Fade...

Sitting here thinking of you,
Reminiscing what we went through.
Wondering if you'd ever forget,
Where and when we first met.
You were like my other half,
Never hesitating to make me laugh.
It's amazing how our friendship would grow,
Meeting people that I didn't know.
Whatever happened, you were always kind.
I always wonder "do I ever cross you mind?"
I always think that people won't remember me,
Like I was just some old memory.
Now I'm standing back, trying to hide in the shade
Please don't let the memory of me fade...

Something Good Should Be On The Way....

So here I was, writing in my blog last week, looking forward to a beautiful weekend at the lake. Just me and my family, away from everything chaotic. Problem free, right? Oh how wrong I was!! Let's start by saying that whomever said that bad luck comes in three's is totally wrong!! It came in more that a set of three for us!! So here is a run down of our rotten luck!! (And welcome to y first blog posting with photos!!)

So on Friday we were getting ready to go to the lake, just Cam & I for this night. Go to Damour Lake, fish and then tent it there for that night. We ended up leaving just about two hours later than originally planned, which was fine. Got to the lake and fished for a couple of hours with only four catches. That's pretty slow fishing for that lake. Guess the fish just didn't like us. So by the time we gave up on them it was already starting to get dark. We still had to load up the boat, pick a site and set up camp. We didn't get our tent set up until after 10pm and it was dark by this time. So there we are, setting up a tent (we had only done this once before with this tent, totally different style from what we know) with a little LED lantern. As we were managing to get it up I noticed some holes in the sides of the tent. Some were the size of my hand. Apparently some mice had decided to sharpen their teeth in it. We had three big holes in the sides and four other holes in the bottom of our tent. So we patched it up with some duct tape. Quick fix that works. We were in bed sometime after 11pm and were sleeping on a very hard, uneven ground. Bad sleep. Then I woke up at 2am to the sound of rain on our tent....
"Cam it's raining."
"Yeah, I know" sigh, sigh, toss turn.
This went on for about half an hour. Then it started raining harder, which usually isn't a big deal BUT the road we drove in on consists of very steep clay roads. If it rains too much there is no getting out. With a truck and a boat you're bound to get stuck. And this is not a well known lake. The only people around are on the farms. There are no cabins and the most you'll see on the lake is two boats at a time. So if we get stuck we're screwed.
"You're not going to sleep anyways so we may as well pack up and get out of here."
"Yeeaaahhh. May as well."
So there we are at 2:30am packing up our tent in the rain and loading all our gear up. We were so glad we left when we did because the roads were already pretty mucky and getting hard to drive on. So we decided to go to another, not so known lake that Cam went to with his Grandpa growing up. We didn't really know our way there, but were willing to try. After just about hitting 10 deer to get there, and a wrong turn later we made it. So by just after 3 we got to go back to sleep in the front seat of the truck.

We awoke at 7am to the sound of another truck coming into the lake. Low and behold it was his Uncle. There they are talking right behind the truck while I'm in the cab trying to sneakily put my bra back on without them seeing me!! How embarressing!! So we got our muffins packed and got ready to head out on the lake for sme fishing. Earl gets his boat in and started up and we say we'll meet him out there. Well that was the plan until our boat decided not to work. Dead battery among other problems. So we decide to take the battery out of the truck so we can still go fishing, but somehow the bolt part breaks. Now that battery doesn't work either so we are without a battery for the boat and the truck!! So we sat there waiting for Earl to come back in from fishing to devise a plan of attack. He ended taking out his battery to boost our truck (no one had booster cables) and then putting ours back in. After letting the truck run for half hour to recharge the battery and load the boat back up, Earl took us out fishing for a couple o hours.



By the time we were done fishing the weather had turned ugly. Winds had picked up quite a bit and it just wasn't suitable for camping. So we cancelled our first night at the lake with the girls and hung out at my parents house that night.

We left early the next morning to go out fishing again, but with the girls this time. Sad to say that once again the boat didn't work, and it wasn't due to the battery this time. Fuel line problem. But when Cam finally got that fixed, the battery died. Grr... So we loaded the boat again and went to the lake we were camping at. We ended up getting it to work that night and parked it at Earls cabin. the next morning when Cam tried to get it started it wouldn't go. So when I was bringing the truck to the boat launch I saw him paddling the boat across the lake. Yay. So we had had enough by this time. Loaded up the boat, packed up camp and went home. We weren't even half way home when this car pulled up beside us on the highway flagging us down. Apparently we blew a tire on the trailer. "Well that explains why the truck was driving funny". Nice. Real nice. I wasn't allowed to take a photo of it though. He got a little ticked at me for trying. So Cam and his dad had to unload the car trailer so they could go back and pick up the boat.

But not all was bad. There were some really fun parts to our weekend too.

The night we spent at my parents was also my brothers birthday. So we ended up celebrating the night with him when he finally got off work at 7pm.



Fur Lake





The kids played at the park...



Went swimming in the freezing cold water...



When we did end up going fishing...




One last trip to the park...



