This Beautiful Life

As it turns out, a delay in writing turns into a long delay in writing, and then what feels like a fresh start. I could drone on about all the things that have happened between the end of March and now, but I’ll stick to the highlights. It’s been a long slog of sports, spring, family and work. Nothing different than any other household, of course, but a slog just the same.

Volleyball schedules kicked our butts this spring, with Mary in competitive ball with Fernie’s team and Lizzie playing for Cranbrook. Both demanded the attention of a handler so Jeff and I divided and conquered for the most part, doing our best to not ignore the home front. I can’t even remember the standings at the end of the season, but know that Mary’s team did well, ranking in the top 8 in her age group, and Lizzie’s team landed somewhere in a less glamourous space. To Lizzie’s credit, she stuck it out through a season that was much less inspiring than usual and with a coach that was, well, not inspirational.

As usual, we wrapped up school in June with stars all around – Mary received an award for basketball, Lizzie for volleyball, and Margaret for art, AND Margaret joining her peers in bidding high school good-bye. Having struggled to find her feet in chemistry during the last semester, no-one was happier to see the end of the year than her! A little more than a little extra studying and some re-taken exams had her landing with a B, which was far better than I think she or we had envisioned. Now she’s off to Lethbridge for University, thankfully only a couple of hours away and a quick trip to fetch her if she needs some home time.

Margaret’s graduation ceremony, dinner and dance spanned a couple of days, with much practice for the grad march, which was an elaborate arrangement of the grads in their full evening dress on parade, weaving and winding their way through choreography that looked complicated and far too difficult for kids who don’t wear heels. With the closing of our community center, the ice-rink was commandeered for the awards ceremony and dance. Thank goodness Fernie had a spare facility big enough to house the 100+ grads, their +1s and family! The grads started their evening at City Hall for photos and then paraded through town with the fire truck to get to the arena. It rained, but I don’t think it mattered. They were all pretty happy. That’s Josh, Margaret’s boyfriend since last summer. A good sport holding Margaret’s purse for her.

Margaret left grad for an early morning departure to go camping with Josh’s family. She came back relaxed and happy, but a summer job was not in the cards given the lateness of the date. She would get to enjoy this last summer without having to punch a clock – lucky girl!

Lizzie, however, decided that this summer she was going to make some cash. She landed a job at Save-On in town and has been enjoying being a bit flush ever since. There will be some reconciling of her lifestyle when school starts again. She is hoping for a spot on the senior’s volleyball team and if that comes through, there won’t be much time for a part time job.

Mary, now 14, but taller than us all (or almost all of us, Jeff is still a smidgen taller), decided working was for chumps and is thoroughly enjoying her summer visiting friends, toying with the idea of building a rocket and working on her basketball and volleyball skills when she is not running, biking or strength training. She is dedicated to getting into shape for fall sports…and her braces come off next week, so look out. Thankfully, no love interests in sight and she still makes a face when I ask.

We had a lovely visit in July with Auntie Deb and Uncle Gord. As always, they are easy and entertaining guests. We’ve got no room at the Inn these days, but have recently acquired a pull out couch for the rec room. Like the smart folks they are, they elected for the comfort and privacy of a hotel room in town. I am so incredibly grateful to have had a chance to visit with them. Just weeks later, Uncle Gord passed away from complications of a stroke. My heart breaks for the loss and we will miss him dearly.

We took a trip to the coast to visit with another favourite of ours, Roy. His own failing health, and recent diagnosis of ALS, has Jeff on high rotation making frequent visits to spend as much time as he can with his Dad. He took a trip in July with Lizzie and Mary, coincidentally at the same time Mom, Margaret and I were entertaining Auntie Deb and Uncle Gord in Fernie. A short trip to the cabin for them, and then a quick turnaround at home, where we finally got to take a vacation as a family. We packed the Armada and the Thule with as much gear as would fit, saved a bit of space for kids and dogs, and made our way back to the Coast for another visit. This time, we would bookend the trip with a quick visit with Roy and Mary and try to spend as many days as possible in disconnected joy. It worked for the most part, and we opted to return a day early to treat the girls to a bucket-list item of having them go to Playland. It fell a bit short of my childhood memories, but we had a great time just the same.

Max has been showing his age and in his dotage is making poor decisions. When Jeff returned from the Coast after the first visit, Max hadn’t been home for more than an hour or two before he tangled with a skunk. Being that I don’t have a sense of smell, when asked, I told Jeff he didn’t smell like skunk so it probably wasn’t Max that triggered the spray. Well, it turns out he was and the house reeeeked. Off to the shower with the dawn and baking soda, we learned that Max also had a raging skin infection under all of that fur. A call to the vet and a $700 wellness/fleece you for all your cash visit ensued. Two different meds, one for allergies and one for the skin infection over 3 weeks is settling it down fortunately. It isn’t doing anything for the poor decision-making though, having chased Max down on another occasion before he decided to try to cross the highway. Just the other night while Lizzie was celebrating her birthday with her friends, Max decided to go stark raving mad, running in circles three fields over and then bee-lining it into the woods. He must have been chasing something we could not see, but one of the house guests swore she saw a black and white tail. Jeff finally caught up with him and dragged him home. He has been on watch ever since and labelled “not to be trusted”.

As usual we are cramming too much in to too little time. The house suffers for our lack of presence, but the chores will still be chores, and they will wait for us to surface. We are working our way through garden and house at equal pace, having put in a large garden at the back of the house that demands regular attention, and continuing to push the dirt piles around trying to smooth out the landscape around the house. It looks less like a construction site with every day’s labour, just takes a lot more days than we seem to have at our disposal.

