Aunt Ruthie Comes to Visit

Our little family had a very fun filled week-end a little while ago. Our church had a missions conference and my Aunt Ruthie was one of the guests. Well we made sure to ask if we could have Aunt Ruth stay with us and were counting down the days until she came.!

 

The girls made a little "fire pit " while we were showing Aunt Ruthie the goats. They were having a great time pretending to roast marshmallows!!

Aunt Ruthie had the girls help her get some crafts ready for Church the next day. Did we ever have fun sitting in the sun on the back deck making necklaces and gluing shells!!

Everyone had something to do.

Even Jake was there getting in on the visiting.

The girls sang special music for the evening service.

The next morning Aunt Ruthie and Aunt Laura had the children's services, and all the kids met Ernie, the dummy!!

Aunt Ruthie brought lots of  dress-up clothes from Africa and the Philippians and the girls had a ball modeling everything!!

       

Eva especially loved the  African mommy doll with a teeny baby doll on her back.

                                 Aunt Ruth is quite handy at making balloon animals and showed her talents as she created flowers,butterflies and puppies for the girls. Elin thought she could help blow the balloons up!!

                   Elin also thought that the baby doll was more fun to take out of the mommy dolls sling than to leave in...much to her older sister's chagrin!!

Elle loved looking at all the beautiful pictures in Aunt Ruthie's books.

 Elin loved the Jewelry too!

 Here are the balloon making adventures!

                          Icecream in the sun!

                           Happy 3 year old with new jewelry!

Now this was a visit we will not forget! Aunt Laura has an aunt Mildred who lives just behind our church. Aunt Mildred was a missionary to India for many years and has many great stories to tell . We have heard so  much about her and finally got to visit. Well what a time we had. We had "tea" in fine style.

                  The girls sang,

                                        admired all the furniture imported from India,

                           sang some more..

                 had a very personal encounter with Ernie,

                                    And got lots of pictures with our new friend Aunt Mildred!!

               Lots and Lots of pictures!!

                                     Elin was never very sure what she thought of Ernie.

                             But in the end the girls sang yet again . This time to teach Ernie the song that they had been singing all weekend with the Swahili  word "Jambo"in it, so he could learn it for when he goes to Africa in a few months!! \
   So much fun and so many blessings. We were pretty sad to have Aunt Ruthie leave us at the end of our conference. Hopefully we can have her back for a visit before she leaves for Uganda in a few months.

Spring is Here!!!!

 Well we have been completely enjoying our spring this year. There is so much to celebrate this time of year. Easter weekend found us at a huge Easter Egg hunt hosted by one of the families in our church. It is their 5th year of doing it and there were around 150 kids there! Even Global news was on hand to capture it for the evening news!!

                            So here is the line up waiting for the go ahead!!

                                                 Yay were we ever excited!!

                                                  The older kids came from a different direction

                                                       Here we were all lined up. Sadly I got so immersed  into the action of filling baskets, I didn't get any pictures of the actual hunt...Silly me!! was it ever fun though!!

          Easter morning bed-heads.,..and lots of treats on the table. We had a great weekend celebrating Christ's Sacrifice for our sins  and Resurrection from the dead with our new church family as well.

 The first of March found us eying our huge maple trees out front and  subsequently doing a little research online. We ended up, much to the neighbors amusement I think, hanging a few steel buckets off of each one and  our  syrup making adventure began!!

 

Emily documented every step for her entry into the Heritage fair, so here it is in a nutshell. Drill a hole, Tap a spile

                             Hang a bucket..or 2 or 3 depending on the size of your tree

                                    Begin to boil....and boil....and boil...

                 boil until the sap has reached the temperature of 7 degrees F above the boiling point of water, and  it's done!! A month and 24 liters of finished syrup later, and we think we did pretty well for ourselves! We are also very much in love with our dear Maple trees and their generosity!

                                  So while sweet Emily was (pun intended! )researching the history of Maple syrup for her project...spunky Elle was researching her latest passion....SNAKES!! She did her project on the Snakes Native to New Brunswick..I shuddered many a time during the making of that one!!

                      They both presented it to us the night before they were judged on them . Ryan's parents were visiting,so they got to hear the presentations as well!!

                                    Emily's turn

                                         Here is Elle chatting it up with the judges..can she ever talk!!

                  Later that evening the awards ceremony began and our girls sang a song for everyone.

                       Then the prizes began rolling in! Emily got second place in her age group, and also the Agricultural award.

                           Here is the happy girl.

                                 Elle  received first place in her age group and her project was chosen as the favorite of all the contestants.

                Here she is giving Grampie Cameron the tour of her project. It was a very special night as we had both sets of Grandparents in attendance to see the girls receive their awards.

                                   We also made time in between  boiling syrup...doing research....winning prizes....knocking other kids out of the way so we could get candy..making the evening news...(seriously it has been a busy spring!!!) to visit our friends' sheep farm and meet oodles of lambs.

                                             Here is Elin with her teeny favorite, meeting a very big dog named Logan

                                            lots of snuggles!

                                           I could have taken all the little ones home.

                                   Especially this little feller.

                       Elin kept picking all the babies up running around with them. She was so excited!!

                                         Elle found snuggle lamb too.

                                   All the girls waiting to pat the donkey

                                        Ryan was in love with Logan . We had a dog just like him when we were first married.

                                Emily didn't run from lamb to lamb. She picked up this bottle fed one and kept it the whole time. It finally fell asleep in her arms much to her delight!!

                      There are no words for this picture. Needless to say we had lots of fun! Now the count down is on for our own babies to be born out in our little barn...soon by the looks of those bellies out there!! The countdown is also on for the Heritage Fair regionals which both of the girls qualified for..I'm more nervous then they are.!!



 

This and That

  Ryan's Parents, and sister  Julia and family came for a fun visit that just happened to fall on Dad's birthday! Elle , colored Dad a very lovely picture!! She was so proud of herself.

                                            Lighting the candles on Dad's cake

                            Happy Birthday Grampie!

                               

He got them all blown out on one looooong blow

                     We had fun visiting, and Em, in a very exciting part in her book decided to do her reading in the living room .

 One day during our March break, the girls received a care package from friends back at our old home in Wood Point. Was it ever an exciting day!! It was all kinds of crafty things for them and they were kept occupied for hours every day of their break from school.

                                        Elin seeing just how gentle and patient Jake really is .She is hand feeding his food to him. What a pair they are .She calls him her "Jakey Boy"

                            Elin had fallen asleep in the van on our way home from town. It was suppertime so I just laid her on the couch thinking she would just wake up right away...well. needless to say she didn't ,the dear little thing was so tired.

She looks like such an angel when she sleeps . Hard to believe that she is a little scamp (at times) with limitlessness energy  all day long!!!