Kea and Tiegan have been attending this great wilderness survival class at the Carp Ridge Centre every Thursday, and this past week Maya, Ryland and I went out to visit for an hour or so. We helped make crafts with plants found around the site, we ran around in the woods, tried chewing sap 'gum' (which was deemed disgusting by all!) and got a tour of their camp site with the homemade survival shelters! I wish *I* could spend all day out there every week! The girls have been learning all about local plants, how to track like animals, how to create fires with friction, how to cook on the fire, how to build shelters with found materials in the forest, how to make reed mats, reed bakets, bow and arrows, safe knife usage, etc

Setting up our yurt -

The yurt skeleton - next step will be felted wool and canvas
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

So this weekend we gathered a few friends together and had a good ole fashioned yurt raising. Unfortunately, none of us really knew WHAT we were doing, and it proved to be slightly more complicated than we anticipated! I *think* we have figured it out by now, but it took a few frustrating hours of have wooden poles falling on our heads over and over again (OUCH) and having to restart a few times, but by the end of the chilly afternoon, we had the skeleton standing! Next step will be putting the felted wool walls and the canvas up, which I'm REALLY hoping will go much easier!!!!! I've posted a few more photos of the afternoon up on our flickr account for those interested.....

As we plan out our straw bale house, we seem to hear various concerns including how it will affect allergies to dust, won't animals live in our walls, how attractive could straw possibly be. Jamie came across a website with these before and after shots on a straw bale house. I love the natural beauty of the stucco, the thickness of the walls and the rounded corners. And as you can see, you can't even tell that it's made of straw! I can't wait to see how our house starts to come together next summer:-)

Yurt raising....

So, we've put out the word that this Sunday we're hosting a good ole fashioned yurt raising, and many friends are coming to lend a hand as we puzzle together how exactly to get this contraption up and standing! There's something like 96 wooden posts, series of wooden lattice work, lots of camel hair rope and no instruction manual. Thank goodness for google videos:-) A couple of the videos we enjoyed were this one which takes a while to download but it kind of an interesting overview of the gers themselves. Or there's this one of a group of mongolians on speed - I suspect our efficiency will look nothing like this when we're setting it up, but hopefully ours will be standing as neat and pretty!!!!!!!!

Laying out the foundations.....

Jamie has been obsessing over designing our house for.....well, for years! But these past few years in particular, he's been hammering out the final designs of what we would like. The poor guy spends hours drawing out designs, then creating models for me to see them in 3-D, only to have me declare I really don't like one aspect, or I want to add something else to another room - must be so frustrating for him!

The other thing we've found is that I cannot for the life of me see a set of drawings and turn it into a visual of what it will actually look like. And so Jamie came up with the brilliant plan of marking out our house with pink and orange surveyor tape and wooden stakes, so that we could walk through the rooms and get a sense of what each space will feel like. He started out mapping out almost 2000 sq. ft and we quickly realized that there was more room than we needed, so we've got it down to about 1500 sq. ft. and it's looking good! Next step is getting formalized drawings - I had no idea that planning out a house could take so many steps! And we haven't even begun on the building stage.......

Jamie and Ian spent a full day building the base for the yurt, and then Jamie and I brought the kids out another weekend to work on some finishing details. It's HUGE, and can't imagine how it will look with the yurt (or GER, as I believe the traditional Mongolian ones are called!) on it, but I guess I'll find out soon!!!!!!

Kea and Tiegan amused themselves playing, and Ryland was obsessed with helping. I was amused by how meticulous he was in laying out the insulation, a handy guy to have around!

sickies

We've all been dealing with the first round of flus around here, and although it doesn't seem to be a particularly bad virus, it's definitely hanging around for a long time. Jamie and Kea, as usual, were the worst affected by it and it seems they'll just be getting better and then start having sore throats and chesty coughs again. Ugh! So, we've been pulling out all of our usual tricks, such as:
-keeping a slower pace
-lots of vitamin C
-honey with ginger on a spoon
-hot teas, focusing a lot on lemon and honey
-regularly using the neti pot
-rubbing garlic oil and oil of oregano on the soles of feet before bed
-long epsom salt baths with eucalyptus oil to breath in
-books on CD and lots of resting
-trips to Mud Lake for fresh air and the kids who are currently healthier and therefore getting very antsy!!!

