Pictures from the birthday

Sunset in a rainstorm Saturday night:

Jorgen's girlfriend Kalie and I taking a break from setting up for the birthday:

Karl and Brent fixing things and Easkild telling them how to do it, in Danish of course:

Mum's birthday

It's Monday morning and we are tired still... What a fun weekend it was! With lots of rain! We went home Friday night and were up fairly late visiting with my mum's cousin Catharina and her husband Jan their two sons Kjartan and Eskil, and Jan's father Nils, all visiting from Denmark. Also, my brother Karl came down from Fort Mack, and my Uncle Wayne and Auntie Agnes came from Edmonton...and it rained all evening. Because my parents had such a full house, we decided to stay in our tent, which we set up close to the swingset and slide...also close to the chickens, which we would be reminded of cheerfully in the morning. All Friday night it thundered and lightninged and rained...and we were safe and dry in our tent. Saturday morning it was not raining. Kalie, Jorgen's girlfriend, came over, and the whole bunch of us set up the house/garage/yard/shop for the party. At two thirty, people starting coming over...mostly dressed up in fifties/sixties fashions and there was old music playing on a speaker set on the roof of the garden shed. All kinds of interesting people came, old friends, new friends. Later in the evening, someone started a fire in the fire pit and we played and sang around the fire for a while. Then, when it was completely dark (around eleven thirty) we played capture the flag. So much fun! (Except I ran into our truck in the dark and gave myself a good bruise). The other team won. The ground was incredibly wet...both with rain and with dew. I had been crawling on the ground most of the game and I was cold and wet by the time we quit. Sunday morning Brent and I were one of the first up, and we made pancakes for the 18 people who had stayed over night. It started raining in the afternoon--pouring! So we played a game inside (Munchkin, which we learned about from Bec and Eric) with Kjartan. Eskil, the younger of the two boys, is five (Kjartan is fourteen). Eskil doesn't seem to understand that we don't speak Danish. So he will spout off to us, telling us all sorts of things which we, unfortunately, don't understand. Brent got a good sample of what Danish should sound like so that when we learn Danish, he'll have a better idea of how he should speak. Such a fun weekend, but waaaaay too short. Jan is a geologist and he and Cat have done a lot of hiking (and Jan a lot of glacier travel). Brent and I felt like we could learn a lot from them and would love to go hiking with them since we share a passion for the outdoors. They told us we are welcome in Denmark anytime...we hope to take them up on that someday. ...Pictures will come when blogspot gets the photos up and working again... --Female 1/2

My cairn!

Brent and I have done a lot of hiking as of late, which some of you may know. Whilst climbing Castle Mountain, a route that involved a fair amount of route-finding--often times in the rock there was no trail to follow. Consequently we had to watch out for the rock cairns that dotted the way and directed us to the best and hopefully easiest trail. When I was growing up, one of the games my family played when traveling long distance in our Astro van was something we liked to call "my horses". The way the game worked was that everyone watched out the windows for horses (this worked especially well in the dusty ranch country of Kamloops area) and when you saw some, you called out "my horses!" and counted how many there were (some artistic estimating license was permissible). Provided you were the first to see them and the first to yell out, these became "your" horses. The same worked with tractors...although we never collected as many tractors as we did horses. When we came across a cemetery, the first person to yell out "graveyard" caused everyone else to lose all their horses and tractors and start from scratch again. It certainly kept us entertained for a while. :) What is the connection you ask? I will tell you. For a while I was leading on the hike down from the summit of Castle mountain. We hadn't really payed attention to the cairns on the way up because mostly we just looked at the summit and took the shortest route to get there. On the way down, however, we figured we should follow the allotted path...with the aid of the cairns. So, it became a contest between the two of us to see who could spot the next cairn first (also it was a distraction from our aching muscles). Ergo, the game "my cairn". The End. --Female 1/2 1st Picture is summit cairn on Castle Mountain. 2nd is a neat diagonal cairn on the way up Indian Ridge. 3rd is on ridge of Wilcox Peak.

In BIG Trouble

My mum sent me this forwarded picture this morning, reminding me of of a time when my younger brothers got into some paint and painted my parents' old International pick up truck...they painted the sides of the truck, the windows, the windshield, the tires, and were just figuring out how to fill up the gas tank with...paint thinner or something I think. Also, I was thinking earlier this week about the phrase my mum always used when she wanted us kids to get to work on our chores: "Quit dinking around!!" Perhaps this is the result of parents not telling their kids to quit dinking around!

Cake!

Brent likes cake. Just the other day he remembered that he liked cake. Cake, not the music group that had a hit song "Short skirt, Long jacket" or something like that when we were in high school. Cake, like the bus-stop bench advertisments show two radio d.j.'s eating. Cake, like Brent didn't get for his birthday (he got birthday lemon merangue pie with a candle on it just on Saturday). Cake, like the scent we could smell wafting in our office window last Saturday during work. So, Brent made cake! Chocolate cake with chocolate coffee almond icing. And it was good.

