Carnival Party (Hardy Style)

John's Aunt and Uncle, who happen to also be my Brother in Law's parents, (got that?  understand the connection?) organized a family carnival during their family reunion a couple of weeks back and invited us to join the fun.    (I say it was a carnival for their immediate family, but really, it was a carnival that their immediate family put on for all of the extended family.)   John's Grandma was there, Aunts and Uncles that he hadn't seen in a long while were there, and Hardys I had never even met before were there.  

 And it was AWESOME! 

The perimeter of their yard was full of fun carnival style games.   The kids were given a handful of tickets and had every opportunity to play each and every game!   Nate spent most of his time at the cake walk, often playing alone.  I'm not sure why he liked that booth so much?  Perhaps it was because Stacey, (John's cousin in law, or our Brother -in -laws Sister-in -law, depending on how you look at it) was so nice to him.   All I know, is he kept playing, and he wasn't playing for the cake!  

 (Oh boy, I ate a lot of his winning cupcakes that afternoon;)

Grandpa Hardy was operating the pinball booth at the carnival, and Sam surprised us all by getting top score!   Woohoo right?    

Like I said, all of these booths were set up and operated by Clark and Deanna's immediate family.

They also had the cutest, most delicious array of teeny tiny treats to enjoy for a ticket each!

Little miniature hot dogs, mini burgers, veggie/fruit cups, mini cookies, mini pizzas, mini EVERYTHING!   

Is it just me, or does food just taste yummier when it is mini?

This zip line that they'd set up was a huge hit!   It spanned the depth of their yard, and had my kids standing in line constantly wanting another turn.   (Some of my kids didn't necessarily wait for their turn too often.  We'll work on that:)

It was a great afternoon, and a wonderful reminder to me of how important it is to stay acquainted with our extended family.   We can get so busy that years go by without doing much to stay connected.
 I am particularly bad at staying connected (tsk tsk) so I was so grateful for this chance for my kids to get to know this awesome family more:)

It was the perfect way to spend a summer day!!

Sick things that Slither

Yup.

Another post about snakes.

There is not much I want to say about these photos except that they document yet another "snake hunt."

Apparently John and the kids have discovered a major hide out, and they find snakes EVERY.TIME!  

Which is AWESOME! (sarcasm intended)

Then they come home and taunt me, and make fun of me for not liking snakes.    Haven't they ever heard that it's not nice to make fun of someone because of their beliefs?   ;) 

This has sssssseriously got to sssssssstop!

Baring Falls!

A year or so ago my chiropractor told me about a great (very kid friendly) hike in Glacier that ended at a beautiful waterfall.    I went home that day and vowed to John that we would do that hike during the summer.    Like most things put on my "to do list" this nagged at me all summer long.  

Finally, we were able to hike the trail to baring falls this past week, and it was indeed super kid friendly.   It's a good thing too, because the hike started out with Sam saying:  "This is boring.  Why did we always even have to do stuff like this?"   haha   Luckily, we'd brought along one of our neighbor kids and she helped keep my own four a little more motivated;)

This trail begins just opposite of Sunrift gorge.   We love stopping at the gorge, and never even realized this little gem of a hike existed!   It's a walk that is lined with berries.   Saskatoon berries...thimble berries...raspberries....    

Part of me was wishing I'd brought a pail along!  (I'm not sure if berry picking in a natural park is allowed?  Don't tell, but ...we ate ALOT of them;)!

It is one of the most dense and lush hikes we've ever taken the kids on.    A few steps into the trail and we couldn't even hear the nearby traffic anymore.

I tried my best to point out all the wildflowers I've learned to recognize this year (I'm a little bit proud of the fact that I now know what pearly everlasting is ok!) but the kids were completely disinterested.  They were all engaged in some imaginary game that involved a lot of texting, a concert, and of course a journey through the woods.   

Baring Falls!

I took some time to try and play around with the shutter speed, because I like the effect on the water.   Clearly though, a tripod would have been helpful, and would have perhaps prevented the blurriness in the rest of the photo?

meh...I had 5 kids in tow.   They weren't about to stand around and wait for me to set up a tripod;)

After the hike to baring falls, we headed over to Many Glacier and fished in front of the hotel.  

We'd already discovered and proven the week before that this is not a very ideal place to fish, but old habits die hard I suppose.   Luckily for some of us - it isn't about whether we catch anything or not;)

We headed for home much later then planned and empty handed nonetheless, but so grateful for a fun family filled day!    

I'm sure loving Glacier!!!

Pickles and Jelly

My sister Jewel makes the best pickles.   THE.Best.Pickles!

In the past I always tried to get together with her to make them (which really just entailed me sitting around pretending to be useful while she did all the work) but for the second year in a row - I was on my own!    Last year, I was determined to do it alone because I felt I needed to learn how to do it, which ended up being a big mistake!   Most of the jars didn't seal and ended up being thrown out, and I swore that I'd never do pickles without Jewel again.    

When the hutterites called me this week and said that cucumbers were ready - I snatched up 20 lbs quickly, without even remembering that Jewel was at a family reunion all week long.    Crap!!!!!!!

Me again.   

Well, me and 20 lbs of cucumbers;)

So, I did my very best to make my sister proud. 

I filled each jar with dill, garlic and a pinch of cream of tartar.  

