60th Birthdays

We celebrated Mal and Ron's 60th birthdays at the campout.

False teeth and glasses were provided for the occasion!

Special entertainment was brought in.

Mal's gift- still rocking at 6o!

Kid's Games

Leanne planned some kid's games for Saturday morning.

The ever-popular races.

It didn't take long for the kids to find a mud hole.

Irene brought glow-in-the-dark glasses for the boys and hoops for the girls. The kids loved them.

Emma's turn at the pinata.

Skimmers and Zinnias

August has brought dragonflies to our yard. This one is called a flame skimmer. They can also be blue or brown-gold. They have 2 sets of wings. This one seemed to enjoy our hosta.

Cute face, eh?

My zinnias are finally blooming in different colors. I'm really enjoying them. And I love having a camera that has a great macro setting with which I can get as close as 1 cm.

Our geraniums have interesting patterns on their petals with dark red dots and stripes. They're all different.

Quading

We had a geat time on the weekend on an acreage along the Slave River. We went quading on a Polaris Ranger.

The land doesn't look very challenging but it was because it was swampland with deep holes and ruts. As we were going along our hostess said to me, "I don't worry about bears - it's the cougars I worry about!" When I commented that the motor had to work pretty hard, she said, "All I know is that next time we're bringing a gun!" However, we didn't see any bears or cougars and we really enjoyed our time.

I'm growing russian Giant sunflowers again, but this one is a smaller multi-head variety. It has 8 heads. I enjoy growing one in a pot so I can move it wherever I want.

B.C. Trip

We began our trip with an overnight at Jon and Magan's. We had fun playing with their wii!

It's hard to beat the Okanagan scenery.

We had a nice visit with Mom.

Diane and Gordie have had a black widow spider in their yard for several years. Diane was brave enough to put it in a jar for me to photograph. Then she was going to return it to its home, but I reminded her that it might have babies, so she put the jar in the freezer overnight, and in the morning Gordie stomped on it.

On our way home we stopped in to see Trickeys. They are incredible gardeners and she loaded us up with cucumbers and peppers.

Visit to the Kids

Learning the High Five!

Counting toes

6th Anniversary

Grandparents

Cheering the Riders

The End of the Story

We've had a wonderful week watching the parents take care of their babies and seeing the babies grow.

The parents not only put the insects in their mouth, but right down their throat. They fed them so continually that it was easy to photograph them. They let us get within 8 feet of them.

We had to go away on Saturday/Sunday and we knew the babies were close to leaving the nest. They leaned way out of the nest and were interested in the world around. We just hoped they'd wait until we returned to leave so we could see and photograph it.

We returned Sunday and found an empty nest. Then I found 3 dead babies on the ground. We assume they left the nest and a cat got them. We wish we had been here to rescue them. Our yard is quieter than it has been for a month or more with no swallows around.

We hope for better luck next time round. And we've talked to our neighbor about keeping her cat out of our yard and she responded well.
So that's the end of the story.