So long friends

Today I visited some very good friends of ours for a while before they leave for a year to Korea. (That's them in the picture of the picture near the teacup). I am happy and sad all at the same time about their departure. I shall miss them very much...but I am excited to hear about all their adventures there! Happy travels guys! --Female 1/2

June 29th

Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday dear Brentyyyyyyyy! Happy Birthday tooooo youuuuu!

CKUA from Southern Alberta

Have I mentioned already that CKUA is the best radio station ever? It's worth repeating! My favorite program, Alberta Morning, has been broadcast from Southern Alberta yesterday morning and this morning. Today Bob (the announcer) is broadcasting live with a fire look out lady from the top of a fire lookout tower in Porcupine Hills. He's so funny and it sounds like he and the look out lady are having lots of fun. Listen to CKUA online.

Himalayan Poppies and Roses

Last weekend we went home to my parents' house and spent all of Saturday cleaning flowerbeds and mowing lawn and such. Thanks to my old job at the greenhouse, my mum has a fairly large collection of perennials. I gave her two plants of the Himalayan Blue Poppy...a beautiful blue flower that doesn't always to well in our climate. I didn't really expect them to survive but lo and behold, one is in bloom and one looks like it will soon! I didn't actually pick the flower, my brothers and Brent broke the bloom off with the soccer ball... Also, the greenhouse ladies put on a "money tree shower" before our wedding last year and the tree was a a variety of rose bush I was a huge fan of. For the life of me, I can't remember what the name of the rose is, but it's in full bloom this year and doing very well! Not sure if you can see from the picture but the color is kind of a cros between a vibrant neon pink and a deep red.

Clean Sweep

Last weekend we had one goal: clean up the storage room. Since we moved here it's been a disaster...we never had the time or the money to figure out how to organize it. So saturday morning we emptied almost everything out of it, piled stuff into four groups 1)stuff to keep 2)stuff to take to Mum and Dad's 3)stuff to give to a second hand store and 4)stuff to THROW OUT. After our living room was full and the storage room empty, we went to Ikea and got four units of cheap shelving called Gorm. We took it home and realized that we needed a specific hexagonal socket bit for Brent's drill...a metric one...that we didn't have. After going to Crappy Tire, Totem and Home Hardware with no luck, we got ahold of Bec and Eric and borrowed their bit (they have lots of Gorm too). So now we have SHELVES!! and an organized storage room! Now we just have to get the piles of stuff to be taken away out of the living room and we'll be set...

Us on a Monday Morning

In case there was any doubt left in your mind regarding our insanity, here is proof. In addition, in case you were wondering whether this aforementioned insanity was brought on by our adaptation to the Calgarian environment, not the Lacombe directional sign above our heads. Our thoughts and goals are directed homeward. :) Lastly, yes, my tea (in the above cup) was excellent! Twinings English Breakfast tea--made from loose leaves! --Female 1/2

Nose Hill Wildflowers #2

Nose Hill Wildflower Pictures #1

Two Fantastic Albums

Two cds Brent and I have been listening to lately and reallllly enjoy: Genius Loves Company--Ray Charles and Various artists. We got this one near the end of our honeymoon last year. It is a compilation of Ray Charles singing duets with various famous artists like Norah Jones, Elton John, James Taylor, Van Morrison. Very gentle but lively. Surprise--Paul Simon. Now I am a very big Paul Simon fan, in case you were wondering, all the way back to the Simon and Garfunkel days. His last cd, "You're the One" is also great. This one, however, is very different. He barely uses the African rhythms he's become famous for at all. It took us a couple listen-throughs to really get into it but now we feel like we could listen to it once a day! Here's part of the lyrics to a song called "Outrageous": Who's gonna love you when your looks are gone? Tell me, who's gonna love you when your looks are gone? Tell me, who's gonna love you when your looks are gone? God will,Like he waters the flowers on your window sill. Take me, I'm an ordinary player in the key of C, And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity Who's gonna love you when your looks are gone? God will, Like he waters the flowers on your window sill.

random picture

Brent and Kirstin being goofy on a lazy (but it shouldn't be) Friday afternoon:

Grassi Lakes

Yesterday Brent and I went with my English class on a fieldtrip out to Grassi Lakes south of Canmore. It was a great day! We hiked and looked at wildlife, plantlife, history and generally, at God's creation. Here are some pictures: Climatis climbing a spruce tree. It's in bloom already! Lower Grassi Lake. Upper Grass Lake. Some petroglyphs we saw on the side of a boulder part way up the canyon. My instructor, Dr. Pamela Banting, and I, climbing down the stone staircase along side the waterfall.