Canada Day & High School Musical

Wednesday 1st July was Canada Day so our day started off with breakfast at the Canadian Commander's house who had kindly opened his garden to everyone and was providing breakfast. Most people came wearing red and white - I wasn't aware that this was the normal thing to do but for some reasons dressed Tegan, Fraser and myself all in the appropriate colours - must have been a subconcsious thing. It was a beautiful morning and we arrived just gone 8.30am and decided to go for just pancakes and syrup - yummy. Tegan and Fraser both got Canadian tattoos which they thought were great, thankfully by Saturday with a little scrubbing they have come off. So with breakfast over we took Jinx for a lovely dog walk on the prairie. Later that afternoon we decided to go into Medicine Hat to Kin Coulee Park to see the rest of the Canada Day festival. Our friend Maryann and her daughter Ophelia (18 months old) came with us so we had a leisurely walk round and finished it off with a tractor ride round the park, which was actually the highlight especially for Fraser. Instead of coming home we decided to pop into Starbucks - before we knew it it was gone 6pm and the day had disappeared.

Chris is predominately living on the prairie and this week he has seen quite a bit of wildlife including 3 elk, several different breeds of deer and managed to run over a rattlesnake which he backed up to make sure it was dead. He has managed to fire up his new toy a very large gas bbq.

We are now on week 2 of our 9 week summer holiday and Tegan and Fraser started swimming lessons on Monday. They are having lessons each morning (Mon - Thu) at the swimming pool in the village which is great. Their lessons start at 9.30am and we only live a 2 minute walk away from the pool - or a 30 second cycle ride for Fraser. Hopefully by the end of the summer both of them should be able to swim and have more confidence in the water especially Tegan getting her head under the water - no fear for Fraser except he just sinks at the moment.

The weather (as I said previously a big topic of conversation) has been extraordinary since last Tuesday. Chris was due to leave for work at 4.30am on Tuesday morning but at 4am our bedroom was ablaze by lightening and tremendous thunder that was rolling across the prairie followed by a downpour of rain and very large hailstones. We had a couple of other days that started off with sunshine but during the day storms would roll in and then disappear. The last one was on Monday evening when Chris had managed to come home at 5pm so I took Jinx for a quick 30min run. As I set off running I looked right and the whole of the sky was black and flashing but there was a strong wind from the left which I thought would push the storm in the opposite direction, how wrong I was. Needless to say I ran very quickly home just in time to shut the back door before the storm rolled over Ralston and it was as though someone had turned out the lights the storm then raged for over an hour.

Last night was a girls night out for Tegan and myself as we drove into Med Hat to see High School Musical performance at the Arena stadium along with a friend. I did have to explain to Tegan that it wasn't actually the stars from the film so Zac Efron wouldn't be there himself - shame! Tegan and Harriet had a great night boogieing to all the songs and finally got home at 10pm.

Finally the war of Gopher vs Jinx - there has been 1 more catch and kill this week - score 5 to Jinx.