We are enjoying a thoroughly lovely summer. For the first time since owning our home, we didn't have a huge project to take on, grad school courses ongoing, or a new baby. The result has been a much more relaxed, easy-going summer. We feel spoiled, actually, to be able to do what we want whether it's small, fun projects, trips, or visiting with friends.
Truth be told, we are ready to hit the grind of "real" life. Life that involves putting money in the bank and returning to more of a routine of school and work. But we feel really refreshed and joyful.
But a little peak at some things that kept us busy and on the road during August...
Our now-Annual Park Picnic. We started a few years ago taking a picnic to a local park. Dan wrote a tour Tisdale blog post as a result of it. Well, we've been going back every year since. It's a tradition, of course.
We took a couple trips to Greenwater Lake this summer. Our favourite was a last-minute invite and decision to meet up with the Humboldt Millettes on the long weekend. We were the last ones on the beach that beautiful evening and our 8 kids took water guns and gunned down all the sand castles all along the beach. It was a touch scary as they took so much joy in destroying the hard work of everyone else. Haha!
Our garden has been producing abundantly and we can't be happier. The carrots are so sweet and the zucchinis are huge and plentiful. We can't wait to dig into the potatoes.
It bears mentioning that one of our kids in particular has really been growing up the past few weeks. Miss Emilie now sports a signature pony-tail on top of her head and walks everywhere. One evening after supper around mid-August, she suddenly took off walking from the kitchen table all the way to the sink. We were stunned. Up until that point, she would tentatively, teasingly take 6-8 steps, but preferred crawling. But from then on, it was walk, walk, walk. She now gets pretty upset when we force her to sit in the stroller for walks.
Emilie's other new favourite pastime is reading books. She has finally hit the age where she loves to just sit and read. A few of our favourites have had repairs made to flaps or now have new bite marks... but that's the price you pay to instill good reading habits. You might just pick up on a theme here in her love for books (or one in particular!).
August brought a number of visitors our way. A long-overdue trip from my brother Jim (the sole remaining family member to visit our home) and his Saskatchewan! girlfriend, Nicole. As always, we had to figure out what to do in small-town Tisdale with company, especially as Jim is on crutches currently. We kept them busy with reading books...
Backyard bonfire and picnicking...
A tour of Tisdale and a short little hike...
And mini-golfing, where the kids had more fun crawling through tunnels than hitting balls...
Jim and Nicole's visit also overlapped with my cousin Katie stopping by for a couple days. Katie was moving back to the east-coast U.S. from California and decided to make it a giant Canadian road-trip visiting all our family. The kids loved going to the pool two days in a row and having another adult to read them books.
And when we thought we were done with trips for the summer, Dan discovered early this week that he wouldn't be able to be at school due to power outages, so we took a very impromptu two day trip to Saskatoon. We have been so grateful to Dan's parents who have let us walk in and out of their new apartment in Saskatoon, just as we please. We caught up with Dan's siblings, Stephen and Lynda, staying there and did some fun little outings and a bit of shopping.
A beautiful evening walk in a new-to-us section of the river...
Hanging out with cousins, seeing who could run the fastest...
One stop was the Western Development Museum. The museum is a reconstruction of Main St. Saskatoon in 1910. So many cool things to see... we will definitely be going back. Unfortunately, in our hurried departure from home we forgot the "real" camera, but it's obvious to see how much fun we had.
We returned from Saskatoon to more overnight visitors from Ontario. Friends Joe and Paul Platt stopped by on route to Flin Flon for a wedding. It was the third time this summer and
the second to our home that we saw Joe this summer. Joseph was pretty impressed that now Daddy got to see his friend so often.
We have one more weekend of fun planned for this upcoming weekend in Nipawin with some golf for the guys, a trip to the new pool, and enjoying life on Grandpa and Grandma's acreage. Maybe, if you're lucky, we might post a few of those pictures...