We have potatoes, corn, squash, carrots, beets, lettuces, cabbage (currently being consumed by the cabbage moths!), fresh dill, garlic, strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb, broccolini, brussels sprouts and chard. Not sure how much we’ll actually get the harvest with all this rain and cold weather, but it’s fun to try and we might get something off the ground if the horseraddish gets it feet. The wet spring had most of my garlic rotting in the ground and the weeds thriving. Maybe when I’m 80 I’ll have this land figured out!

I took a look at the date on my last post and am more than a bit sad that I haven’t sat down to fill in the gap with an update of some sort. Where did February and half of March go anyway?

Mary finally finished up the slog that was January and February, taking a trip to the East Kootenay finals with her basketball team in the third week of February, which by all accounts could not have happened sooner. Mary loves basketball, but does not love the every night practice between basketball and volleyball and more than a few late nights as we travelled to neighbouring communities to find gym space since the community center closed. I was also grateful for the reprieve and her high intensity volleyball team schedule seems like light duty after the preceding weeks.

With basketball behind us, we are focusing on the dueling volleyballers in the house, both on different practice and travel schedules to and from Calgary about every 2nd weekend. The Armada is protesting and is starting to show its age. I keep talking nice to it and hoping it holds out until next year when we can trade it in for another SUV-like vehicle that maybe isn’t quite as big and maybe better on gas. It has been good to us, but with Margaret going to Lethbridge in the fall for University, I’m not sure we need the family bus quite as much as we do now. Last weekend, Margaret joined us for Mary’s volleyball tournament in Calgary so we could do a final grad dress fitting and do a bit of accessory shopping. The weekend went well and we scratched a couple of things off her list, but the drive home was less awesome with some serious wind having me steering cockeyed just to stay straight. And just this past weekend Lizzie and I travelled back from Calgary in a white out, crawling down highway 22 only to find the Crowsnest closed when we got to the junction. The white out and the closure were both a surprise – the Alberta road reports did not share that tidbit earlier in the day. We found a township road that we could use to get around the closure and keep us on our way home – earning the Armada a pat on the dash and a quiet thank you for its capabilities…and that’s the last time I leave Calgary for the dead zone between there and Frank’s Slide with only a half tank of gas. Full tanks only from now on!

Speaking of Margaret, the clock is ticking and were are staring down the calendar watching the days roll by. It won’t be long before she is off to school and we will be feeling like there’s a bit more space here than there should be. What I’ll do when they’re all gone, I don’t know. Margaret and Mary were both out of the house today and Lizzie sank into misery for the lack of sisters to hang out with. This could also have been because she had to clean her room. Its a toss up. It is spring break after all, and it seems like everyone but us has left town for warmer and more entertaining spaces.

With our lives dominated by club sports we have had precious little time to get moving on the farm. Lucky for us, Mother Nature doesn’t see any rush either and has left us with a load of snow to get out of the way so before we can find the garden. I did do some planning, stealing index cards from one of the girls and mapping out a 2×4 ft grid of garden plots with a dizzying array of vegetables to get started. I think we have about an acre of garden to plant…time to get busy indoors if the snow won’t get on its way!

I am getting quite excited about the garden, despite the lack of cooperation from the earth around us. The plot will be split this year, the garlic having been planted in the front garden in the fall and currently tucked in under some landscaping cloth and cardboard until we thaw a bit. The Rhubarb, horseradish, strawberries, and the lone surviving raspberry are still there as well, so we’ve got some transplanting to do if we are going to move all of it behind the house.

This year will be focused on short-season winners…root vegetables! Surprise! We have some others on the list, but really its all about what will grown underground and what is truly frost-hardy. We had great luck with carrots, radishes, beets, and onions last year. The brussels sprouts did well (until the moths got them). The garlic was really good too and if I can scale all of that up, we’ll be selling at a roadside farmstand in no time. Lots of things to try out this year too. We’re going to try corn, and take another stab at cucumbers and zucchini. Last year we put them out too early and a late frost took them out. I’d love to get runner beans going again, and have found a black version to try. We have lettuces and chard to plant to which will hopefully alleviate the problem of finding lettuce that is grown somewhere other than the US.

Jeff has acquired a used post-pounder and Mary’s 3D printer is starting to pay off. He and Mary spent an evening last week designing a part to connect some part of the post pounder to some part of the tractor (I wasn’t really listening). I was impressed at the result, having saved us a trip to who knows where for who knows how much money to find this missing part. Now the fun begins. We have A LOT of fencing to fix before we can put any livestock on this land and earn our way to farm status.

So our spring chores will get us into shape for sure, with loads of clean up to do, gardens to dig, and fencing to put in and repair. We might even squeeze in building a small shed-like workshop so Jeff has somewhere to put tools and a covered workspace. The workshop will have a nice spot attached for the wood shed which we also need closer to the house. We have loved the new fireplace in the house and after figuring out the right way to load it and what size wood works best, we have stopped having to fight to light it.

Jeff is spending more time at the office each week as EVR moves to a work from the office model properly in July. No more working from home for him sadly. And work is picking up for me too. I have added another client to my roster and am enjoying the variety that three very different projects brings to my day. Great people all round which helps make the work easier for sure.

Till the next time…hopefully not so long in between!

