkway and Jasper on our summer camping vacay.

More fun at Pyramid Lake!

End of August: Emerson and Blake, crossing the finish line with Cal at the Edmonton Marathon.  One of my most favorite photo's of the year!  Cal did it, he finished his first FULL marathon!!

Cheering on Cal at the 1/2 way point during his marathon!

September 8th - first day of school!!

Off they go - all in the same school :)

The most handsome third grader!!

Our gorgeous first grader!!

Our beautiful kindergartener!!

 

After weeks of tryouts in August and September, Blake is proud to represent the KC Saints, Novice tier 2 rep team!!  There are 16 tiers in EMHA.  We're so proud of our boy, he's doing great at this level and loving the intense competition.

mid-September: Blake had another great Oil Kings clinic!  A huge thanks to the Oil Kings and ATB for putting on this wonderful event!

Reese and Emerson began ringette in October!  Reese is in Active Start 1, which is 1 ice time/weekend.  It is more like a learn to skate/learn ringette program.  They don't have any organized league games but do play in a fun tournament at the end of the year.  Last year she would tire after approx 45 minutes but this year, she's skating hard until the end :) I enjoy being on the ice with her as an assistant coach!

Emerson is in Active Start 2.  She plays 1/wk and twice every second week.  She will be participating in 3 tournaments this year.  In Active Start 2 they start learning more of the rules of the game and playing 1/2 ice games.  She is enjoying herself and is super happy to have her Dad on the ice with her, as an assistant coach :)

After a few years of being disappointed in our family photo's, we decided to try to take our own!  We took this photo on Thanksgiving weekend, before our family dinner at the Stecyk's.  We got gorgeous shots of the kids but it was raining off and on and we didn't get a great family photo :(  We'll try again next year and in the meantime, enjoy this photo of our gorgeous kiddo's!

LOVE this photo!!  The Hulk, Princess Auora and our Pirate = Halloween 2015.

A fabulous November night out at the River Cree with my Mom and Sister, celebrating my 35th birthday!!

Miss Emerson chose Ukrainian dance this year!  Here she is at her costume fitting in November!

Reese's 5th birthday party at 4 Cats Art Studio!  So much fun!!

Reese had her 1st Music Recital in December!  Her part was very short but she did wonderful and learned so much from this music class.  Unfortunately the next session does not work with our schedules but she wants to play piano, so I will try to get her into piano lessons in September!

 Blake's first school choir performance was in early December, at City Hall!!  

 I spent the first two Friday's of December on a field trip with Blake and the rest of the grade 3's, 4's, 5's and 6's!  We had so much fun and Blake mastered the chair lift!

 Another beautiful Christmas pageant by the Sunday school children at St. Albert United Church!  The kids did so great!

A new tradition begins!  Delivering gifts for Santa's Anoymous.  We delivered gifts to five different homes.
 

 Photo with Santa!  They all still believe :)

We spent Christmas Day at my Mom and Dad's with Connor and Mason (and their parents!) :)

Boxing Day at our house, with Grandma Bev, Colby, Jenna (and their parents!), Katie and Greyson :)

December 27 to 29th, Blake and the KC Saints participated in the Confederation Hockey Tournament.  They played amazing, and won GOLD!!  So proud of this team and my boys - #4 and Coach Cal ;)
 

 After a busy Christmas break, we decided to ring in 2016 together, at home.  It was a wonderful evening, spent watching hockey, putting together Lego, playing games and working on Cal's puzzle :)

~ I hope you've enjoyed this look back on some of the many highlights of our 2015!  I could add a 1000 more photo's :) We are looking forward to 2016 and wish everyone all the best in the New Year.  May your year be blessed with time spent with both great friends and family, good health and an abundance of love.  Smile and be grateful for each moment, as we all know the time passes far too quickly! xoxo The Cameron's ~

Confederation Hockey Tournament

We spent the 27th to the 30th at the rink, as the KC Saints were in the Confederation Hockey Tournament!  Some may think, "Why would you want to spend some of your Christmas break at the rink?" to which we would reply, "Because we're crazy hockey parents and we LOVE it!!!"  lol!  Our girls may not love it but quite honestly, they don't really complain so maybe they love it too?! 

