Last Friday night, I sat down with my family to watch Thor and Tweeted/Facebooked this momentous event. When the movie was over and the kids were in bed, I wanted to see if anyone had a comment about Thor and to give my review (LOVED IT). Our Internet was broken, but seeing as it was 10:30 on a Friday night, I wasn’t going to make a fuss about it. I was sure that all would be well in the morning.

(Side note: I live in The Sticks. I get a little defensive when people make comments about living “way out there ” (IT’S A TEN-MINUTE DRIVE TO TOWN) but there is one drawback to living out here: Internet access. We have a satellite provider and while it is fine, for the most part, sometimes it is not.)

I called our ISP on Saturday morning and they asked me to unplug and restart and blah, blah, blah. If the Internet was not working after fifteen minutes, I should call them back. I did as I was asked and they told us that a ticket had been submitted for the Internet to be repaired. GO INTERNET.

I headed out on a date afternoon/evening with Matthew and we bought something that we had flagged some of my freelance income for: an iPad2. It was supposed to be my Christmas present (accessories still needed, family!) but my office has recently blocked certain sites and is tracking all Internet use (Hello, 1984). I often use my lunch hours at the office to answer emails or work on my freelance stuff and that all came to a halt. Enter iPad 2.

We arrived home on Saturday, got the kids to bed, fired up my laptop to get my iPad set up and…no Internet. NO INTERNET. I called our ISP and was told that they had no plans to fix it until Monday. MONDAY. I asked to be put through to a supervisor and, yep, they wouldn’t fix it until Monday. I asked him what I should do in order to get work done and he said, “Go to a friend’s house.”

(I’d switch companies but THEY ARE THE ONLY OPTION.)

(I may or may not have cried after our conversation but it was DAY TWO of “THAT TIME.” DAY TWO involves prescription painkillers which barely take the edge off of the physical pain I endure. As for the emotional aspect, steer clear.)

I did go to my SIL’s house on Sunday for an hour to (let the cousins play while their Dads were out hunting, and) answer some emails (and post the Halloween costumes recap). I went to hook up my iPad and was told I needed a SIM card. So, I drove to the next city to get one! A one-hour return trip later I had a SIM card! And still no Internet! Or a functioning iPad 2!

Monday. MONDAY. Yesterday. I (dressed up as Wonder Woman, and) brought all of my Apple gear to work in the hopes that I could get my iPad working. My morning was busy and then all of us who were wearing costumes went out for lunch and then I got a call from the kids’ school before my lunch was ready and then I had to leave before lunch was served. I made the seven-minute walk back to the office/my car all by myself. While wearing my costume. It was awesome.

(By “awesome” I mean “awful” because SERIOUSLY.)

(The upside was that after teasing my kids about showing up to their school in my WW costume (TO THEIR HORROR) I had to do it out of necessity and while I had two teacher friends tell me that I looked hot, I completely mortified my children. I took great pleasure in this; how could I not?)

We had a few hours of down time and then spent the bulk of our late afternoon/evening pilfering the homes of townsfolk for their candy. Emily was told multiple times that she looked beautiful and a few folks gave me candy for wearing my wig and eyelashes.

Back to the iPad. Remember the iPad? I ALMOST DON’T. As I type this I am finally (finally!) upgrading it to iOS5 so that I can, like, USE IT ALREADY. The iPad that I bought THREE DAYS AGO.

I should be good to go when I wake up in the morning (FINGERS CROSSED) and, if so, will need some iPad help. Are there different apps I need? Tips? Secret functions? Magical unicorns to point the way?

Here are a few photos of what we’ve been enjoying lately:

Yellow (and green) beans (sauteed on the barbecue with garlic (from the garden, too) and butter:

Lettuce, tomatoes, garlic, red onion, peppers:

More garlic and red onion:

Small, but so flavorful.

Greek salad made from our garden ingredients (the feta and olives are not from our garden)(obviously):

Fresh tomato sauce, made with garden ingredients, over a bed of spaghetti squash purchased from the market, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese from the grocery store:

You may remember that back in May we bought fifty baby chicks (and I outlined our path to becoming hippies-sans-armpit-hair). While Matthew hunts and fishes and we buy our beef from a local ranch, chicken meat is the staple of our diet that we did not obtain organically. These little cuties?

