Our once luscious, thriving Mountain Ash Tree…..a shadow of it’s former self……thanks to two little-boy arborists. Last summer they were doing some ‘trimming’. And somehow it was just too fun, and they got a little too carried away. They had hacked off all the branches they could reach from the ground – the ones Neika is standing on. And then they kept right on going to all the ones that they could reach from standing on a chair. And well, now we have a very lame looking tree, with some branches at the top.
I was lying on the ground underneath the tree with my camera, taking pictures of them jumping on the tramp, and the red berries against the bright blue sky looked cool as I was looking up.
Curious George has been a recent discovery in our house. The little monkey on TV is now much loved by Malakai. While Kent was down in the crawl space, rummaging through his boxes of treasures from his own childhood, he found a Curious George. We decided to surprize Malakai, by having him wake up with George. But first we had fun taking pictures of them together in the dark. We were laughing and giggling away as we posed them together. Then Kent decided that we should take pictures of all the kids with George, while they were sleeping, so we could show them the next morning. They all got a kick out of it when they saw them!
So I wanted to try a do a photo project – a day in our life. But maybe I might not do it again! It takes FOREVER to put a tonne of photo’s into a collage and get them on a blog.
We are very happy that Kent get’s to come home for the weekend from his back rehab program in Vancouver. It feels like he is out on a weekend pass. We picked him up from the airport last night, and we made a special breakfast together. Actually they made breakfast – I took pictures 🙂 They all had tasks, except Chelise. Her job was just snitching food whenever she could get her hands on it.
We have had multi-tool pocket knives to give them for a while, so we decided this was a good time. They were beyond stoked to get them.
We decided to go for a walk up on the flanks of Castle Mountain. Not much walking happened…..it was all about whittling sticks with their new knives.
Going for the hat.
Kent and Chelise are going toddler speed. The bigger kids wanted to race down the hill at top speed to get back to the van.
The real fun began after we got back into the van. We decided we would go ‘a little bit further’. I was trying to keep Chelise awake so to not wreck her sleep for when we got home. I was trying to do that by feeling her chocolate almond, hence the choco face. We had been driving about 10 mins and Kent commented we didn’t have much fuel. A few mins later we realized we didn’t really know where we were or where we were going. I gave up trying to keep her awake.
It dawned on us, that in our minds, we were on a road that we actually weren’t. And with a little help from the GPS we realized we were heading into the hills even more. No big deal, except we were just about out of petrol. What we came down was a mix of gravel, snow and ice. We weren’t sure that we would make it home by simply turning around, but that would be our best bet. We thought maybe the logging road we were on might bi-sect the road we thought we were on. It didn’t. But there was a skidder road down through the middle of a clear cut. On the other side of it, we thought we could see the other road. Kent decided to do a little 4×4 mish. I instantly was in the place I feel like I have been in SO MANY times before…..trying to get ourselves out of a pickle by taking a 2-wheel drive vehicle somewhere most people wouldn’t. It is NOT my favourite! But I tried really hard to think it was funny for the sake of the kids. Ordinarily I’m just annoyed at Kent!! We made it down, and the road we wanted was at the bottom. Hurray! It was a lot shorter to get back home that way even though we still weren’t sure if we would make it! We pulled into a gas station. Our tank has an 80 litre capacity. Kent put 80.5 litre’s in it. Wowsers, I am SO GLAD we made it!!! I tell myself that is what memories are made of.
Sequoia had a project she needed to do about simple machines. I am so unmotivated about that kind of stuff. I’m so glad Kent was home to help her. They were brain storming how to make a wheel and axle and got sidetracked with this new-to-us toy that I picked up for like 3 bucks at the thrift store a couple of years ago, but still haven’t given to them!!
This clever monkey thinks she knows how to use the tablet, and then has a fit when I take it away.
Then it was evening and we decided to go outside and play 500 before it got dark. This is her version.
I was actually here all day too – one photo to prove it!!Keep your eye on the ball! These boys love playing this game.
I had made a picnic dinner that we ate outside in the near dark. Chelise is getting a head start on it.
And that’s a wrap….a day in our life, minus the getting up and going to bed part.