More earthday activities

We were back out planting trees, this time in our home town to wind up the Earthweek. The kids had fun at this community event. I had to feel guilty, because we spent a little while planting trees and the rest of the day enjoying the D.J., the air tunnels, the clowns, the balloon animals, the face painting, the creepy crawler express (bugs and stuff) and the barbeque.

Earth day poster

This is my my daughters submission for an environment contest sponsored by the local hydro company.

That's me on the roller blades, and my son on the tricycle. My daughter is riding a bike, and Sharon is walking the dog.

Scratch, scratch, scratch

As a follow-up to the tree planting, Sharon came down with the worst case of poison ivy ever. She even had it on her head. She went to the doctor for some steroids and cortozon cream, and she is slowly getting better.

The photo is the poison ivy villain from Batman. Who wants to see a rash?

Earth day Tree Planting

The kids enjoyed planting trees in the forest at the Earth Day Festivities. We planted a lot of trees, saw a demo of a tree harvester, enjoyed Mike Ford, the entertainer (he sang the ABC song for my daughter) and had a horse drawn wagon ride.

Tough job but someone has to do it

I just returned from several days of work in Barbados. I attended a meeting with high ranking government officials, where I was given strict directions not to talk.

Its a tough job but....

I stayed in a nice resort, with a swim up bar. Great idea, you can drink beer there all day and don't have to get out to go to the bathroom. World cup cricket was the buz, but I didn't go to any games. The water was pretty choppy, but I managed to get in the ocean to go swimming. Here is the landfill I visited.

Easter Bunnies

We had a fun Easter. The kids searched for eggs in the house and we went for a nice refreshing walk. We decorated eggs and I tried my hand at making balloon animals.

We met the Easter Bunny at the zoo eggs-travaganza. He was very friendly and gave the kids lots of chocolates.

Freeze Your Fanny Down the Ganny 2007

It was a very cold “Float your Fanny Down the Ganny” day. My brother’s (recycled) team and niece’s (the bunny’s) teams did really well. Many teams looked very cold. The kids enjoyed watching all the crazy craft. The funniest part was loosing the exchange student from Brazil. Definitely not a Brazilian experience.

Afterwards, we went to Granny’s for Easter dinner.

Happy 44

Sharon hit the big 44 on the weekend. We got her crocs, a Laurel and Hardy movie (she says she really liked it as a kid, lets see if it is still funny) and an ice cream maker. The kids had fun baking a cake, and we went out for dinner. Sharon had her favourite: Perogy Pizza!!

Family Syrup

We finally decide it was time to boil the sap (see this post). I set up the gas stove and put the pot on to boil. Keep in mind, it takes 40 litres of sap to make 1 litre of maple syrup. About 4 hours later, we had about 500 mL of syrup. We strained it through J-cloth and is it ever sweet. I think I boiled it a bit too much, as it is much sweeter than regular syrup, but not as much as last year when I burnt it. We had it on ice cream, and had enough for several pancake breakfasts, and it is really good.

Photo on left shows how much sap we started with.

Photo on right shows how much syrup we got.

Tenants

A pair of birds are moving into the birdhouse gourd which we hung right outside my daughters window, so we are all having fun watching them build a little home.

Spring Flings

Spring is coming. We have had the bikes out, played in the park, played in the backyard, gone geocaching (got soaked) and barbequed.

Kent Recommends

I am about 3/4 of the way through this book and find it quite enjoyable. Consider it sort of like a Harry Potter for adults during the Napolean wars.