a collection of what makes up our life here in this part of the world...
seeking balance, being present, living life, celebrating learning, capturing memories, being me
Once again, I took multiple photos of the boys on the beach while we were on our trip to Oregon. They always seem to find so much to talk about.
I can't always help but think of the song lyrics...I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean. Looking at my boys who are now so big to me, and thinking of those words, puts things in a different perspective.
We are so grateful that the boys are such good friends and seeing a photo like this, even though I have MANY like this, still makes me smile.
This is a The Simple Things photo for 2012.
Check out other "simple things" photographs on Rebecca's blog.
Several times a year, I answer the question, What is a yurt? when I tell people that we are going or have been yurting over the summer. We have been staying in yurts every summer now for several years in Oregon State Parks. We love to camp but when we are doing a "mixed" holiday of hotel-ing and camping, staying in a yurt saves us from having to pack, unpack, etc the tent , tarps and mattresses and other necessary tenting paraphenilia. Although the boys and I miss the freshness and magic of tent camping, we still get to sleep outdoors in the forest and have a campfire and our own private little site.
A yurt is a wood-framed, canvas covered domed structure with a wood floor, based on the traditional Mongolian yurt dwelling.
There is electricity inside (which we have found is great for charging all the technology that now accompanies us everywhere including camera battery chargers, phones, etc). And there is a little heater which is great to turn on a bit for chilly Oregon coast evenings.
The yurt sleeps five (a double futon and a double/single bunkbed) and there is plenty of room to sit around a table together to play games, read etc. We bring our sleeping bags and pillows and this year we also brought blankets and sheets to cover the mattresses. That's really just for me though because I am such a light sleeper. The scritch-scratch of the sleeping bags moving against the vinyl covered mattresses drives me crazy all night!
I put together a little photo and video tour of the yurt we stayed in at Honeyman State Park this year.
This year's rates were $39 a night, check in at 4, check out by 1.
Yurts book up fast and if you want a specific park, you have to book early. They start taking reservations 9 months in advance of your date. We have stayed at Honeyman, Beverly Beach, South Beach, Silver Falls (cabin) and Fort Stevens. We love Honeyman, and stay there every year, because we can walk to the sand dunes, it is a short drive (less than 5 min) into Florence, and it has a little lake to swim in with boat rentals and a lodge (washrooms, snacks and smores supplies). We usually stay at one other state park each trip as well. Next year, we're thinking we might try Umpqua.
We love yurting and highly recommend staying in yurts to others.
Next time someone asks me, What is a yurt?, I'll be able to send a link to this post!
Twelve photos on the twelfth day of the month following Ella's Take 12 photo challenge. This month's prompt was to capture what a Sunday in summer means to you - rest, relaxation or both.The bonus theme is summer food.
On the 12th of August we will be away on our annual family vacation to the Oregon Coast. The photo collage will be posted later but I can anticipate that our "Sunday in the summer" might involve some sandboarding, swimming in the lake and sitting around a campfire. Special summer food might involve a meal out at Mo's, one of our favourite coastal restaurants, lots of cold drinks, some Blue Bunny ice cream at the lake lodge and smores cooked around the campfire. I'm sure we'll get some sort of update on the final day of the Olympics as well!
Can't wait to see how close my predictions are ;)
Update: So we woke up on the 12th in our hotel in Portland to find updates on our phones that Christine Sinclair would be carrying the Canadian flag for the closing ceremonies! We've pvr-ed it at home and are looking forward to watching it. We drove down to Eugene and out to a very windy Florence. The boys still enjoyed sandboarding although they spent a lot of time covering their faces with their hoodies so they wouldn't swallow so much blowing sand! We walked around Old Town and had dinner at Mo's befor heading back to our yurt, our home away from home for a few days, and campfire. We roasted marshmallows and drank hot chocolate around the campfire - a very relaxing and fun family tradition.
Our main reason for traveling to Edmonton this past weekend was to attend a very large family reunion for my father's side of our family. The Friday evening event was for the "Mundare" family - the location where one of the original siblings set up his business and home, my dad's dad. My dad comes from a family of ten siblings and we grew up attending many family events. I have lots of fun and fond memories of times spent with my many cousins (photo of first cousins who were able to attend is below). Many of them attended on Friday night and it was great to catch up and find out how they were doing. It was also great to see all my aunts and uncles - I don't get to see them very often anymore. It is a good feeling to feel so connected to such a large family!
Adam helped put together a slide show of over 150 photos of my dad's family, some dating back 100 years! This photo is of my grandparents.
The Saturday event, at the same hall, was for all the relatives of all the siblings of the orginial Nowakowsky family. These siblings had all settled in different small communities in northern Alberta. Most of the 150+ people I didn't really know but knew their names and some of their stories.