Anyways, back to the tournament!  Blake's team had an amazing tournament, bringing home the GOLD medal!  They played teams who they play in their league play and beat the top 2 teams in the standings!!  It was extremely exciting (and stressful at times) as two games came down to shootouts! We also enjoyed watching other teams play, including many of Blake's classmates and the tier 1 KC team.  After the gold medal game, the entire team headed to BP's for a celebration.  Sending a HUGE thank you to all our friends and family who cheered Blake and his team on.  We love you and appreciate your support! 

Congrats to the Saints!!! We are now looking forward to a good run during Minor Hockey Week :)  The first game is January 8th.  It's an interesting format - if you win the first game, you move on but lose one game and you're out.  If you lose the first game, you still have one more loss before you're knocked out.  And the top teams in the tier are in one bracket, while the lower teams in the tier are in the other bracket.  So basically they make it difficult for the top teams!!  And we're one of those top teams.  Which we are proud of but in this instance, it might be easier to be lower in the standings!  lol!  Either way, we can beat every single team in our tier ... so hopefully they're on their game and play their best hockey!!  Either way, I'll be cheering hard and a proud hockey mom :)

Christmas Celebrations

It's funny how we spend weeks preparing for Christmas and just like that, it's over!  The preparations are always more than worth it :)

On Christmas Eve we spent the day at home - cleaning house, decorating cookies for Santa and relaxing.  That evening we attended the family pj service at Church, followed by take out and Christmas lights!!  It was a wonderful evening, the pj service is always so great, the stories and prayers targeted towards children but also enjoyable for the adults.  We picked up dinner and took in St. Albert's version of Candycane Lane.  It's just 2 blocks but gorgeous!  From there we headed to the actual Candycane Lane!  It was BUSY but we snuck in a 'back' way and enjoyed the scenery :)  When we got home we said goodbye to our elf, Picks Rudolph, set out cookies, carrots and Christmas milk (aka egg nog) and it was off to bed for the kiddo's!!  They took awhile to fall asleep ... after numerous threats that Santa was not going to come if they didn't get to sleep, they fell asleep.

On Christmas morning Cal and Blake woke early to go to November Project.  Blake was so excited to attend his very first November Project and it was a great time to attend, as they met at the zoo and there was a special visit from Santa's reindeer!!  When the boys got home, the girls were cuddled in with me and we quickly headed downstairs to open stockings and gifts :)  We spent a few hours at home, enjoying our wife saver breakfast and the kids enjoying their new gifts!  We headed to my parents house for the remainder of the day, where we met my sister and her family and my Grandma Kelley.  We had a great day!  My parents recently had all their old home movies transferred to DVD and we watched hours of footage!!  It was so awesome, I loved it all - from Christmas celebrations at my Grandma Marg and Grandpa Art's to swimming lessons in St. Paul!!  I'm so glad we have those memories to treasure forever and hopefully we'll be able to take in the other home movies some day soon!!  It was a great day with my family and after the previous weeks scare, I'm sure we all had our moments where we thanked our lucky stars that we were all together, at Mom and Dad's house.

On Boxing Day we had Cal's brother and his family, his mom and his niece and nephew over for a Cameron Christmas!  We had another wonderful day :)  The kids played outside for awhile and all had a blast together.  Many manicures and pedicures were given with Em's new salon set, Lego was built, plush pillows created and a few games of NHL '15 were played!

It was a wonderful Christmas and we are so very blessed with time with our wonderful families.  Sending love to those we did not see on Christmas, we are always thinking of everyone during this special time of year.

xoxo
Tracy