Life...somewhat gypsy style

I cannot believe that its been almost 3 months since my last post.  Time flies.  In that time we have:
- taken a long weekend trip to Quesnel
-celebrated Mckenna's 11th (got that???  11th!!!!) birthday
-had some snow
-enjoyed that same snow melt ;)
-built a greenhouse
-visited family in Chilliwack
-gone to Barkerville (love that place)
-and temporarily moved to Quesnel

That's right, friends and family.  We are spending most of the summer in Quesnel.  It started out with a self-employed job opportunity for John, that never panned out.  Then a friend, who is listing his house here, needed help with a new roof and some painting.  So all 4 of us helped him with that.  And then the work started pouring in... just by word of mouth.  The more people John talked to, the more work he was getting.  It's mostly roofing, which is hard work, especially in the heat.  But both the girls and I are able to help him.  We went home for a week in the end of April for Mckenna's birthday.  And then we went home for 2 days, right after the long weekend, so one of John's sisters and her family could see where we lived, and then we could also get some work done around the house.  We have enough work lined up to last all summer.  I'm sure if we went home, there'd be work there too, but it takes John away from the family, so if we can make it work here in Quesnel, that is what we hope to do... for now.  I will overload you with the little pictures that I have :) They won't necessarily be in order :)

It doesn't take long to decorate a small house!!

Her biggest birthday request- cowgirl boots

Another birthday request- that I make her a horse birthday card

Another special card- handmade by Grandma.  The front cover is Grandpa and Mckenna having icecream together which we hope they can actually do at the end of June/begninning of July

its so special when you get to share your birthday with friends.  I was a little nervous since the weather forecasted rain.  Add 4 extra girls in a tiny little house... Well, the first rain drop fell as I was on my way back from bringing them back home.  Needless to say, I had  a few crafts that they could work on, and I didn't tell their parents what time they would be home.  But we were able to enjoy dinner together, and there was still disappointment when I said it was time to go home.  So I would say : SUCCESS!!

One of the crafts was a picture frame.  So I took this picture so they could put it in that frame.  

can't go without a silly one!

opening gifts.  a mini album to scrapbook!

a special little box made by one one of her friends containing a necklace made out of horse hair, and beads that basically match her cowboy boots

                                                                 silly sisters♥

The birthday request was a vanilla caramel one.  So I made vanilla cupcakes with butterscotch in the center.  Then iced it with French vanilla or French chocolate icing! 

fancy table settings!  Love the dollar stores

personalized party bags!

One good thing about having family want to come visit you in Dawson, when you currently aren't living in Dawson, is that you take time on the way from where you are living (Quesnel) to stop and sight see some things.  Found a beautiful lake/picnic area, and stopped in Chetwynd (known as the chainsaw carving capital of BC) to see all the chainsaw carvings.

John loves the dogwood flowers

I unfortunately don't have any pictures of Kenna with the carvings.  She was way behind me.  But Emmy's pretty cute and loves to pose (shocking if you would see pictures of her when she was 4!)

Hope you enjoyed it!  I had fun putting it together and remembering :)  No promises of when the next post will be!  It will be a Barkerville/ Dawson Creek museum post though.

35 year anniversary gift

Once again, these are pictures off my phone.  They may be blurry because I don't email them as large files.. I'm not sure.  But they are clear enough to get an idea of what went into this quilt.  It started with a text from my sister in law wondering if I had any idea what to get my mom and dad as a gift for the 35th anniversary.  So between her, another sister in law, and my sister, we came up with the idea of making a quilt.  We have a cousin that makes quilts as a business, so we made contact with her and away it went.  The layout is hard to see, but that is what she designed with the what information we gave her: there was 11 grandkids that would draw a picture on a block (the twins used one block), and then 10 kids that would choose a verse or quote which I was to embroider on another 10 squares.  Then we also wanted mom and dad's wedding text on there too.  Then he gave her a few color options, which is the next picture, the material that she came up with.. beautifully matched!

We weren't sure what fabric markers worked best, but these were the winners!

(they are found at walmart!)

So my cousin cut out 6" squares out of white material, for the grandkids drawings.  She had to mail me a package and a package to Alberta.  Here are a few pictures of the work in progress.  My brother had texted me some pics of my niece working on hers but I must have deleted them. Too bad, because they were super cute! 

The square were taped to the table so the fabric didn't move 

So all the kids picked a text, and sent it to me.  I fooled around with different fonts before I found the ones that would work best for small type.  It took alot of time to do that, but also to load them onto the machine, line it all up, cut the threads, remove the stabilizer, etc.  But it was all worth it!!

I posted this picture to show a before and after scenario.  With the embroidery machine, the letters are all connected by thread that can be cut with affecting the stitching.  The top one is complete, the bottom one still has the thread attached.  

Everything is complete!! 

Mom and Dad's wedding text, you can also see that some of the thread hasn't been trimmed. 