This photo is just of my dad's (Mundare) family and there was a big photo like this for each family grouping.
The boys busied themselves outdoors with their cousins and other relatives they met for the first time. We enjoyed eating Ukrainian food, hearing stories about family members, learning more about our family history, seeing lots of photos and other family artifacts, and buying some of my Great Aunt Barbara's pysanky for the boys.
The older I get, the more I feel the importance of family history and making sure the stories stay alive. And some photos only help to illustrate the stories!
We decided to arrive a day early for our family reunion and stay a night at the Fantasyland Hotel at West Edmonton Mall. I didn't really know what to expect. We had been there once when we were in Edmonton for the last family reunion in 1998 so Adam was only 18 months old. I think that time we just walked around a bit and left. This time we took it all in and got a sense of its enormity. I am not a mall girl any more. I don't like shopping and I find the whole thing a bit excessive but I know that WEM is a huge tourist attraction for Edmonton and now, I can see why. We didn't do any shopping at all, but did take in some of the other aspects of the mall.
The boys spent most of Thursday afternoon with their cousins in the World Waterpark. We've been to many a waterpark but nothing compares to this - this place is huge and the variety is amazing. Neil and I did some tube slides with the boys (the family that plays together...) and then they went off with their cousins. Neil and I decided to try a few slides ourselves which was fun.
The boys enjoyed the wave pool with their cousins (try and find them getting crushed by the huge waves and in the middle of the crowds in this video!):
After dinner on "Bourbon Street" we met up with my sister and her two kids in Galaxyland and the boys did one ride with their cousins - a spinny rollercoaster thing. Then we all watched as my nephew and sister did the ridiculously fast, tall and triple-loop rollercoaster. The things mothers do for their children ;)
On Sunday, before we headed for the airport, we visited WEM one more time. The boys had heard about the shooting range there and Neil and I had said probably not all along, before and during this trip. And then my sister, her husband and kids went and did it Saturday morning and talked about how safe it was and it just seemed like an Albertan kind of thing to do. Without the boys knowing, Neil and I decided that we would let them do it because they understood why we had a lot of apprehension about it, respected that and didn't pester us about it at all. We knew this was likely a once in a lifetime thing for them and we knew they would be responsible. But oh, the parental angst I went through. I have very strong feelings about guns but I also know my boys. They have loved archery and target practice and nerf guns and water "shooters" since we finally gave in and let them have those. It is very much about the skill and technique for them and so, because we believe in being responsive and flexible as parents, we let our two boys shoot 9mm pistols with real ammo. They went after zombies on their target sheets. Oh my.
Adam shot a bullseye on his very first shot. The shooting trainers were very impressed and Adam had a perma-smile on for most of the day. Colin enjoyed it too but as you can see in the video, the guns are very powerful and Colin's whole body was affected by each shot. I can't even imagine how that feels. I think the boys are still in shock that we let them do this!
After all that excitement, we had some lunch in the food court and then played some glow in the dark minigolf. I tell ya, that WEM has everything! I can see how families can go for a little holiday there and never leave the building! There's also an ice rink, an aquarium with penguin and seal shows, bumper boats, arcades, theatres and of course, tons of stores and restaurants.
So although I am sure the shopping is great there, we enjoyed many of the other experiences available at West Edmonton Mall. Although we likely won't be back there anytime soon, I've learned to never say never ;)
My father comes from a small town in Alberta with longstanding Ukrainian roots. This past weekend we traveled to Edmonton for a huge family reunion to celebrate my father's family immigrating to Canada in 1912. A celebration of 100 years of a family in Canada.
On Friday morning, we drove out to the small town my dad grew up in, just east of Edmonton. The town has a current population of 712. Adam thought it was amazing that a whole town had fewer people in that his high school! There is one short "main street" and it really is a charming little town. Driving through the town and seeing the house my dad grew up in (with 10 children) brought back all sorts of memories for me. As I was growing up we traveled to Mundare every summer and even spent one Christmas holiday there. My sisters and cousins reminisced about trips to the grotto, the corner candy store, my grandfather's garage (and the chest of pop) and remembering to keep our mouths closed when we were riding our bikes so the bugs wouldn't get in.
There were no grocery stores in town (and still aren't) and I remember my grandmother's huge garden and have heard the stories of the chickens running around in the yard when my dad and his brothers and sisters were young. Families had to be self-sufficient in those days and everything was made "from scratch". I have fond memories of my grandmother's chicken and cream, perogies and doughnuts and butterhorns. Part of that small town, rural life is actually very appealing to me. When we visited when we were younger, we did a drive into the "big" town of Vegreville (which I think only had a population of 3000 now and it has grown so much) to get groceries and other things we needed. The world's largest egg/pysanka is Vegreville's claim to fame.
