Saying goodbye to Cairo......

Our cat Cairo died on Thursday. We 'adopted' Cairo when we bought our house, and he had become a much loved family member. Such a loving cat - he would never hurt anyone and always accepted any animal we brought into his life - cuddling up with Amber and Rosie on the porch - accepting Jasper and Grayson into his life and sharing his home and beds with them....and even cuddling up with Charlie the pig or in the chicken house at times over the years!!! He loved nothing better than to snuggle with you on the porch!!!

We buried Cairo on Thursday evening, down by the pond - one of Cairo's favourite places to spend time on a Summer evening.

I have only just been able to post about Cairo, because the children had friends staying here and I didn't want to upset them while their friends were here staying - and then Laurence went to stay at his friends house and I planned to tell him when he came home - but he has been there three nights now so we eventually had to tell them all and I ended up having to tell him over the phone :( so at least he now knows.....I just didn't want to wait any longer in case he heard another way....with the children chatting with their friends over the computer these days I wanted to be sure he heard from me and not someone else....and the children here were bound to notice they hadn't seen Cairo...so we had to tell them.

Anyway - they all now know. We have lost two cats this Summer :( At least with cairo we know what happened and we have been able to say goodbye. We will never know what happened to Jasper....

Raspberry picking...

Our fields are filled with wild raspberry bushes and last night we went for a walk and the children picked a load of them as we walked.....the berries are only little compared to the kind you can grow or buy, but they still love to pick and eat them :) YUM!!!! :)
This Summer will be known as the summer of the thumbs up sign I think - Susie does it in almost every picture this Summer :) it's her thang lol!!! ;) funny girl :) so dorky ;)

Berries...

Beautiful summer colour....

Sams friends...

Sam's little buddies are just EVERYWHERE this year....you can't walk without a sea of them jumping out of your way...it is just sooooo DRY here. The bugs are destroying all the crops for the farmers :(

There is now barely any water in our pond at all. Alberta is cattle country and that is being cut by a third at least because farmers are getting rid of their cattle because they can't afford to feed them now because the hay has not grown. Hay will now be sooooo expensive this year that they can't afford to feed their cattle. The government are stepping in with financial aid for cattle farmers but they say by the end of September they are going to have to help the agricultural sector too because nothing grew!!!

We had a frost two nights ago and all our peas got hit - our potato tops look hard hit too - not sure if it will have effected the actual potatoes but the tops are all damaged :( So the only two things that grew anyway are now ruined probably. It was really a bad year - and last year we did soooooooo well! We finally have some tomatoes growing but they are still green. No more frosts for a while please!!!

What a crappy year for growing!!!

Slip and Slide fun....

Laurence had a friend sleep over on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Then another friend came over on Thursday for the day. His Mom is my friend Samantha!!! Val came over on Thursday too, as she knows Samantha!! Val brought her 3 too and we had great fun outside on the slip and slide!!!! I even went down the slip and slide too - it is soooo much fun and I went down several times even head first on my tummy!!! (I'm paying for that now though lol as I ache a LOT)!!!!

The boys did several science experiments up on the workshop roof and were also up climbing trees - not sure Samantha could quite believe her eyes ;) I think her boys have lead rather sheltered city lives ;)

Vals Daughter J stayed here and slept over as she was coming to a workshop with Susannah on Friday anyway - so Thursday evening we stayed outside until dark and had S'mores and snakes on a stick and played charades by the fire......it was a fun day but very tiring :) and yes I STILL ache sooo much from the slip and slide and have grass burns but even the kids were complaining that they ached and had grass burns too so I am not the only one hahahahaha - but it was worth it as it is sooooo much FUN!!! :)

I am hoping to get some more pictures from Thursday from Val as she took more pictures than I did!

What's on my kitchen island today????

On Thursday Lloyd went to help Laurence feed the turkeys and chickens and came back with 4 in one of my hive boxes because they were being trampled and attacked by the larger chickens. They were not looking good and couldn't access the water at all because of the bigger chickens.

We had them on the island and gave them food and water and within and hour or two they were doing much better. We put them in the garage over night and made sure they had plenty of food and water and then Friday night they went back over and rejoined the other chickens.

Christie phoned while they were on the island and Lloyd was cooking dinner at the time and she could hear the chickens and was making jokes about how the chickens were supposed to be dead before you cook them ;)

Many Offerings....

I planted sunflower seeds everywhere this year - and NONE of them grew!!!

However - our wonderful, clever little birds also happily 'planted' sunflower seeds for us, and they have sprouted all over the place! Amongst them, this BEAUTY popped up way down where the workmen put all the earth that they dug up from the basement last year!! It has 19 flower heads on it - some aren't flowering yet! The main top flower head has already finished flowering!! Isn't it GORGEOUS?????