Well, if you can believe it, our busy January schedule got busier with bonus tournaments and extra practices for Volleyball. Mary is fully exhausted already, dual-sporting her way through the month, and Lizzie and I are feeling like long-haul drivers with our thrice-weekly trips into Cranbrook and beyond for her practices. Jeff has bitten the bullet and allowed social media apps to be added to his phone so he can take point on Mary’s volleyball team, and while I am Lizzie’s handler for volleyball, we are sharing the load on Mary, and enlisting Margaret for help when schedules are just too complicated to get it all done. Whew! Oh yeah, Margaret got her “N” on January 6th. Thank goodness! Just in time to assume her role as sub-chauffeur. Getting Mary to and from some of her in-town practices is getting her some extra driving time in, a little bit of independence with the car, and helping us at the same time. Jeff spent a week in Calgary and without Margaret and her N it would have been impossible. Well, not impossible, it just would have taken a lot of coordination and rides with friends.

We’re at the semester end for Margaret and Lizzie which meant some extra study time, a rush to finish assignments and some scrambling to make volunteer hours. Margaret has been working on her capstone project, putting in a good amount of work over the Christmas break, and some fine tuning in the first weeks of January. Her presentation went very well, and the Capstone Fair this week had her displaying her sketchbooks, watercolours and her main project for the oodles of students and parents that came to see what the grade 12s had achieved. There are some pretty talented individuals in her peer group. Some are musicians, artists, scientists and inventors in the making!

Mary is finding her basketball legs and in the process has also found her way to being taller than me and closing on her Dad. She’s mastering 3-point shots, having earned a little bit of celebrity in her last league game by shooting 18 of their 21 points in the form of 3-pointers. Lizzie tells me there is a Mary fan club brewing. Oh dear.

In other news, Margaret is weighing her options with university picks having been accepted to Lethbridge Arts and Science programs and also to the U of Calgary English program. We’re crossing our fingers for the Calgary science program as well and hope to hear next week when her 1st semester grades make it into their hands. She needs some pretty high marks there and we’re not sure they’re high enough. She is keen on Lethbridge though and has been offered a couple of internships there. Some tough decisions ahead for her! Now I just need to light the fire to get some scholarships going.

Lizzie is doing well and despite a disappointment in not making the top team in Cranbrook, her volleyball team seems to be finding its legs and practices have finally become engaging. Her coach wants to have her be a “swiss army knife” player which means she is working on her skills as a setter and right side so she can sub in anywhere. Not a bad spot really if it gets her more court time – this is the first year that fair play goes out the window…its all about what you can do now. We are looking forward to seeing this team on the court…we’re shut out of practices so I don’t get to see very much of what happens in training.

Not much else to report. We’re not seeing much snow at the moment, so skiing hasn’t been a thing – Jeff’s been traveling with Mary (our 2 primary skiers). Lizzie took one trip up to the hill with her friends but the day was cut short when one of them (not Lizzie – shocker) got hit by the chair lift and suffered a concussion. Not a great start to the season!

Well, how the heck that snuck up on us, I’ll never know. It’s something of a mystery how time speeds up as you age. Days, weeks, months and years disappear behind you and without this blog and a healthy dose of B12 I might not remember a thing. Some of that is just being busy, not complaining there, just observing. And seriously, everybody is busy. Seems as though that is the new normal and I’d love to find a way to slow down. Stop to watch the snow fall. Jeff bought me a magazine for Christmas that he thought was about Folklore. It was actually about Folklife and the slowing down. It was full of people telling their stories of ditching it all to live an alternative life. To not follow the usual path. Surprise, it is written and produced by someone on Gabriola Island. Not following the usual path is precisely what I set out to do 20 years ago and continue to work at. I have never been a fan of the punching and out kind of life. Jeff is now questioning his sanity – wondering whether I will steal away in the night – pack up my hairy knickers to go live with the fairies. A life less encumbered is entirely too attractive when the busy tries to drag you down, but we are working on a dream here, so the life with less to do will have to wait. I think he’s safe for a while yet.

Despite the busy, Christmas is a nice time of year for slowing down. I realize that’s a contradiction; however, we indulge a little and make room for traditions and evenings by the fire and visits with family and friends. In the darkness of the evenings we work on the dream, imagine the possibilities and make plans.

This year, advent was a bit of a bust. I had many plans, but our busy daily schedule didn’t really cooperate and a last minute decision to drive to the coast put paid to two of our big advent days on the last weekend before Christmas. The girls and I usually spend an afternoon drinking tea and colouring together – taking a rare bit of time to be all together and relaxed, and another afternoon having a home spa day. We also didn’t get much baking done this year which was probably a good thing! BUT, just because advent is done, doesn’t mean we can’t still do those things, it just takes on a different flavour. This year, I will add a short trip to the hot tub as part of the spa experience. We have a foot bath, but really a bone warming soak in the hot tub will get us started a little bit better! And our colouring date and baking will happen, but maybe on a day down the road a bit.

As I sit, writing the blog, the snow is falling outside. I imagine it has been for hours now judging by the few inches that now cover the edges of the deck. Not giant fluffy flakes, but a finer mist that stealthily accumulates. It is not quite dawn here and I can hear the avalanche cannons on the ski hill, they’re all up and getting ready for their day. Purple and grey shadows mark the trees along the draw, and the chairs and other lawn ornaments that dot the front yardscape are slowly disappearing into the white. Out the back it is our familiar mound of dirt, waiting until spring to be smoothed into a gentle slope, and a sea of white against the the treeline and behind that, the mountains. I enjoy the view from my dining room in any direction. I could sit here and write and drink my coffee for hours.

Back to Christmas!