Are now HUGE.

They also have a bit of a death wish — that fence they’re perched on borders the dog run.

We’ve had the occasional escapee but Nathan is more than willing to go on the hunt.

Just like his Daddy.

One of those rogue chickens actually did fly into the dog run. The dogs were not closed in the run but Diesel seized the opportunity and Matthew rescued the chicken, but she was wounded. So, he did what needed to be done and she became dinner, with a side of garden corn and salad.

She was tasty. It just felt so much better, taste aside, to be eating free range chicken instead of the processed kind. I’m not judging anyone, for it’s what we’ve always done. I just feel like we’ve got this huge opportunity to grow what we can naturally and we’re finally doing what we have the space to do. Fresh fruits and vegetables from our garden, supplemented with foods from local gardens and stands who grow what we cannot. Meats of all varieties that are shot/caught/butchered by a husband who loves to be outside and to work hard and to put the work in to make us more sustainable each and every year.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Are any of you backyard farmers? Or do you leave the butchering to, well, the butchers?

Matthew and I put the kids to bed last night, checked our respective work emails and decided to watch one of our shows before crawling into bed. The show (Modern Family) was cued up, we settled into the couch and then…darkness.

The power went out.

It had flickered approximately forty minutes before and we had both held our breath for the three second that our world went black and then, light returned. We then hauled out the candles and the flashlights and the generator (to keep the baby chicks warm) “just in case” and hoped that we wouldn’t have to use them.

The winds had kicked up after dinner and the temperature went from warm to cool in a matter of minutes. The rain started pelting and with the short blip of blackness we knew that there was a likelihood that the power would, indeed, go out for a longer period of time. We were right.

I know that the power going out might seem like a First World Problem, and I suppose that it is, but for me it’s not about the inconvenience. It’s about safety. Or rather, lack thereof.

You see, we live in the sticks, out of cell phone range. We have one of those corded phones that plugs directly into the wall and it’s good for calling BC Hydro to see what the ETA is for restored power and for calling anyone else we need to. So, we’re not completely cut off from the world, but it sure seems like it.

The bigger issue, for me, is our history with power outages. Nearly seven years ago, on a warm summer night, the power went out. We lit candles to give us light and to use as night-lights for the boys. One of those candles somehow, some way, set our house on fire and that’s just something that sticks with you. I don’t like darkness, I don’t like candles and I don’t like fire.

When the power goes out the memories of that night come flooding back and while I’m able to do all that I need to do to make the outage less inconvenient for my family, my heart races a little bit faster and my breath is a little bit shallower and my shoulders clench a little bit tighter and sleep isn’t really an option until I know that the power is back on and the generator is shut off and everyone is OK.

I am so very thankful for the miracle that occurred seven years ago that saw us getting out of here alive and well when the fire tried to take us down but that doesn’t mean that I think that we are out of the woods, so to speak. I am on guard. Always. The power doesn’t go out often but every time it happens I wonder why we live so remotely.

The good news is that the power came back on at 4:37 this morning and my daughter is fine after waking up, afraid, in the pitch darkness and coming in to sleep with us. The dudes are fine and baby chicks are fine and I am fine. Tired, but fine. I’m sitting at the table typing this and looking out the window and remembering why, exactly, we live out in the sticks. The good and the adventures and the laughter and the memories we’ve built here far outweigh the occasional powerless (and sleepless) night. It’s all worth it.

The chickens we had were Banties and while they are fine and all (they were given to us by a neighbor when I was pregnant with Nathan, and we’ve had new batches hatch) they aren’t really meat chickens and they lay really small eggs. So! Matthew spent a lot of time researching chickens and has been building a bigger hen house and run for the fifty (fifty!) baby chicks we ordered (a friend is taking ten of them once they’re ready to lay eggs).

At 7 a.m. yesterday morning, the post office called to let us know that the chicks had arrived. Did you know that they send the chicks IN THE MAIL? Next day delivery from Alberta, but still. I found that a little bit crazy.

All fifty-three (They sent extras!) baby chicks were in this small box, all huddled together for warmth.

Matthew read that the yellow ones are hens and the brown ones are roosters. They’re split pretty evenly in the batch we got which means we’ll have approximately twenty-five crowing roosters before we know it. Thanks be for ear plugs.

