Shadow joins our family

After the death of our cat, Maggie we were very anxious to find another kitty to love. Our neighbour, Sherry, found us this cute little bundle of fur in the town of Samara.

Andrew named her Shadow and she is a barrel of fun. She races around when she first wakes up and has a big sleep in the afternoon. The boys made her a jungle gym (upper floor where she pulls and tugs on her string and the bottom floor where she sleeps. Isn't she the cutest???

Austin Pepper Seed

Austin, aka Austin Pepper Seed, is here showing off his latest crop of peppers. We have scrunchy peppers (some are hot and some are mild - we don't know the real name of them), bell peppers, jalapeño peppers and small, multi-colored peppers (not sure of their name either but Austin calls them pepper bombs). He's very proud of his peppers and we're very proud of him that he's taken such an interest in growing them. He starts many of them from seeds and currently he is trying to grow:
- cerrano chile
- banana peppers
- habanero
- poblano
- gypsy
- normal chile (like the slogan from the restaurant Chile's)
and one more muy picante chile that we don't know the name of.

One thing we know for sure is that we don't ever have to buy any peppers at the grocery store!!!

Trip to Forestburg for a family wedding

Mid July saw us travelling to Bashaw (wedding ceremony) and Forestburg (wedding reception) to attend my cousin Dale's daughter's wedding. Here are pictures of my Uncle Marcel and Aunt Anna Blouin. My cousin Dale and his wife Lorraine Blouin and the bride and groom - Dale and Lorraine's daughter Pam and her new husband Shane Fuller. We had attended the Blouin family reunion on the July long weekend but this was great to see a few of the relatives again.

Visit to High Prairie

Our friend, Jack Lischka, from High Prairie visited us twice last winter in Costa Rica. On his first trip in December, he brought his two friends, Pat and Amber and on his second trip in March he brought his friend Ernie. So, this summer, we visited Jack at his home in High Prairie and while we were there, Pat came from Grande Prairie to see us and Ernie - well he lives next door - very handy. Ernie is in the picture with Jack and John. Jack's neighbour visited us one day and he is in the other picture with Jack at the kitchen table.

Jack has a lot of wildlife on his farm and one morning we saw two young foxes crossing his yard but I wasn't quick enough to grab a picture. Austin really enjoyed feeding the squirrels as you can see. Both Jack and Ernie make their own wine which we enjoyed on a daily basis while visiting. We hope Jack and his gang will come south again to visit this winter. Thanks for a great visit and hospitality Jack; we really enjoyed it.

We arrived in Edmonton on June 8/07 for our summer visit. Although a nice day the rest of the week was very cold and rainy; quite a shock for us southerners. I picked up our "Canada" coats from Camrose first thing!

We were invited to Pat and Jan Wren's for a BBQ on our first weekend back so here's a picture of Polly and I plus one of (left to right) Sandy, Polly, John, Terry and our hostess Jan Wren. Pat was away on business so he missed out.


I met my NAIT ladies for an evening at the Creperie which is something we have been doing fairly regularly for many years.


Our family attended the Blouin Family reunion on the July long weekend but alas no pictures from that event. Next up was my get together with my work group friends. We spent the night at the Country Creek Inn at Pigeon Lake where half of us went to the spa and half golfed. We stayed in for drinks, snacks and dinner and then had a scrumptious breakfast buffet at the Black Bull golf resort the next morning. My apologies to Susan as I didn't have a picture that would be suitable for posting but then I didn't have one of me either.

Florida vacation

This year we spent two weeks in Orlando, Florida prior to returning to Canada for a two month visit. Week one we stayed at the Hilton Grand Vacation Club at SeaWorld which was really great. John had injured his leg at the end of April so he wasn't able to join the kids and I on all our tours. Therefore, I also didn't bring the camera to any of the parks as I wanted to ride the rides too! So, we have very few pictures of our Florida vacation but here's what we have:
- tour of The Holy Land theme park where the boys went rock climbing in between plays
- a trip to the Titanic Museum
- a trip to Ripley's and
- a trip to southern Florida to visit my friend Nora Kean and her little boy Pierce. Her husband, Alan, was away working.

We also went to SeaWorld this week. Week two we moved to River Island at Orange Lake where we had a fabulous two bedroom condo. We went to the Disney parks one day and to the water parks for a couple of days plus I did get some shopping in.

Landscape Progress

In late April, early May we completed Phase 1 of our landscape project. John finished all the rock walls and we put in the plants. The rainy season starts in early May so the timing was great as we didn't have to manually water. We left for our vacation on May 24th knowing that everything would grow in our absence. "After" pictures will be posted eventually. We were very impressed by the growth of our plants. In fact, I had planted a weed on purpose (milk star) as I really like the flower; however our gardener pulled it out in our absence! I was shading it initially (see front of house picture with the white bag shade structure). Anyway, weeds aren't ever hard to come by so I put in another when I returned!

In the back we planted bougainvillea along the top planter and wow did they ever catch nicely; wait till you see the August pictures. We also put in our sod which is like a golf grass so it doesn't need mowing - wonderful!