4H Banquet 2009

The PEC 4H Sheep Club was in charge of hosting the event this year. It's such a small club that they have never been hosts before, but the kids (and leaders ;-) ...) did a masterful job. I just have a few photos of the event. My favourite is this one :-).


MC's for the evening were Katlyn and Mikaela (centre); Shannon and Alison assisted by gathering up awards and passing them to the appropriate presenter.

The theme was "4H Members are Stars" and one of the things the club did was prepare stars showcasing each of the clubs, ranging from 6 weekers to yearlong clubs, that happened in Prince Edward County in 2009. Here is the Wall of Stars.



Getting ready (Katlyn, Mikaela, and Mikaela's mom, Patti, who is the head Club honcho ;-) ...)


Getting ready ...


It was such a delight to watch the event ... the club members did a fabulous job. My only regret was not getting a photograph of the three guys in the club (Iain, Jaret and Mitchell) -- by the time my camera came out the three lads (all 12 and under) were starting to look pretty disheveled ;-). But at the start they were all in black dress pants/cargo pants, blue dress shirts and dark blue ties! They also threw themselves wholeheartedly into the dance portion afterwards, which impressed the leaders no end.

Lastly, Alison once again won the Top Member award for the 2009 Sheep Club. Here are the two trophies she received:


4H sign-up night is tonight. Claire has decided that she is done with 4H for the most part. She may continue to occasionally do lifestyle clubs, but she is no longer interested in livestock projects. Iain is looking forward to 4H sign-up night this Wednesday; he has been wanting to do the beef club for two years and I wouldn't let him until he proved his ability to persevere with an animal in the sheep club. He proved it this past summer, so I suppose I may have to consider letting him have a go at beef next year. In the mean time, he will be doing wool club this fall, along with Alison, and is quite pumped about the weaving emphasis this year.

Alison is not sure what to do about livestock club next year. Because of her planned mission trip to Brazil, she will be hard pressed to work with a lamb. As well, after having won the Top Member award two years in a row, she will not allow her name to stand next year. She may try to aim for a junior leadership position instead, if it will work out with her busy schedule.

That's it for now! More later :-).

Belleville Christmas Parade, November 13 (!!!) 2009

Our family volunteered to help with the UCB float, passing out candy canes. Despite the incredibly long wait, and sore feet, we had a lot of fun. So much so, that on our way back to the van, Kevin was stopped by a police officer who told him that our group was the most cheerful and "Christmas-like" bunch in the parade. She asked him "So what is UCB Canada?" Smile.

A couple of fun things ...

Number 1: Family photo taken for our church directory ->



Number 2: Family picture after bored Kevin subjected it to Photoshop ->


Number 3: Last night at a 4H event (annual banquet) one of our lovely senior farmers mentioned that our family was Youtube'd after squaredancing at Allisonville Hall in May. Our friend Blake found is fiddling, and his mom Michelle is playing the piano. Embedded here for your amusement/entertainment lol. ->

Monumental moment last week ...

I popped upstairs during school to make lunch for Iain and myself. Going for "fast", I popped hot dogs into boiling water and prepared for a very excited boy (we don't have them often because I loathe hotdogs, but we were pressed for time). Just as they were done, Iain sauntered upstairs and asked what was for lunch. I said brightly "Hot dogs!" expecting cheers, high fives and a hug. What I got instead was ... "Huh. Okay." I said to my youngest man, "You don't sound very excited about hot dogs. Why is that?"

He said ...

(drum roll please) ...

"Yeah ... I dunno ... I just don't really feel like them today."

MY LITTLE BOY IS GROWING UP!!!!

Seriously, this boy has loved hot dogs his entire life. Serving hotdogs to him has been an act of love on my part, in his opinion. My mom world tilts again :-).

