Bike Rides, Rocky Horror, Ice Cream and Flat Tires

 Bowmount Park and the Bow River Pathway Bike Ride

 We have been so lucky here in Calgary to have had a wonderful, hot summer and an even better start to fall.   Still hitting the high 20's, you can't help but want to get outside and enjoy it while it lasts! And that is exactly what we did!  The last day of September was a scoarching 28 degrees and so Dad, Cam, myself and Patty (a friend in town for just a few days) hit the bike pathways and took in the fall glory. 

Pee break!

The Bow River and Mountains beyond

Nothing like sunbathing nude at the end of September

Fall colors in the city

 We biked from our house, down the Edworthy hill and then went west up the Bow River Pathway system.  The whole river valley is a sea of gold, reds and oranges as all the fall colors have come out in full.  It is amazingly beautiful and it hardly feels like you are in the city at all as you cruse down the pathway.

Kayakers on the Bow River and a train going over the bridge

Cam just loves being outdoors!

A great thinker to-be

Rocky Horror

Front Row Centre - a volunteer based community theater is currently presenting the Rocky Horror Picture Show!  They put on a outstanding interpretation of the cult classic and it is really a must see if you can catch it before the show closes!  Not wanting to miss out myself, I rounded up the roomates, we all got dressed up,slathered on the makeup, I had Dad come watch Cam and then we were off to the Midnight showing!  Paul met us there as soon as he got off from work and it was a damn good time!

Dressed to kill ; Kelsey, Patty, Shy and Clayton

 

Shy, Clay, Patty, Frank (audience member), Kelsey

Its been about a year and a half since I wore makeup, at least 6 months since I had shaved my legs last and even longer since I could even try fitting into anything sexy - but you cant half-ass for Rocky Horror!  My face felt raw for the next few days from all the makeup and I was surprised to find that I actually fit into my corset and garder belt.  All very well worth it!  Again, go see this show!!

Reserviour Bike Ride

The first day that Kelsey's friend Patty was in town the three of us (and Cam) biked from our place to the elbow river path way (near sandy beach) and around the reserviour! It was another amazing day here in the city and so we packed a picnic and set off to show Patty the city - or at least the parts worth seeing...

Kelsey and me checking out some rad graffiti

A sail boat on the reserviour

Nothing like peeing with a view!

Cam and Me in the sunset glow

Three lovely ladies on a bridge with... wine?!

After watching the sunset over the reserviour over a picnic dinner oof cheese, crackers and wine we were off biking again into the early evening.  On our way home we found oursevles at My Favorite Ice Cream Shop and couldn't help but finish the evening off with a scoop of gelato!!

Little did we know... the evening still had something up it's sleeve for us....

In the ice cream shop

Kelsey showing off the goods

After finishing up our desert we jumped back on our bikes and I immediately realized that my back tire was FLAT!!! I must have the worst luck with bike tires... but this time I was *more* prepared - I had brought a tire pump!! Unfortunately after a few minutes of pumping uselessly we found the head of a roofing nail nestled in my treads... just as we were brain storming what our coarse of action would be another patron of the ice cream shop saw our predicament.  She kindly offered Me, Cam and our bikes a ride home in her truck!  No pushing a bike for endless kilometers this time!!  From now on though I am carrying a complete bike repair kit...

Photo spew!

Well, since so many of you are here to see photos of the little one, I will start with those first!  

Cam has been doing amazing the past month!  He seems like he is getting bigger and stronger by the day;  He has recently learnt to roll over and is starting to lift his upper body off the grown by pushing against the ground with his arms.  He is also starting to reach for things (and then put them in his mouth) and has even licked a few carrots and some spaghetti squash - we're keeping him as a exclusively breast feed baby for as long as possible though!

So serious!  Tummy time is hard work.

Story time! So much lovin' from the tios!

Impromptu Family Day

Mom and Tommy had us over the other day for Breakfast and we ended up staying all day!  It was a great chance to visit and for the grandparents to get some baby time as well as something that hasn't happened in a long time!

Mom and Cam

I look unimpressed for some reason - but Cam is stoked to be playing with Dad!

Cameron sleeping away our family day

Visit with Emma!

A good friend of mine just had a baby of her own!  Emma is about 6 weeks younger then Cam and is such a sweetie!

Emma

The typical sleeping pose : The Spread Eagle

The little ones together!

 Baby Group!

All of the ladies from the Prenatal Baby group that I was attending finally got together for a Mexican themed pot luck to socialize and show off our babies.  All of our little ones were born in (or very close to) June, so they are all within a few weeks old of eachother.  There are 4 girls and 4 boys and all of them are adorable.