The nights are still cold here and so we’re doing what we did with baby chicks of yore – they get to stay inside our house.

The kids are loving every minute of it and basically want us to invite every single person we know over to see them, or take the chicks on a traveling road show through town to show them to anyone who might want to see them.

Emily named this one Sally.

A few months from now we’ll be calling her “Dinner.”

We’ve done a lot of work on our place in the ten years that we’ve been here. It’s about 90% where we’d like it to be, and that other ten percent will likely not happen until the next decade of home ownership is done, but that’s really OK. I may give my husband a hard time about the fact that we are sleeping on a mattress on the floor (and have been for over FOUR YEARS NOW) but he likes to build things and he always blows me away with what he creates, so I will wait. Impatiently, yes, but I will wait.

The thing about our home that is far greater than all of the handiwork and the craftsmanship and the warmth of it is our access to the outdoors. We have an acreage that backs onto Crown (government)(though I could pretend we’re close to the Royals) land and you could stand on my deck and sing, “Wide Open Spaces” and none of our neighbors would hear you. Well, unless you shriek – that sound carries down the valley.

We have a huge garden and flowerbeds galore and chickens (More arrive next week!) and a tree fort and a sand box and a swing set and a basketball hoop and hockey nets and bikes and ATV’s and a sledding hill in the winter and, oh. My kids spend HOURS outside and whenever friends or family come over with their kids, said kids cry that they have to leave and ask if they can sleep over. It’s a little piece of Heaven and we know it. So do those who come to visit.

As if our place alone weren’t enough to make us feel spoiled, living ten minutes out of town affords us other benefits. We are a five-minute walk to the Trans-Canada trail, which runs along a creek. We go down there on family walks and Matthew and I take the dog for runs along it. The kids love to throw rocks in the water and pluck wildflowers and whatnot. We really do live in the sticks.

This past Sunday afternoon Matthew asked if I was up for a bit of an adventure. Did I want to load the kids and the dog in the truck and take an old logging road/current ATV trail to a place further down the trail? OF COURSE I did. It was a beautiful day and it was a perfect time to go exploring and have some family time.

Ten or so minutes later, we were driving down a narrow ATV trail.

You can be thankful that I didn’t take a shot to the left: mountainside, steep drop-off, deep ravine, etc. It was rocky and slow going but we had some great conversations and shared some of the kids’ Easter candy that we brought along and before we knew it, we were at the bottom.

We were back on the Trans-Canada trail, along the same creek, with a few Provincial campsites in view. We walked to the creek so the dogs could get some water and the boys could master their creek-jumping skills.

We went a bit inland to the campground that has been set up over the years with plank walkways across the creek and a campfire-fueled hot tub and an outhouse and the kids opened doors and snooped around and asked questions and were just kids, you know?

Graham really wanted to go to his “favorite place” and so we made our way back to where we had parked and took the path back the way we had driven down. There are two concrete foundations, from a sawmill that existed there in the 1940′s and we answered questions about what a sawmill was and what they did and how they moved the wood (train, which used to run where the trail now exists) and why the mill and the train no longer existed. Zombies, man. They ruin EVERYTHING. (I kid!)

So, yeah. It was one of the days where nothing had to be done and we just got to hang out and the sun was shining and everyone was on a sugar high happy and we just played out outside as we like to do.

As we were walking back to the truck, the kids were running ahead and Matthew grabbed my hand.

Didn’t we just meet? I mean, I’m pretty sure it was just last week that I invited you over for lasagna and we planned our next few dates. How did we get here?

I don’t know. I mean, I do…but I don’t. I only know that I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is where we are supposed to be.

Oh. Sorry about that.

I was happy to take the day off and hang out at home with my monkeys. I had thought that I would Get Stuff Done but instead I sat with them and watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid on Netflix (We finally! installed it on the Wii)(Love it) and made yogurt smoothies and I cuddled in a chair with my baby girl (aka Poopsilicious) and took photos. Many, many photos.

The snow has melted, the sun is shining and we were OUTSIDE. Fresh air and sunshine can take my mood up ten notches (twenty, if my hormones aren’t doing their monthly dance) and, well, we had a pretty perfect day.

