Midnight Posting and Spaceballs

So...it is almost midnight. I turned 35 today. Frank has fallen asleep, the dishwasher is running, all the lights are out, I am watching "Spaceballs" (funniest movie ever!!! May the Swartz be with you!) and I wanted to say thank you...to everyone. To Darren and Auria for agreeing to hike up The Grouse Grind with Frank and I today, to Frank for making me homemade crepes this morning, to Auria, again for making me a cheesecake. To my friends from Glenville, WV who remembered my birthday and emailed me birthday wishes, and to my kids up in Prince George with my parents for the summer (now that's a birthday present!). It was a great day.

I have some pictures that I wanted to share.

This one is of Mackendra's kindergarten graduation. She was so proud of herself.


I was really proud of her, too.

The next series of pictures is of Auria and I working the garden, the garden that we weren't planning to do except my Mom sent 15 tomato plants on Greyhound...don't ask.



In about one month, from this date, July 25th, we should have tomatoes coming out of our ears! We also planted peas, beans, carrots, lettuce (3 kinds), spinach, swiss chard, radishes and 1 pumpkin plant that Mackendra started from seed in her class. I will take more current pictures soon and post them. Auria and I have never done a garden. It seems to be going quite well, we started pretty late in the season but it is looking quite...verdant. My mom would be so proud.

The last series is of the first Grouse Grind hike we went on, we took the kids on it, against the advise of others, and you know what...the kids kicked our butts. Especially Mackendra. Frank, Aislinn and I were sweating buckets and barely able to catch our breath and Mackendra wasn't even winded. Amazing!



What a tough climb. It is over an hour of straight climbing stairs. At one point a guy was encouraging his own kid and said, "don't worry, you're almost at the 1/4 way mark." I almost started crying.


There were so many people on the hike that all we saw, all the way up, was butts. I don't remember many of the people we hiked with, but I remember thinking, "I passed those shoes before!" a couple times. You had to concentrate on where you were walking, turning an ankle could have happened quite easily. At one point, about half way, Mackendra did seem to hit a wall, but Dad came to the rescue!



Once we reached the top (it took just over an hour we figured) it was well worth the climb. They have some really cool stuff up there at the top of the mountain. We even got to watch a live lumberjack show, which made me think of my friend, Matt from Glenville.



Matt is a professional "Axeman" and was recently on ESPN for the Stihl Timbersport competition. It is like the nationals for lumberjacks. Oh Matt...what a sweet guy.

Anyways, we all had a good time. The kids saw live Grizzly Bears, and Timberwolves and we ate these awesome hotdogs that used bannock bread as the buns. Even the ride down the gondola was fun, and it only took 4 minutes. Our legs were all rubbery and they hurt for 2 days after. Good times!


So, it is now after midnight and I am getting tired. I do have one more story to tell. This evening, as we were barbequing dinner we had this wicked lightning and thunderstorm. Darren and I were watching it out my front door and we just happened to catch a strike make contact with some sort of pole about 5 kms away on the hillside. The lightning hit, sparks flew and then all the lights in that vacinity blinked out. Way cool!!!! Hope noone was hurt, but pretty darn cool.

Well..."Spaceballs" is almost over, Pizza the Hut just ate himself to death and I am getting very sleepy. Good night my friends. So far, 35 is looking to be a good year.

Love you,

Tanya