Home and School

 Written on the top of our home schools education plan are the following words,

"Psalm 25: 4-5. Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long." 

We picked this text to go forward with this past September as we gave up summer and dove into fall with it's routines and activities.  I had lower expectations than the year before remembering that math and writing did need some review instead of jumping in whole hog and then feeling like you fell off a cliff only to have to slowly climb back up full of aches and pains.  And thankfully, a few curriculum changes and some good old positive character studies later, we are happily enjoying these beautiful days of "discipling" and play.   The kids have fallen into routine and we are almost always guaranteed to be finished by lunch time so there's lot of time for recreation and imagination.  This season Seth is in grade 4, Tristan grade 3 and Rowan kindergarten.

Study on Leonardo DaVinci

Celebrating 500 yeas since the Reformation

Building popsicle stick bridges

Rowan discovering MagFormers

A trip to the Fire Station with the Taber Homeschool Group

And of course many many trips to the local library 💗 for the love of books

This fall marked 4 years of Alberta in our lives!  Celebrations were required, which meant a good reason for ice cream at Costco ;)

 Fall 2017 was nothing extraordinary for me.  After a hot summer winter jumped in with a vengeance and we had alot of snow and cold which meant I was stuck inside alot with the little girlies since they don't do too well in the cold windy weather.  And to be honest I didn't feel like doing anything outside either. So we did alot of sewing, reading, cleaning, crafting and cooking. We also took the kittens in the house to change things up a little 😀.  And who can resist a kitten and little girls?

 Marla keeps changing and growing and we really can't get enough of her joy and cheerfulness. She's the sweetest little thing, but doesn't miss a beat and pushes her way into the middle of whatever we are doing. There's rarely a moment when she isn't making someone smile! We so love Marla-girl.

Marla is everyone's live doll

The little feet under the little bum. So adorable, even if I am biased.

I'm sewing these girls more dresses than they need 😜 but it's Oh So Fun!

And then of course bath time. Sometimes rushed, sometimes lazy... either way, a great way to clean up and calm down before bed.  

Nothing like cuddles from your very own baby wrapped in a cozy towel. She may be a Daddy's girl!

In and around Golden

A few more pictures from in and around Golden to finish off this novel about our holiday.
We spent some time one nice afternoon to walk along the river bank of the Kicking Horse River and drive thru the town to see some of the landmarks.  The kids could have spent hours upon hours here throwing stones and changing water paths. The flow was still quite fast even though it was fall, and it was really nice that the water level was low.

Golden was built on the rail and became popular in the 1900s when it hired Swiss guides to help tackle the mountaineering. Several men moved in with their wives and to make them feel more at home the CPR built them homes in the sides of the mountain to resemble their Swiss mountain houses.   They are now empty and rundown but Andy humored me in my desire to find and look at these deserted houses which have so much history and are still a famous landmark of Golden.  

Time to go home!  The only road to the resort was over this one car wide bridge with wooden deck.  Considering the safety consious society and such that we live in today it was quite surprising that they hadn't updated this bridge and made it bigger and more usable, but it was quite fun to drive over time and time again.

Our constant ray of sunshine :)

Bugagaboos and Conrad Kain hut

Honestly, have you ever heard of Bugaboo Provincial Park?
Neither had I.
Neither had any of us actually.
But it got stumbled upon while Andy was searching the web for one "nice" hike to do with Seth and Tristan.  That was one of his personal goals on our trip, to have one good, rugged, climbing, scramble in with the big boys.  The Conrad Kain Hut and trip came up and it seemed like a perfect fit so early one morning he took off to this very isolated and secluded area in the Rockies between Golden and Radium Hot Springs.  If you are interested in the geography of this sort of thing click here to read all about it, you will leave feeling like you learned something new for the day!
This was more of an advanced hike for the guys in the family, and they were extremely excited to go as this park had been closed due to the forest fire smoke till the very day they went. I would not be surprised if they were the first people to hike here in possibly weeks.  After 50 km of slowly driving down a windy gravel road they made it to the Purcell Mountains which are known for its rugged granite mountains and spires.
In the above picture you will notice the van has chicken wire and stakes around it. This is provided at the parking lot since it is known that porcupines like to enter the brake systems of vehicles to lick the salt and thereby, eat thru the brake lines. Which obviously is a very terrible thing to have happen to you when you are miles and miles down a logging road up in the Rocky mountains. So proper precautions were taken and the van secured.

Certain areas were secured with chains and a small ladder.

Victory!  Made it to the goal. 700 metre elevation gain in 3 hours.

Note how you can see the glacier folding and flowing down.

The Hut is behind the boulder. Where's Waldo? (Seth and Tristan?)

The kids were happy there was some chain to hang on to.