Family Photo for March

And here is our family photo for the month of March....we were wandering around in Mud Lake with friends, and one of the women took our photo behind Jamie's insta-artwork that he loves to create whenever we stop in the outdoors. Of course, to me it is so foreign to not take 5 or 6 photos when you're trying to take a group shot, so her one shot isn't perfect of everyone, but it's still a snapshot in time......and these two are the only photos we have from the month that are of all five of us together, this project turns out to be harder to keep up with than I anticipated!!!!



- we have been enjoying unusually mild temperatures and the snow has melted at a crazy fast rate. We were finishing up skiing at the beginning of the month, and by the end we were hard-pressed to find snow ANYWHERE. We've dug out our summer clothes, packed away the winter woolens and are almost mourning how short our winter was. I understand we'll most likely make up for it next year, and I hope so. I want more time to ski and skate and tobaggon and drink hot chocolate!

- not that we're complaining about the increased vitamin D, blooming flowers all around and return of animals! It's so interesting, I guess because the winter was so mild, the leaves didn't have a chance to fully decompose so it looks exactly like fall in our backyard and in Mud Lake. Then, at night as we lay in bed, we hear all of the geese honking as they fly overhead, and I often feel confused about what season we're in.

- the house we are renting for the year is a very chilly house, so we feel very lucky about the milder weather. And we are SO VERY GRATEFUL for the warmer weather these days, we're no longer freezing off our nose and toes and needing to cuddle with hot water bottles as we crawl into bed!

- this month Ryland has FULLY embraced using the toilet and we are completely DONE DONE DONE with diapers - both day and night! When he sets his mind to do something, he does it, wow! He's had maybe 3 accidents in the past few weeks, and is very independent about just running into the toilet when he needs to go pee. As much as I kind of mourn how quickly my baby is growing up, I have to admit I am so glad to no longer be washing diapers!

- Jamie is still carrying around those nasty amoebas in his gut, which really really sucks. So now it's time to get really serious about getting rid of them - the doctor has increased the dosage AND the length of time that he's taking the drugs, and we've also gone to visit our naturopath for other suggestions on how to help his body eliminate these critters who don't want to go. So now we have a long list of do's and don'ts for the next couple of months, and by the end of it I'm sure we'll be lean, mean healthy machines!!!!!! Or at the very least, Jamie WILL be rid of the bugs!!!!!!!!

- March was also the month that we tapped our very own maple trees on the property, a very exciting adventure for us! I'm sure we made numerous novice mistakes along the way, but we had a blast and we ended up with some delicious-tasting syrup at the end of it all so I guess that's what counts!!!!! Meg and Ian ended up doing the brunt of the work this year, as we had no way of boiling the sap down at our rented house, but next year we're really looking forward to living out on the land, able to collect sap daily and to create an outdoor kitchen to boil it all down.

- As we hit the end of March, we were really glad that we took advantage of a lot of the down time to rest and just hang out, as I'm sure that it was the last slow month before the chaos of building really starts to pick up! The severance won't officially pass until May 17th at the council meeting, so we can't really start building until after that, but before we start building there's still all the tree-cutting, driveway making, well digging, material finding, people gathering - all sorts of fun! We're getting very excited to finally be moving forward:-)

March 30th, a sad ending to an otherwise lovely day....

We were enjoying a beautiful day here in Ottawa. The sun was out, everyone was getting along well and Jamie came home early from work. We decided to get outside and enjoy a long walk up to the grocery store to stock up on our greens (more on that subject soon!), and on the way back meandered our way through Mud Lake. It was amazing to spot all the differences, how much drier it was, and we hung out in there forever, all of us feeling relaxed and happy. Then as we were leaving the park, Jamie decided to move the car (he'd parked it near the entrance, off the road, as someone else's car was in the driveway before). He told the kids to stay far behind the car, started it up and started to drive away.

However, unfortunately there was a muskrat under the car, and in fact half under the rear tire. So not only did he run over the poor animal, he only ran over half of it so its back was broken, it was bleeding and it was trying to drag its body off the street. One look at my horrified face in his rear-view mirror and the screams of the horrified children, and he stopped and jumped out to see what was going on. At this point, I ran away because I get rather squeamish about this sort of stuff (helpful, I know, but it was well spelled out in our prenuptial that I'm not good with this sort of thing) and with one look, Jamie knew the kindest thing would be to run over it again and finish it off. At this point Kea went into hysterics, all the kids ran home to me, we cuddled in a sobbing mess and left Jamie to deal with the mess. He said he had also found a carcass of another one right next to it, and after googling muskrats we learned that they have one mate, so we explained it was a bit of a mercy killing on two fronts, and then we buried them together and held a ceremony for them. All evening Kea cried off and on and was really upset that he had to die. Her gravestone says, "SORRY. RIP. SORRY. Hope you are with your love. I'm really sorry you had to die. Sorry. March 30, 2010." I think she feels a wee bit of guilt. Ryland just kept asking over and over and over again why Dad was killing muskrats, and Tiegan has come to the opinion that it was probably very old anyways and ready to die. Oh, I really hope so - another life lesson under the belt, one I'd love to have avoided.

