Are you reading this on your phone!? If you are, take a second and look around... Is there anyone else with you? Are they aware of what you are doing with your phone? Are they looking at you with an exasperated look on their pretty little faces? Are you in a conversation with them but find it so uninteresting and dull that you picked up your phone in order to enhance your life just a tiny little bit to get away from the situation in which you find yourself? STOP IT. Put down your phone, it wont go anywhere. Use your facial and mouth muscles instead of your right thumb and talk, listen, enjoy the feeling of a one on one tete-a-tete with a fellow human being.
Why do I mention this? Well, me and brown eyed girl have just been for a wonderful weekend away with some of our best mates - Adam, Alena, Joel and Byron and we spent two great evenings playing games, chatting, drinking and building fires - Most without the aid of a phone or the tinterweb, It was great! We discussed this and we worked out acceptable levels of phone use when with company. They are as follows:-
1. Acceptable.
Using the phone to find out information regarding the conversation or something that may help or enhance it.
2. Acceptable but with limits.
In a group environment (more than 2 people). Using the phone to check on news, live sports scores or to answer short messages. If you are not, at that moment in time, part of the actual conversation. It also helps if you explain what you are doing - 'Dont mind me a moment - I'm just answering a text/checking the weather for tomorrow/setting a reminder' etc
3. Not acceptable.
Having a full on conversation, online, with one or more other parties, whilst fake attempting to listen to a live conversation of which you are a part. This includes randomly searching instagram, facebook or snap chat whilst grunting to pretend you are listening. This is not OK.
We think most people have been on both ends of these things - Both being the phone user and the annoyed party. I know its frustrating and I promise I will try to do less of it and give more time to the now. Hopefully you are all nodding in agreement and vowing to do the same.
Right - enough of that, I just wanted to mention it - Now for the news...
As mentioned we had a great weekend away. We took a drive out of the city into Ontario and to Minaki Yurt adventures. You may remember we went last year, just the two of us and had a great, but freezing cold weekend staying in a lakeside yurt. This year, me and her stayed in a Tee pee - with electricity, a pellet fed stove and enough seating for 6 people. There is also an upstairs with a really comfortable bed.
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| The tee pee (or wigwam if you prefer) |
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| Nighttime |
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| Inside |
Friday night was spent sitting in our place, just chatting - The stove was warm, the drinks were cold and the conversation flowed easily, with us all staying up tino the early hours.
We awoke to a beautiful Saturday morning with clear blue skies and a temperature of just about freezing. It was by far the nicest day of the year so far. So we decided to make use of the pizza oven on the site to make lunch. Now, we have a pizza oven at home and sometimes its difficult to get the pizza actually into the oven without messing it up. But today we REALLY messed it up . What started life as a round tasty looking pizza, quickly stuck to the pizza peel and wouldn't let go. It ended up a huge doughy mess combined with sauce and meat. Then because the oven was too hot, this pile of stuff, instantly caught fire and started to turn black. That was good though as I like burned food, so we managed to scrape the mess back out of the oven in time to taste it before it turned to charcoal.
A second pizza was made and although this one got into the oven OK, the topping burned as the dough stayed raw! We ended up cooking the underside of the dough over the gas cooker once the topping was well done. We were very happy with the taste though and combined with the beers we bought after a quick drive into Minaki it was a good albeit messy start to the day.
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| That looks good.... |
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| That doesn't |
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| Take 2 |
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| I got a dirty face from the smoke. |
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| Delicious |
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| Nothing to see here |
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| I enjoyed it! |
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| She loved it! |
After a spot of relaxing me, Buffty, Adam and Alena decided on a quick hike to try out the trails and see some of the surrounding area. We had walked for about 40 minutes by the time we found ourselves 2 foot deep in snow and geographically confused. It wasn't that we were lost, but we had just decided not to follow the trail anymore. It wasn't a problem though as we came across an airfield and wandered along the snow covered runway towards the planes we could see in the distance. We knew this was near to the lake outside the yurts so we weren't worried. After a bit of moseying at the planes we bushwhacked a little bit through the snow and found ourselves looking down across the lake at Byron and Joel sat outside their yurt enjoying the sunshine.
All we had to do was get down the steep slope to the frozen lake and cross it to get home. So after Alena pulled Adam out of the snow he jumped into, we slid down the slope on our arses and wandered back home for a beer and dinner.
Here's a few piccies of our little adventure....
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| The runway |
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| The yurts are just behind us... |
After our tiring afternoon, we settled into the Tee pee and had a great big dinner of sweet and sour ribs and rice expertly cooked by Adam. A really nice dinner and just what we needed to wash down the beers and sooth our aching muscles. Later in the evening we built a fire and spent a couple of hours sat around it in the snow, eating bannock cooked on sticks and just enjoying the good life. It started to snow about midnight and so we headed off to bed tired and with big smiles. It had been a great day.
During the night our pellet burning stove stopped working for no reason we could work out. I climbed out of bed, unplugged it, reset it, downloaded the manual for it and was getting really annoyed when a quiet voice from upstairs spoke...'Is it plugged in?' Of course it bloody plugged in I replied angrily. Then the voice spoke again 'From here it looks like the kettle is plugged in but not the stove'....... '
Drops the mic.
Somehow, when I reset it I had plugged in the wrong cable and then spent about 20 chilly minutes trying everything to get it to turn back on. I sheepishly plugged it in. Unsurprisingly, it came on immediately and I got back into bed after apologizing profusely. I can be a knob sometimes. haha
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| Adam and fire! |
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| Snow |
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| Night time |
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| See you next year Jenkins BABY ALERT-BABY ALERT-BABY ALERT-BABY ALERT-BABY ALERT-BABY ALERT |
Last post I told you of the scan Buffy had just had and posted some crazy pics. This time I will show you some of the many blurry photos of our actual bundle of joy.
The thing growing inside Buffy is doing well. The doctor was very happy with its progress. It has every chance of being born as close to normal as it can be with us two as parents. Heartbeat, baby size, shape and everything else is looking good. We don't know if its a boy, girl or other and we don't want to know, so if you have medical training or can see things in any of these photos that give away the gender, keep it to yourself. We don't want to know. Whether its a Gwendoline or a Sebastien, a Rey or a Luke, Donny or Marie, a Sandy or Danny. It doesn't matter to us.
Anyway here are a few pics for anyone who wants to see...
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| Face and hands |
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| Sideways showing it has my small nose and not Buffy's conk! (Sorry Buffy - love you!) |
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| A fish or a spine? |
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| Looks a bit like ALIEN. I have no idea what this is. |
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| Legs with bones showing in white |
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| The arms |
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| Feet. Yes it will be able to walk to the fridge to get me a beer. |
For now though its Sunday night. we have the laundry in, a lasagne for dinner and then a nice relaxing night before work tomorrow. There is also huge winter storm expected to hit overnight with up to 40 cm of snow expected. So tomorrow could be chaos and if so, I will let you know about it in the next post.
Have a great day whatever you are doing!
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