No Electronics in July?!?!?!?!

This past month has been lovely, I decided at the end of June to make July an electronic device free month. Now we really don't have that many compared to a lot of people, Pat and I have iphones, Nyla has an ipod touch, Cady has a ipod shuffle and we have an old Nintendo DS. But, I was getting so tired of waking up every day to one of the kids asking to play games on my phone or arguing about who got more time on what or constantly telling them to put devices down and go play outside or use their toys and games and imaginations, that I finally lost my patience and took them all away for a month. And you know what? 

It has been wonderful! 

 They have been on bike rides, running through the sprinkler, jumping on the trampoline with the sprinkler underneath, digging in the dirt, playing with their toys,

Ordinary days

It's coming to an end (and I'm so looking forward to it, and so not looking forward to it if you know what I mean ;)

Beautiful beets and crunchy carrots!

Look at this beautiful haul we picked from mom's garden! I love having fresh, beautiful, (very) local produce available. So yummy!

Happy Friday and have a good (long) weekend!

Guess who's back, back again....

Sam is back, tell your friends....

Yes, I'm a dork, what can I say?
   Just dropping in today to share some more summer fun pics. We were away last week on holidays so I took a blogging break and enjoyed some family time. I'm finding I take most of my pictures with my phone as it is light and easy to carry, do you find that so in the summer? 

      We've been picking tons of raspberries! My moms place has a huge raspberry patch and the kids especially love to pick them. I think they've picked a couple ice cream buckets full.

I'm still here

I'm still here, but it's summer time and I have to admit that my blogging time has been drastically reduced. But we're having fun, kids went to Grandmas farm for a couple days and Cady got some cuddle time with Rosco the goat kid :) Really he is alive though he doesn't look like it :)

Yummy dinner and fun at the farmers market

Roasted garlic scapes, carrots and prawns, yum!!!

Are we done yet?

I had a post all set to go for today and then I saw this post by Jen and I HAD to share it with all you other mom's out there whose kids don't finish school till the end of June. It is hilarious!! It so perfectly describes how I (and I'm sure many of you other moms with school aged children)have been feeling the last week or so. I'm so done with making school lunches, the kids are ready for freedom (they keep asking to have "sleepovers" in each other's rooms) I tell you I was exhausted by 8 this morning (could have something to do with the fact that my eldest left for a four day school trip this morning!)

So check it out it will hopefully bring a smile to your day! Oh and by the way, the blog post got so much attention, Jen was on the Today show!

Check her blog post titled "Worst end of school year mom ever!"

You can check out the Today show with Jen HERE

Now, I'm off to deliver lunches that never made it into the backpacks this am :)
Solidarity, moms, solidarity!
Have a great week ;)

Something to Ponder

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The sun is shining and my freckles are out in abundance :)

Have a great week!

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?

Summer fun!

I know it's been awhile since I've done a "real" post but we've been enjoying the warm weather that has finally arrived in our neck of the woods :)

Where are we living this summer?

So, as most of you know we sold our house (as long as all goes well on the 29th of this month, fingers crossed!) and some of you may be wondering, where are you moving to??
Well although I would love to be moving to something like this...


                                             (source)

or this...


                                           (source)

or {sigh} this...


                                          (source)

We haven't found our perfect house/farm yet (and truthfully if we found something looking like any of the above pictures it would most likely be out of our price range {sigh}) So, here's our plan...
We are staying at my mom and Al's house for a month, house-sitting and garden-sitting while they are away on a sailing trip (I know, I'm jealous too!). Then, we are going to be camping for the rest of the summer in our tent.

Just kidding! About the tent part, not the camping part :) No, we are getting a travel trailer to camp in for the summer :) We are going to really enjoy our local area and see all there is to see for camping spots. We live in a gorgeous area with mountains for hiking and biking, a lake for swimming and water sports and tons of little picturesque towns to explore. We have to stay in our area because my hubby still has to work, but it should be fun with the five of us and our dog Stella. :) The kids think it's going to be a grand adventure (they love camping) and they know they are also going to spend some time on Grandma Dusty's farm :)

So, anyone else camping for the summer? Anyone think we're crazy? :) Have a great weekend!

All pictures above were found on Pinterest.

Another fun weekend :)

Warning! This post has a ton of photos!

A few weekends ago (labour day actually) our family had a really great day with my mom and Al on their sailboat. We went up the lake to a lovely beach and spent the day hanging out in the sun. At first I thought our kids would be bored and drive us nuts (they're used to speedboat speed) but they were actually great and they all had a fantastic time.

This first pic is of Gabe and Cady poking their heads out of the berth in the front and catching a breeze.

Next is Pat and Nyla having a moment together.

              And then Pat just has to be a goof :)

       Next we went for a little hike with my mom on the "beach trail" :)

           and yes it made me very nervous that there was a bear in the area, but that just made me sing louder...
         Next is Grandma and Gabe hanging out on a cool tree stump

And my goofy kids (the air horn is to scare off bears too) I love this one :)

                      Nyla was doing her "peace out", so Gabe tells me

and Pat tried to skip some rocks, he's actually pretty good :)

When we got back from our exploring, Al had the fire going so we roasted some hotdogs for lunch...

and ooey gooey marshmallows for dessert :)

On our way back, Nyla tried her hand at stearing the boat, she did really well!

And of course we had some more snacks. Peaches! yum!

Thanks mom and Al for a wonderful and relaxing day!

A beautiful, busy, fun weekend part 2

Finally!! Part 2 of our fun pre-long weekend weekend. In part 1 I showed a bunch of pictures of the hike we did on the Saturday, well that was only part of Saturday. The rest of the day was spent on the beach playing in the water and cooling down (it was 34 degrees that day) as well as doing some fun water sports including tubing (this is Cady and Pat)

and my brother wakeboarding. Pat and Matt (my bro) also did a bit of waterskiing and normally I would join in but one of my feet is really hurting and bothering me. But I did go for a tube ride with Nyla and we had a blast!

Gabe asked uncle Matt if he would go with him. Gabe loved it so much and wanted to go again and again! He was also quite upset when we told him (Gabe, not Matt :-) that he was a little too young yet to do waterskiing and wakeboarding.

On the Sunday we packed up and headed home because Pats fire department was having a fun softball game and bbq. The guys set up the port-a-tank for the kids to cool off in and they spent most of the afternoon playing in it :)

Cady and Gabe replenishing their energy with hotdogs :-)

After the game everyone had a chance to cool of in the tank, whether by choice or not as I think everyone was tossed in at one point or another. It was a blast! We all had such a wonderful weekend.

Hope you all enjoyed the rest of summer. We certainly did! Actually we are still enjoying beautiful hot sunny weather, thank goodness, as our July was just yucky. Have a good weekend!

p.s I'm working on a house tour for next week, so if you like that sort of thing like I do, be sure to check back and see our "Kozy Kabin"