Look who turned ONE today!!!!

Okay, so I have about four different blog posts saved in my edit file, and now have some catching up to do........hopefully throughout the day I'll find enough moments to sit down with a cup of tea to finish and publish another post, but for now I really wanted to publish a few photos of our newly ONE-YEAR OLD niece Elsie. WHERE DID THE TIME GO? She's a crawling, clapping, smiling queen these days, such a delight to go and visit and cuddle! And she's loving to pull herself up and 'walk' with her high-chair - before long she'll be keeping up with everyone else in the courtyard!!!!

Kea and Maya

I just wanted to upload a recent photo of Kea and her cousin Maya. I took this while we had Maya over for a double sleepover - now that Chloe has gone back to work, Maya has gone back to school. Kea really misses the ability to hang out so much more with Maya, so we're trying to take advantage of free time over spring breaks and pd days. Crazy how much the school day fills up your schedule!!!!!!!

A few photos from our lunch over at Sean and Chloe's house - the kids had a blast playing outside in the sunny spring weather, and checking out Lucas' playmobile. And now that Elsie is almost ONE YEAR OLD (where did that time go??!!!!) she's keen to keep up with the older boys!!!!!

Schlomping our way through Mud Lake!

We couldn't let a visit from Steph go by without a visit to our beloved park across the street, Mud Lake - though unfortunately we picked a very wet, warm, melting kind of day and everyone got soaked! We also shared with her the fine art of feeding birds, something that she wasn't overly comfortable with but quickly got into the groove of:-)

We had a great week visiting with Steph and catching up with her life. Stayed up way too late every night, drank lots of wine, played cards and yahtzee and all that jazz. Sooooooooooo nice, but also fairly exhausting. So it took a few days to catch up a little on our sleep, and Ryland also got sick with a brutal cold, so these past few days have been purely about surviving day to day and trying to function as basically as possible. Though now we seem to be on an upward swing, so hopefully we feel caught up with life again very soon!!!!

Art Gallery

We took Steph downtown to see the Parliament Buildings, the Mint, wander around Byward Market and go to the Art Gallery - you know, typical touristy stuff. Ryland was really excited to run around the big spider out front - the image is stamped onto the back of all of the printouts we get from the library, so he's grown very fond of the spider. In real life, it is IMMENSE. And so difficult to climb!!!!!

Maple Syrup time......

One day while Steph was here, we took her out to the property to wander around and also to collect all of our sap. Most of the buckets were totally full and over-filling, which was exciting!!!! Unfortunately as soon as we arrived on the property, my camera battery died - d'oh! What a beginner move. So then I grabbed Kea's camera and took a few photos, hence the ones with the date that is totally wrong! But other than that, I was impressed with the photos that her little point-and-shoot took!!!!

On our way out to the property, we stopped at a maple syrup farm - they now tap 7,000 trees, using 46 km of piping, they suck the sap out of the trees and use a reverse osmosis process to make it into syrup. However, they also had the more traditional sugar shack set up out back and we had a lot of fun exploring that and dreaming about how we'll be setting up something similar on our property next spring!!!

One of the most hilarious moments for us was when we were looking at all of the old tools set up on the walls, and the kids were drawn to the ghetto-blaster. They had no idea what it was, or how you would fit a CD into it. Trying to describe a tape to them, and how it works, was rather tricky, and made us feel REALLY REALLY REALLY old!!!!!!

After my camera battery ran out, I grabbed Kea's little point and shoot to take some photos of the maple sap we were collecting. So today, in trying to download a few of those photos onto my laptop, I came across a few of the self-portraits she's been taking lately. They crack me up, and it's so much fun to see the world through her eyes! Don't mind the dates on the photos, not only does she have the annoying date function on, but it's set at the wrong date to boot. Also, the last two photos were ones she took at the art gallery, we don't have mirrored floors!

A little jaunt into Quebec -

Steph had never been to Quebec, so we decided to do a day trip (or rather a 10 minute drive over the bridge) into the neighbouring province. After getting lost numerous times and driving around in circles due to a frustrating lack of signage, we stopped in Gatineau Park to hike around a little - and spotted a tree felled by a beaver, which was endlessly fascinating to Ryland!!! Then we went into Chelsea for a little art, followed by poutine and beer - of course!!!!!!!

On another day, I brought Steph back to Quebec, but this time to visit the Nordik Spa that I am quickly becoming addicted to - so very relaxing and rejuvenating, though understandably I have no photos from this day together!!!!!