And other family news ... Kev had a day off yesterday, and we had a VERY productive day. We managed to get the garage all cleaned out and ready to put the car in for winter. We sorted through and organized the storage area, removing things for the dump. We took a van load of junk to the dump (Wednesdays are a GOOD day for Kev to be home; the dump is only open Wednesdays and Saturdays.) Not a particularly exciting day off for my big man, however it's been tough to find time for these pre-winter chores. Another one looming is our lawns .. they have yet to be mown for the last time. We have a waving wheat field on our front lawn. It mocks us when we look out the living room window. We have had so much rain that it's still wet on the infrequent sunny days ... by the time it's almost dry, it's raining ... or hailing! ... again.

Falling asleep and must go :-) ...

Feeling prepared for winter ....

We just got given a very old, but working, freezer, which is now ensconced in our garage happily freezing two lambs and 1/4 cow for the winter. We were able to get a really good price on 1/4 of one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_cattle

Supposedly the meat is divine, but we'll wait and see. All I know is the only time I've had a t-bone steak since we moved back to Canada was at a friend's party a couple of years ago, and we have three packages now!

I managed to locate our first firewood supplier by looking through my old day planners. They had taken a couple of years off, but the nephew is back in the county and really trying to make a go of his business. He is a GOOD supplier -- was able to custom order my wood from what he had available (beech = good, hardwood maple = good, ironwood (aka eastern hop hornbeam, not the ironwood of the South) = EXCELLENT! We had lousy softwood last year from a neighbour (but were in a pinch so we were grateful :-) ...) plus some donations (thank you guys!) but it was a patchwork kind of season. We just had our chimney cleaned and this is the first year it has actually been dirty; too much low temp burning wood. And oh, the ash build-up with softwood!

School is going well all around. Claire is LOVING grade 9 (do they make Grade 8 really boring on purpose I wonder???). She has a great Venture class, and the subjects she has been worried about are not an issue at all so far. Alison is enjoying her classes, although doesn't get any anatomy this term in science and the rest of her favourite subjects are next semester. They are looking forward to trying out for "Romeo and Juliet" next month. Alison continues her Saturday job, and is also helping out at Blumen for Taste of the County, a big "eat local" promotion that is county wide. Both girls are presently getting their passports ready for possible trips next summer.

Iain is having a great school year as well! I've chosen pretty much the perfect curriculum for him in every subject we do at home ... his attitude is getting better and better and (YAY) he really is getting interested in what he's learning. Not sure what about institutionalized school killed his desire to learn, but it's so good to have it back :-). It has also been awesome that he can attend Sonrise Christian Academy for their home school program. The new teacher they have is awesome, and Iain came home last week saying that he LIKED soccer (let's not talk about his public school phys ed experience, where if you're not skilled, you are ridiculed by the other kids and in some cases, even by the teacher :-( ). They are also using amazing (and very boy friendly) curriculum for French ... Iain spent over an hour last night studying it for fun!

Life is good ... and fun :-).

Busy ... (what else is new???)

Trying to prepare house to have an 18 month old this weekend. Our house is so not toddler proof! Yikes. New rule: toddlers and babies on weekends only :-). Five sets of eyes and hands are the only way this will get done.

On the other hand, it's the county Fair this weekend, and it might be fun to have a little one to take on the kiddie rides ;-).

First lamb has been shipped to Uncle Ted's ... looking forward to finding out the quality of our lamb this year!

Alison is busily getting the sheep club display ready. Chimney sweep tomorrow. Foster parents' meeting tomorrow night. Dropping off display at fairgrounds Thursday night. Long-awaited Picton Skateboard Park ceremony Thursday night. Training night for new church sound system Thursday night. (Can you see our predicament? LOL. And at some point, our weekend visitor must come for a pre-placement visit (... but when?!?!?!). Oh yes, and two and a half cords of wood to stack.