Baby group photo (one baby didn't make it)

Urban Chicken Farming

Our hens are doing awesome and are now laying eggs for us!  I would love to post all of our egg photos however, we seem to have misplaced the cameras battery charger and can not up load photos from the camera right now... As soon as we find it, I will post them up here, but for now, here are some silky chicken photos!

Nelson petting Thing 1

Christolla and Thing 2

Olympic Summit Hike

At the end of August Paul, my Dad (Randy), Tommy, Cam and me headed to Kananaskis Country for a (long) day hike.  Our objective was to hike the Centennial trail up past Olympic Summit and summit on Mt. Allen.  The Centennial Trail boasts being highest hiking trail in the Canadian Rockies.  With a elevation gain of 1400m, over 11km of horizontal travel, and a max elevation of 2819m  it wasn't going to be just another walk in the park! 

Tommy, Shy (Cameron) and Paul just a few meters of elevation gain to go before we hit tree line.

Water break

Ribbon Mountain

Randy and Olympic Summit (the grassy peak on the right)

Tommy

Visiting Canada from New York State, this hike was Tommy's first outdoorsey experience in the Canadian Rockies!  He told me when we were first planing a trip out that he wanted something challenging- well, I would have to guess he got more then he could of ever anticipated; An up close look at the (questionable) venue of the 1988 winter Olympics, a spectacular view of the Kananaskis, a unrelenting upwards grind - and the wind! Oh the wind!! Nakiska is known for having some of the highest wind readings, but to experience it first hand is pretty humbing;  There were several times were we all hit the deck as the wind threatend to blow us right off the ridge.

It has been a late summer and usually we would not find such an amazing show of alpine flowers this time of year, but what a show it was!

An alpine family photo

Lunch break at Olympic Summit

After munching down on lunch hiding in a spot protected from the gale force (literally) winds, we made the call to turn around and head back down the mountain.  The winds were not subsiding, but rather getting more and more forceful and even just standing upright was not possible on the Olympic Summit - the wind would actually push you off your feet.  Knowing we had another 400m of elevation gain to go, it was only bound to get more extreme the further up we went.  Unfortunately, this meant we did the hardest part of the hike only to turn around before the far easier and far more scenic section.  We'll have to go back one of these day and finish it off!

My hair hardly gives justice to how windy it really was up there.

 I just look pregnant gain with Cam bundled up against my chest!

Tommy and Paul looking down over Kananaskis Village

The view up Ribbon Creek

Rock bluffs

Tommy did great! Welcome to the Rockies Tommy!

Mi amor

Dad and I descending down the trail

The parking lot was deceptively calm and hot. 

Despite not reaching true summit, the day was a great success!  It was a wonderful day out in the Mountains, a great challenge (our first hard hike with Cam) and we had excellent company.  No matter how many times I visit Kananaskis, I am continually impressed by its beauty- We are so lucky to have the Rockies in our backyard! 

Olympic Summit is the rounded out peak at the very top of the ski runs.

Cam's first paddling trip photos

Cameron's First paddling trip!

Poor little guy is still pretty small for wearing a PFD - it goes down all the way to his knees and squishes his face, which is neither comfortable nor allows him to move his head at all.  Needless to say, he can get pretty upset about the situation after a while.  However, the boats rocking in the water puts him to sleep and he is generally good company to have out on the water.

We didnt have to travel far for a scenic paddling trip - we didnt even leave the city!  We put our boat in at the Canoe Club on the Reservoir and followed the north shore and then up the Elbow River into Weaslehead park;  It's amazingly beautiful in there and a nice mellow paddle. We finally got turned around at a small stretch of rapids which we couldn't get though without having to walk the boat.  We did (unintentionally) pull of a few minutes of surfing the boat on it though when attempting to paddle through it.  I didnt know it was possible to surf such a small waving in a massive tin can canoe...

Looking out over the Weaslehead park from our canoe

Back at the docks, Cam is still fast asleep in the make-shift hammock we made for him in the middle of the boat.

And then there were four

While it seems like everyone is having a bumper crop this year, our sad little garden is leaving much to be desired. This is our first summer at this house and despite the yard facing south we didn't realize how much shade the trees cast on the property. It turns out that we only get about 4 hours of sunlight a day which means all of our plants are terribly stunted... Our pea plants stand at about 20cm tall (to be generous) and have produced only a hand full of pods with as many as 4 tiny peas inside. Only two of the lettuces plants we planted came up, and then went promptly to seed. Same with the cilantro - a few leaves and then straight to flowering. They must think its fall with the little sunlight they recieve....


We have had a bit more luck with the zucchinis and tomatoes - we have enjoyed two small zucchinis and 2 tiny tomatoes so far this season! Haha.... On the bright side, both have lots of blooms and some small fruits that we are anxiously awaiting to be ready to pick. We have yet to find out how the carrots have done... but if I can take a guess I would say marginally at best.