I named it 'Many Offerings' after my wonderful friend Val - as Sunflowers always remind me of her, and that is the Native name she was given. I think it's actually the perfect name for this flower as with all those flower heads it will have soooo many seeds and offerings for the birds and squirrels AND for us to plant for next year!!! :)

A bit of a zoo.......

We've been looking after a friends collection of animals and plants for them and it's been quite the adventure.....the small chickens are smaller than the holes in the chicken wire and can get out easily...and the turkeys keep getting out too! We aren't sure how!!! It has been a bit of a turkey chase at times!!! I must admit it reminds me why we no longer keep chickens - they STINK!!!!! ;)

About a boy....

Lloyd played golf this afternoon and the plan was that when he was finished, he would call me and I would head round there and meet him in the bar and we would have dinner there.

It was sooooo funny waiting for him to call...like a teenaged girl waiting on a phone call from a boy. I was excited to hear from him and couldn't wait to get the call! It is so nice to have Northern Bear just around the corner - such a nice restaurant and bar so close yet for us to still be in the middle of the countryside and not even know it is there.

We had a lovely dinner there - amazing steak!! And the dessert was DELICIOUS!!! Yes I snapped a picture lol much to Lloyds dismay hahahaha but isn't it soooooo PRETTY????? ;) Then afterwards we walked back to our cars which were parked next to each other, and of course we were driving home separately and then it struck me that it all felt kind of surreal and 'naughty' - like we were a couple having an affair or something!!! Here we were at a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, leaving in separate cars.....

Hahahaha.....I liked it ;) it was funny!! But exciting hahahahaha :) Lloyd thought that was funny!!! :)

Anyway we both kind of like this new habit of going to our new 'local'.....it was lovely just sitting there chatting in such beautiful surroundings!! It really isn't any more expensive than anywhere else - there are two menus - the casual bar/ patio type menu with sandwiches/ pastas, quesadillas etc etc that we had last week and then the more formal dining room menu that we had tonight - both are wonderful!!! :) Try it!!! :)

Sand art at Pelican Point...

The campground had had a sand castle/ art contest on the beach....probably doesn't compare to Slave Lakes competition lol but I thought the baby and the guitar were very good anyway!! :)

More pics from Pelican Point.....

Buffalo Lake....

Our weekend plans were all totally changed - we were supposed to spend saturday in Red Deer, but we decided to go and get a new spare tyre after last weeks puncture - so we got that done on Saturday and were going to Red Deer on Sunday instead!! Then on Sunday night at 10:50pm there was a very loud explosion from outside and the house went dark. It was as if the electric pole had been struck by lightning but there was no storm in the area.

Lloyd spent hours trying to get hold of Fortis with no luck so we gave up until morning - just leaving a message on the automated service and hoping they got it! He had checked the power pole and the breaker was still up so it was fine - so we knew it wasn't us!! Everything in the house was fine - just no power! the thing about acreage life is that having no power also means NO WATER - as you need power to run the pumps from the well!!! So we can't flush toilets or get water from the taps!!! It was also +30c and we had no air conditioning (ok ok I don't expect sympathy from many of you hahahaha) but we have been used to air conditioning all summer so this was NOT good!

Anyway we decided NOT to go as far as Red Deer in case Fortis needed us to head back quickly! Chris was working at the golf course and at the acreage again so he couldn't come out with us again, but we didn't want to just stay home either - Summer really is sooooo short here and it was a holiday weekend and I didn't want to waste it!!! So we packed up a picnic and headed to Buffalo Lake to check out the beach that my friend Linda had been telling me about at the pool last week! She said that they go there quite often just for the evening because it's so close (an hour).

We were very impressed with this beach - the sand is groomed - there is no garbage - no yucky water - yes there is a bit of weed (I call it seaweed but I guess its lake weed lol but apart from that the water is clear - it is NOT like Miquelon which is YUCKY this year and last year the beach was covered in garbage and NASTY - this water didn't have bugs in it either!! Miquelon has all those little red bugs in it!! Ewwww!!

The camp ground has a store that sells food/ ice creams and has a grill that even does poutine etc!! They have two volleyball courts on the beach and two playgrounds. The boat launch seems great and then there is a shallow area next to the swimming area where you can rest your boat if you are just pulling up for a while! The water was lovely and warm!

Family bowling day...

Fun at the bowling alley...

Ok, so I feel like I can post about bowling on Saturday now....while the tragic storm blew through Camrose, we knew very little about it, because we were inside the bowling alley on Calgary Trail. It had been gorgeous and hot and sunny when we went inside. We were only in there a couple of hours!! We had a great time - C hris was working all day at two of his jobs, so couldn't come with us, but everyone else went.

As you can see, everyone was in high spirits (check out Susies face in these pics - I particularly like the last one hahahaha)