We live in the sticks (in a mountain range, to boot) and so we took the dogs on a hike up the “hill” (read: 30 degree angle) and felt pretty accomplished when we got to the top. I had to take a photo of my little hikers, of course.

I also had to take one of the four of us. The first rule of Instagram is that there is no Instagram. Wait. That’s not right. Life would be sad without Instagram.

I love those three so much that it really does hurt.

We survived the hike back down the hill, despite the incline. My shins are screaming today but no pain, no gain. Or something.

The next thing I knew, the kids had started a game where they would run at the swings and “fly.”

(More on Flickr but you have to be a “friend” to see them. I’ve had more “take me to the kittens” episodes lately and am playing it safe.)

Sunshine and fresh air and no jackets and 99 (!) photos taken and, yeah. It was exactly what I needed.

*Post title courtesy of the fact that my children were singing said song as they would run and jump and fly.

**They know the song lyrics so well because they recently discovered a box of old VHS movies that were given to us by an employer of mine when I was pregnant with Graham (we still have a VCR)(!) and they’ve watched Space Jam a number of times.

**Yes, Space Jam. Michael Jordan may have been my basketball playing/loving husband’s hero but Space Jam is not one of his favorite movies. Hoosiers, however, is.

You may or may not know that I live out in the sticks. We have a lovely home, on an acreage that backs onto Crown (government) land and are a five-minute walk from the Trans-Canada Trail. The trail winds along a creek and both Matthew and I will take the dog down there for runs. I did as much after lunch yesterday and upon arriving home told him that I thought we should go for on a family walk so that I could take photos of the creek and all of the pretty-colored leaves. He said he was bored with the same area of the creek and suggested that we drive further up the highway and walk along a different portion of the creek/trail. So that’s what we did.

Upon exiting the truck and walking west, I noted (not complained)(OK, maybe I complained a little) that the creek was far down a steep embankment and all of the leaves on these particular trees had already fallen and, BOO. I wanted a pretty creek shot with the running water and yellow foliage and instead had a gravel trail and empty branches (I’m so demanding). He promised that we’d swing by my part of the creak on my way home and we spent the rest of our walk talking about our upcoming week and his hunting hopes and stuff I’m looking forward to, in between interjections of, “Hey MOM!” and “Hey DAD!”

We soon happened upon a cave, which was pretty freaky neat.

I asked the kid to pose for a group shot. Take #1:

Not horrible, but what is with Graham’s hand?

Take #2:

Nice face, Graham.

Take #3:

Emily looks constipated and Nathan has a wad of gum in his cheek. Awesome.

Take #4:

Emily and Graham are pirates. Or something.

Take #5:

Nathan flashing that wad of gum I mentioned and Emily doing a scaled-down jazz hands. She really is my daughter.

Take #6:

Yep. TOTALLY my daughter.

Take #7:

Lucky number 7 it is! NO IDEA what the deal is with her leg pose, but we’ll take it.

We stopped at the bridge close to home as planned and I got to take a few photos of the creek in all of its glory.

As much as I love the vibe of a big city (one of the (many) reasons that I’m excited to be speaking at Blissdom Canada in Toronto next week), I also love to be outside enjoying nature. The fresh air clears my head and the scenery makes my heart happy. I am so looking forward to the day when the kids are of the age where we can all go hiking and get to know this area we live in even better than we already do, but even afternoon trips like this leave me with a silly grin on my face for the rest of the day and probably, well into this next week. I love how two hours of fresh air can wipe out a week’s worth of stress. It’s like magic.

A little over nine years ago, Matthew and I bought our very first house. It is the same house that we live in today. We’ve spent a lot of time renovating this home of ours and I cannot see us uprooting our family any time soon.

We live in an area that I affectionately refer to as “The Sticks”. We’re a ten minute drive behind the small town where our kids go to school and where we go to church and where the majority of our friends live. We refer to it as “Town”. As in, “We’re going into town”. Quaint, yes, and also sometimes a pain in the arse. Mainly because I’m tired of people making comments about how we live “so far from town”. It’s ten minutes, people. TEN MINUTES.