Iain's homeschool program starts on Thursday, so he is very excited. So far our school year has started smoothly! He is really working on being focused, and some of what we are doing is just plain fun! Had a great phone call from the grade 7 teacher who will be his phys ed teacher for the program ... he is new to the school but it sounds like he is going to be just as amazing as the other teachers at Sonrise. Nice that he's a guy too! I'm hoping that on of these afternoons during school I'll be able to do some fleece washing and carding ... I have nine fleeces from July and September to ready for spinning.

Okay, my five minute window is over ... looking forward to our schedule settling down somewhat. Ha, ha. But I have been told that month long lapses in blogging are not acceptable ;-). It's true!

Cheers, all!

This-and-that

Iain's first day of school (yes, that is a cup of coffee in his hand!). The girls both headed off for a 7:30 bus this morning, and already that significantly improves our school day. We can be up, organized, and started by 8. This is a good thing.


Alison is done her job at Blumen, although will stay on call for emergencies. Here is an example of what we are eating at home now, post summer job training. This was a lunch a couple of weeks ago ... pan-seared crab stuffed mushrooms with County corn. Can I just say ... yum!



Two photos from the 2009 4H Sheep Show. I was very proud of both kids involved. Alison had to work, and realizes that the livestock portion of the sheep club may be over for her due to summer job and potential travel commitments (more about that later!)

Claire with Paris:


Iain with Babette:


Claire's new haircut (and since this photo, we have also put in a temporary colour, but that will have to wait ... STILL trying to fix her hair post-Annie!)

Working women at our house!

First, let me start with Alison. Oh my. All I can say is she is going to be mightly glad when September rolls around and she has some time to herself. She is working two jobs this summer. She still continues at Marathon Stables, which is normally just Saturdays, however she also has two consecutive weeks of helping at riding camp. She insists this doesn’t feel like work (and in fact, until recently, her only payment has been riding lessons. Mary has also started giving her a nominal amount of cash as well!).

Her second job was the result of a “chance” meeting I had with a chef at No Frills. As we reached for the same perfect head of romaine, we ended up chatting, and he suggested that Alison submit a resume to the restaurant. It turned out he was the owner of Blumen Garden Bistro, and Alison has now been working there for a week and a half. She is the fourth “cook” in the restaurant (I say cook loosely, since this is a lovely upscale place where they serve daylily flowers in the salad and chickpea fries; oysters and creme brulee). Andreas is the head chef; there is a sous chef, a salads and appetizers chef, and Alison is now their preferred dessert prep person. However, she fills in for everything and they are thrilled with her, consider her part of the restaurant "team" and keep begging her to work more. She has made homemade egg noodles, crab cakes, the aforementioned daylily flowers in salad (she says the flowers are yummy) and is having a great time. She finds being in a kitchen soothing and restful (SHE IS NOT MY CHILD OBVIOUSLY LOL). This little restaurant served almost 100 people last night! She works Friday through Sunday, 3 - 11, and some Mondays as well. He would like her to come in Wednesday night as well, but I've said no.

Claire also scored in the job department this summer. She REALLY, REALLY wanted to work this summer, however being only 13 she figured the best she could do was babysitting. Last year she volunteered to clean trailers for our friends Scott and Sophie who run “West Lake Willows”. She is quite a good cleaner and she thought this might be a good way to get some experience. It has turned out that they had their full allotment of cleaning staff, so she is predominantly in the store, running the cash register, tidying displays, making registrations with a computerized system, scooping ice cream and making milkshakes. It is a GREAT job for her. She will clean if it is necessary, and also watch the children if Sophie has paperwork to do and Scott is unavailable. This is a beautiful place (I encourage you to go to their website and check it out!) and she is lucky to spend 3 days a week there this summer! She is working 12-6 Thursday and Friday, and 9-4 on Saturdays. Kevin actually spent the day there today SALMON fishing so I have hopes that our dinner menu tomorrow is taken care of ;-). Do you think a boat of guys thought to take a picture of the event??

Next post: Claire’s amazing week at Worship Camp at Wesley Acres (last week)

Blogger issues are continuing ...

