Landscape artist!

A. spent time in the Rockies recently watercolour painting on canvas. She painted lake scenes, mountains, as well as pictures of bees, dragonflies and butterflies.

Sam also painted while we we relaxed by the lakes :)

swimming like a fish

A has spent a lot of time swimming this Summer - she LOVES it!

New friends...

Meeting Pocket gophers in Banff National Park....

First fish!

A. with her first 'catch' in Spray Lakes Provincial Park. She had fun learning to fish with Daddy last week :)

Want to be my neighbour?

www.mls.ca

and then:

MLS number: E3154430

flower update....

The grass around my flower tubs needs cutting (remember this is where I sowed the new grass seed???) but Lloyd didn't like to cut it because the lilies that popped through were about to flower and a few little Shasta Daisies also popped through and he knows they are my favourites so he left them to flower :) He also noticed two Hostas popping up so he left them for me to move which I haven't gotten around to yet - so it looks messy around my tubs yes, but you can see the basic effect of the tubs and the apple tree (that has no apples this year lol). This is at the end of our driveway kind of and greets you as you turn into our acreage.

My papery sunshine...

I can't remember what this flower is apart from they labeled it as a type of false sunflower (there are many different kinds of flase sunflowers though) and I have fallen in love with this one! The flowers are gorgeous from beginning to end - the petals are papery and remind me of pineapples to begin with! then they slowly open to look like sunflowers and they last for AGES! And they bloom all summer long! Just gorgeous and it seems to do so well even when you forget to water ot for ages! STUNNING :) The different stages of flower look gorgeous together :)

Pink lily....

Sammy's Sunflower

Sam grew this sunflower from a seed with Lloyd in a pot. We replanted it in the front flower bed as soon as we could and it did really well until one storm when it split half way up the stem. It had a cane supporting it but the storm had been too much for the cane.

We thought it was going to die but we were so sad and we tried to keep it alive despite the damage to the stem - there was literally just threads of stem keeping it alive but the sunflower kept going and shockingly it kept going and it grew a head and flowered! It didn't get very tall and the flower didn't get very big - all the leaves died off but it STILL flowered and Sam is sooooooo happy :) He LOVES his flower - as sad and pathetic as it looks :)

I haven't dared touch any f the thistles or weeds around his sunflower lately for fear of knocking the poor thing and knocking the flower! None of our other sunflowers have flowered as early - they won't flower for at least another month yet!

Baseball with the siblings

Another movie clip by Chris

Thank you Val!

The rest of our afternoon was spent sunning ourselves on Vals porch, the children playing in their pool, chatting, laughing, eating, drinking and generally having a lovely afternoon! K (Vals DD) and I both agreed that Val is getting extremely spoiled in her old in her old age (lol at the old age)!!! AND senile (she has started going to home depot for FUN when she gets time to herself!!!!!!)

TOO FUNNY!

Anyway - we had a lovely afternoon so thank you Val and everyone over at the funny farm ;)

I'm still a little hurt that Abby likes your place better than mine!! ;)

Fun at the farm!!!

Laurie, Sam and Abby were really lucky and got to go and meet Vals animals this afternoon - she has two donkeys and two sheep. It's been ages since we've seen them - I'm not even sure if we've seen the donkeys - I know we've seen the sheep before though....my memory is hopeless!

The children got to feed the animals 'horse crunch' which they obviously LOVED and they kept coming back for more!!!

The black sheep 'pepper' or 'shadow' was more shy and stayed back a lot more - probably wise with my three around ;) I think my three were more nervous of gentle giant Zorro than they were of the other animals!

There must always, always be a Zorro....

This is Sam with Vals dog Zorro...I just HAD to get a picture of this giant teddy bear dog with Sam. Isn't he just a gorgeous dog? I said to my crew that we MUST rent the Beethoven dvd series of movies so they can laugh about the drool factor and St Bernard dogs! They are great movies :) Zorro is so gorgeous - he was lying across the front step when we arrived and refused to get up for us so we all just had to step across him and he is NOT small! ;)

Lightning over Edmonton...

A colleague of Lloyds took these pictures during the storm earlier this week over Edmonton. The storm didn't come out as far as us but we could watch it from our bedroom window and could see all of the lightning. We couldn't hear any thunder but the all the lightning was amazing to watch - it didn't even rain here! Chris actually cycled home from his friends durng it and kept phoning us because he couldnt believe that it wasn't at our house and he was worried he wouldn't make it home in time but we kept saying it wasn't here and we didn't think it was coming here! Aren't these pictures great?

Playing with the children....

Davidson (or Harley as Lloyd is calling him already lol) seems to LOVE playing with the children :) he runs about and follows them and chases apples and follows trails of food. He is like a puppy compared to Charlie who is so much slower lol! Susie had him walking through the hoop again and again and he seemed to like that too :)