Our home is situated on three acres that back onto Crown (government) land which we use to garden, to play and to house chickens, a dog and a cat. We have neighbors on either side, and down the road, but I am the first to admit that maybe we could be better neighbors. We keep saying that we should make the effort to get to know them better, to have them for dinner or over for coffee, and then six months have gone by and we haven’t done a single thing to remedy this. Let’s just heap that onto my never ending guilt and carry on.

We have not been totally remiss in our neighborly duties. The neighbors to the south of us are ones that we’ve had an pretty neat relationship with ever since we moved in. John and Doris and their once-upon-a-time dog, Duke.

John is eighty-eight (EIGHTY-EIGHT) and spends his days puttering on his own acreage. He’ll often wander over to give gardening advice to Matthew or just to see what’s going on. We bring them Christmas baking every Christmas Eve and sit in John’s den while the kids admire all of his carvings and stuffed animals. Matthew will help John with anything he needs: setting up/taking down the pool used for fire prevention, dealing with a truck that has broken down, firing the paint gun at wild animals that cause chaos on our properties.

John is gruff and tough and also, a BIG OLD SOFTIE.

The way his eyes light up around our kids, ever since Graham was a newborn, shows his true heart. He may be an outdoors man who smokes a pipe and barks out his words but his eyes show his true spirit. He adores all three of my kids and chuckles whenever he can make out what they are saying despite his poor hearing. He adored Sir Duke, who passed last year.  He adores his fair Doris, even though he would give her a (good-natured) hard time most every day.

Things have changed for John recently. Doris has been fighting throat cancer and has been discharged into their daughter’s care. Upon finding this out, we invited him to join us for dinner this past Saturday. He showed up on Friday, and while it may have been a result of his weakened memory, it did not matter. We sat him down at the table with a beer and a plate full of pizza and had a conversation that still gives me (good) shivers.

He came back on Saturday, wine in hand, and we continued on where we had left off. He told the kids stories from when he was an anti-aircraft gunman in WWII. He talked about the fishing resort he once owned. When Graham asked, “So what was the war actually about?”, John explained it in a way that all three kids understood why there was a war and why the soldiers went to fight. He lived history and hearing his stories left me riveted.

I found out that his wife had married a Moran (my maiden name) who died in the war. Moran was her surname when she met him. Wow. Just, wow.

He hugged me when he arrived, he hugged me mid-visit and he hugged me when he left. I see many more hugs between us in the near future. And many more dinners, for the record.

His beloved is on her way out and I cannot even fathom that. He cannot fathom that, even though eighty-eight is a “reasonable” age to go. He has the same questions and doubts that I would have if Matthew were to have cancer right now. “Why her?” “Why me?” “Did I do something wrong to make this happen?” “Is God mad at me?”

I don’t have a lot of answers, but I do have a lot of love. I’m going to love on him as much as he can handle.

I have lived in other small towns and I think I can honestly say that this small town leaves other small towns in the dust. We have a decent-sized city (where I work) ten minutes to the south and we have a large city a mere forty-five minutes to the north. We have access to all of the amenities of the city while living in a town where everybody knows your name. Well, everyone knows my husband’s name (He grew up here, and I’m known as “Matt’s wife”).

This small town of ours has made a name for itself as the “Town of Festivals”. A few times a year we throw a big party and people come from far and wide to attend. The first weekend in June is always Actionfest. Baseball teams descend upon our town to challenge the locals and in between watching Matthew and my brother play ball, we partook of the festivities.

Saturday morning is the parade! With Princesses! And candy! And clowns! (*Shudder*) And…garbage trucks? Only in Summerland.

The kids LOVED it, despite how they look here.

Oh, hi! Graham at fourteen. Sigh.

Sunday morning is an interdenominational service in the park, which is twenty shades of rad for a number of reasons. When the service is over we always beeline it over to the Mini Donut vendor (Mmm…donuts) and usually head home after indulging. I say “usually” because we actually stayed for awhile and told the kids they could partake in one of the rides. JUST ONE. They chose the cheesy Be-Towed-Behind-The-Quad-In-Barrels ride (complete with horns!).

They handed in their tickets.

They were a wee bit excited to be on the ride.

Ah, small town entertainment.

The “train” came back, we unbuckled the kids and helped them out and Emily immediately pointed to the horses. She told me that she wanted to go on that ride. I told her that I had used all of my cash to put them on the ONE RIDE that they had chosen and that they had been instructed to choose carefully. She had chosen the train.