I'm presently looking about for another blog host, ideally one where I can have a public blog with password protected entries for family business. I did this morning manage to get into the normal create blog screen, so I'm going to now attempt to upload the video of Claire singing "Why" in my previous post. Check there just in case I am successful. :-P Okay ... this is completely frustrating. I saved "Why" in an incompatible file format. The only way to show video now is using a YouTube Player, which will load all my videos. At some point when I'm not completely frustrated with tech stuff, I will move the Youtube Player to my side bar and where I can, reload previous videos. Time to go outside and enjoy the day (and work!)

The good (?) news is there have been no more lambs yet. I'm hoping something will happen today though, because we are now expecting five more days of rain. Based on a LLOOONGG gestation period of 155 days (sheep range from 144 - 155 days normally), and assuming that these two ewes did not conceive until Eddy's very last day on the property, the latest possible lambing date is April 19. Considering that Kivu appeared to get covered right away, I'm a little surprised.

We've had a lovely, peaceful 4-day long weekend ... including Kevin! This is the first year he has had both Good Friday and Easter Monday "off". "Off" in quotes because he did the Good Friday sermon ... and it was excellent. I was very proud of him.

A few photos ... here is Lorelai, our only 4H lamb to date:


This is Digger, Coriander's little ram lamb. He is a cutie, and being raised as a single he's packing on the pounds.


And lastly, here is Max Medina. He is a lovely, leggy long ram lamb.

Claire singing Nichole Nordeman's "Why" for Holy Week ... not yet/ no more video at Blogger :-(

Unfortunately the sound quality is terrible ... but I adore this song.

Okay ... update ... Google Video is no longer allowing updates to Blogger. I will have to get creative before I can post videos. :-(. Hold on for future updates!


Testing ... testing ... is this going to work?

Claire's grad photo proofs :-), plus update on lambs and Roger

Claire's hair is still Annie-red ... only slightly subdued, and it is growing out beautifully! It's starting to look highlighted, and she doesn't have dark roots showing because the hair colour tones were almost identical. It's actually quite lovely, but she can hardly wait for her own hair. And wait she will have to, because NOTHING at our budget level covers this red! She has decided to go with Image 1 for her order. She has grown up SO much this year ... and not only on the outside. I'm very proud of her :-).

We just completed Claire's Venture Portfolio (what a big job this is!). This is toward her entry into the Venture program at the high school in September. Gasp. Two in high school. I just have to run in town and get a signature on a letter of reference and pick up a CD (she is including video of two of her musical performances, snippets from Annie and Enchanted Sleeping Beauty). Then, off to the high school to drop the binder off and pick up Alison for the weekend!

All I can say is ... hurray for weekends!

Farm chores ... gave new little lamb his Selenium-E shot last night, and will likely band him later today. Iain will be doing shop class this morning ... I have to modify our creep panel so that our smaller adult sheep can't wiggle their way in. Iain, with my guidance, will cut the correctly sized piece of wood and screw it on to the panel. For those not in the know, creep feed is a feed ration specially made for little lambs. It's a delicious concoction of various crunchy pellets, some grains, and molasses. Adult sheep LOVE this stuff, so a creep panel is a length of fence with a lamb-sized door cut into it.

Speaking of homeschool, here is Iain yesterday doing math ;-), along with Coriander and her new little guy. Unfortunately, Corrie liked nibbling on the math book ... which belongs to our school district ... so he had to move to the other end of the shelter.


And for those of you asking about Roger, here are some "Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood" photos. This cat, honestly, is the neatest cat I've ever been privileged to meet. I'm so glad he showed up. He has graduated from following Alison out to the bus, to following us EVERYWHERE around the property. When Iain heads over to the pond to explore, Roger follows him. When I took Dickens for a short walk a few days ago, he trotted after us for quite a distance! When any of us head out to the sheep pen, he now knows that fence is off and he comes out to play with the sheep. He loves the sheep, and Rosie and Coriander adore him. Here are two photos taken yesterday:

Here he is in his "Overseer of Sheep" position:

(He tried this when Jasmine was in here with her twins, and she was less accepting of him. But he and Corrie are buddies!)