After some ice cream, we drove back west and stopped at the Ukrainian Village which shows what life was like in Ukrainian villages and homesteads in the early 1900s in Alberta. There were actors in role and traditional costumes and many historic buildings and replicas. We met up here with my sister's family and we all learned a lot about the hard life that early immigrants had in the prairies.
Friday was a full day of history and experiences. Lots of memories and connections for me and hopefully the boys are old enough now to remember this trip and a little glimpse into their grandfather's childhood.
When I first met Neil, he was a triathlete. I swam, biked and ran myself but could not imagine doing all three at the level that he did. Crazy. Over our marriage, I have watched him train for several marathons and when he needed a change from that, he began to train for long distance bike rides (and still keep up the running). Last year he did the RSVP from Seattle to Vancouver and this year he decided he wanted to do a solo ride down to Burlington in Washington state and back. He booked a hotel for an overnight stay, planned his route and on Sunday morning before we all awoke, he was off.
Now that we are texters, I asked Neil to text me every couple of ours to let me know where he was and that he was okay. The texts on the way down were uneventful, on the way back, not so much. There was pouring rain, soaking wet socks and shoes, no brakes and then having to stop and get new brake pads installed and then when he was through the border and on his way home, a flat tire.
We were happy to see him pull up the driveway on Monday evening, exhausted but smiling.
I totally get his need to get away and be on his own for a bit. I think its healthy to be with ourselves and in our heads. With the difficult year he had at work, the need for some peace was much needed.
I have great admiration for this man who sets a goal and is so disciplined in setting up a plan to achieve that goal. He's such an inspiration to me and our boys!
The boys and I drove up to Wood Lake in the Okanagan to spend three days with my sister, niece and nephew. We've been having a "cousins" trip like this for several years now, staying at different places around Kelowna. This year only 4 out of the 7 cousins were together and my niece had two of her friends there so it wasn't quite the same. Just the reality I think, as the cousins get older that things will change. We still maintained some of the boys favourite traditions though - they jumped off the dock into the lake, we rented a boat and they tried some new things.
The boys and my nephew went to a gymnastics place together and they also tried paintball for the first time. We've been saying no for quite a few years now but the place we found up there was more like an amusement centre and our three boys were the only ones playing so it felt like an okay situation to give it a try.
The boys loved it. Colin has a major welt on his arm but he seems to think it was all worth it!
They got to go out on a boat twice and loved wakeboarding again. We talked about the year they learned when an adult needed to go in the water with them to boost them to get them up and how we all cheered like crazy as each of them finally got up and stayed up! They've come a long way!
This year, they also got to try wake surfing which they thought was cool. I didn't go out on the boat with them for this (a first!) which was kind of hard for me. As the boys get older, I know I can't be a part of everything in their lives, but I still want to be ;)
My sister had bought a paddleboard and we all enjoyed paddleboarding on the lake. It was so much more stable than paddleboarding in Hawaii!
We had amazing sunsets both nights on the lake. Many photos were taken...
A trip to the Okanagan would not be the same without a few stops for fresh fruit. I stopped at a cherry orchard in Winfield to buy a huge box of cherries and I also picked up some sour cherries and yellow cherries and then we stopped by Paynter's Market in Westbank on our way home for some ice cream and fruit for the road. Stay tuned for some advetures in the kitchen with cherries!
With a three-day weekend upon us, we decided we needed a little one night family getaway to disconnect from the trappings of being at home and have some time together. The boys needed some new shoes so we hit a couple of outlet centres but tried to spend most of our time outside in the sun. On Saturday morning we walked part of the Centennial Trail near Burlington. Its a trail across Washington state that covers the old BNR railway tracks. We decided it would be perfect for a bike trip...so smooth and far from traffic.
After a diner lunch in Marysville with some famous pie, we drove up to Lake Padden and had a great walk around the lake.
Sunday brought the rain and Adam headed to the north shore for a hike with classmates from his program at school. They got a little wet but had a great time and then set up camp in one of the family's backyards to sleep overnight.
As I heard the rain start pouring down around 2am, I wondered how Adam was managing. We got a quick text from him Monday morning that they were off to lazer tag so I guess he wasn't too waterlogged!
As I was driving Adam on Sunday, we came upon the Rick Hansen relay and then Neil and Colin ran out onto the street to run alongside the relay for awhile. Rick is such an inspiration!
The rain kept coming down all day today which made for good conditions for writing and for enjoying some of a Criminal Minds marathon with Neil!
The rain broke for a bit this evening and I got outside to check on the garden and Neil bbq-ed for dinner. Adam went right to bed after dinner (he'd been surviving on about three hours of sleep!) and we're all glad for a four day school week ahead!
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