The kids were playing and I was getting dinner ready, suddenly, I noticed it was really quiet – too quiet. I went to investigate and found this:
ACK! What are you doing? No standing up!! That only leads to… walking!
Don’t look at me like that, I know you’re trying to walk.
I can tell you’re planning something
No no, climbing is totally unacceptable!
Good thing you’re cute
Living next to a park sure has some advantages, we’re never more than putting shoes on away from a little trip over there.
Dougie loves the swing! He sometimes will use his legs to keep going but for the most part, he likes to be pushed.
Connie is content to hang out in the stroller
Dougie is also a huge fan of the slide
No matter what else he does, it always comes back to the slide
This last trip to the park, we decided to try Connie in the swing, and then Dougie decided to help
We love how much they love each other!
We decided this year that we were going to try growing butterflies. A friends of ours from Dallas did it and it looked like a lot of fun. I found a local place that we could get them from and we started our project. We had to time our delivery so the butterflies wouldn’t arrive until we got back from Vancouver.
They were all pretty small when they arrived.
We received 12 caterpillars. The brown stuff in the bottom is food for them. All we had to do was put them somewhere that wasn’t directly in the sun and wait. Dougie and I checked them every day. It was astounding how quickly they grew!
Look how much bigger in just a week
The caterpillars started to hang upside down in a “J” shape. This is a sign they are about to start their transformation.
The first one started to change a bit more than a week after the caterpillars arrived. It took almost a week for all of them to get with the program though.
Our first chrysalis.
Of the twelve caterpillars, 11 formed chrysalises though one was knocked into the food by the other caterpillars and started to degrade. We let that one as well as the one caterpillar who hadn’t changed go into the wild.
We had to transfer the chrysalises to the butterfly house.
A few days later, the first butterfly emerged.
Here’s what they looked like with their wings open
Every day, we got a few new butterflies. We were lucky enough to catch a few of them actually coming out. Dougie was thrilled by the entire experience and checked on the new butterflies several times a day. They just eat sugar water so we sprayed that on some flowers.
Once they had all emerged, we decided it was time to let them go. It has to be warm enough to release them so we were a bit concerned we may have these butterflies forever but by the weekend, it had been nice for long enough to let them go.
Dougie counted them one more time before we left
Butterflies are excited to get going
There’s one flying away
Some of them took their time flying away
Overall, it was a great project for Dougie! We’ll definitely do it again next year.
Happy Father’s Day! What a fantastic day we had!! We both got up early and decided to go for a hike. Not just any hike though, we were going to climb a mountain. We had tried a day earlier but after a few wrong turns, we decided we would shelve the trip and try again today.
The hike started off pretty steep. We were both a bit concerned but, fortunately, it would level occasionally to give us a little break. We both were carrying kids at the beginning but after the first big climb, Dougie decided he wanted to walk. Scott was thrilled though having a toddler climb a mountain did slow us down a lot.
Dougie took one of my walking sticks and he really enjoyed the hike.
One of the unfortunate things about this hike was that there were only a few opportunities for a great view until we were well up the train. Here was the first fantastic view we saw.
Dougie was in and out of the backpack carrier as we went up. He did surprisingly well in it.
Dougie did most of this very long very steep section of switchbacks on his own. We couldn’t believe what a trooper he was!
Dougie and Scott as they broke through the tree line
Kim and Connie stop to find a geocache en route
Dougie was taking a lot of breaks by this point. He’d go 10-15 feet and then just sit down.
Almost there…
Making a final assault on the summit
More resting
LOOK, snow!
Scott and Dougie finishing the climb to the summit
Success!
Scott and the kids at the summit cairn
Moments before this, Connie tried to eat a rock. Scott thought it was funny she was trying to eat the mountain and tried to get a picture.
Kim goes off to find the summit cache.
The hike down seemed almost worse than the hike up. Partially because we were already tired, partially because it was a very different muscle group being used and partially because there is no option to turn back at that point – you must go down.
It was a very different Father’s Day and won’t likely be a tradition but we were thrilled to do it and are excited to climb our next mountain!
The obsession with playing the piano continues in our family. Connie loves to tickle the ivories.
Really getting into it
The frustration of an artist
A little singing
The concentration
Who wants to sign me to a record label?
Dougie has been doing puzzles for years. He loves the wooden ones with the pieces that drop into little slots. He especially likes the ones that make noise when you put the piece in. We have been trying to get him to do real puzzles for a while but he just didn’t get the concept of putting the pieces together. His speech therapist started him with an opposites puzzle. They were little two piece puzzles with two opposite pictures (dirty boots/clean boots, asleep/awake, etc). He started to understand the concept but still had trouble putting the pieces together.
Enter Thomas. Dougie loves Thomas and was highly motivated to build his own tracks on the floor. He couldn’t figure out how to get the tracks together though. They are shaped very similarly to puzzle pieces – you can’t just push them together, you need to lift one and place it on the other. After a few demonstrations, Dougie got it! We decided to try a puzzle again to see if he could apply the concept.