The finished quilt.. absolutely BEAUTIFUL. 

I was able to FaceTime my parents as they opened it. It wasn't the same as being there, but I guess it was the next best thing.  All my siblings and nieces/nephews were there at that time so they weren't able to talk much.. But when my mom called later on, and my dad talked to me, he got quite emotional when he was trying to thank me.  That made all the hardwork of organizing, texting, embroidery, etc. worth it :)

Backyard visitors

There are a few perks to living this far north. Wildlife!  When the snow gets deep, wildlife, specifically deer and moose, tend to move into town for food.  Although the snow is not that deep as we have been having very mild temperatures, a cow and calf moose ventured into our yard.  We have seen this couple before, on a walk on the path behind our house.  But to be able to open your living room window, and basically have a moose within arms reach is quite the experience.  I think the closest I got to the cow moose was about 12 feet.  I was on the deck, and the moose was on the lawn, so there was a barrier between us!  Here are a few pictures

They came from the road, and went straight for the back yard.  The first few pics are blurry cuz I got them off my phone.  My battery on my camera was dead of course so I quickly plugged it in, captured what I could on my phone, and when the battery had just enough juice in it to do its job, I used my regular camera.

The mom stayed near the house and ate from this tree, while the baby went farther into the back yard to eat off the smaller bushes

mama heading out to the calf (sorry for the crooked pictures, I was too lazy to fix them!)

calf

cow in front of calf 

this is when I was only 12 feet away.   

Mama left before the calf was done eating.  When she realized that mama was gone, she started calling for her.. The girls also heard it.  What an amazing sound!! 

Great fun!

I'm back!!

Unfortunately my method of blogging is to not blog for a long time, then do a blog posting overload. It has been a very long time since my last post, and so much has gone on in that time:

A trip to Alberta

A trip to Chilliwack

John home LOTS

and now John has been gone since January 2.

Fortunately we were able to go see him for 3 nights, as he staying in a hotel, has the room to himself, that has 2 queen beds. I am currently keeping very busy. This is kinda what my schedule looks like

Monday: Clean church ( I am currently the janitor for the Alliance Church), homeschool, race Emmy to swimming lessons on time to be able to drop Kenna off at gymnastics, drive back to Emmy, watch her finish swimming lessons, and crack the whip at her to hurry up since we have to be back at Kenna in 15 minutes as she is finished gymnastics.
Tuesday: HOME ALL DAY, until 4:30 when Kenna has rock climbing, go home until 5:45 to bring Emmy to girl guides, straight to Kenna to pick her up, home for 45 minutes before heading out to pick Emmy up
Wednesday: homeschool, leave at 3:00 to go babysit (babysitting is 2 weeks on/2 weeks off) until 5:30, go home for half hour before bringing Emmy to swimming lessons.
Thursday: baby sit from 9-3 (also 2 weeks on/ 2 weeks off), try to fit schooling in there, and home for the rest of the evening.
Friday: homeschool, clean church, and then home
Saturday: babysit from 9-1
Sunday: thankful for this day of rest

As long as John is working, I don't mind being this busy, and away from home.  Especially in winter, when there is not much else to do outside.  Today was a crazy warm day, 6 degrees, which has cleared up the roads alot.  With John being gone, I was responsible for clearing off our flat roof.  There was about 2 feet on it, the top half was light and fluffy on the first day that I started.  The bottom half was ice/hard snow.  The second day I worked on it, it had started raining, and that made for an all around heavy snow.  I wouldnt be surprised if I burned 3000 calories ;) 4 hrs of continuous shoveling??? Maybe????

The girls had a blast.  A pile of snow + rain = an Olaf making day ( Olaf is the snowman in the movie Frozen).

This is a quick update for now.. I am heading off to bring Emmy to girl guides, and then pick up Kenna.  I will try post some pics soon. (The computer that has all our pics on is also the computer the girls use for schooling, so I don't have access very often to it!)

One season to another!

We are all settled in. It took about a month, as we had to go through each box and figure out what we wanted to fit into the house, and what we could do without for an unknown amount of time!  John also had to go back to work, so I had to finish emptying storage units, and finding a place for it all in the sheds.  We have had a busy but enjoyable summer.  We are quickly heading into fall, and have already experience the first snowfall of the season :)  I will tell our story with pictures, as well as I can!!

OUR HOUSE

(before we moved in)

girls room 

The shed we had to build, since the ones that are there already are in the way for when the excavator needs to get in the backyard and are not sturdy enough to be moved.  I don't have a finished picture of it on my computer, but we finished it to match what we hope to make the house look like! A steel blue, with white facia and cedar shakes in the gable.

This is what Emmy did while we were building 

Kenna made her own little house with the scrap wood 

It was HOT! So they took a dip in our pool to cool :)

Framing is fnished. Notice how close the trampoline is to the shed? That was JOhn's idea, so Mckenna could jump off

Next up.. a day at the river with friends

and

our trip to Chilliwack