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.

Excuse My Rant

I've been seeing this "inspirational" quote all over the place lately.

And every time I see it, it makes me mad. I don't see what is so inspirational about it. It really seems like a put down, a negative outlook on the human race. I won't deny that there are SOME people who this quote rings true, but, and this is just me and my own experiences, I find this to not generally be true. I have people thank me regularly for the ordinary things that I do, whether at the school, in church or at home. I feel like this quote is all about "Me" vs "Them". Like putting the blame on everyone else. Are we including ourselves in the "Them" group? Do "We" notice the things that "They" are doing for us? I like to think that I try pretty hard to acknowledge others for their ordinary efforts. However, I don't expect recognition for every little thing that I do, does the rest of the world expect a "thank-you" every time they do something for somebody else? If so...I think maybe you need to get off your high horse and start looking for all the things that are done for you by all the people you think aren't noticing what you are doing for them. Just saying.

End rant, thanks for listening. Continue on with your day.

Heartbreak, a hard painful lesson.

I was sitting at the computer desk this morning, still in my pajamas and folding a paper airplane for James when the phone rings. The caller ID said it was Kathryn's school calling. I thought it would be Kathryn asking me to bring her something she forgot. But it was one of her teachers, first letting me know that Kathryn was alright, which immediately made me start to panic, then she let me know that one of Kathryn's classmates had passed away the night before, and Kathryn had asked her to call me. Then Kathryn got on the phone, she was sobbing and my heart broke to pieces. Of course Daniel and I immediately got dressed and headed down to the school.

Kathryn's grade six class consists of 9 kids, 4 girls and 5 boys. It is a close knit group, because they have no choice but to be that way. They don't all like each other, but they know each other so very well. My dear Kathryn is everyone's friend and is always the peacemaker, the go to girl when a kid needs some one on one time, the class room relationship fixer upper, and likely the kid with the biggest heart. She cares deeply for everyone and is always the one to take the kid left out under her wing and make them her best friend for the day. This tragedy sucks. It sucks big time. It's no way to end the year, with only one week left of the school year, I worry about how some of these kids are going to cope through the summer. So many of them come from broken homes, and don't have very much family around. And with some, the family that is around...isn't really around much. These kids are going to get one week of supporting each other and the support of the school...and then they'll be left to fend for themselves for the summer. Oh it's just not fair.

It's events like this that will stick in a kids memory for years to come. For some it might be a turning point. I hope and pray that it's not a turn down a dark and lonely road but rather a chance to learn an important life lesson. I hope that these kids will be able to learn form all of this is to be kind to everyone, because you just never know when it'll be the last time you see them. Kathryn remembers seeing Ryan at his bike on the last day he was at school and teasing him about seeing him with pink hair (there had been a bet that if he could stay out of the principals office for the rest of the year then the teacher would have to dye her hair pink, but if didn't then he would have to dye his hair pink...he didn't even make it two days). He told her to be quiet, she laughed and she said "see ya tomorrow!" and that was that. The next day he wasn't at school, and the kids all laughed because they thought he didn't want to have to dye his hair pink. He wasn't at school the next day either. And then this morning, the news came that he had passed away the night before.

The scary thing is he was just sick. He had been at home for the past two days with a fever, and then last night a turn for the worse and he was gone. So far that's all we know. The school will let us know if there is a health concern when all the tests and stuff are done. But until then, all we know is to watch for a fever and vomiting and to take them in right away to the doctor.

My heart breaks for Ryan's family. For his friends. For the Grade 6 class. For the community.

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My poor poor Kathryn. She has a little black cloud hanging over her head and I just don't know what to say or do. I want to just hold her tight, wave a magic wand and make it all better. I've never experienced such a loss, so I don't even know what she is feeling. How can I ease the pain of something I don't completely understand? Aren't mom's supposed to be able to fix anything? I feel so helpless. This really sucks.

Funny things the boy says...again

I was reading scriptures to the kids tonight, and James wanted a turn. He said "I want to say 'And it came to pass...'. " So I said alright and started reading a verse for him to repeat after me, but there wasn't a verse with "And it came to pass". So before we would repeat what I was saying he first had to say "And it came to pass." Seems as though he is listening...at least to the first few words.

Treasure Hunting in our own yard

Tonight we had a wiener roast in our back yard, Tansley had some friends over, and they were playing in their favourite climbing tree. They've climbed this tree a million times over the years.

There has always been this funny glob of duct tape way up in the tree, and I've always wondered why someone would use duct tape to hold a branch in place. Over the years as the duct tape has deteriorated, I have thought about just pulling it all down. Usually that thought comes while the girls who actually climb up in that tree are at school and I don't have anyone to climb up and pull it down. Tonight, while enjoying this beautiful May evening, Tansley and her friends saw something sticking out of the tape and started to pull it down, and low and behold, it wasn't holding a branch together at all. It was holding a ziploc bag with some notes written by a girl named Robyn, her brother(whose name we couldn't read) and her sister Kayli. The notes were written in August of 2006, and year and a half before we bought this house. The notes were wet and a little moldy, but for the most part we could read them. The kids think this is a great discovery.

The first thing I did was search for them on Facebook. They left us their last name too and enough information to narrow the search. And I'm pretty sure I've found them and have sent them a message letting them know that we have found their notes. I hope we hear back from them so that we can share with them the story on how we found their notes, and why it took us 6 years. I hope this isn't the end of this story. I hope there will be more to share in the near future.