So in some ways I'm glad the weekend's over, but at the same time we did have fun. We got to do some visiting with family we don't see too often and we also did some fun stuff as a family.

Camping

So me and my little family are going camping this weekend. First time ever going camping with Cam or the girls!! I actually haven't slept in a tent for at least 10 years!!! Makes me kinda nervous!! To actually be totally prepared to sleep outside, especially when there's a chance of rain for tomorrow!! And for the girls to still sleep with a night light. Should make for an interesting weekend!!

But honestly, I am extremely excited!! I love just being at the lake. Whether we're sitting around the fire, swimming, fishing or sometimes hiking, it's just great to be able to be outside away from the zaniness of our world. To be able to spend time with my family without being pre-occupied by work or something else that happens to come up.

So here's to an awesome long weekend to all!!

My Fish

So I went out shopping last night for the first time in a very long time. Madison needed shoes to wear to school and for ball and I ended up buying a couple other pairs for her because they were too cute to pass up. So while shopping I decided to splurge a little and ended up buying some new fish for our tanks... This is what I bought....

First of all I bought Cam another little Golden Dojo Loach. For those who don't know, they look like little water snakes, but they are bottom dwellers. We already have 3 but they're getting so it (most average about 4"). They're really fun to watch and I've grown to like them.

The next thing I bought were a couple of Shubunkin's. In our goldfish tank I felt that we needed a little color, so our new fish are bright orange with flecks of black and white. They're already fitting in and that makes me happy. Last time I bought some comets and I bought them too small so they got eaten in less than 5 hours, so needless to say I'm a little nervous when I add fish to this tank!!

The last type of fish I bought were Gourami's. But these are a special kind. They're called Pink Kissing Gourami's. What caught my eye and sold me on getting these fish are their mouths/lips!!! I've never seen a fish whose lips go out so far!! They're hilarious!! Madison was laughing the whole time because she thought that they were going to kiss each other! "That's gross! Don't kiss him!!" It was so entertaining to watch them that I bought three.

So, those were my adventures of the evening. It was such a good time to just get out of the house and enjoy some time with my girls. It's amazing what buying a few little fish can do for you!!

More About Me....

So today I have been reading other peoples blogs and I came to realize a few new things about myself that these other people made me realize....

1. It's okay to miss a beloved pet...even if it has been gone for a long time. I was in grade 7 when our dog Chico was put down. I loved that dog very much and still miss him. I think because of this I tend to compare other dogs of ours to how Chico was and that's just not fair. Don't get me wrong...I loved the dogs we had...Mike was a great dog, but some of his habits I just couldn't get used to, and Shelby is a great dog too and with a little more training she'll only improve. So I need to realize that every dog is different, especially if you didn't get them as pups and train them yourself in the beginning. But I do love my dogs and really do appreciate them, I just think I need to appreciate them more for their own uniqueness. That's the one thing I regret not doing when Mike was still around...

2. The beauty of nature... I was reading "Mary's View" blog today and I must say she takes the most beautiful pictures! She takes her camera and takes pictures of everything in nature. She had pictures of so many different types of birds, her dogs, bees busy at work in a flower, flowers, her fish, etc... I love the beauty of nature and I don't know why, but it has honestly never occured to me to actually take the time to take a piture of it. I have recently started taking more scenic pictures, but now I sit here wondering if I could take pictures even a fraction as beautiful as hers. I know it would be more of a challenge to take a picture of a moving creature, but I think it would definitely be worth it in the end. I enjoy these types of pictures and plan on trying my hand at them very soon (except that I don't know how to post them to my site quite yet, so you'll just have to check out my flickr site to see my progress).

3. How much I love my fish... I know lots of people think fish are not much of a pet, but Cam & I would surely disagree. As of now we have four fish tanks on the go. One 10gallon, two 20 gallon, and a 37 gallon tank. It started out with me just wanting to have fish in my life again, so I convinced Cam to let me get a tank. Well my wanting to just have fish around became a point of interest in both of our lives very quickly. We had started out with just a few goldfish in the 10 gallon tank. But soon after we were presented with many opportunities to expand on our collection. There was a fish tank for sale at our church garage sale for $20 which included everything including some guppies and some tetras. It was still there at the end of the day so we bought it. Our babysitter was also looking at getting rid of her 20 gallon tank, so she gave it to us for free along with her 5" Plecostomus. And our big tank we decided that for Christmas we would buy it as a joint present to each other. So now we have a very wide variety of fish. We now have goldfish, angelfish, guppies, plecos, tetras, black skirts, barbs and loaches....but definitely not in the same tank! We already need to buy a bigger tank for my angels as they are quickly outgrowing the one they're in. But our ultimate goal is to have a pond in our backyard. But that will have to wait until the girls are older due to me having a bad experience when I was quite young...so we're looking at about 5 years away minimum!

It's amazing what you get when you actually take the time to read what other people are taking the time to tell you about their own lives. With them taking the time it helped me remember and realize some things about myself! And I truely thank you for that!