Första årsdagen

A Few Garden Updates

Autumn has started to settle into our garden.  Our little plum tree that had flowered so nicely for us in spring has started to turn colour.

Our sunflowers have become pretty nosy, and are now peeking overtop our fence into the neighbour's yard.

Roger rescued a family of potatoes that were living in our garden.

And this gnome can't wait until it gets dark earlier so he can get some more shut-eye.

End of Summer

We recently had a freakishly warm week of end of summer weather.  Perhaps it's Summer's way of saying good-bye.  Either way, it allowed us the opportunity to enjoy lounging away outside, and some of us got in some baby cuddling time.

First and last hike of the season

This past weekend we headed down to Calgary to try and squeeze in our one and only hike of the quickly fading summer season.  We ended up accumulating quite a varied group of enthusiastic hikers, which made choosing a hike difficult, but in the end, we finally settled on Elbow Lake in K Country.  

The hike into Elbow Lake is slightly steep, but very short (only 1.3 km).  At the lake there are fire pits, bathrooms and tent pads.  After stopping at Elbow Lake, there's the opportunity to hike further into the Pipestone or to Rae lake. It was perfect for our group as the tired hikers could hang out at the lake while the rest of us went on exploring.

Longview, enroute to K country

The start of the hike--watching these kids run up the hill made me feel very old.

Approaching Elbow Lake

Elbow Lake

At Elbow Lake, we engaged in all sorts of safe activities such as:

Pointing a bear banger at the camera person

Playing with fire

and playing with axes:

The bathroom at Elbow Lake

Heading to the Pipestone

We didn't make it to Rae Lake unfortunately after being over ruled by a 10 and 8 year old, but on the way back we ran into the munchkins!   

August: Came and went

August has been a busy month, last weekend Mattias and Lucas came up for a visit and they had fun playing Pacman and Need for Speed.  We also introduced Lucas to sushi.  He even managed to eat a bit of tuna tataki without gagging.  We've also just been finishing off some landscaping in our front yard which has involved a lot of shovel work.  Our garden really took off this year--we managed to grow mostly straight carrots, potatoes, beets, peas and something that looked like an onion.

We managed to grow a lot of poppies:

and... of course, Roger's sunflowers have not been disappointing this summer.  They have also been popping up at select houses in Fort McMurray.

We also recently acquired Hungry Hungry Hippos and for the first time ever, read the game instructions and realized after all these years, we were playing it all wrong.

I went down to visit Mamma G in mid August to see how she was healing up.  She was doing just fine, and managed to single handedly (literally) make me this delicious breakfast!

and showed me how to properly make Rabarber kräm

For those of you in Malaysia who have been wondering about her progress--the most updated news is she can finally sign her name with her right hand!