A post, a post, finally!

I seem to go through posting spurts. Three in a night and then a long silence. Sometimes I just don't feel like waiting forever for the pictures to upload to blogger. Or I'm too busy, with, let's say, riding a horse. Or taking the kids to the stable to ride. A pony named Fritz, but more on that soon. Whatever 'soon' may mean. :)  For now, here are some more Canada pictures. Today's theme:

'Little Cabin in the Woods'!

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As always, being at the family cabin at Candle Lake was a lot of fun. The first thing Finn and Lily needed to check was if ex-Black-Bear I and ex-Black-Bear II were still up in that loft. The bear skin formerly known as Black Bear I was enjoying the view from up there, as he likes to do, and his colleague was hanging out on the floor of the loft - so all was well in Finn's and Lily's neck of the woods. 

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And everybody needs a grandpa to tell him hunting stories at night!

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When Kristine and I weren't busy doing the most amazing puzzles you've never seen we did other fun things like taking the kids for a canoe ride. It was a little wobbly and an icy cold wave came in where Kristine was sitting, but other than that no one got wet. I think we scared Lily a bit with all our talk of who grabs whom if we tip, so the princess wanted to go back pretty soon, but the kids really did well with their paddling.

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Wonder why Kurt looks so tense in this photo? (I mean, come on, it's just a puny little 6-year-old wielding a hatchet in front of your face and over your legs!)

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All right, exhaaaaale!!!

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Finn and Grandpa built this treehouse together, complete with a fireplace, pictures on the 'walls', and the absolutely necessary dead bird in a tin can for decoration. What, you don't have one in your home? Finn's taking orders, he collects that kind of stuff. As does Lily. Am I the only mother who makes her little girl cry by telling her that, NO, she can't bring those feathers into the house. Not as long as they are still attached to that ripped-off wing. Blech.

But back to the cabin. Speaking of Lily, she enjoyed her cabin bath pioneer style. And the lucky girl even got to be the first one to get washed up in that water.

But Finn was lucky, too! He was the lucky one to share a bed with Lily at the cabin. Good thing he sleeps like a rock, as there is just NO escaping her. She will follow you all over the bed, all night long, to sleep in exactly THIS position. I'm speaking from personal experience here. On the upside, she and her future husband won't ever have to invest in a big bed, a narrow one will do. :)

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This is the dream team on one of the traditionally unsuccessful Candle Lake fishing expeditions.

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Unless you count rocks and seaweed as a 'catch', of course.

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One morning we saw a deer right outside the cabin.

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And Karl's old bike got some miles put on it again, after many years. Tires were leaking a bit, but otherwise it's in good shape!

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On our last morning there Finn and Lily decided that the lake water had warmed up from icy cold to very cold and thus was warm enough for a dip. (It was still under 10C though, the lake had been ice free for only 4 weeks.)

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No swim suits handy, but who cared.

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Well, maybe it was a TAD on the chilly side still.

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And with that, good night! I have lots more pictures, and I will get them uploaded. Sooner rather than later, but just how soon I can't say. We're pretty busy here with all kinds of activities as Finn's Kindergarten days are drawing to a close. And have I mentioned I ride that horse quite a bit? Like, almost every day?

Stay tuned. :)

Travel tales, part II, or: from grasslands to wetlands

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As promised, here is part two of the road pictures.

We covered a lot of prairie, and I always like to look out for the abandoned old homesteads in the fields. I wonder who built them, who lived there, and what kind of memories they hold - the dreams and laughter, love and pain of generations past. Sometimes you see whole farmsteads with several buildings, sometimes just a single house is left, like this one (on Larry and Corrina's ranch land).

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As we were driving we saw some wildlife (sometimes, well, dead), but often we'd come across deer or a coyote.
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Sometimes we were faced with tough decisions like: Bay, River, or Plain? Carrot or Porcupine? :)
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And then there are all the small towns you drive through or pass by. The green sign by the roadside tells you what services the town offers, and luckily for Lily who announced she was in dire need of a bathroom the town coming up had signs for: a restaurant, a picnic area and a gas station. So we pulled off the highway. Turned out the sign could use some updating. The gas station was nowhere to be found, Finn to his utter disappointment found the saloon shuttered and with a "for sale" sign in the window

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and Lily had to make do with the open air bathroom between the shack and the hay stack.
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But - we did find the picnic area, romantically located just beside the rusty old truck.