 (Jewel says that's to make them crunchy:)

Then I filled them with cucumbers.   This year I made sure to put more then eight in a jar.   I really crammed those babies in!!      

Then I filled the jars with Jewels fabulous brine recipe and sealed them the way she recommends.    

I fell asleep that night listening to the glorious sound of lids popping!   

It'll be a few months before I know for sure, but I'm thinking this years pickle making endeavor just might have been - a Success!!!

As if that wasn't enough though, the same day the hutterites called for cucumbers to be picked up, was the same day John picked hundreds of crab apples off our back yard tree, AND happened to also be the same day my Father in law stopped by with tonnes of delicious juice from his home grown berries.    

But of course this would all come on the same day, right!

Seeing as the kitchen was already a hot and sticky mess, we decided to just keep going.   

First we washed the apples and threw them into this handy dandy steamer that we bought for Max last year.   (That makes us sound awesome doesn't it?   Well, we bought it for him after we had melted his into complete nothingness, so really, it was the least we could do;)

This juice was the prettiest color coming out, and made the kitchen smell oh so sweet!

Then I divided this juice into about a kazillion batches that took about 80 hundred thousand hours to boil.    The nice thing about all of this, is that John was home and stuck with me for the whole project.   I'll tell ya, that was some major quality time we spent together that day!   

Then we threw them into a water bath (which is a process that still totally freaks me out).

....And Oila!

Just like that, we had a year supply of Jelly!

(Which won't last nearly a year because my kids go through one of those a DAY the little bums!)

Garden in July

Here's a picture of our flower beds in July.  I really do love to track the changes that go on out front throughout the course of the year.   Sometimes reds dominate, other times yellows and purples.   I'm hoping that in the next few weeks the burgendy plants start to take over;)

The Tiger Lillies were huge, and multiplied a bunch this year!

Our Raspberries did great!  I've made several quarts of freezer jam already.  Yumm!!!

(And we planted transplants on the other side of our fence, technically in the alley, in hopes of having even more next year!)

July was such a hot month that this little garden got big real fast.   We went away to Utah for a week, and all of this was more then double in size!

Our garden and yard did have to put up with a few hailstorms in July, but thankfully, I think everything survived pretty well.    I don't think we've quite gotten over the storm of 2012.  

One Friday night, in particular, a small hailstorm rolled through town, and the kids were more then a little traumatized by it.  (ie: Jessica was found hiding in a closet praying;)   John and I tried our best to calm them down and assure them all that this was not the same type of hailstorm that did so much damage last year.   Well,  as I was laying with Jessica an hour later, we could still hear the sound of thunder off in the distance.   She turned to me and said dramatically (still a bit nervous), 

"If I don't make it - find me a husband, and tell him I love him!!"   haha.  She kills me!

Wild flowers (part 2)

In the course of our playing this past week or so, I've been able to use my handy dandy "Flower Twitcher" to identify 12 new flowers that I had never seen (well never NOTICED) before!  

Here are some of the flowers I discovered this week:

So far, my favorite flowers are the Wildrose, Pink Spirea, and the white Lady Slippers. 

It's crazy that these flowers have always been growing in these places that I have always been going.

   I just never stopped to notice them before!

  So beautiful!

Fishing, Walleys Beach, and more!

On Wednesday John took the kids to a stocked fishing pond, that is owned by a man John works with. We had hoped that it would make up for the unsuccessful fishing trip in Glacier, a couple of days earlier.    We've brought our kids here before, and they LOVE it every time!

It looks like they had a bit of success, judging by the bend in Abby's fishing rod;)

I'm not sure if Sam actually caught this fish, or just insisted on holding it and pretending he caught it.

As if fishing in an old dugout wasn't exciting enough - one day we took them out to St.Mary's Reservoir (though we like to call it Walley's Beach) for some fun in the sand!  The weather had been kinda hit and miss all week, but we seemed to plan things at the right time, so that we could enjoy the warm sun whenever it did decide to shine.

It's been a year since we last came out here, and I felt kinda bad about that as soon as I saw how excited Nate was. 

  He sure had a blast playing in the water, destroying other people's sand creations, and being buried alive.

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Speaking of sand creations.   Our niece Brooke really worked hard (with help;) to create this awesome castle!

John worked hard to create THIS!  haha

My favorite spot to be when we go to Walleys Beach is always sitting in a chair, under an umbrella, watching it all! ;) 

On Thursday we took the kids out to Joe's Cabin, which everyone really enjoyed.   

The little kids enjoyed the zip line, the older kids enjoyed riding on the four wheeler, and I enjoyed just lazing around listening to the quiet sound of leaves blowing int he wind, and water trickling by.   

 I LOVE getting away from the "hustle and bustle" of town!  haha  

We had hot dogs for supper, and then roasted Marshmallows for s'mores before heading back in to town.     Max and I were happy to see that the momma hummingbird is still in the area,  however the nest we saw weeks ago seems to be abandoned now, which makes us think that the baby birds have taken off.  

Such a relaxing night!

On Sarah and Dave's last day here, we took them out to St.Mary's for some fossil hunting.

The kids scoured those rocks in hopes of finding a dinosaur bone.

But in the end, all they found was this little garter snake!  EW!!!!!

The kids played with the snake for a few minutes before letting it go.  

I love the laid back days of summer, and LOVE that we got to spend a week with John's brother and his family!