The Essence

Living and growing a family in the North awards you with a real and tangible connection to the land. As a mother of 5 and as a home baker and wannabe chef, it is this connection that seeps into everything - motherhood, food, harvesting, and experiencing the very heartbeat of the bit of earth that sustains us.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Happy Birthday Lydia!

On May 31st, 2005 at 6:02am Lydia Thora Jayne was born to us in Whitehorse. She had lots of black hair, so different from Emily and Dustin who are red heads!

Today is Lydia's 5th birthday, here she is waiting for Mommy to bring her gifts into the living room:

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She was a little excited!

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Blowing out 5 candles:

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And showing us that she is now "a whole hand old"!

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Lydia has been asking for her own pet for a few years now, and yesterday I had a lapse in judgement and bought her a guinea pig from a family that had baby ones. She named him Stripes and he actually has made a great little pet for her! His is very tame and is used to kids (the family we got him from has 4) and he makes cute noises and likes to run around on the grass. He eats lots of veggies, too, so Liddie likes to collect carrot and beet tops from the garden and picks dandelion greens to give him, too. Welcome to the family, Stripes!

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Thursday, May 27, 2010

Frances May Long

One of our very favorite camping spots is Frances Lake. This gem in the wilderness lies between Watson Lake and Ross River on the Robert Campbell Highway. On some maps, you will find a marker labelled, "Hudson Bay Trading Post", because there once was one there. There isn't much of it left, and it is off the lake so you would have to hunt around and have some GPS coordinates to find it. This was our view from our camper for 4 whole days:

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Could it get better than this?

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We absolutly love it here. The ice melts here about 3 days before May long weekend, and the fish are hungry!

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Lydia caught a lake trout!

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And die hard Dustin was up at first light and up till it got dark (which is about midnight this time of year) with his rod in the lake.

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Thank goodness the Ristau family joined us, because they brought June's best bud, Emma, and the girls played together all weekend. They spent hours throwing rocks into the water. June calls the rocks her money. Too bad that couldn't come true!

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I bought these strollers in the sale bin at Walmart for 5 bucks each, best deal by far this year. The girls walked their babies all around the campground.

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Our Auntie Yo Yo came camping with us too, and she's so smart, she brought bubbles!

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The second morning, we were sitting around the campfire with our morning coffee's and watched this caribou swim across the lake.

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June had fun throwing sticks for the dog.

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Emily liked throwing rocks, too. The rocks were a hit!

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Our girls relaxed in the hammock.

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And Lydia barely took her favorite "cap" off the whole time. I like that she calls it her cap.

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I think I'm going to put this picture on our wall. When Dustin was younger, he loved those "Where's Waldo" books.

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When we go to Francis Lake, something always goes wrong. Once the bearings went on the trailer, once we forgot diapers, once we got so close to a head on collision that our side mirror hit the oncoming truck. This time, TJ was obsessed with the tires. I guess he had reason to worry, because 2 hours into the drive on our way there, the rear tire blew. So on our way home when the other rear tire went flat, his eyeballs just about popped right out! Lydia asked, "Mommy, why is Daddy kicking that tree?"

Thank goodness for Sat phones. We were able to contact the Conservation Officer in Ross, and she brought several tires that she scavenged from around town for us to try. After 6 hours sitting on the side of the road with 4 kids and 2 dogs we were ready to be rescued. I wonder what disaster awaits us when we go back for Labour Day weekend?!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Happy 2nd Birthday June!

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O.K so this post is late, it has been sitting in my draft folder since the 6th of May. I have been having problems with my photo uploader and my computer and so have been mentally boycotting my blog posts because I'm frusterated. Why can't things be easier?

My sweet little June bug turned two years old, and just like every mother, I go back to the hours of her birth on this day, the 6th of May, to recount every delicious detail that was hers.

Two years ago today I got up at 6am so that I could shower and shave my legs and paint my toenails and make sure I looked fabulous in front of the doctor and nurses who would see me at both my best and my worst. Maybe looking fabulous would make things less painful, or more glamorous, or maybe it would make it look like I had things together. I had been in Whitehorse waiting to deliver this baby for 5 weeks and my patience ran out, my determination to wait things out the natural way was traded in for cervadil.

T.J had requalifications this day, the 6th of May, that he really couldn't skip out on, he was instructing and people were counting on him to be there. So the plan took shape - he was going to get me settled in at the hospital, then he was going to leave to teach his course with his cell phone turned up loud strapped onto his belt. Cell phones work on Grey Mountain don't they?! Cervadil doesn't kick in right away, does it?

I did get settled into my bed on the maternity ward at about 9am, the straps of the monitor across my belly and the cervadil working its magic. I was reading "The Birth House". Things started slowly kicking into gear after lunch. I spent the afternoon breathing, staying peaceful, sitting on the excercise ball, reading some more. After 3 babies, 3 births, I was O.K with being alone, I was sure of myself, I was calm. I quietly prepared for what was to come. It was a powerful feeling, being there in the quiet of the room with my soon to be born baby.

At about 4 T.J returned, and helped me into the shower. The excersise ball I was sitting on sat right on top of the drain and the nurse came in to let us know the hospital room was flooding.

At 5 Gramma, my sister Megan and our kids showed up and decided they had enough time to go for supper. We had decided to let our kids participate in the birth of their newest sibling, and they all wanted to be there. Also around this time the nurse came in and told us there was a photographer in the maternity ward that was doing some kind of promotional thing for the hospital and she thought it would be so great to get some real footage of a woman in labour. The nurse took one look at me moaning and groaning with my still wet hair and my makeup from the morning long worn off and said she would tell the photographer not a chance!

At 6:30 Gramma and the crew came back and I was almost ready to push. Lydia took one look at me and had to wait out in the hall with Auntie Megan. She must have got over her fear pretty quickly, because I could hear her chanting, "go mommy go, go mommy go!" Emily really wanted to be in the room but fear and uncertainty won over and she settled for still in the room, but behind the curtain so that all I could see of her were her legs from the knee down. Dustin wanted to be there,too, he came right up by my head but then promptly turned around and stared at the wall. As June's head was crowning and I gave one last wail he ran from the room. June was born at 7:02 delivered into her Gramma's hands. She was blue all over and pooped right into my hand as I held her. It was special to have everyone there, as soon as she cried everyone came in, all the kids wanted to hold her right away. The day afterwards, the photographer pursued, and I let her in to take some pictures of our new family of six. They are up in the entrance of the hospital, and also in some brochures and on the website. And that's June's story.

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Sunday, May 2, 2010

GNO

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I coordinate a girls only youth group in Faro called Girls Night Out. (GNO)
We meet every week on Wednesday nights. There are 27 past and present members of GNO, and we have a lot of fun together. Working with these incredible young women brings me great satisfaction and joy. They are amazing individuals who have passionate, funny, thoughtful, brilliant personalities. These girls have potential that reaches as far as the eye can see, they can do anything and make real, palatable change to our world. I am so proud to be their friend and confidant, to be a person in their lives that believes in them.