And here is his as "Overseer of the Neighbourhood":



And lastly, two of Corrie and her babe. Here Corrie is attempting to recover from the birth. Aren't you glad human babies don't do this??? I'm glad we don't shear before lambing!


And the two, snuggling ...

Am I sore ... :-) ... edited ;-)

It's been a tough winter ... the pneumonia really knocked me out through January, and I really felt as if I'd lost muscle. I've been a little worried by this lack of fitness. Today we trimmed feet and crutched the ewes ("crutched" - snipped away all the extra fleece bits that a lamb might confuse with a teat). We also re-tarped both of the sheep sheds, amongst a bunch of small chores. You know you're not very fit when you're sore by the time you walk back in the house!

Good news: all four ewes are definitely pregnant. And very fun (something we've not seen before) ... we spent some fun time watching lambs rollicking inside of Corrie. We didn't shear until the fall last year, so the staple is still quite short and we can see these big lamb movements.

Bad news: a couple of the ewes seem REALLY pregnant (swollen ****** (insert word for lady parts here, lol) , tails lifted already, very uncomfortable) and I'm feeling a little concerned about our trip to Burlington on Wednesday. By my calculations, the very earliest day we should expect lambs is March 24. We should be just fine. However, little Coriander worries me. She is quite tiny, and is carrying either twins or one large lamb (the second option is the worrying one). Alison has valiantly volunteered to stay here and sheep sit. However, I really want all the kids to come. What do do, what to do ... well, nothing for tonight, and we will keep checking tomorrow and make a decision by tomorrow night. I hope.

In the meantime, I'm going to attempt to stand up and make my way to the family room to watch TV with the family. Ouch. Pathetic.

Am I a terrible parent if ...

I was REALLY hoping that my kids were still feeling poorly today???

Yesterday I had all three home ... Alison had been off school for 4 days, Claire for 2, and Iain was now catching the fever/headache/achy flu that has been going around. There were NO expectations on my time ... no lunches to make, no school to prepare and do, no driving in to town to pick up kids doing after school activities. Iain slept for at least an hour in the afternoon.

I spent all day trying to sort through all of our books, and reorganize bookshelves, and bring order to the school room/office area. I felt terrifically accomplished by day's end.

I hoped to continue today, all day. Alison headed off to school in the morning, but Iain was also feeling well enough for school ... then I had to head in to town to take Alison to a doctor's appointment. I did have a little while this afternoon, and although not completely done, here is the school and office area ...


Bookshelves and school table:



Command central on the other side of the room:


This all stemmed from a comment Kev made a couple of weeks back that all of our current books (he gets quite a few from work) have been teetering unsafely on bedside tables and dressers. "With all the bookshelves in this house, you'd think we'd have some room for our own books!".

Now we do!

Alison is writing a math contest tomorrow (hopefully)

http://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/pcf.html

This is the Pascal contest put on by University of Waterloo. She purposed to write this thing on the first day of grade 9, and has been completing old tests since then. Unfortunately, she has a very bad cold today -- she's hoping she feels better in the morning as she tends to get flaky when writing tests if she's sick. It's really a no-brainer ... only the student gets the result unless they are in the top so many, so it won't count against her at all. It could be very positive though if she does do well. I sure appreciate her willingness to try new things :-).

A review of "Annie" that we hadn't seen earlier, and an extremely rare photograph of yours truly ;-)

Thanks to a friend who kept this Wellington Times article around for quite some time. It mentions both Claire and Kevin by name, which is sort of cool. As always, click on the images to enlarge.





And secondly, an extremely rare photograph of myself, taken as we were running out the door for a lovely Valentine's meal at Paulo's in Belleville. Kev had been given a gift certificate for Christmas, and we decided we'd spend the whole thing on just us ;-). It was lovely! You can just see the scarf I'm wearing ... I'll have to get some photographs of the scarves Kev brought home. This was one of the scarves woven by the Karen tribe woman whose photograph Kev took.

