It’s been a tumultuous few weeks since we moved in, buried in boxes and getting re-acquainted with life in Fernie. It’s not that we haven’t been here all along, but living here again has been a stress reliever that I knew was coming, but didn’t quite realize how much. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still surrounded by stuff we don’t quite know what to do with, and there are kinks that need to be worked out, but man, it is pretty nice to be back to a 5-minute commute to anywhere and we are making quick work of turning this back into a home.
The finishing of the house is coming along (the builders still return periodically to fix things that aren’t quite as they should be) and Jeff has been working hard at smoothing our dirt piles, and finishing off the staining that has been delayed time and time again for other more pressing things (like life!). We are thoroughly enjoying the infinite space of our outside, having had our first fire-pit fire on Thanksgiving and spending more than a few minutes gazing at the sky when the Northern Lights graced us for an evening.
The girls have settled back into no-school-bus (yay!) life and are riding their bikes gladly having been denied for the last year and a bit. This will be short-lived I imagine as our days are cooling rapidly and more often than not, we are met with frost in the early morning. We’ve had a round of wet these past couple of days too, and I was faced with frozen doors on the truck. Time to break out the windshield cover and warm up the auto-start! There was snow on them thar hills this morning!
On the sadness side, we have had a tragic end to the chicken experiment. While I was away with Lizzie at a volleyball tournament in Kelowna a couple of weekends ago, Mary was attending her own volleyball tournament in Sparwood. She returned in the early evening to find her chickens alive and well, but when she went out an hour later to close up the coop, she was met with what I can only imagine looked like a horror movie. Three of her chickens lay dead outside the coop on the other side of the garden and two were missing. We have a fox that lives in the draw that is the likely culprit, and despite her immense sadness, Mary is practical and gets that the fox is just doing what a fox will do. She left the carcasses of the three for the fox to retrieve rather than having them wasted. She’s a good farmer already. Needless to say, we won’t dive into another batch of chickens until we’ve designed a fort knox style chicken coop, although Jeff seems to think that it would be a bad idea anyway given the size of the bears we are seeing on our cameras at night. Nothing will keep the bears out. They were producing beautiful little eggs (finally) and we and they were thoroughly enjoying their free-ranging in the garden. A too-short, but good life. RIP ladies.
With both Mary and Lizzie on volleyball our weeknights are filled with practices and league games, and for Lizzie, a travel schedule that rivals club season. We have been to Lethbridge, Calgary, Kelowna, and Red Deer so far. There are a couple more trips coming, but thankfully, this weekend is a home tournament hosted by Fernie. I might just get that painting finished on the exterior of the house! Mary’s team is doing well and she’s being moved around a bit for positions on her team, first as setter and then as power and now probably back to setter since she seems to have good hands for it. Lizzie is enjoying being back on her old team (mostly), but is seeing less court time than she’d like which is the way of grade 10 volleyball. Fair play rules end so you have to make the first string to really get to play. She’s working on it, but there is some pretty steep competition in Fernie. Her team is undefeated this season having taken the top spot in each of the tournaments they’ve attended. Loads of fun to watch. I’m hoping to get a bit more time to see Mary play since her games are more local, but so far that hasn’t worked out.
Thanksgiving brought the return of the rotisserie turkey! It has been almost 2 years since we fired up the BBQ for thanksgiving and boy did we miss it. The turkey, as usual, was done in record time and we were setting the table early. We had Mary’s friend Bode, and Margaret’s boyfriend Josh joining us this year, so we added a ham to the menu (Josh is allergic to Turkey – I can’t even imagine). All good, he survived dinner at our house and we all rolly-polied ourselves out the fire-pit to digest enough to make room for pie! Even mom made it down the wobbly rocks to join us. Mom and Mary slaved making pumpkin and apple pie for the event, and I snuck some ice-cream into the freezer since we weren’t 45 minutes away from the store anymore. So good to celebrate our first holiday and with friends over too.
Max is also a very happy dog these days, taking to lying out front in the leaves. He looks like a dead dog in this picture, but he’s just super relaxed and a bit old these days so napping is his pastime. He has taken to napping in unusual places in this house, not quite having found his routine yet. He’s moved away from the couch, but I did find him curled up on the armchair which I’m sure he shoehorned himself into.
Last night we took an evening off from work around the house and put a fire on. Jeff had tried it out another night while I was away and fussed as the living room filled with smoke – had to work out the kinks there too, but this was my first fire. How lovely to get cozy in an almost clean living room.
Next up – Time to bust out the Halloween decorations. With all those leaves and frosty/foggy mornings outside it’s past due!