Quote for the Day.

Of those who say nothing,

Few are silent.

-Thomas Neill

I love this quote...it's very good.

Summer meals---Ideas Anyone??

Ever since summer started I've been at a loss for meals during the day. Normally of course, the kids eat at school. I don't know why I'm having trouble coming up with creative meals?! Maybe it's the heat!!
Anyway if you have any ideas for some yummy (and NUTRITIOUS!!) and economical summer breakfasts and lunches, please leave your ideas for me!! The kids will eat almost anything too, so that makes it easier. One thing that seems to happen is that we eat junk we wouldn't normally eat... so this isn't a healthy way to be doing things!
We try not to eat a lot of dairy...but some is okay.

It's been really hot here this past week. Today it's up to about 34*C--that's about 93 or 94*F -for my Americans blogging buddies that are reading this. By Friday we're supposed to be up to 40*C or 104*F!!


Thank goodness for the pool! I hope you're all having a great week. I'll be looking forward to hearing from you all with some good ideas!!!
thx!
☺

17 Years Ago Today!!

At this time 17 years ago today I was waking up in the apartment that my fiance and I would soon share together as our first home. My maid of honour was there with me. We got up and showered and headed off to the hairdresser for a wedding "doo" and makeup. The esthetician thought it would be a great idea to wax my eyebrows. I'd never had my eyebrows waxed and thought "sure why not?" Not a good idea! The skin above my eyelids was red almost the whole way down to my eyelashes... and not just a little bit red...they were RED! oops...great...the Godzilla bride with the red eyes..here we come!! We figured it would settle down by the time of the wedding...hmmm..... not to be. Oh well my moh came to the rescue... she plastered my eyes with eyeshadow to cover it. It ended up turning out okay. The other girls came over to the apartment and got ready with us.
The wedding was supposed to start at 2......at about 2:15 the phone rang and someone (I think it was my Dad) was calling to see where we were. Dad had forgotten or somehow didn't know that he was supposed to come pick me up. Anyway someone did come and pick us up and we got there just fine... albeit a half hour late! People told me afterward that they were starting to wonder if I had changed my mind and wasn't coming at all!! :) The wedding took place as planned and the rest is history.
We bought our first house 15 months (Oct/91) after getting married. It was a cute little 2 bedroom house with a huge flat yard. A great yard for little ones to play in!
We wanted to have children fairly soon after getting married. Sooo... Our first daughter, Lindsay, was born May 14, 1992, two months short of our second anniversary. When she 15 1/2 months old our second daughter Courtenay was born on August 29, 1993. That second bedroom was filling up! We were having a great time with our little girls and soon after Courtenay was born....well one year, we were expecting our third. Amanda was born on April 3, 1995. We now had 3 children, 3 and under, in our tiny little 2 bedroom home. It was beginning to get quite crowded, especially once we put Amanda into her own bed! The bedroom didn't have space for the 3 beds so we had a mattress under one bed that we pulled out at night for Amanda. We stayed in this little house until a month after Amanda's second birthday.
On June 20,1997 we moved from our little 850 square foot house to a 2400 square foot house!! Wow - we were lost in the expanse of it!! What a wonderful change this was. The 3 girls were so used to sleeping together in the same room that we kept them crammed in one bedroom for the first little bit until they got used to the new house. After a short while we moved them to separate rooms.
The following spring, on May 2,1998 our fourth and final baby was born. We called her Janelle. She was a tiny little peanut... weighing 6lbs 9 oz. Our kids ages at this point were Lindsay-6, 12 days after Janelle's birth, Courtenay 41/2, Amanda 3 and newborn Janelle. It was a busy but happy time for our family. It was like I'd brought home a living dolly for the girls to play with! They loved her!
I was also homeschooling the girls at this point. I had taught the first two kindergarten together the year that I was expecting Janelle. So we started them in grade one together while having a toddler and a 4 month old!! Wow!! I was busy! And very tired all the time. I didn't realize until some time later that I was very iron depleted! So my days were long.. but mostly happy ones! You have to know by this point that I love babies/children otherwise I wouldn't have had the four or homeschooled them. We lived in that house for 9 years. We moved to our present home last summer on July 3rd and again... a little bit bigger than the last house - to accommodate our growing family. We are no longer growing in number but instead- in stature!

We aren't planning any grand celebration today. We are having some friends over. Our wooden pool deck is in need of some work. We think that the people we bought the house from last summer just threw a coat of paint on everything so that it would look pretty and fresh for a quick sale. Now after a year of weathering the paint is peeling off the pool deck and it's a real mess! So Steve is bringing a pressure washer over to blow the rest of the paint off the deck so we can refinish it. After that we'll get the BBQ going with some chicken and burgers. I also plan to make some potato salad and some macaroni salad and probably a caesar or greek salad as well. Then for desert we'll have some of our fresh strawberries and ice cream.

Hope you're all having a great weekend.
:) ☺ ☻

Time for a Change.

