Toads and icecream and camp

Linda and I went for a walk on the trail beside the Bike and Bean, a cafe adjacent to the Canada Rail to Trail system. We found this,

a wooden pipe conduit for water. Now this is only cool if you like wooden things, the transportation of water and cool engineering. Steve loves all of it, so we need to head out and look at it with cameras in hand.

We also found this.

When was the last time you nearly stepped on a toad? It used to be de rigour in my youth, now its sort of next to a miracle. Big bugger.

Now, we didn't find this,
we organized a 50th birthday party for Diane in our backyard. Steve picked her up in the volkswagon before the party. We had a lot of fun and two kinds of cake!

At the end of June every years since we moved here, we have taken the kids to the Dairy Queen for a celebration that school is over. Not for a good report card, not for scholastic achievement, or sports achievement but because 1) they survived another school year more or less ethically and physically intact, 2) because it is summer and that means real reading can happen (my agenda, not theirs) and 3) because who doesn't want a Buster Bar now that it is getting hot?

A few years ago we happened to have our Dairy Queen celebration at the same time as the local high schools were having their prom nights. This is instant entertainment! Girls in huge dresses and inadequate shoes, boys in tuxes being dragged about by girls in huge dresses, parents with multiple cameras, cell phones and no offspring. They are off pulling or being pulled around their friends, taking the pictures they think need to be taken. My all time favourite moment is when the girls get exasperated with the boys and hoik up their gowns and start stomping. Licking a Buster Bar while seated and watching this is hugely amusing.

For a change, this year we did celebrate scholastic achievement. Lucas and Natasha graduate, Natasha with Summa Cum Laude, Lucas with multi-coloured running shoes and Phoebe had a great year, winning another scholarship despite multiple social difficulties. So instead of novelties, the kids were allowed to get whatever they wanted. Blow the bank!

Lucas had a banana split, Natasha some kind of Blizzard/cookie thing,

Phoebe a Peanut Buster Parfait. For the first time EVER, Phoebe did not spill on her shirt. This was cause for a separate celebration.

A few days later, Steve and I went to the camp and pulled off the old tarp roof on the gazebo.


We had camped the weekend before and in the midst of a huge thunderstorm, it became clear that the tarp had failed in its waterproof-ness. This is usually the kitchen and sitting area and in the past we slept in a small pup tent elsewhere but this year I had the bright idea of sleeping in the screened room so that it meant less set up and it was easier to get out of the sleeping bags at night for the nocturnal pee. Our bedding was getting soaked so we had to set up a tarp underneath the roof tarp and we slept through torrential rains. It was quite an experience.

New tarp....new roof....no water inside when it rains.