If you have made it this far in our blog life…. believe it or not, we have been living in this bus for 6 ½ years; sorry to anyone that had put money on us not surviving that long and lost the bet! Of course, not everyday is a super adventure, but there’s enough going on a regular basis to write about, and this outlet is also an awesome diary for Todd and I. So, without further ado, welcome to blog post 100 and thanks for sticking around!
As expected, summer in Alberta always zooms by in the blink of an eye. This year we kept waiting for summer to arrive….we spent months waiting and these are some of the antics that we got up too:
- Panorama long weekend – it had been a few years since we booked a summer long weekend vacation with our friends in the Invermere / Columbia Valley. We started a conversation on this possible even back in May and although it took a few tries, we finally found a great spot in Panorama for the 6 of us to hang our hats for 4 days. We brought the lake boat (Clara Mary), expecting to use it everyday on Windermere Lake ….but apparently the Columbia Valley hadn’t seen summer yet either. We managed to take Clara Mary out for 3 hours on day 1; it was a challenging time for captain Todd to navigate us back to shore without anyone going overboard! The rest of the weekend was spent eating, laughing, visiting, walking around town, games and a couple visits with my cousin and family who also have a place up there. Panorama.html
- We also helped Devon get his SeaCan installed at the family land and did a week of groundskeeping, where we had Todd’s buddy’s son Corban come help us. Seacan.html
- Aug long weekend – usually the hottest weekend in the summer and the plan was to go with a group out to Ghost Lake for camping and boating. Mother nature said NO we are not gonna give you good weather. So it was a spontaneous location change to go east back to our favourite little unknown campground Swalwell Dam, hoping for sun. It was good enough with only 1 day of pouring rain!
- Wedding #2 – This wedding was for Todd’s niece down in Lethbridge, AB. We ventured down in Missy the Mercedes, with Todd’s boys in the back seat like family vacation! It was a lovely wedding and party in their back yard – finally got to meet some of their friends and they were just as excited to meet “UNCLE TODD”!
- FSS camping weekend – this was a long overdue camping weekend with my “old” workmates, and we hosted this at the family land instead of Ghost Lake, of course due to shitty summer weather. We had such a fun time and couldn’t believe we had never done this before. Wedding-and-such.html
It was about the 3rd week in August, when summer finally decided to show up (no rain, no overnight lows of 4C and daytime temp above 22 for longer than 1 day) we made plans to head into Calgary for the weekend to visit with local friends and friends from Vancouver. Always a super fun time with these fun folks, but for some reason I have not a single photo!
Camping on the streets in City of Calgary. Trying to just “fit in”.
Next thing we knew, August was over and on Sept Long weekend Todd and I went separate ways….Todd went on a road trip with a buddy down to Montana, while I flew down east with my sister to celebrate our youngest sister’s big 50th birthday in Ft. Erie, ON. It was a super fun weekend, with alot of estrogen….Amanda’s mom and sister came down and so did our niece EmmaJo from Toronto. A fantastic summer afternoon party, lots of laughs, too much food, late night firepit chats, hot tub and hikes through Niagara before we headed back home. I have no photographic evidence of Todd’s Road trip, but I do have some of the visit to my sisters. Carleys-50th-birthday.html
A few years ago (or maybe it was 6…), Todd suggested an end of September/summer party at the family land for all our friends and called it the Pig Roast. Well, we were obvious amateurs because we had no idea you needed to brine a pig before you roast it on a spit. Turns out, the roasting part on the spit was the most fun to watch, but a pretty boring and dry meat to eat! Since then, we have removed said “pig” from the roast and slightly changed the name. We now do a variety of meat on the spit (ham, turkey), BBQ salmon and two smokers for briskets …..the event is now called “Meatfest”.
This is how it works:
This year’s Meatfest was by far the most well attended (50 people) because we bragged about it too much that everyone wanted to come! We also moved it up a few weeks to early September for a couple reasons: we have a BIG holiday scheduled this year Sept 12-27, and going forward in future years we might want to go snowbirding after Meatfest and head somewhere warmer without having to wait until October to do it. Regardless, it was probably the FUNNEST time we have EVER had at our own event: lawn games, laughing, so much food, the best DJ for deck dancing, HUGE bonfires, so many great times. Here is some of the antics from that fun event and we will see you next year! Meatfest.html