I've had the same blog template since I started blogging in February of this year. So I've been playing around by trying out the different templates that blogger offers. There aren't really any that jump out at me and if you can adjust and change and add and subtract- I don't have the computer savvy that Leigh Ann does-haven't figured out how. Mind you----I haven't really put any effort into figuring it out either though. So you will likely see a few changes in template as I play around with them.
I could give some really creative excuses why I haven't been posting for awhile but I won't. Like I've heard some other blog friends say..."I started doing this for fun so don't want to feel guilty when I don't post for awhile". So that's why you haven't seen much of me lately! I don't want the kids looking at my back all summer!!! :o)

Last night we went strawberry picking. Between all of us we picked about 11 or 12 gallon buckets! I think they gave us a good deal on them... I didn't notice 'til after we left but we got over 50 pounds of fruit for $47! Today is when the work starts though! My friend Louise came along and picked berries with us. She's bringing the kids and coming over to "do" strawberries with me today. The plan is to just wash and freeze them. I think it's going to be a good day to be in the house-the forecast is for 33*C (91.4 F) today. It will probably get that hot or hotter in here today though because I took the blinds (livingroom) down awhile back to paint and haven't done the window sills yet so haven't gotten the blinds back up--MISTAKE!! It's Friday today so too late to do it this week. I was just saying to my daughter Courtenay that we HAVE TO finish painting next week and get the blinds back up!!

Have you ever had "swimmers itch"? I have it!!! Grrrr! Actually I have it very mildly. My two younger girls have it bad-especially Amanda. It's rather disgusting actually because it's a parasite from duck poop. The duck poops in the water...parasite leaves the poop goes into snails and then does something there. At this point it leaves them looking for the next host which is normally the duck... but if the human gets between the duck and the parasite... guess who becomes the host?!!?! Eeeeeew! (these photos are off the web, but they tell the story) The thought that there are parasites burrowed into my skin makes me shiver. But they say the body kill them off within a few hours... so I guess it's really not that big a deal. The really big deal though is the itch! I was just reading about it online. It says that you can get nausea and fever.... So THAT'S why Janelle was nauseous and had a fever last night! Actually she just got up a few minutes ago and still has a bit of a fever. Amanda seems to have more spots but hasn't had any symptoms except for severe itching....I see she's gotten a blister of infection on one of the spots...Anyway... to sum it all up-we won't be going back to that beach again! I think we'll just stick with swimming in the pool.

Well I'd better get moving here. I need to run over to Walmart for freezer bags for the strawberries.
Hope you're all having a great summer and are enjoying the nice weather.... Hey Peter I hope summer has found you in Scotland as it has here in BC!!!
I'll probably post the before and after pictures of the pool in the near future.
Have an AWESOME weekend!

YAY!! summer is here!!

Well summer is finally here!! The kids are now officially done school!! But the summer weather seems to have left..I'm sitting here freezing my toes off! I'm sure it will be back soon though!
I'm off to get our first summer day started! Have a great week!

Addendum to the previous post.. scroll down then come back to this one.

Amanda showing her fish to me, while Courtenay looks on.

This was a very exciting time for Amanda.. She caught her first fish ever!! She was really excited and wanted Dad to show them how to 'gut' a fish. So he got down on the ground with them and gutted it. I decided that if we're going to be catching fish then we should be eating them, otherwise it's a waste. So I put the fish into tinfoil with butter and seasoning salt and cooked it over the fire... It was actually pretty good. :) Not too long after eating we got everything together and into the van.
We left about 8 pm. As we're driving along the narrow little bush road, I hear Lindsay behind me asking if she can drive.... She's 15 and has never driven... but I hesitate... while thinking.. then said sure... I guess so... if Dad doesn't mind....So he said he didn't see why not... She COULDN'T believe it!!!! She was SO excited. We let her drive for about an hour... I think it was the highlight of the year for her! She did really well too....Must get it from her mother!! lol...

FATHER'S DAY!!!

I'm finally getting at it! So here ya go--

On Father's Day morning we went to church and headed out from there. Our first stop was at A&W for a bucket of chicken for lunch. We ate in the van since we had over an hour to drive before we got to the lake.
When we were almost to where we were going, there was a bit of a creek through the road... we slowed down and had a look at it and decided that it wasn't too deep to go through... with the van!!! I think we really need a 4X4 for these bush excursions! The water was a little deeper than we had expected it to be. It actually came up over the top of the running boards! The girls ooh-ed and aaah-ed about that!
We spent the day fishing and hanging around the fire just enjoying the quiet... well... it wasn't really quiet, there were lots of birds and creatures making lovely noises. It was so peaceful up there.
So here are some pictures from that day. They aren't the greatest quality... I probably didn't have the camera on the right setting... I don't use it often enough... I'm going to have to figure it out!


Janelle being goofy!



The bush that we parked in the middle of - next to the lake.
The sky through the trees.
Janelle fishing.
Lindsay peeking through the bushes.

Lindsay, Goldie and Janelle.... showing off her pepperoni stick.
Lindsay and I on the little 'dock'.
Lindsay found a dragonfly nymph. (we think)

Janelle fishing again.
Dad giving Janelle some pointers on the art of fishing.
Courtenay and Amanda in the canoe.
Shortly after we got there they headed out in search of firewood. This is what they came back with!!!


Lindsay and Janelle hanging out around the fire.

Linday being a goofy nut bar!! :oD
Janelle and Lindsay out in the canoe

I guess I'm going to have to make a second post to get all the pictures in... one of the highlights of the day isn't even on here yet!!

ps...
we don't normally dress like the hillbillies that we look like in these pictures...the older girls are wearing some of their Dad's jackets, and grubbies.