Mary performed in her first concert with the school band. It was not a Christmas concert, and in the end I forget the name they gave it, but she is playing the trumpet which is a long way from the piano or the guitar. She was pretty good and her class put on a good show – looking quite grown up in their dress blacks. There were of course, memories of the concerts from the Fine Arts School in Langley and a dismayed Margaret had a hard time listening to the strangled geese that made up the winds section. It was thoroughly enjoyable though and another opportunity for us to take a moment to watch the snow fall.

Advent gave us the opportunity to have a bit of fun with food and drink. There is a tradition of red and green food, which this year was made up of both red and green pasta, meat balls, marinara, and Caesar salad. Jeff missed this one while he was away in Calgary in early December.

And fancy hot chocolate, completed with marshmallows shaped like snowmen and chocolate stirring spoons!

We also managed to keep up our tradition of making gingerbread houses and after a good hunt for all of the pieces of the template, we set about building the sugary masterpieces! Lizzie, breaking from the norm, decided to design her house from scratch this year, adding stained glass windows to hers and a candle to light it from the inside. At the end of it all, we’d missed one of Lizzie’s roof panels and in trying to fix it, we ended up with what looked like a roof that collapsed from snow load. Kind of fitting for our part of the world!

Tree hunting was as much fun as ever with a long hike to find the tree that sang to us. Not sure this one sang to everyone, but we do love it. The experience of slogging through deep snow, Max along for the walk of course, a swede saw and a gaggle of Thorpes. Mary was out at a basketball tournament for the day, so Jeff and Lizzie went out on reconnaissance to see if they could pre-pick a tree. By the time Mary would get home, it would be late afternoon, with not a lot of daylight left for choosing a tree. All good though, we were not going far so tree hunting would be less of a day long affair this year. After choosing the winner and before getting on with cutting, someone started a snowball fight. (my money is on Mary). They knew better than to throw snowballs at me, but Jeff is fair game.

Just a week to go before Christmas as we were finally getting down to shopping. We (or I) had had a bit of bad luck at the end of November had had to have a credit card replaced. While trying to buy a gift for one of the girls, my card was compromised and long story short, it set off a cascade of issues with using either of my credit cards for anything but groceries, fully hamstringing my efforts to get ahead of Christmas. It took a few weeks of sorting (and in all honesty I don’t think its all fixed yet), but we decided a trip to Lethbridge to try to get it done was the way to go. Off to Lethbridge we went, with lists in hand. A very long day, and I’ll say 80% success. The rest would have to wait until we got to the coast.

Last year we did a whirlwind trip in and out of Vancouver to visit family. The Thorpe/Monk gathering, if at all possible, is a must attend event and this year, we decided to watch the weather and go anyway. In keeping with the theme of time passing quickly, these gatherings are gaining importance to us. It is an opportunity to be present, laugh heartily, eat much, be merry and again, watch the snow fall. Jeff will attest to the fact that as much as I love the visit, the process of getting there and back is a stressful one. Roads are icy, weather can be bad, and it can take an eternity (or what feels like an eternity sometimes) to make that drive. But it is always worth it.

On our way to the coast this time, we arranged for a stop with some dear friends, George and Inger. This is a visit that was long overdue and for no better excuse than when you point the nose of your vehicle in the direction of Vancouver, you seldom stop unless it is for gas or to address food/water/washrooms. George and Inger moved back to Grand Forks a few years ago into a lovely little house that has lived longer than us all, and right on the path for us. Literally a few blocks off the highway and nearly in the middle of the journey so the perfect opportunity to break and spend a moment stretching legs, sipping tea and reminiscing. Jeff of course knew Inger growing up, but I only had the pleasure of meeting Inger and later George, years ago when they were visiting Roy and Jean, and nearly straight away, Inger and I starting playing scrabble together on-line. We have had a steady two games running for many years now and it is a bit of a beacon…if our game goes quiet, its time to send a message. Inger is very reliable though, and I have yet to call out the guard to see how she and George are doing.

Our visit consisted of a romp in the yard for Gus and Max, some lovely cookies, warm soothing tea, good conversation and some music! Margaret, Lizzie, Inger and George all took their turns at the piano entertaining us with their favourite tunes. The visit ended too soon, but we had hours ahead still and sketchy roads.

Back home again, we had a couple of days to get our ducks in a row, get some things wrapped and groceries in the fridge so we could get on with making some merry of our own. Christmas eve came fast, and this year Jeff and Mom took on the task of making the tourtiere. It was not a hard sell for me to pass the torch there. They did a marvelous job, with little instruction or intervention from me. It somehow tasted better for not having had a hand in it. We had a wonderful evening although the days of travel I think had worn us down a bit. After watching a Christmas Story, we called it a night and headed for bed. Marci and Bryan would visit Christmas Day, making the journey from Airdrie to stay the night and celebrate mom’s 77th birthday with her the next morning.

Mom had done us the great favour of heaving our 9 kilo turkey out of the freezer before we returned home from the coast, so he had been defrosting in a cooler for 4 days. Perfectly in time to be ready to go on the rotisserie. I trussed him up, we set up the rotisserie and we were off to the races. Sides were being made for dinner, and I was on to making the stuffing. Used to barely watching the BBQ, we went about other things, visiting, eating the plethora of food that Marci had brought for snacking, playing monopoly, generally ignoring our responsibilities. A lovely day all told. Until we checked the turkey. Turns out there is a point where our rotisserie taps out. It appears that is somewhere around 9 kilos. In my defense, I don’t think we have been too far away from that in past years, but maybe the motor is aging (like us all!) or we just took it a few grams too far. Either way, we were met with a half-turn and one side decidedly darker (ahem, burnt). While Jeff troubleshooted the not turning rotisserie, I set about trying to find the roasting pan, knowing that this would end in the turkey being cooked in the oven. Good thing it was already preheated for the stuffing, and I had a spare oven to continue on with the making and warming of sides! It wouldn’t be Christmas if a fuse didn’t get blown, a fire didn’t get started somewhere or some other calamity didn’t happen. Our Christmas memories are littered with “remember the year when…?”

