Busy...

I've decided, that although photography and this blog are my creative outlet, I'm taking a break for a little while. It's just so that I can get caught up on some things and get us into a routine that works. Our schedule has changed so much in the past couple of weeks. If I get a chance I'll likely do little updates, but even Book Sharing Monday will be on hold. I'll be back. Thanks for reading !!

Sunflowers

 Some of our sunflowers are TALL!!

This picture really puts the size of them into perspective.

Book Sharing Monday - On Meadowview Street

 We found this story cool because it's about a little girl who started something. One flower that she tried to save kicked off a trend in her yard that changed their lives and their yard and it was never the same again. 

 As nature took over the yard and more animals and plants showed up the larger the natural area became. One day the family decided to sell their lawnmower. In the end their yard was completely different than everyone elses' and the other neighbours didn't seem to mind. Actually they did better than that. This little girl who saved a little flower changed the way many people think about their yards and changed the look of Meadowview Street! 

It's a great story! You will love it even more if you are like me and tired of seeing the perfectly manicured lawns all over and prefer a hike in the trees over a walk down your own street.

Hockey All Year!

After living in Alberta and experiencing the best hockey experience there, that we have ever, and may ever experience, we do hockey all year long.  It's normal there to do that. Most of the players we met there played at least street hockey in the summer. Many of them skate all year round and skating in Edmonton was free. 

This summer Austyn has been playing hockey or doing camps all summer except maybe two weeks or so. He did 3-on-3, two camps, and a practice that his friends did and one of the parents put on. It was great! He played Lacrosse as well and raced. 

The experiences he had with hockey this summer were great. The above picture is him playing around on the ice with NHL player, Dustin Jeffery. 

His skill level this summer has gone up. We see such a difference in his abilities. AND... he loves it!!! I swear this kid would live on the ice, if you let him. Well... maybe... LOL!!

 Austyn posing for a picture with Dustin Jeffery.

We only sign him up for what he wants to sign up for and nothing more. This camp we will likely do again next year. It's a bit pricy, but it was well worth it. These teachers travel around to different cities to teach kids how to stick handle.

If you have a child who loves hockey, but could use practice with stick handling, this is the camp to take! Check out when it comes to a city near you. It's well worth it!

Now try-outs have started... YA!! ALREADY!! I hope that all of the fun he had this summer paid off for him. Small town hockey politics suck. Kids who people don't know well really need to stand out. I hope he makes one of the travel teams and isn't stuck on house league again. I'm excited to travel and I know he'll get more experience from it.

Butterflies

Our butterfly finally came out. It's a girl!! Here we are letting it go. 

Now we have another one and it's in it's chrysalis. I'm not sure that it's alive because of the colour of the chrysalis. I wonder if it died. I've learned never to be sure and to wait for a long time and see. So... we wait...

Oil Discovery

 I took Austyn to another museum. It was not far from the other one. There was a tour guide for this one. I found that although it was really cool to see more things live and working, the information that the guide had to give us at this museum was vague. We were able to get much more detailed information at the other museum.

 This is a real gum bed. "Real" as in not put here by humans but naturally occurring and left alone to be viewed. 

A wagon with a tank on it was always nearby to ship the oil to the train.

This is the old way of drilling for oil.

 This is the storage tank. We could walk up and look in. They also separate the water from the crude oil here.

 This was a favourite place for Austyn. Again... we may need to try and make a model or the jerker line and how it works with our K'nex.

One nice thing about a small-town museum is that Austyn was able to get close up and personal with a very old typewriter and now knows why Shift is on our keyboard and why it's named what it is. I think mechanical things are his thing! He loves to figure out how things work.

Oil Museum of Canada

I took Austyn to visit The Oil Museum of Canada. Zoe didn't come. It was nice! It gave him peace and quiet to learn what he wanted to learn and take his time on things that interested him. This is a model of the jerker line. It was broken and he fixed it as well as he could, without being able to tighten the one belt.

 He played and observed this model for a long time. 

 Although the real deal is just outside the doors of this museum the models are still cool to see. Here is another one of the first oil well.

 This was a tent that a traveler from the area would have stayed in while traveling abroad. The pictures you see on the inside of the tent are of a movie that is projected onto the sides of the tent and it tells a story that is all around us while we sit down to learn what happened in the past. 

 Although unrelated to oil, there were many old items in the museum. One that Austyn found interesting was this camera. We may need to research old cameras now.

 He also enjoyed the metals and coins.

 Here is another model. We were thinking that this may be a model that we could try and duplicate at home with our Educational K'nex kits. 

 Here is a real jerker line. It is working and there is still oil being collected on this site and the surrounding area. 

 This is one of the outdoor displays. There are many more, including a blacksmith shop.

 We purchased a toy that kids would have played with long ago.

 After viewing all of the displays at the museum we took a drive around the area and listened to the details of many of the original sites. There were displays set up with metal men.

The well that you see in the background is the site of the first Oil Gusher in North America.

We had a great time and learned so much about oil here in Ontario. This is so much more interesting after living in Alberta.