Hi all

I haven't had a whole lot of time to blog lately ... just busy juggling school, work, transportation to events etc. I quickly wanted to mention that lambs will start arriving no earlier than about the 25th of March, for those who visit because of farm interests :-).

The girls had a wonderful weekend at Joy Bible Camp. The leaders took the group through a video/book series for Josh Harris' "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" -- a book that all the girls in this house have already read and loved. It correlates well with my long-held theory that dating is the best preparation for divorce there is! (But that's for another time). Apparently there was lots of animated discussion, in particular from the kids who ARE dating right now :-). There was also tubing, sledding, snowboarding (Claire was able to give it a try), long discussions well in to the night and pranking, in no particular order. Fun times!

One photo for now ...

Kevin took about 100 photographs .... which would be 20 separate entries here. I'm looking at alternatives since that's a pretty time-consuming endeavour :-). But I leave you with this to start:

Kev was able to take a raft trip upriver from Chaing Rai and visit the Karen tribe village of Ruammi. The Karens are considered a "long-neck" tribe; the women wear rings around their necks with numbers increasing as they age. A child may have four; a women would have many more. He did get photos of this, but I won't be posting more pics until later.

Thanks, Kev, by the way, for checking in to the blog from Bangkok ... I now have Thailand on my map of readers :-). Since this is a private blog, that's a big deal!

Photo of the girls with some friends ...

Back (left to right): Alison, Emily Griffin (our new pastor's awesome 14 year old daughter) and Claire
Front: Amy, a really great homeschooled teen who the girls have been friends with since we moved here :-).

This photo was taken by Amy's mom, Vic, I believe during apple picking in October.

This is getting almost funny ... poor Kev ...

So there was an earthquake in Tokyo this morning at 5ish o'clock (acted as an alarm clock). It was 5.9 on the richter scale but luckily the epicentre wasn't right in Tokyo but a couple of hundred clicks away so it was just a rattler.

And now, they've changed his flights and he is heading to Los Angeles rather than Vancouver. Oh my. He is VERY tired of the trip at this point, and will be getting home even later than he was. Poor guy.

And here, of course ... it continues to snow. I spoke with one of my farmer neighbours today and heard one more time of winters past, and how this winter reminds them of winter 50 years ago. This is a perfect winter, for the right transportation. Our over-dependence on cars is what makes it challenging. All the old-timers get a faraway look in their eyes, and tell you about their favourite team, and hitching up the sleigh to go in to town, and how snow in their days wasn't something to be feared but made transportation easier. As we drove home tonight from helping our pastor and family settle in to their new house, it was more "magic" snow ... glittery diamond dust snow covering everything. Magical and beautiful. Mmmmmm.

Updates on Kev and snow :-)

... who is now stranded in Tokyo. Good things: he is with his boss, not alone. The sushi is truly amazing, and he never imagined eating sushi in Japan. They get a day trip into Tokyo today (tonight our time) which was unplanned but should be fun.

Bad thing: He is now truly desperate to get home.

WE continue today to help move our pastor in ... and blow snow. Expecting 5 cm today and possibly 15 cm on Monday. Yikes!

Here are some "ladies-in-waiting" and snow photos:

Our flower box before snowfall number two:


Jasmine breaking snow in their paddock. The sheep have maintained a path to their feeder; otherwise the snow is untouched. It reaches right over their fence in some parts, however they are not particularly interested in leaving.


"Why are you dragging me through this, Alison?"


Rosemary's first winter. I don't think she's so sure about this!


Now I know she's not sure ... bawling for help! (Or food)


"That's better!"



Okay, only loosely a snow photo ... Iain carved this polar bear out of ivory soap as part of his unit on aboriginals. I'm sorry it's blurry, but I though he did a great job.