Kim's house

Meet Cameron. This is Kim's little baby boy, he's only a few weeks old and he's very cute. We went to visit Cameron and his family today. They have 40 acres of woodland not far from Beaumont with donkeys and goats and quad bikes. We got to see Lightning, the baby donkey we visited a couple of months ago and also got to see some baby fainting goats that had just been born a few days ago.

Here's Kim and family walking the donkey family.

Baby Lightning skipping out of the trees.

Neil with the cutest of the goat triplets. We liked this one's crooked ears.

Neil and Cameron comparing hair styles.

Smiley, happy baby goat.

Cameron doing some opera singing.

Green grass and green trees at last!

Cameron's older brother Jordan.

May long weekend at home....

We've had some lovely weather lately, last week while we were stuck at work it almost reached 30 degrees but sadly this weekend it's cooled down and become a bit cloudy. Anyway I thought I'd add some photos to show you all how green and nice everything looks now (finally!) Here's a picture of the house I took about 5 minutes ago.
This photo of Doog was taken last night at about 8pm. It stays light here until about 10.30pm now.

Here I made Doogy pose in front of some flowers. You can tell by the way he's leaning back that I have a biscuit in my hand.
I thought I'd add this one in to show you all how different it looks out the back of the house these days. So many houses have gone up now. The house you can see on the right hand side is Nigel and Sarah's house. It should be ready for them to move into in October.

Here's another Doogy pose. I couldn't get him to sit facing me, he's not a very cooperative model.

Here's Neil mowing the front lawn last night for the first time since last October.



And this was last nights dinner. Since we got the BBQ we've been trying to work our way through the one ton supply of burgers we seem to have.

And this is me looking rather fat, anyone would think I'm pregnant or something.

Froggy's froggy's everywhere!

This little froggy was a present from Kate's cat Rufus. Here he is sitting next to a plug hole. He is so tiny you can't even tell it's a plug hole! Anyway, I'm a bit fascinated by frogs at the moment as we have been surrounded by them! You can't see them but in the evenings, out the back of the house, you can here them everywhere clicking and singing. It's kind of like a cricket noise but more froggy. I heard them for the first time a few nights ago. Apparently they are Boreal Chorus Frogs and they live underground through the winter and actually freeze solid! After the snow all melts, they defrost and come out of the ground and start clicking. It's a very nice and soothing sound to listen to when going to sleep.

BBQ time!

The sun has been shining quite a bit recently. Apart from the one day of snow we had a week or so ago, it has begun to feel a little summery. the grass is even looking green in places. So, this weekend Neil decided that he wanted to go and buy a barebeque. Anyone who knows Neil will remember that BBQing is one of his favorite things to do in the world. As you can imagine, he was quite excited when we woke up Saturday morning and the sun was shining.

We left the house and headed to BARBEQUE COUNTRY!




As we got out of the car Neil became a little bit more excited. This was only the beginning........we spent the whole day going from Home Depot to Home Depot and back to Barbeque Country and back to Home Depot again looking for Neil's perfect BBQ. Eventually at 9pm we returned home with almost the perfect BBQ and a lovely new table and 4 chairs. We were too exausted to put it all together and decided that Sunday would be BBQ day.

Neil awoke at 6am and ran downstairs to start work. When I eventually came down at 10am he had it all put together and ready to go.

The sky started to turn a bit grey and just as we got cooking it started to drizzle.


We carried on!





And then it started to really rain.

and rain.....
and rain....

Even though we couldn't actually sit and eat outside, we did have a lovely lunch. Hopefully it'll be a bit more sunny next time.

Lake Louise....Land Of The Giants!

This is me at Lake Louise. We stopped there on our way home from Emerald Lake last weekend. I really like this picture, don't you think I look like a giant?

I decided to play a little game with you all. Its called spot the difference.

Email me with the number of differences you can find in the following pictures.

Amazing how different it is, I love this place. When at Emerald lake the peacefulness of not having a mobile phone signal, Internet or Televisions is such a good feeling, you really feel like you are getting away from it all. During the evening you can smell all the wood burning in the open fire places. You can hear the different animal noises in the distance, But best of all, no car noises, no sound at all.

Its great.

I am finally over my spell of Bronchitis and pneumonia! Phew that was horrible. Some days when I had to drag myself in to work I really thought to myself that I wasn't going to survive. The running is killing me. Running in -20, -30 really did me in and I think that was the cause of the problem. The weather is now warming up and spring is in. The snow is slowly melting and the sun is starting to beam out and heat this city up. Thank god! It has been a long winter and I found it hard, but fun. The novelty of snow wore off though, after about 4 months of it. The novelty of breathing in air at - 30 also wore off after about a minute! its a bizarre feeling when you breath in and your nose instantly freezes and you feel like you have loads of boogers up there, when in fact, it is just frozen inside. Anyway hopefully Sophie will take a few snaps of the warm weather for you all to see.

On another note. Anyone who hasn't booked Emerald Lake MUST do it now for the time they wish to stay there. The hotel is getting booked up quick and we need to know who is staying and for how long. SO emails please. Or call the lodge and say you are part of the Parham/Ralston wedding and you will be able to book.

Thank you all

Neil

Easter weekend...

The road to Emerald lake.

Sipping tea overlooking the lake in the morning. (Wearing Neil's shoes. My feet are big but not that big.)

A particularly rocky mountain on the way through Kicking Horse Pass.

Neil on a small rock.

Sophie on a big rock.

The Easter bunny!

Munching lunch at Truffle Pigs cafe/general store in Field B.C.

Elk!

The Kicking Horse River just near the natural bridge. (The bridge in the background however is actually not natural. It's man-made.)

Emerald Lake Lodge in the evening.

Neil sun-bathing on some rocks by the Kicking Horse river.

Reading by the fire at Emerald Lake Lodge.

Standing on Emerald lake. We walked right across it which was probably a stupid thing to do considering the time of year and lovely warm weather we've had lately. Oh and there was a sign saying DANGER! THIN ICE!

Neil, Sophie, Nigel and Sarah resting during our lake hike.

The fire pit at the lodge.

At the old lodge building.

Half way around the lake, just before we gave up and decided to cross the ice.

Looking for cracks.

Spring.....

The snow is melting! There are huge puddles everywhere and the grass is brown and mucky. The off-leash park is a lake and Doog has to be thoroughly washed before he's allowed back in the house. But at least we've had some sunshine and the temperature is usually above 0 in the daytime. It even reached a whopping 10 degrees a couple of times!

Here's Doog enjoying the warmth and sunshine on the deck. He's pretty happy winter is finally over.

This is a close up of the moldy carrot and tomatoes I found the other day on the front lawn. They are all that remains of the snowman we made with Kate when it first snowed back in October. (Yep, the last time I saw the lawn was in October!)

And here is the last bit of our once giant snow piles.

I really hope it doesn't take too long for the grass to recover. It doesn't look too healthy at the moment. In fact nobody is too healthy at the moment. I've had a cold and Neil is just recovering from a bout of bronchitis/pneumonia! I won't go into detail but we both feel pretty crappy.

In other news, and I'm sure everyone will find this highly exciting......we now have cabinets and counter tops in our laundry room as you can see in the beautiful photograph below. I bet you're happy you decided to read this riveting blog today!

Hunter...

Look how big he is now!

Funny sunset...

I took these photos about a week or so ago from our back deck. I thought it was kind of odd how the sun was leaving a trail as it set. Just to prove it wasn't me wobbling whilst I took the picture here's another one from a minute or so before.....

I've never seen a sunset like this before and thought you might want to see it too.