It's felt like a long couple of weeks, full of many meltdowns and whining, but I think we're pretty much through it now. I'm always keen to hear of new tricks that people use when their families are getting sick, so feel free to leave a comment - I'm suspecting that this will be a winter full of little aches and pains as we get used to new germs!

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So, we headed out to Mud Lake today, on a surprisingly mild November day, in order to try and replicate a photo I took of the three kids a couple of years ago. On that photo, I completely fluked out on getting them all to look at me with natural smiles. Today, I was not so lucky!

I took a few photos next to this tree, as the lighting was really neat. However, it took me FOREVER to convince Tiegan to join the other two, then she would not stand still enough, I could not get Ryland to look at me - I must have 25 photos from this spot! And then the branch that Ryland was leaning on broke off, and hysterics ensued....so we decided to move along!!!!!!! I did get one half-decent shot at that spot, but I think this is the year that Tiegan is incapable of giving us a natural smile - it's either goofy, or very serious!!! What a funny nut, must have something to do with being six!






Here's a new location, where we tried again - Kea even took a moment to loosen up Tiegan's face for her and help her give a natural smile, but to no avail - it was either really serious or goofy! Finally I gave up on my silly notions, and enjoyed the rest of the day with my family hanging out in the leaves, and snapping some really fun shots of my kids!!! I think my absolute favourite from the day is the last photo, I was laying on the ground and happened to look up, and noticed all three kids above me! I should know better than to try to plan it out so much - it always seems to be the random ones that I love the most!

The Tail End of Autumn

Walking on a carpet of leaves
Originally uploaded by the five mckays

Everyone woke up this morning in a bit of a cranky mood. Kea's been sick for a few days, so we've been laying low and letting her rest up as much as possible, which has meant a very slow pace for the other two, healthy siblings. I was hoping for one more quiet day of finishing things off at home, but it quickly became apparent that that was not going to happen. At least, not without a lot of yelling and threats, tears and tantrums. So, after the 6th fight of the morning, I quickly decided we needed a change of pace - everyone got wrapped up in their warm layers, we grabbed bird food, cameras and walking sticks and headed across the street to Mud Lake!

It's amazing how much happier we all are in the outdoors. Ryland was on his balance bike, and happily crashed along at crazy speeds and no worries at all about walls or chairs or breakable items. Tiegan skipped and hopped, and explored little nooks on her own. Kea ran ahead so she could be really still and quiet while she fed as many birds as she could. And I really took my time with the camera, taking a million photos of all the amazing plants and birds in this park. We try to get in here every few days at least (sometimes twice a day!) and I'm really enjoying seeing all of the changes from week to week. I hear rumours of snow later this week, so I'm glad we were able to get out there and enjoy this last bit of autumn! (A SMALL spattering of photos from the walk are on flickr, you can link by clicking on the photo!)

As we've been slowing our pace down a little over the past couple of weeks, and enjoying a lot of quiet time at home, we've been doing all sorts of autumn crafts. I did so much of this when Kea was a toddler, and I don't always remember to do the same sorts of things with Tiegan and Ryland!
Jamie brought home a huge roll of white paper from work, and in unpacking all of our stuff from storage I came across the paints, thus many body traces and painting projects have been embarked upon! Kea and Tiegan quickly filled in their bodies with cat costumes, whereas Ryland spent FOREVER painting all along the outside lines very meticulously and intentionally, and then made it clear that I was NOT allowed to cut anywhere that there was paint! I find it fascinating to see how his very different personality is starting to emerge, all three of them are so different!
We've been creating crayon rubbings of leaves, melting shredded crayons between wax paper, creating corn husk dolls, collaging, cutting, glueing and drawing like crazy - I'm beginning to run out of wall space for it all!!!!!!! Hopefully they'll be happy with photographic memories of most of it!
And for all of those crafty wannabes, I often look at the Crafty Crow website, or else this woman's blog, for great ideas - it's hard to narrow it down to one or two ideas, but now that we're constantly doing more art around here I love that Jamie and I are getting dragged into the process!

Happy Birthday Maya!

Our niece/cousin Maya turned 10 on the 20th, and we were very excited to be in town this year to be able to celebrate in person - to share in the delicious carrot cake, sing a happy song and give her huge birthday hugs (whether she wanted them or not!) I can't believe that it was ten whole years ago that Maya started the next generation of kids, time is flying by far too quickly and these little girls are growing up so fast. But what fun, creative and loving girls they are - I suspect the next ten years will be even more fun with them!!!!!! Happy Birthday Maya xo