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Ah, that's better!
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But what surprised us most was all the water in the prairies. For about three years now it has rained A LOT, and the fields that used to be too dry for anything to grow in are now too wet for the farmers to get onto. Neil said he had never seen the prairies this green so early in the year. And there is water everywhere, with the ditches overflowing and forming lakes, rotting away the fence and power posts, roads that are flooded, and basements running full of water, as we experienced first hand at our friends' house. So this guy here definitely had the right idea.
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At the Wilderness Ranch we piled into Larry's truck to check on the cows and the pastures. When we drove onto the field it was like driving into a bog and I was curious to see if the 4 wheel drive would actually manage to get us through. But it kicked in after a while and off we went, luckily. This is what driving through a formerly parched field sounds and feels like now:
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It reminded me of our drive out to the ranch, where we were just happily cruising along (looking at all the water in the fields) when the most hilarious and fitting song came on the country station we were listening to. You just know you've come across a gem of a song when the band who sings it is called "Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans."
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Here are some of the lyrics:
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For The first time in the collective memory,
That old brown prairie that had been so dry for so long was very muddy
Boggy and sticky
We’d pull one truck out and get another stuck in
And motors would roar and tires would spin
We’d sink right down, down to the diff, and we’d all take turns and do it again
Till no one could move, we’d call one more friend,
Come on out here, we need you…bring your truck.
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The Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck
Got the Chev unstuck when the Dodge showed up
But the Dodge got stuck in the tractor rut
Which eventually pulled out the Ford
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Well it was truck after truck, we all got stuck
‘cept the big old four by hutterite truck
We all thought “lord are we in luck!”
But he wouldn’t come anywhere near us,
Mighty neighborly, mighty neighborly.
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And then they save the day and get the trucks out with the help of some stolen Canola seed. That song cracked us up and I especially loved the part about the Hutterites. I love seeing them in their distinctive garb, shopping at the mall or eating at the buffet restaurants. Anyway, I managed to catch some of that song while filming us in the car. And if you think watching us do nothing in the van for 2 minutes is boring - imagine what it is like driving along like this for hours and hours. :)
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And, here is the official video to that song. Couldn't not post this, of course.

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Those Canadians, eh?
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Let me end this post with a little road incident that Neil declared the "highlight of his trip." (If you are a faithful blog reader you will know that I did not have international driver's licenses made this time around. We just carried our German ones.)
Anyway, we were driving back to Calgary the day before our flight (you know, ENDLESS stretches of empty prairie highway), with Grandma and Grandpa following somewhere behind us in their car. We met up for coffee at a Tim Horton's somewhere along the way, and Grandpa, as is a habit of his, told me not to speed because the fines are hefty and anyway, it's dangerous. Plus, the cruise control on the van is a little off and you might go faster than you think. So, since the speed limit was 100 kph I set the cruise control to approximately 103 or maybe a TAD higher and off we went. Highway straight and empty, with no trees or bushes on either side, I was happily chatting away with Neil when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a police car with flashing lights pulling out of the ditch to my left just as I passed it.
I pulled over and watched the officer in my rearview mirror talking on her phone and checking whatever things she needed to check for endless minutes, all the while Neil was squirming in his seat, almost peeing his pants with excitement and muttering, 'Come on, Kurt! Where the heck are you when you're needed!? Come on, you just HAVE to drive past us now and give Claudia THAT look!'
Mighty neighborly, Neil, mighty neighborly.
So finally the officer gets out of her car, and my smirking husband rolls down the window so she could inform me that she clocked me going 129. (BOY, talk about that cruise control thing being OFF!☺ ) Then, of course, she needed to see my driver's license and she asked me if this (the German one) was all I had. I said yes. And then guess what happened? She said, 'Well, as you are going back to Germany I am not going to give you a ticket, but slow down, this is a dangerous highway.' (NO KIDDING, with all those police cars hiding in the ditches!)
Neil could not believe his ears, and before he recovered enough to ask her if she would not at least lock me up for a few hours or so I drove off. And slowed down. A little.
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Here's the view of the police car as I'm driving off. And Kurt never passed us. But we did phone him to warn him we had just seen a police car on the highway. :)
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Travel Tales part 1