Benny (nee Bentley) was a perfect gentleman for the whole visit once we removed all the tantalizing distractions. He is a large lovable cow of a dog and he and Max thoroughly enjoyed their visit, getting in a good amount of play time before settling down inside. James spent the two days nestled in Jeff’s socks in the closet, but otherwise was unscathed. He was definitely cautious for a few hours after the Carver’s made their exist, never sure that Benny was truly gone. We had another great visit under our belts, rounding out the holidays with memories from both sides of the family.

January is coming fast and with it a return to reality. Mary and Lizzie are both playing volleyball, but in different cities. Mary is on the 14U Fernie team and Lizzie is one again playing on the 16U Cranbrook team. We have a shoulder season of basketball to navigate and the season start up for both volleyball teams with tournaments and practices littering the schedule. Jeff has taken on the acting manager role for Teck after his boss left for greener pastures. We’re not sure what that means on our day to day, but most definitely a little more time at his desk. Margaret is taking her driver’s exam on January 6th and we are looking forward to seeing her be able to stretch her wings a bit. She will also likely look for a part time job in the new year so she can enjoy a bit more pocket money and pay for some gas!

Hopefully we’ll have an evening or two by the fire to watch the snow fall in between!

November has been an eventful month. We saw snow start falling at the end of October, and well it hasn’t really stopped. Our usual pattern of weather has some ups and downs this time of year, with a few warm days that melt away anything that has lingered on the ground, but not this year. We are in it now and won’t see the ground until April or May I suspect.

Jeff and Mary are playing hooky today and joining the throngs who have arrived in town to take in opening day at Mt. Fernie. I have been told it is “epic” and they are having a blast. Lizzie and Margaret are at school with the other unlucky kids who didn’t blow off the day for skiing. Lizzie, because she misses too many days for volleyball, and Margaret because she has had quite a few sick days of late and needs to catch up a bit.

On the indoor side of things, Lizzie’s volleyball team extended their winning streak to include the top spot in the East Kootenays and then keeping that momentum by taking the gold medal at the Junior Provincial Championships in Surrey. They lost their first game to a tough team from Salmon Arm, but then rallied to go undefeated for the rest of the tournament. They earned themselves the championship and the team sportsmanship award that is decided by votes from the other participating teams. A fantastic result for the season…now onto club volleyball! Tryouts are this weekend for both Mary and Lizzie. Fingers crossed they both make their Fernie-based teams. Lizzie, made quite an impression last year in Cranbrook and has been invited by her coach to play again there – a nice ego bump for her and a good opportunity to train and play with another great group of girls if Fernie doesn’t work out. Our first choice is playing close to home and reducing our travel, but she’d love to play on either team.

Last year I joined the Fernie Volleyball Club Board of Directors, just as a member at large, but it was a good opportunity to give back to an organization that does a ton for youth in the area, and introduced Lizzie to a sport she instantly fell in love with. This year, I am sitting as president and hopefully will do the role justice. There were some rolled eyes in the house when that was announced, if only because I seem to be constantly lacking for time. There’s a good group on the board though, and all willing doers. They’re also a lot of fun and don’t take things too seriously so meetings tend to be enjoyable and the work is rewarding.

Mary has also earned a spot on the Bantam basketball team for Fernie and her season will overlap a bit with volleyball. January and February are shaping up to be pretty busy around our house! At least December will be a bit of a break!

While we were in Surrey chasing volleyballs, I gratefully camped at Mike and Chrissy’s house and might have been the first to stay in their newly minted guest room. Very comfortable accommodations and they were lovely allowing me to come and go at all hours while I trying to manage Lizzie through her tournament while eking out a few hours of work at the same time. I also managed to get a couple of visits in with some old friends. Waaay back, when Margaret was a baby, I went to a new mom’s drop-in East Van. I met an incredible group of women who have stayed together all these years. We are all now looking at our babies graduating high school! A long overdue dinner out, loads of laughs and reminiscing. Wish I still lived close enough to join every night out. And a great thanks to Lizzie, who graciously told me to go see my friends when it was clear I would miss their gold medal match. I didn’t miss it in the end, thanks to the live-streaming I got to watch it as I walked home from dinner. I just missed giving her a hug and congratulations in the moment.

With the snow flying early this year and hot on the heels of an unusually wet patch, we didn’t quite get to moving all that dirt around. We still have half a hill behind the house, and a giant one at the back. Silver lining (or white lining?), we have inadvertently created our own sledding hill and the girls are already making good use of it.

Never a dull moment, we had a bit of unexpected trouble with the Armada when the ice and snow arrived. Definitely not a good way to start the winter! A month or so ago, I had Nissan check out the air suspension because we figured it was starting to fail. They reset the airbags, avoiding a costly repair on top of the costly repair I was in for (the armada is showing its age and the abuse it endured last year) and no sooner had we got it home, but they deflated again. I was sitting pretty squat at the back and looking something like one of those Mexican lowrider cars where the front end bounces down the highway. It made driving a bit squirrelly and it also made me think my new snow tires from last year were already done. We feared the worst, but Jeff, looking for a less complicated and inexpensive fix to replacing the rear suspension and/or tires, did some research and ordered a $100 level sensor that looked easy enough to replace and could be the culprit. Not exactly an easy fix in the end, but it did the trick and my back end no longer droops…on the truck that is. I am also not swerving wildly on the ice. Also not me. Bonus.