Matthew met up with us, saw his baby girl’s crocodile tears and asked what was going on. Upon hearing how much she wanted to ride a horse he ran off to the truck to fetch the cash he had in his wallet. Daddies and their girls, hey?

(The dudes had the option for another ride and opted for the bounce house. We do our best to play fair over here.)

I think that this is one of the coolest things about being a parent. The majority of the time, you show your kids that you love them by teaching them about making wise decisions and about the consequences of those decisions. But sometimes, you show your kids you love them by letting them ride a horse for the very first time.

Happy New Year! Yes, I know I am many days late with the greeting but I took a bit of a break from the Internet. Not a complete break (Though that sounds a little heavenly, doesn’t it?) but I had kind of put it on the back burner. Apart from Scrabble, that is. Matthew and I have spent a couple of afternoons playing Scrabble on Facebook while the kids beheaded each other in Wii Lego Star Wars. Nothing says family togetherness than a good sword fight. Or something.

We had a hectic two weeks that included hosting Christmas dinner, a Boxing Day dinner for the other side of the family and then Graham’s birthday party. That party saw us entertain an additional six kids under the age of seven. IT WAS A LITTLE LOUD. Also, a whole lot of fun. I love that the kids are all at an age where you can send them down to the family room to play while the adults get to sit and actually talk. It’s a whole new world. Or something.

The day of Graham’s birthday I woke up feeling “off” and a little bit nauseous. With the aid of a nap, I managed to get everything done and enjoy myself with the friends who came over to celebrate with us. As we crawled into bed that night I told Matthew that I no longer felt nauseous. I was happy to have averted what I thought could have turned into some intimate time spent with the porcelain throne.

The next morning, I woke up with a blasted head cold. I have tried to keep my whining to a minimum but I have spent my days (DAYS)(These days HAVE NOT ENDED) alternating between blowing my nose and slathering it with Vaseline in order to prevent it from chapping. I also have a lovely cough that (according to my husband) makes me sound like a man. In other words, I am a particularly lovely sight right now.

The upside to this nasty cold is (that it waited until after all of our big events were finished, and) that it forced me to slow down a bit. I had a huge list of items that I wanted to get done before I start work on Tuesday and even I have to admit that the list was a little unreasonable. I did get a huge chunk of stuff done that I have been aching to do but apart from that I just enjoyed my days. I played Battleship with Graham, I played Connect Four with Nathan, I painted with Emily. I slept in past 6 a.m. (my usual internal alarm clock) four days in a row. It was mostly because I was up blowing my nose every two hours, but still. I read a two books and played with my shiny new camera.

I used that camera to capture some sledding fun out in our backyard. We had a brown Christmas but a few days later we got some snow. And more snow. And then, even more snow. For those who are new around here, we live on an acreage out in the sticks. We also have a huge hill that is perfect for sledding on. I was too sick to participate but I bundled up and photographed my family in action.

Nathan is the “Sporto” of the family. He’s naturally athletic and loves a plethora of sports. He especially loves “snowboarding” which is what he calls sledding on our Ski-Doo sleds. We’ve had a few minor dustings of snow and he’s asked if he could go “snowboarding.” There was never enough of a base, but now there is. He was beyond happy about it.

Minor crash:

This photo was actually upside down when I took it; he landed at my feet.

Graham soon joined in on the party.

He crashed as well, but was having too much fun to be upset.

Last year, Emily REFUSED to sled. We would try to take her with us and after just one run she would be wigging out. She doesn’t like to be thrown up in the air either. For such a feisty girl she is exceptionally cautious. I’m not sure what happened this year, but she’s loving the sledding action.

See?

Matthew put her on the bigger board because she kept dragging her feet.

She wasn’t scared of the sled; she was worried that she was going to crash into me. I jumped out of the way with time to spare. She was pretty happy about her mad sledding skills.

That’s what we’ve been up to. Enjoying life, soaking up the fun that we can and popping Advil Cold & Sinus. (Just me. So far).

I had a good friend of mine tell me that 2010 is going to be rad for the both of us. I believe it to be true and I hope it is the same for each and every one of you. I mean it. Happy New Year, you guys.