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First off, let me say that travelling overseas with a 5- and a 6-year old is MUCH different from travelling with a 2- and a 3-year-old. This became especially clear on our flight back to Germany, where we boarded with a mother travelling alone with three small children, the youngest just 3 days younger than Sophie, so around 9 months old. She ended up sitting a few rows in front of us and it seemed at least 2 out of her 3 children were crying at any given time. The turbulences probably didn't help. She never left her seat the whole 9+ hours, and I am sure she didn't get to eat anything either. The baby was especially unhappy, but of course Neil was drawn to this beautiful little girl like a fly to an outhouse and eventually Emmalina ended up in his arms where she finally succumbed to the endless knee bends and humming and fell asleep. They don't call him the "Baby Whisperer" for nothing. :)

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Finn and Lily did exceptionally well on this trip - on the train, on the plane and during the many hours we spent in the car in Canada. We drove more than 3000 km (1900 miles), and covered a lot of Alberta and Saskatchewan, from Calgary to the Rockies

and north to Edmonton, then east all the way to the cabin at Candle Lake (near Prince Albert), then home to Saskatoon, then the trips to Murray Lake (near North Battleford) and to the ranch in northeastern Saskatchewan through endless prairie

and finally back to Calgary through the southern part of the provinces, with a stint in the Badlands and "Dinosaur Valley" (Drumheller).

Thank you again, Grandma and Grandpa, for so graciously providing us with this neat van!

And for getting us a GPS navigations system, too. While it's pretty hard to get lost on a prairie highway the GPS really helped us navigate through a city like Calgary with all its Crowchild

and Deerfoot and whatnot trails and avenues and construction sites. 

It was a real blessing to have because Neil and I and reading maps in the car and getting lost and driving around in circles just don't go together very well. And frankly, it took us a few days to adjust to the different time zone and to the four of us being together 24/7 anyway. I distinctly remember taking the following picture during our first days in Calgary, with this evil little laugh going off in my head and visions of - oh well. Some things are better kept inside. :)

But adjust we did, and more than that, we had a really really great holiday and the car trips were fun. We travelled at night

or early early (well, for us) in the day:

Good Morning, Lily, have some breakfast!

Good Morning Fi... - oh, never mind.

If we were lucky we drove on asphalt

but we also learned that the van gets EXTREMELY dusty on the inside when you're driving on dirt roads

especially if there is "traffic".

We stopped at the one or other Greasy Spoon to have a bite

we attracted curious glances when we decided to have a picnic right in the middle of a little prairie town (we couldn't find any picnic tables anywhere)

we ate our share of fast food

and we kept a cool head

when we (nearly) ran out of gas on highway 41. We somehow forgot to fill up and were caught by surprise when the warning light came on pretty much in the middle of nowhere. We made it to the next little town on our map, but it didn't have a gas station and Neil was momentarily distressed ("What am I DOING here on 41 with an empty tank!? Let's turn around, maybe we can make it back!!"). He calmed down though, we drove on, saw a little farm by the side of the road and decided to ask where the next gas station was. And would you believe it, Neil found the farmer in the process of filling up his truck. He managed to refrain from begging for a cup of gas and learned that the next gas station was in fact not that far away, in the next little town.

Enter this place:

Population: 70. Attractions: one gas station slash convenience store. And a playground (Finn and Lily are on the very left in the above picture). There was a moment of tension when the pump didn't seem to work, but then we were saved. (For the record, Neil thinks we could have made it to Wakaw, but I'm not so sure. That van sure is a thirsty one.)

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More to follow, this is getting too long and the kids are begging me to watch something on here.

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Happy trails!

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Ranch video

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One of the highlights of our Canada visit was taking Finn and Lily to the Eastview Wilderness Ranch in northeastern Saskatchewan for a few days. Neil and I stayed at Larry and Corrina's ranch in 2002, and we had so much fun that we knew we just had to bring the kids back once they were old enough. We stayed in touch over the years and it was fun to visit them again, now as a family of four. As expected, we all had an awesome time, and Finn and Lily fit right in. We left the pictures and videos we took with Corrina, and she made this nice little video. Enjoy!

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More pictures from the ranch to follow in another post.

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And check out their website:

Eastview Wilderness Ranch

Happy Canada Day

from these little Canadian ranch hands!

And dedicated to all you Canadian girls out there: Dean Brody! Some lines in this song made me think of one Canadian girl especially.

(Hint:

'Her brothers taught her how to fight'

'She can wear high heels and flannel, she can look sexy in a toque'

or:

'Baby she likes to snowboard
Spends her summers out on a boat
Thinks a perfect night out is a cabin
Smell of coffee on an old wood stove'

okay, maybe substitute the coffee for 'doing weird puzzles in record time')





You know who you are. ☺ Spending time with you is always so much fun! And Lily says: ♥ ♥ ♥