I amongst volleyball and snowy adventures, we kicked off the season with some Christmas Baking and that much awaited screening of White Christmas! As is tradition, we made Ringham Christmas cakes, made some cookies to have something sweet to eat and make the house smell yummy, and settled in for our movie. During the last scene they reveal the snow falling behind the set, and as if on queue, we looked out our own window to see giant fluffy flakes flying again. Cheesy and wonderful, just how we like it!

Tradition in our house is to watch White Christmas on the first snow fall of the year. When we lived in Langley, this was a challenge, since snow usually felt in the form of melted snow so you had to make due. Here, snow can arrive anytime so you have to be ready. Jeff, preparing, has ordered a 4K version of White Christmas that has yet to arrive…the snow, however, had other plans! October 31st we saw flakes falling, just in time for Halloween.

It has been cold, and our lessons learned from previous years is that you cannot leave your pumpkins out or they become frozen and useless. The carving must happen a day or two before and they have to live in your house until it is time! As it was, the pumpkins were not the greatest this year – I ended up bringing some back from Lethbridge a few days earlier, and even one of those rotted before we got to carving. Sooo…loving the idea of throwing a bit of a family party, we did just that. Working between volleyball practices and driving lessons, we squeezed in a bit of monster mash to liven things up.

The end result was a pretty good batch of pumpkins and a lot of roasted pumpkin seeds!

Being that we live in the middle of a field on the outskirts of the city, it was unlikely that we would have any treaters showing up at our door. They would have to brave the long dark driveway first and take a chance that the pumpkins on the porch were for real. I still was hopeful though and having not shaken the need to buy a thousand pieces of candy (for anyone who can remember the John Street alley era of our lives) I stocked up. I did show some restraint though and only bought enough to fill the canning pot come witches cauldron that sits by the door each year.

There was much “aw mom”-ing as the sympathy for me and my love of Halloween grew. On the night, not a one showed at our door, but we had some fun anyway! Margaret went off for a sleepover at a friends house in Bayne’s Lake, Lizzie went to a party with some of her friends with a bit of trick or treating on the side, and Mary teamed up with her buddy Bode to clean up in town. Jeff and I ferried to and from and in between, and watched our favorite Halloween movie, Sleepy Hollow. I, as is tradition, watched a portion of this movie while napping next to him on the couch.

In the realm of things not Halloween, we have installed our second-hand hot tub, acquired in the last couple of weeks and from our old land lords in Galloway. After some fenagling and some heave-ho from our work crew (Margaret, Mary, me and Jeff) we got it moved onto the patio. It took a few more days of set up and water testing to get it going, but we now have a working hot tub, and the family meetings can resume! Still working out the kinks on the in’s and out’s since Grandma’s bathroom doubles as the hot tub shower, but so far it’s not too bad. We can also get at the master bath through the patio door, so we are using that if the other is occupied.

School volleyball is wrapping up, and Mary and her team placed third in the East Kootenay tournament that happened this weekend. Lizzie’s team still goes undefeated, high pressure there, and their East Kootenay tournament is next weekend. They are also slated to take to the berth in the Junior Championships happening in two weeks in Surrey. Lizzie and I will be traveling to that, whipping in and out of town again.

We are settling into the idea winter now, refocusing on catching up on the chores that have been left while we try to get the house settled. Jeff did a tour of the draw to find all the burdock and lit it up a day or two ago in the front yard. We have some equipment to get moved and covered and have some landscaping to try to get done before the ground starts to freeze. There are piles of dirt destined for landscaping that may just remain until the spring if we don’t get a stretch of dry weather in the next couple of weeks. We’ve moved half of the mound behind the house and smoothed it out, but there is half remaining and another great mound at the back of the property that needs to be moved to the front of the house to level out the ground there. The septic field is also a series of piles, and we have some hazard marking to do so we know where things are when the land is a sea of white! We have loads of gravel to come to smooth out the parking area, but with the snow yesterday, the folks at the gravel pit declined. That will change hopefully with a warm patch, we are above zero today and no rain in the forecast. It will be a work day outside.

It’s been a tumultuous few weeks since we moved in, buried in boxes and getting re-acquainted with life in Fernie. It’s not that we haven’t been here all along, but living here again has been a stress reliever that I knew was coming, but didn’t quite realize how much. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still surrounded by stuff we don’t quite know what to do with, and there are kinks that need to be worked out, but man, it is pretty nice to be back to a 5-minute commute to anywhere and we are making quick work of turning this back into a home.

The finishing of the house is coming along (the builders still return periodically to fix things that aren’t quite as they should be) and Jeff has been working hard at smoothing our dirt piles, and finishing off the staining that has been delayed time and time again for other more pressing things (like life!). We are thoroughly enjoying the infinite space of our outside, having had our first fire-pit fire on Thanksgiving and spending more than a few minutes gazing at the sky when the Northern Lights graced us for an evening.

The girls have settled back into no-school-bus (yay!) life and are riding their bikes gladly having been denied for the last year and a bit. This will be short-lived I imagine as our days are cooling rapidly and more often than not, we are met with frost in the early morning. We’ve had a round of wet these past couple of days too, and I was faced with frozen doors on the truck. Time to break out the windshield cover and warm up the auto-start! There was snow on them thar hills this morning!

