Homemade Raspberry Jam

From the vine...

to the freezer :)

Are you wondering what happened to our deck progress?

    Yesterday as I was reading back over the last couple months of posts (which didn't take long as there are so few of them :)  I realized that I inadvertently left everyone hanging about the progress of our deck redo. So, I apologise for that and I'll tell you that what happened was this.
    We sold our house in April with the closing set for June 30th and part of our agreement with the buyers was that we would fix up our deck before they moved in ( you can read a bit more about all that HERE and HERE ) basically the deck was deemed unsafe by their inspector and as the buyers had two kids of their own and she was planning a daycare in the home a bad deck would be no good (even though we were told by our inspector when we bought the house that the deck was just fine ) Anyways, so began the journey of the deck redo. Everything was going well, permit acquired, contractor chosen, demolition day happened ,and we were off to a good start. Except we didn't plan for the weather to be the wettest, rainiest spring that blasted records set 30 yrs ago! Seriously, it was bad. Our local soccer fields were flooded so much, there were people canoeing on them, streams and rivers flooded over their banks, it was pretty bad.  




     So, what happened with our deck? Well it got put on hold of course until the weather cleared up and everything dried out a bit. By that time, we had moved out (during a downpour!) and the closing of our house finalized and the new owners moved in. Luckily the new owners were very understanding and were OK with the work finishing during our transition. But, I still haven't gotten a chance to go back and ask them if I could take "after" pictures. We've driven by and had a look and it turned out very nice indeed, we just wish we could have had a chance to enjoy the new deck for a couple days! :)
      So, there is the story of our deck. The highs, the lows, the crazy weather, thankfully this summer the weather has cooperated and we've had lots of nice hot sunny days!

So, how about you? Crazy weather? Projects that didn't quite pan out the way you had hoped? Having a good summer?

A Beautiful Day for a Hike

A few weekends ago, Pat and I had a hankering to go on a hike. Since the friends we were staying with had the same idea, we all went together :) We went to a place called Ross lake and it was just gorgeous! It is days and moments like this that I am so grateful for living in such a beautiful part of our country. All the pictures taken in this post were taken with my new iPhone and I'm not sure why they are so washed out :(

We are pretty fortunate that our kids love to hike as well. They still talk about their favorite hike so far which was to Idaho Peak last summer ( you can check out that excursion HERE ) Gabe was my little hiking buddy so there are quite a few pics of him and the girls stayed way up front with our friend who is a super fast hiker (the fact that she has legs up to her armpits might possibly be a reason why she is so fast ;)

This huge boulder was right beside the trail so Pat and the kids had to conquer it! Stella really really wanted to join them. :)

Awwww family photo op :) When we got to the lake we took off our shoes and waded in the nice cool water. I should mention that it was a really really hot day in the low 30s so it was especially nice to have this pretty alpine lake to cool off in.

And of course we had to have a snack, trail mix of course! My little guy was so cute perched on a rock with his bare feet and his trail mix I couldn't resist sharing this pic.

Part of the hike was to pick our way through the bottom of this old rock slide. I thought it looked pretty cool so I told the hubby to go pose for me :)

And last but not least I had to share this picture to give you all some idea of how high up we were. This is only about half way up the drive part of the day and the hike was about 45 minutes each way ( I think).

All in all it was a great hike and a lovely day, I'm really glad that we are having such gorgeous weather after the extremely wet spring we had!

Have you been on any good hikes lately? Do you like hiking or hate it? Enjoying some gorgeous weather?

Our life this summer so far....

Hi!
I want to apologise first for the serious lack of posts this month. I had planned to keep up the pace but found that a few places where we stayed in our "New Home" had no cell service and unfortunately the little gadget I picked up to have mobile Internet relies, of course, on cell service. So here
we are and I am going to attempt to update you all on our life lately.

We've been doing a LOT of reading (there's no TV in the trailer)

We've been discovering native "wildlife". Meet Toady the toad whom we discovered close to our campsite one night. We've also seen a few deer, a black bear and a moose! Welcome to the great (not so white) north!

Pat and the kids have done a bunch of fishing. The kids are getting to be quite the little fisher people, Cadence and Gabe like casting from shore, and Nyla really enjoys trolling in the little boat.

This is the view from one of our campsites in one of my favorite places.

And then more reading!
This next month brings us swimming lessons, a wedding, a visit with some family from far away, harvesting and planting in the garden and hopefully more time on the beach!
How is your summer going so far?