Author: Pam

Lowell has joined the choir at Grace Episcopal Church, they practice Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings before the service. Grace is in Amherst and we drive there Sunday mornings, so L and I have to entertain ourselves while Daddy practices. Last Sunday we enjoyed lattes with Aunty I, the Sunday before we roamed the grounds of the Emily Dickinson Museum. This morning was an absolutely beautiful autumn day and we checked out Amherst College and enjoyed the fall foliage. Just a piece of trivia for you, Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken) was part of the faculty of Amherst College for 40 years.

L would rather be walking along furniture then crawling. He does move around slowly now, but he would rather do it on his feet even when there isn’t anything or anybody to hold on to.

I have been working at my sewing machine lately, but I have not been quilting. When I was in the fabric store looking for ribbon for the remote control home I came across this beautiful fabric. I loved it, so, I did an uncharacteristic impulse buy and came home with enough material for a skirt. It actually came together fairly easily; I was amazed when I got the zipper in nicely on the first try. I still like the material in the form of a skirt, and I like the skirt after some minor fitting alterations. Now I need to find something to wear with it, which I find is the problem with skirts. I guess this means that I need to spend some time in a shopping mall, oh well!

So fall is creeping slowly into New England. The first sign is the fields of pumpkins, then pumpkins and mums start turning up on doorsteps. The Fall Foliage is the biggest tourist season in New England; hopefully over the next couple of weeks I can get some pictures that show you why that is.

Lowell said this weekend that having a 6 month old isn’t nearly as much fun as having a 9 month old. I must say that L makes parenting lots of fun. He has enjoyed peekaboo for a long time, but now he can initiate the hiding. I was folding diapers on the floor this weekend and L was having a great time throwing them over his head and peeking out from behind them.

L still hasn’t figured out how to put all the parts of crawling together yet to go forward, but he is discovering the joy of furniture walking. Moving around on his feet comes with many anxious moments for both L and his parents as he wobbles around corners and reaches on his tip toes for toys that are just out of reach. L has bonked his head a couple of times, but no bruising yet.

We are settling back into life around here. Classes have resumed for Lowell, and L and I are remembering what it is like to spend the whole day in only each others company. Nobody around here has been very productive because we have been sick…

and we can’t quite seem to shake it. My guess is that we just partied too hard over summer and with J,S,K&M, but it was worth every minute of it. Also L is having to learn how to fall asleep on his own, which has made for less restful sleep then usual.

On the up side L has learned to clap his hands and his pincer grasp (finger and thumb) is so good that he is enjoying feeding himself and turning pages in books. At the moment we have a little bookworm on our hands.

We have made some changes to our living room since we returned to Massachusetts. Our sofa was still a second hand freebie from the 70’s that had served us well but no longer sat very comfortably. In fact, Lowell vowed when we left in May that he was no longer going to sit on it; we had to get new furniture. It took us a while to decide on what piece of furniture would be the most comfortable and versatile to our transient lifestyle. A trip to Ikea with J&S solved our problem; we bought these 2 chairs, footstools and table.

Then I heard this: “So since we saved so much money on buying these chairs instead of another sofa, and since we don’t get out to the theatre with L, we should get a better TV.” In all fairness our TV was ancient, small and the colour had recently started going wonky. I wasn’t difficult to persuade, so now we have a much improved environment for watching movies, basketball games etc.

The only thing left that was driving me crazy is that the 5 remotes required to control our home theatre system are constantly being misplaced and have no designated home. So out came my sewing machine and a beautiful flannel Fat Quarter (piece of fabric measuring approximately 18 by 22”) sent to me by a quilting friend and “wala” we have a remote control home.

So we spent the weekend camping with my extended family near Somerset, MB. We drove through Manitoba’s largest (probably only) windmill farm. These windmills are pretty spectacular, we guessed that they stand 130 ft.

Lowell took some amazing pictures in my opinion. Here one of my cousins is just about to bite it!

Hope that you are all staying cool during these dog days of summer. Manitoba’s heatwave has been 30+ for 2 weeks now.

So it is time to put some work into our house in Winnipeg. As you can see the deck badly needs some attention…so we are building a fence. Honestly we are not going about this backwards it is all part of the big picture.

On Monday Lowell picked up our massive pile of wood. There is no way a person could drive a truck through this fence when it is completed (a little bit of overkill, but typical Lowell style).

We supported our local sawmill contact so Wednesday we spent prepping and treating the posts. Here L is supervising the activities. He is a hard taskmaster, he quickly lets us know if we are taking too long.

Lowell is adding a little bit of style to the posts.

We are finally finished ripping out the old chainlink fence, (the posts were cemented 3 feet into the ground) so now we can begin constructing.

With all the beautiful places in this world we forget how amazing the prairies can be. When I come home to Manitoba I notice the sky, the clouds, the sun. I will admit that some of the love for the landscape is just because it is home, but really the prairies are beautiful in their own right.