On the sadness side, we have had a tragic end to the chicken experiment. While I was away with Lizzie at a volleyball tournament in Kelowna a couple of weekends ago, Mary was attending her own volleyball tournament in Sparwood. She returned in the early evening to find her chickens alive and well, but when she went out an hour later to close up the coop, she was met with what I can only imagine looked like a horror movie. Three of her chickens lay dead outside the coop on the other side of the garden and two were missing. We have a fox that lives in the draw that is the likely culprit, and despite her immense sadness, Mary is practical and gets that the fox is just doing what a fox will do. She left the carcasses of the three for the fox to retrieve rather than having them wasted. She’s a good farmer already. Needless to say, we won’t dive into another batch of chickens until we’ve designed a fort knox style chicken coop, although Jeff seems to think that it would be a bad idea anyway given the size of the bears we are seeing on our cameras at night. Nothing will keep the bears out. They were producing beautiful little eggs (finally) and we and they were thoroughly enjoying their free-ranging in the garden. A too-short, but good life. RIP ladies.

With both Mary and Lizzie on volleyball our weeknights are filled with practices and league games, and for Lizzie, a travel schedule that rivals club season. We have been to Lethbridge, Calgary, Kelowna, and Red Deer so far. There are a couple more trips coming, but thankfully, this weekend is a home tournament hosted by Fernie. I might just get that painting finished on the exterior of the house! Mary’s team is doing well and she’s being moved around a bit for positions on her team, first as setter and then as power and now probably back to setter since she seems to have good hands for it. Lizzie is enjoying being back on her old team (mostly), but is seeing less court time than she’d like which is the way of grade 10 volleyball. Fair play rules end so you have to make the first string to really get to play. She’s working on it, but there is some pretty steep competition in Fernie. Her team is undefeated this season having taken the top spot in each of the tournaments they’ve attended. Loads of fun to watch. I’m hoping to get a bit more time to see Mary play since her games are more local, but so far that hasn’t worked out.

Thanksgiving brought the return of the rotisserie turkey! It has been almost 2 years since we fired up the BBQ for thanksgiving and boy did we miss it. The turkey, as usual, was done in record time and we were setting the table early. We had Mary’s friend Bode, and Margaret’s boyfriend Josh joining us this year, so we added a ham to the menu (Josh is allergic to Turkey – I can’t even imagine). All good, he survived dinner at our house and we all rolly-polied ourselves out the fire-pit to digest enough to make room for pie! Even mom made it down the wobbly rocks to join us. Mom and Mary slaved making pumpkin and apple pie for the event, and I snuck some ice-cream into the freezer since we weren’t 45 minutes away from the store anymore. So good to celebrate our first holiday and with friends over too.

Max is also a very happy dog these days, taking to lying out front in the leaves. He looks like a dead dog in this picture, but he’s just super relaxed and a bit old these days so napping is his pastime. He has taken to napping in unusual places in this house, not quite having found his routine yet. He’s moved away from the couch, but I did find him curled up on the armchair which I’m sure he shoehorned himself into.

Last night we took an evening off from work around the house and put a fire on. Jeff had tried it out another night while I was away and fussed as the living room filled with smoke – had to work out the kinks there too, but this was my first fire. How lovely to get cozy in an almost clean living room.

Next up – Time to bust out the Halloween decorations. With all those leaves and frosty/foggy mornings outside it’s past due!

We’ve been with our builder now for just over a year and now we’re breaking up. It is amicable, and they will be missed, but we agree – it is time. How ever will we fill our nights and days without a laundry list of decisions and problems to solve? I’m hoping that I will be languishing in a bath or hanging out just staring at the chickens.

I had hoped that this house reveal post would be full of designer ad type photos and could showcase how amazing it all looks. Instead, we are buried in boxes and there is still some construction happening (see the Tyvex wrap on the porch posts) while we work out the kinks of things that got delivered late, doors that need a tweak and some painting corrections. They have just finished the pantry shelving, so I can now move all the boxes that are littering the entry way to where they truly belong and make the decisions for what goes where between there and the kitchen. We are also short a library shelf, but that is a little way down the road and requires the local smithy to fashion us some ironwork, and the parts that arrived broken for our wood stove are still in transit somewhere between Germany and Fernie. It’s all good though, just a bit chaotic and mildly (ha!) stressful. As you can see from this photo, I have less hair and a lot more of it is grey. We have been in for a week now, and I haven’t used my tub yet…that will come!

The kitchen is my favourite place in the house, despite it not having a bathtub. I am learning to love the induction cooktop, but have fallen deeply in love with the shiny perfection of our double-oven. The cabinets, open shelving and countertops are exactly what should be in this house and it all fits. We almost don’t stumble over each other and the layout appears to be working after cooking just a couple of meals with all of us around. (the post-it notes all over the doors are not damage, they are location devices for the family so I don’t have to tell them where everything is…they can READ)

We have almost found the dining room and have managed to get us all sitting around it a few times now. The debris is finding its way out the door or to where it belongs slowly. We’ve also purged a bit of furniture and have discovered that our stay-over blow up pull-out couch has suffered a fatal blow somewhere between Jaffray and Fernie. The frame is bent and now the pull out has dropped too low to pull out. It will find its way to the dump sadly since there’s no repairing it and we’ll have to come up with a plan B for visitors!

