Month: January 2018

We didn’t go camping this year but we did get away with friends to a camp.  Lowell was asked to give a series of 3 lectures on a topic of his choice at Star Lake Family Camp.  He spoke on the meaning of life as reflected on by several different philosophers.

While he was working I celebrated my birthday without cooking or cleaning.  I read, took in the scenery of the whiteshell, canoed at sunset with my family while listening to the loons.  L&K were playing with friends and supervised around the ever burning bonfire by a lady who loved burning things as much as they did.

Day 2; L&K had a little more input into how this day unfolded.  They were no longer interested in the surprises that M&D would dream up.  Since 2017 was free national park pass year we took the opportunity to visit Lower Fort Gary.  I had only been there once before, on a Grade 6 field trip.  Kira’s class had gone in the spring so she was very excited to show us around.  We enjoyed checking out the assortment of furs at the general store, learning about dyes for wool and what a tea bale looked like.

The second half of the day we spent in the Grand Beach area.  Again Lowell and I had only been there once before and couldn’t quite remember which beach our friends had taken us to.  Despite the rocky start we had a great time.  Apparently we were too busy having fun in the water to take photos.  L&K took their googles along.  The algae made the water too murky for lake bottom exploration, but they provide a welcome defence against splashes.

We didn’t get away camping by ourselves this year.  This made L&K quite sad.  The renovation project took longer then we anticipated, (perfection comes at a cost) and there were a few funerals that the church choir director needed to be at.  There were many other little things that maybe shouldn’t have mattered, but their accumulated effect was that we were too tired to undertake the planning and packing.  Instead we took 2 days to for some fun day trips.

Day 1 was a bike ride, not very exciting to L&K, although the KFC picnic in Assiniboine Park was a rare treat.  We took some time to explore the gardens and the playground.

We have previously biked to Assiniboine Park so we tried to go a little farther.  This was met with much grumbling and the whitetailed deer we spotted in the Assiniboine Forest did not compensate.  However the lure of an ice cream come at Sargent Sundae kept them going.

It couldn’t have been all bad, Lyndon was artistically inspired by the mallards in the pond. He took many photos so that he could draw them when he got home.  Unfortunately by the time we did get home he was too tired to be creative.

 

What would life be like if one didn’t have all kinds of ideas for making our new house great?  You may remember that in late winter and early spring we had plumbing and insulating done in our basement, we have since dry walled, and painted the exterior walls.  The next step in our Grand plan was to alter the side stairwell going down into the basement.  It involved removing a closet and a doorway, then levelling the floor and re-configuring the stairs. This summer Lowell undertook this part of the plan.

It takes awhile to make a customized staircase, especially when you use raw lumber.

Along the way Lowell needed to install a new screendoor, and weatherstrip the original door.  We decided to keep the original fir on the landing too, it remains to be seen whether all the work we put into it was worth the trouble.  Many hours of paint stripping and gap filling were required.

The new stairs go all the way into the basement.

I think the final results are stunning.  Lowell even made trim boards that replicate the originals in the house.