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.!!