For those of you who remember our John Street house, we kept a few mementos from there and have packed them around for the last ??! years hoping to find another use for them. Some of them have a home now. We repurposed the glass knobs from the old doors and our builder turned them into knobs on the louvered closet doors in this house. They’re brilliant. (the knobs and the builders, of course)

We have loads of sorting to do to get to the bottom of all these boxes and continue to take loads of ‘why do we have this anyway” treasures to the re-use-it down the road. We put our foot down with Mom and told her to get rid of a pile of stuff. She took us a bit too seriously I think. (just kidding this picture was taken before all her stuff arrived!) She’s nicely settled in now with a new bedframe and mattress and her usual creature comforts.

Ok, that’s it for now. I have boxes calling me and I’m off to Kelowna for volleyball with Liz this weekend so much will be waiting for me when I get back.

How on earth did we blow through August?

Summer is short around here, and this year, it feels like we had a couple of weeks of blistering heat wave and that was about it.

After a cold wet start, we finally saw some growth out of the garden, reaping a bit of what we sowed in the form of chard and some beets, and watching patiently as the rhubarb blumed and the onions and garlic worked hard to fill out underground. So did the brussels sprouts, that had us a bit worried early on, but then finally found their roots and started to show us that they knew what they were doing. And the carrots in all their tiny glory were a mass of tops that should have been thinned, but I like the babies. Probably the only time I’ll eat babies.

We had some more crazy weather that first week of August with a wicked perfect storm of storms converging overhead. A good dose of thunder, lightening, heavy rain, and hail preceded some gutsy wind that only served to push the next storm our way. We stood on the porch for a good long while watching, at least until the thunder and lightening sounded like it was leaving us and wind picked up enough to make us go inside. Max, still not a fan, was nowhere to be found.

I managed to take an almost week off work to take the girls to the cabin for a second time this summer. We packed all our gear and left Jeff in charge of the dogs, chickens and Grandma. Grandma is easy, the dogs are needy, and the chickens like to spice things up by escaping. A good time was had (by the chickens) holding the fort while we were having our own good time on the coast.

The drive, as always, is pretty uneventful. I tend to point the nose of the truck in the right direction, put on some music I like, and just go. It’s surprising how fast the hours and kms tick by. We stopped a few times for drinks and snacks, and eventually something that looked like dinner in Hope. We were anxious to get to our destination. Papa’s is a lovely place to re-group before we pack up again to go to the cabin. There’s always a welcome smile, a hug, and a glass of something waiting. This time, we were arriving to an event being hosted by cousin Jacob with all of his friends partaking in the Beer Olympics. There were games. You had to pick a country. But that’s probably where the similarity ended. After observing a few minutes of frivolity, I escaped to take care of cabin provisioning, while the girls visited and spent some time relaxing from their long, hard car trip (ahem). I did get Margaret to drive for a bit, but the weather wasn’t the greatest so I didn’t push that too hard. I’m also a control freak, so there would be no rest if someone with an L is driving. I got back to Papa’s just in time for the first act to start. Jacob had a couple of friends performing as part of the evening and Papa, Mary and I sat and watched the show from the deck above. Loads of fun and a properly decent performance. Honestly the first concert I’ve been to in ?? years…. (that’s double-digits)

Lucky for us we had a morning and a bit of an afternoon ahead of us the next day to sneak in some errands. On our list was a long overdue visit to a dear lady that we miss so very much. We had a nice chat, a few minutes to reflect and left her a bouquet to cheer us and her.

After much anticipation we packed (like we were moving in) and climbed on Papa’s boat. Lizzie and Mary took their usual places on the bow, Margaret I think might have decided she was too old? (nah), but decided to stay on the back in the fresh air there instead. We were timing our trip to meet up with Kristi, Keith, Shelby and Scotty for the week, our good fortune that a missed opportunity to have them in Fernie worked out and we were able to switch things up for another trip to the coast. Well worth the effort, as always, and the week of almost sunny, almost warm/hot weather was just fine. We soaked up as much time as we could visiting and laying about, the girls taking advantage of some tubing and wake surfing (Thanks Keith and Mike!), and evenings of man hunt. The East Langley Thorpes made a guest appearance early in our week, staying over for just a night so we could squeeze in a proper visit all together. We were missing Isabel just then, but she came up at the end of the week, giving us a couple of days with just us girls.

Home to Papa’s at the end of the week and a whirlwind of trying to take care of some more house-related errands, which gave us a bit of time to hang out with Auntie Julie! We had a nice afternoon chatting while she helped me try to pick out fixtures (I failed), but it was fun and we wound up our afternoon with an early dinner, all of us packed into a booth. We so often just blow in and out of town, and I miss the opportunity to see all the people. I miss the evenings sitting on her couch talking about everything and nothing. We have plans to get her to Fernie next year and I do hope we manage it…I’ve got a sofa.

So quickly the week ended and we were back in the throws of house building and getting ourselves ready to move and the girls back to school. So much to report there, but I’ll leave off this post with a celebration.

Margaret turned 17 at the end of August! She spent the day hanging out with her friends, taking them for lunch to celebrate, and then coming home to her birthday dinner of choice…burgers and fries (what else?!) In the end her birthday lasted about 3 days for all the scheduling hiccups so cake actually occurred before the birthday dinner on the calendar. We took a trip to Lethbridge to do some birthday/back to school shopping over the Labour Day weekend which is always a good time, and the girls spent some fun-time picking out supplies to round out what we had left from last year. I love back to school…it’s all I could do not to buy MYSELF school supplies.