Friday, June 25, 2010

To The Mountains And Back

It has been brought to my attention that my blog is in need of a more recent post - and here I thought you might all enjoy re-reading and re-reading my previous postings! ;)

Okay, well to my defense I've been rather busy lately. Not a good excuse I know, but it is what it is. I've attempted to blog recently, but the few times I tried my computer/Internet was not co-operating. Such is the price you pay for poor satellite Internet service, I guess.

So what's new in the land of me? Well, we (my family and I) took our camper out for its maiden voyage to Jasper National Park a few weekends ago.




It was a lovely long weekend for us. Four days of nice weather, no bugs, some wildlife, lots of nature, some shopping, eating out lots, and not a lot of sleep. Emily went to bed too late each night and woke up too early each morning, and by the end of the weekend both her and Adam were sick, but it was still a fun time. It was hard for Emily to understand that we were on a mountain ourselves when she saw all the other mountains around us. And she enjoyed her first ice cream cone in Jasper too! (yes, she's been a deprived child, lol)


We were thankful to be home, however, and it took us nearly a week to catch up on all our sleep and feel 100%. I've realized how nice it is to be able to sit properly on our toilet at home, rather than having to sit partially sideways in order to close the bathroom door, like in our tiny RV bathroom. But at least I didn't have to use the public camp restroom - a small phobia of mine.
We saw some wildlife on our trip - nothing exciting like a bear (although we were told by the staff that they were in the campground) or a wolf. But we did see a big herd of mountain sheep - a bit mangy but exciting because of the two cute babies.


And since our campground was also Elk calving territory, we were warned about female elk and their young and instructed to stay at least 30 feet away. But one kept visiting our campsite and I managed to sneak a few quick pictures.



Other than that, our most common sighting were the very brazen squirrels that lived around our campsite and kept having territorial disputes right in front of us. I think they wanted to fight it out for our prime real estate, since we were feeding them salted Spitz, which they were extremely fond of. That and a chocolate M&M, which Adam was determined to let them try... I was concerned the chocolate might kill the little critter. But he seemed to rather enjoy it, and he was still alive the next morning. :)

Other than our trip to Jasper, nothing all that interesting has happened lately. We've had more than enough rain lately, with 3 nights of thunderstorms in a row this week already. Our yard is covered in puddles and the mosquitoes are exceedingly abundant. At this point, I'm just praying for some hot sunshine.

My garden is coming along, although in desperate need of being weeded. My pumpkins, zucchini, carrots, peas, lettuce, sunflowers, parsley, celery, tomatoes, bean (only one plant as it was one Emily planted), and strawberries are all growing well. I ended up reseeding my peas for a 3rd time this summer as they just weren't growing - too wet maybe? Third time's the charm! :)

I've planted a few new trees in our front yard - a new spruce tree to fill in an empty spot, a poplar, and a choke cherry. I also just bought a mountain ash that I still need to plant. I'm getting tired of seeing mostly spruce in our front yard and want a bit of variety.

What else? I've been attempting to potty train Emily for a few weeks now. It's going okay, although some days are more successful than others. She's a great kid, but I think we've entered into the "terrible twos" a bit. She's becoming more defiant and argumentative and is trying to assert her independence a lot more. She's lucky I think she's so cute otherwise it would be a lot harder to deal with, I think.



She's also in a big "crafty" phase of her short life and has really been enjoying finger painting and stickers and colouring a lot more these last few weeks. That's something I'm trying hard to encourage. I was amazed at how well she drew this picture a few weeks ago - a person and a sun. Not bad for 2.5 years old!


Speaking of crafty, I haven't done much of anything for scrapbooking since my last post, up until yesterday. I finished these two layouts yesterday.





I think that's about all.... oh, except to say that "The Book of Negros" was an excellent read. :)

Until next time...

Buck Lake Blogger

Sunday, June 6, 2010

All Because of a Book

The house is quiet with everyone (but me) down for their Sunday afternoon naps. We spent the morning going to church and then headed to another town in search of some reportedly good pizza... which has been an ongoing search in my neck of the woods for some time. It wasn't half bad either - certainly the best I've come across within a half hour drive. And now contently full, I'm tired. Really tired. Although, I think it has less to do with my lunch and more to do with the fact that I stayed up reading until 12:30am last night (this morning?). A good book'll do that to you, I guess. And it's been awhile since I've read a really good book. I had been reading Norton's Introduction to Literature, but found many of the short stories and poems rather boring. The book I was reading last night, borrowed from a friend, is The Book Of Negroes, about an 11 year old girl who was kidnapped from village in West Africa and sent on the slave ships to America. I find it to be an easy read, yet very griping. Griping... that's why last night I kept telling myself "just one more page". Yes, I think that's the reason I'm so tired today.

Not much else is new. My garden is almost entirely planted... only a few more flowers to go. Em and I planted zucchini, pumpkins and tomatoes this past weekend. Now to move on to the weeds that are cropping up everywhere and threaten to overtake my garden if left alone for too much longer. It's supposed to rain a bunch this week, so hopefully I'll get a chance to get into my garden and do some work.

I, sadly, have not done any more scrapbooking recently. There just seems to be too much else to do. I did manage to take pics of the 2 layouts that I did but hadn't posted yet. Here they are...




Well, I'm off to continue reading my book while the house is quiet.

Until next time...

Buck Lake Blogger




Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Oh Happy Day!

Today is the first of June! I can't believe how fast time is flying by already. And the sun is shining bright with no rain falling... sweet relief after a rather gloomy week or so. It's also in the mid-teens, temperature-wise, so that's also a welcome change. After another night of frost last night, I'm unsure if I should plant the rest of my flowers this week or not. I'm getting rather anxious to get them all in and start to enjoy them, instead of just looking at them in my little greenhouse. I took Emily to the greenhouse again yesterday to buy some more stock. Our cats like to climb on top of my flowerpots when I have them covered for the night, and as a result have damaged a few that need to be replaced. And the way I see it, one cannot have too many flowers! :)

This morning was gym for me and Em. We're starting to wind down a little now as we approach the summer break. I'm looking forward to not having to leave the house multiple times a week. I've got enough around here to keep me busy!

That being said, tomorrow one of the girls from work will be coming out to the house so that I can show her how to do some of the paperwork that I currently look after. Once she takes that on, my workload will be lighter. One of these days I might actually be able to take my "maternity" leave - considering I was doing month end paperwork 2 weeks after having Emily (over 2 years ago). That's kind of a running "joke" in my house.

A neighbouring town held their rodeo this past weekend - pouring rain and all. I decided to check things out on Friday night since they were also having a trade fair along with it. Sadly, because of the cold, wet weather the spectator turnout was very poor. As quiet as it was for the trade fair vendors, it was kind of nice for me. I managed to spend some time buying Tupperware from the lady who is always so busy at the weekly Farmer's Market that it's hard to actually buy much. And because of my purchase I was entered into her draw for free Tupperware, for which I later received the call that I had won!! Woo hoo!! :) All very exciting to me!

Other than that, not much else is new on the home front. I'll be getting ready to go camping in Jasper National Park soon - something Emily is super excited to be doing this year. I did finish a few scrapbooking layouts yesterday, but haven't taken pictures of them yet. Soon. Instead, I'll leave you with some new photos of my sweet girl, taken recently.



Until next time...

Buck Lake Blogger