Canoeing down the Bow

Our annual adventure on the Bow with the neighbours took on a new twist this year. Instead of renting a raft, we set out on the Bob Special. Sarah was busy playing with her friend Maddy, (who has been off at sleepover camps all summer), and our neighbour's daughter was away at a friend's place, so it was just 6 of us who enjoyed an absolutely glorious summer day floating/paddling down the Bow.


Alison spent a lot of time helping the neighbours manoeuver their raft. That really is her under all that hair.



Pelicans! On the Bow! Those are some impressive beaks. No wonder they were out, though, fish were jumping up out of the water all over the place.

Reece did take a couple of swimming trips between the boats. Alison did it once, too, but Daddy didn't go in at all. Alison wins!

A trip to the zoo

These fuzzy huge antlers belong to one of the zoo's male moose.


Wouldn't you love to have a visit with this bear?


Spike has to get metal caps over his tusks after cracking one of them. A few days ago he cracked it again.



The baby elephant is ssssssssooooooooooo cute! Malti may be already one year
old but she is still tiny . She is about the size of her mom's leg.


This baby giraffe is a week and a half old and is already 7 feet tall. The baby has not yet been named. As the baby elephant, the baby giraffe is about the size of her mother's leg.

by guest blogger, Sarah

Lobster

There are few pleasures in life greater than a feast of lobster. Here are a couple of experts at work.

New Blogger in the House

Resident author, Alison, has taken on technology and now has a blog of her own. Since she's only seven, I've restricted access to only those who have been invited. I popped a few addresses in from the top of my head, so if you would like an invitation, comment below and I'll dig out your email address for an invite.

The Golf Cart

Alison has been looking forward to being big enough to drive Papa Les' golf cart since her last visit to Cape Breton, when she was a mere 4 years old. This summer, now that she is seven, she got her chance.

She's a very cautious driver and managed to cruise about the property without hitting a single tree. The video cuts off before she answers my question, but her journal entry after her first driving experience explains in great detail how very thrilling and wonderful it was. Thanks for sharing your golf cart, Papa Les!

Yard Sale

Before I get into vacation photos, I have a couple of leftover July posts.

Rustle's girls have discovered the Wii and are on a mission to save up all their coins to buy one. Just hoping for enough change in the couch will take forever, though, so they've come up with a plan.

The first part is to start earning some money by doing chores. Now you might find a girl emptying a dishwasher, tidying her room or at least getting up and dressed right away in the morning.

As all employed people know, working doesn't always reap rewards quickly enough. So our girls and the kids next door decided to boost their money-making plans with a yard sale. They collected all sorts of stuff they no longer enjoy (and are keeping the rooms from staying tidy), made signs, and spent two weekend days pawning their stuff off on unsuspecting neighbourhood children.



Complete with Koolade stand.

Daddy's Home

Usually, the girls are in bed when Bob returns from a business trip to Houston. Not in the middle of July, though! Tonight, Alison has a warm welcome for Daddy.

Stampede Parade

Yes, it's that time again. The annual Calgary Stampede and Exhibition has descended upon town with all the fanfare, Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots you can shake a lasso at. Rustle is completely uninterested, and his girls are pretty much only into going to the parade. Free pancake breakfast? No, too early for Sarah and Alison doesn't like pancakes. Rides on the midway? Not big fans. Rodeo? Don't get them started on how mean those cowboys are to those teeny baby cows.

So, the parade it is.

One of the fun floats, with a genuine western theme.


Is this the cutest cowgirl you've ever seen, or what? She's her own stylist, by the way. Her consulting services are a bit pricey.

Canada Day

Alison's friend's family invited us to spend the Canada Day weekend at their home in Fairmont, B.C. We had a fabulous time swimming and boating in Columbia Lake, climbing up a mountain trail to reach a waterfall to swim below, and just having fun with good people.

Here we are at Columbia Lake. It is a glacier-fed lake, but it's really shallow, so it was nice and warm. It was especially enjoyable since the temperature was in the low 30s and we needed a good dip to cool off. We also had lots of fun tubing about the lake, until, of course, Alison had to dump Mommy off the tube...



The waterfall is an offshoot of the hot springs. We climbed a trail to reach the waterfall and then swam in the pools below, which were really warm. It was also pretty busy there, so Alison and Sam went off exploring in the stream below.




We spent Canada Day at the base of Fairmont Ski Hill. Alison and her friends made their own Canada Day t-shirts which turned out rather spectacularly, I must say.

Soccer 08

As manager for Sarah's soccer team this year, I realize that I have no pictures from Alison's games, which occurred on the the same nights (of course!). I also noticed that I took terrible video of Sarah's games which were played on full-sized fields and were pretty fast. My bias may be obvious, but this team was great. The girls learned a lot about being teammates and improved with every play they made. There were a lot of rained-out games, but they still managed to finish with a 9-1-2 record and would have been contenders in the playoffs had more than half the team been around to play in July! The big party at the end was a Dairy Queen extravaganza and a great finish to a great season! Congratulations Sarah!



And Alison, too. This is her medal from her adventures with the Black Holes Soccer team. We spent Canada Day weekend with the soccer coach's family (who is the mom of Alison's friend, Liana) and pictures from that trip will be coming soon.


So if anyone wonders where we were all June, you could always try a soccer field....