Despite our inability to grow things here, we have been able to harvest a lot of great food from gardens that are doing much better then ours. Clay's parents had us out their way this past weekend and we came home with a large cooler full of beets, carrots, snap peas and potatoes, two huge buckets of cherries, half an ice cream pail Saskatoon, and two pails of raspberries. Needless to say we have been spending some long hours in the kitchen canning, drying and freezing the bounty. We still have more to process and it looks like we will be heading out to Paul's parents place this weekend and helping out with the garden out there as well!

Canning has been a new experience for both Paul and I... after a bit of a rocky start I am pleased to say that I think we will have some really good food to enjoy this winter. I am particularly excited to try the cherry pie filling and the caraway and peppercorn pickled beats... I hope to get some more fruits from the farmers markets and have those canned as well!

I am sad to announce that we lost another chicken last week. So we are now down to 2 faverolles and 2 silkie chickens, and none of them are feeling compelled to do any laying yet... We think that we may have an issue with worms and that is what is causing our chickens to die, so we are trying some homeopathics on them and hopefully we can keep the rest happy and healthy as we head into the fall. When the first egg does eventually happen, I will be sure to let you all know.

Cameron is now 9 weeks old, weighs 12 and a half pounds and is getting gigglier and wigglier by the day!

Cam is still a pretty easy going guy, but is certainly starting to voice his preferences more these days! He is actually using his voice a lot more in general; he has several coo's that he uses constantly but is now starting to try out some new noises as he becomes more and more talkative.

This summer is in full bloom, the weather is fantastic and Cameron is getting bigger and stronger every day. Good vibes all around - what more could we ask for?

Cameron and Paul

Paul is full swing into the summer programing for the home he is working at; they have been doing canoe trips, hiking, camping and some mountain biking so far. I am going to have to get him to write about those adventure at some point, but from what I gather they are going well (for the most part) and he is having a good time taking the kids out! Since he is doing day trips as well as overnights he is able to bank a lot of hours in just a few days of work meaning that he will typically get 3 days on a week and 4 off - what a perfect summer time schedule!! It certainly is great for us to be able to spend time together and get outdoors.

Camping!

We stayed in town for the long weekend and when everyone was coming back to Calgary, we packed up and went camping! It was nice to get treated to a quite(r) city and have the campsite to ourselves. Evening for just a night, it was great change of scenery getting out of the city for a while.

Diapers roasting by an open fire...

Cameron did amazing with the camping, not that we had any doubts - he is still a easy going baby, but we were not sure how we would fair with diapers and sleeping in a tent. However we had no problems! Cam used a few more diapers then he normal does because he was on a pee strike and we couldn't figure out when he needed to go... (more peeing babies coming up next paragraph), however we were able to wash the ones he did use and dry them by the fire and in the end we didn't end up needing the extras anyways! Sleeping was a bit trickier; we took my 2 person backpacking tent to see how it would go... With Cam being so small still the space wasn't the issue, but feeding and peeing was a bit more awkward then normal. Still, we figured it out fast and now we know that we can pull it off even in a small tent - a big family sized, car camping tent will be a breeze!

Cameron going potty!

We have been practicing Elimination Communication (EC) with Cam since he was about a week old and overall are having a lot of success with it! EC goes on the basis that babies are aware and in control of their elimination needs; when they need to go they signal (could be fussing, squeezing with their knees, making a particular face....) and you are then able to hold them over a "receptacle" (for us an old bowl at night, the toilet or even right out on the front lawn during the day), make a cuing noise and.. ta-da! The baby goes! Sounds crazy? Impossible? Well it isn't! It really does work! Its more of parent training then baby training when it comes down to it, and we are proving to be good learners! Of course we have some bad days, but they are being increasingly outweighed by really successful ones! Cam actually really dislikes being wet now and isn't even fond of wearing diapers anymore. He goes without diapers most of the time during the day but wears them to bed at night, however we have had several night now where he stays dry for the whole night so we are hoping to start keeping him diaper free at night as well sometime soon.
Yes, sometimes when we have a 'miss' we get peed on, but to be able to respond to his needs that much better and avoid the numerous pit falls of diapers (cost, cleaning, rashes...) it is totally worth it! We are able to get by now without any issue with only 10 or so cloth diapers. On good days we have to wash only 2-3 diapers a day (and a few jumpers) and on less successful days this may jump to only 4-5 diapers. And those numbers keep dropping every week - in the past 24 hours we went dry through the whole night and had only had 2 misses all day and one of those was because he was got startled and it made him cry.... not too bad! We haven't had any issue with rashes because he is never sitting in a dirty nappy so we dont even have to use diaper creams or baby wipes. As he goes through different stages (like teething) we expect that he will regress some, but that's how it goes.
Pretty awesome all-in-all