Adding a new piece
Find a new piece
Add that one
All done!
I have to help Dougie a bit with the top part. The pieces are quite similar and he hasn’t mastered the art of finding the right “next” piece but he’s getting there. He’s already started to look for patterns on the piece he’s working on and then trying to find another piece that has a similar pattern. He likes the animal part at the bottom best though.
While we were in Vancouver, Connie started to really move herself. She had been able to go very short distances (< 2 feet) prior to our trip but she suddenly realized that this crawling thing could be a good way to get around.
She has a pretty good body position
But actually crawls in this position:
Notice her far arm is flat on the floor, that arm is used to pull her along the floor (it stays in that position). The other arm does some pulling as well. One foot is used to push her along. The other foot is for stability only. Despite the less than conventional method, she is quite fast and can easy go across and entire room.
As you would expect, Connie is thrilled with her new abilities. Dougie, on the other hand, is not as thrilled. Suddenly, all his toys are “up for grabs.” He’s started putting them on tables, I don’t have the heart to tell him that won’t work for long either.
We are trying to live here like tourists. We want to see a lot of what Alberta has to offer and don’t want to get into a rut and realize after our time here that we missed a lot. So, we took a trip to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. For those who don’t know, Scott has had a lifelong dream to go there – so we had to go.
Dougie and Scott check out one of the many buffaloes
There it is – this is *the* jump.
It was pretty cold that day. We thought tucking Connie into my jacket would be our best bet.
Here is the carpet in the center – Scott wants to put this into the house.
Since we had come so far already, we decided to head over to Frank Slide (click here for more information on Frank Slide). We hadn’t planned on the trip but it was only about an hour away and it sounded interesting. Nothing could have truly prepared us though. As we approached, all you could see was rock. In a matter of only a few minutes, all this rock fell and covered the town of Frank.
Again, our pictures leave some to be desired as the camera was still not fixed.
Turtle Mountain – the source of the slide
The rock
It was a long day but we’re so glad that we were able to go. On our way home, we saw a bear! There wasn’t time to get a picture (not that it likely would have turned out) as it darted across the road but it made the day for us.
We were so excited to be able to get out to Vancouver to visit Scott’s parents. It is a lot easier now that it’s just an hour flight!!
The weather wasn’t ideal, but we found some great inside things to do.
Grandma picked up some gluten-free cookie mix and Dougie, Daddy and Grandma all made cookies one afternoon.
Gathering around getting things going
Watching the mixer
Adding more mix
Almost ready for the next step
A few rolling instructions from Grandma and Dougie was off
“Okay, I’ve got this”
Daddy and Grandma step in to apply a bit of pressure
Taste testing before we start cutting
More direction from Grandma on the next steps
And Dougie can do it almost on his own
Let’s just be sure it still tastes good
Sprinkle on some sugar
Trying some different sprinkles
Our visit wasn’t only about sprinkles and cookies though. Connie got some good quality time with her grandparents. She’s changed a lot since the last time they saw her so it was fun for everyone to get to know each other again.
Dougie taught Aunt Judy about Thomas trains.
We had a great time! We took a lot more pictures but unfortunately, we dropped our camera while we were there and it broke the lens and the remaining pictures didn’t come out at all.
Now that it’s getting warmer and people are starting to come out of their houses, we decided that we need to start experiencing more of Alberta. Who knows how long we’ll end up being here and there is so much to see! So, we decided to make a day trip out to Drumheller – it’s about an hour and a half drive from Calgary.
For those not familiar with Drumheller, it’s most famous for its dinosaurs. We thought Dougie may enjoy it since he sort of likes dinosaurs. Well, I should more accurately say he used to “sort of like” dinosaurs, now, they are his favourite thing on earth!
This is the largest dinosaur on earth
Sitting on the dino’s foot
For $3, you could climb up into the mouth of the dinosaur. Of course, we had to do that.
Dougie at this point was so enthralled with everything dinosaurs that it was hard to get him to look anywhere else.
They just have these things on every street corner.
There is more to Drumheller than dinosaurs, it also has some of the most impressive Hoodoos in the world. Of course, we had to stop there.
Mum and Connie in front of one of the hoodoos.
Daddy and Dougie with a different hoodoo
Notice we didn’t totally escape the dinosaurs.
From the hoodoos, we went to an old suspension bridge that took us over to an old mining area. The bridge isn’t used for that anymore but it’s maintained by the province for tourist use. I was not a fan. We climbed a reasonably large hill there to get a better view of the area. We didn’t see the mine but it was a lovely little excursion.
After a long day, we were all very ready to get home. We didn’t hit all the sites we were hoping to so we’ll have to go back. We decided to let Dougie drive home, he has to learn sometime.
