Down by the bay, where the watermelons grow....

Happy Birthday to ME!!! Yesterday was a day to celebrate! My fabulous day started off with a wonderful gift from my oldest daughter. She had made a new skirt for me(with my help the day before, but idea, concept and most of the work was hers). It ended up beautifully amazing! When James saw me he said "mom! You're a Princess!"

We had a wonderful day at church and after church we got ready to go to Waterton. But first a skype visit with my mom and dad in Ireland! we met up with Jakki and kids in Waterton and decided to hike in to Bertha Bay. It was a pleasant hike, not to hard, but the mosquitoes were plentiful. It was slow going with James and Hudson. We had to keep encouraging them to keep going.

Packing Ella down to the bay. She is such a cute kid. 

Check out this view from the bay! What a beautiful day! Below is Daddy teaching Kymberly how to skip rocks. Every. Single. Rock. on this beach was perfect for skipping.

 Ella enjoyed sitting on the beach and tossing rocks in...some of them may have also ended up in her mouth.

 James and Hudson enjoyed being boys, and doing boy things. Kymberly found a fabulous pinky purple heart shaped rock.

 When we got back to the town site we met up with Lorne and headed to the park and set up to BBQ hamburgers for the kids and some delicious steaks and make some grilled Caesar salad for the adults. SO GOOD! After dinner we enjoyed the black forest cake that Kathryn had made for me. Talk about the perfect setting to enjoy some seriously delicious food!

 It was an absolutely perfect day spent with friends and family, in a perfect place. We ended the day with a drive past the Temple all lit up.

We had driven past the temple last week after our visit to Waterton and James had asked "Mom, does Jesus live there?" I told him that he did and he simply said "Oh". When we drove passed last night he said "Mom, is that where you turned to a Princess?" I chuckled a little and said "you bet buddy". Then he asked "Mom, is Jesus sleeping?" We all had a laugh, but how do you answer that? Kathryn told him that he was too busy helping people so be sleeping.

A great finish to a great day.

BBQ Cookies

So for the past few days Tansley has been asking if we could try to make cookies on the BBQ. So finally today we gave it a try. We used one of our favourite recipes from my 4H cookbooks that I know I have mentioned before, they are the best set of cookbooks ever! I believe I have hailed them as one of the best wedding gifts we ever got.

The recipe:
1 cup margarine
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups chocolate chips

Mix it all together

I'd like to tell how how long to bake them for...but we weren't very good at timing them. And likely your BBQ would be different than ours anyways. The first batch I put 4 old canning rings down on the grill and then placed the pan of cookies on top. But this was too hot on the bottom. they burned to a crisp on the bottom and the tops were almost right...but we had kinda forgot about them.

The second attempt, I turned down the temp on the BBQ and tried again, but again the bottoms cooked to quickly. So for the third and final attempt we put soup cans on the grill and then put the pan of cookies on top, and they turned out perfectly after about 8(ish) minutes.

It was a fun experiment and now we know that you can indeed bake cookies on the BBQ, and we'll probably do it again some time.

Starting the summer off right

As soon as the kids were done with school, we packed up and headed out for 10 days of camping. We went with Beth and Mike Clarke and their two kids Dylan and Sydnee. It all started out sunny and warm. We didn't get to camp until 9:30pm. We had to stop a couple of times for puking kids, first Ella, then Dylan. Great start. Great fun.

Our first full day at the beach started out warm, but not too hot. It was a little cloudy but it just kept the temperature just right.

At lunch the Clarke's headed back to camp for lunch and to see if the kids would take a nap. We brought lunch to the beach.The mosquitoes were pretty bad at camp so we wanted to stay at the beach were the mosquitoes weren't so bad. We ate lunch and played some more. When we noticed a dark cloud moving in, we weren't too worried, it looked like it would just pass over us, even when the first crack of lightning struck. As the rain began to fall we thought we would just wait it out in our beach shade, to avoid the mosquitoes at camp. Kathryn and Tansley played Frisbee in the pouring rain while the rest of us sat in the beach shade to keep dry. But then the wind started to pick up and the rain really started to come down and Kathryn and Tansley joined us in the beach shade. We had probably been sitting in the shelter for 20 minutes or so, when the hail started, so we zipped up the door and got all cozy together while James and Ella cried through the noise of all of the thunder, rain and hail beating down on the tent.

What an adventure. After nearly an hour, it finally let up enough to make an escape back to camp...only to find that the window in the tent had been left open and Mine and Daniel's bed soaking wet. We ended up making a trip into Kalispell to the laundromat to dry out our bedding.

Later that day Lorne and Jakki Harty showed up with their crew. And the next day we spent an awesome day on the beach.

 Daniel spent a little time looking for his wedding ring he lost in the lake two years ago...a lost cause.

The next couple of days were rainy and cool. We spent some time in Kalispell, said good bye to friends, hung out around camp and went for a drive to the Flathead tunnel.

 Sunday the weather started to look up, we even enjoyed a beautiful rainbow that evening!

Monday brought beautiful weather and family to play with! Daniel's brother Spencer and his family showed up and we got to enjoy the next couple of days with them. They brought some kayaks and a motor boat. Cousins are always fun to play with!

 All set up to enjoy an amazing Canada day at the beach with family! This day was the most perfect day for enjoying water play! We would have loved to stay and enjoy more days like this!

 Wednesday morning James was up early, and it so happened that Barrett was up early too, so Angela and I took the boys for a walk. We ended up down at the beach, and the boys wanted to play in the water, so off came the PJ's and into the water they went in their undies.

 It was a beautiful morning, but it was our day to say good bye and pack up. No regrets here. It was a perfect start to our summer. We are looking forward to many more adventures this summer. Creating memories in whatever circumstances head our way.

 The obligatory visit to the big green truck in Sparwood.