The pookiest of them all..

What a monkey...

Deanne comes to town

My goodest friend Deanne Petker (also known as "Deezil" or "Deener" or "Doozle") came out to visit us this weekend! We had lots of adventures, including a visit to Radium Hot Springs, a leisurely drive through the woods and a walk along the lake. This is actually a view of our street from another point along the shore. We drove out to "SRL K2" Ranch this weekend, the location of a few projects Kevin's boss has going right now. Here's a cabin his work buddies built (this is all on 22,000 acres of private land, owned by a rather fortunate - and wealthy Calgarian). Deezil and myself on the dock. View from the cabin porch. Kev's work buddies built all the furniture themselves as well. Looks awesome!

New Toy!

The "Wide Tracker Activity Walker" was a baby gift from Kendra's coworkers at the U of BC before Atalie was born. It's pretty cool actually. It takes the shape of a mail delivery cart with plastic envelopes which fit into all kinds of slots and drops, complete with doobobs and thingamajigs to push and pull. Mom spent a good 15 minutes putting it together just right and Atalie could hardly wait to get her hands on the plastic wheels which looked so good to chew on!! Finally - done! What does Atalie do? She takes off her sock and sucks on it. Hmph. My kind coworkers could have bought her a string and she would have been just as thrilled! Anybody thinking of buying Atalie lots of toys for Christmas may want to reconsider:)

Playin around

This little monkey had squash for starters, highchair for dinner... ...and Daddy for desert! :)

The locals

So, as it turns out I see more wildlife than people out here. Makes for a slow, but sometimes mildly interesting day. Here's a few of the locals: One of many deer that visit now and then. This one is Abigail (at least, I think it's a girl). Usually Bucky is the one in our backyard, scratching his stubby little antlers on the tree. I've decided to name them since they frequent their visits:) Here she is peering through the kitchen window along the side of the house. This is an interesting story... read on to find out why I bothered to take pictures of the birds... So, I was peacefully baking away like a good housewife always does (right??), making brownies and gingerbread cookies, which some might argue is a little premature, but hey - what the heck, why not?? ...when suddenly I heard a BANG! And then another! And then 5 minutes later, another!! What the deuce?? What could be making this noise? I looked out the window yet saw nothing. Then a few minutes later, BANG!! So I opened the front door, only to quickly close it to avoid being hit by yet another bird, flying itself into the screen door. There were at least a hundred of them fluttering around the trees! Then another bang on the back window! So I went to the back to check it out and sure enough, there was a poor stupid little bird sitting stunned on the deck. But wait - BANG! Another stupid little bird has now joined the first one, dazed and confused on the deck. Can't really help but say that it serves him right. Didn't he see what happened to the other guy 2 seconds earlier?! Does anybody know what kind of pretty yet unusually unintelligent bird this is?

Radium Hot Springs

We visited the hotties for the second time in the same week today... how can we resist? Just look how inviting it is! Anyway, Radium is Attie's first pool experience so we had to capture it, just like all the other experiences:) If she could have swam she would have swam like the best little otter around! She loves the water and especially loves to splash anybody within a 2 metre radius:)