well what a surprise, a blizzard for hallowe'en. At least this year there was room in charlie's costume for her parka. -19.0 out side this morning, so no reprieve from winter. The ferries are due to stop running today, so we'll be taking out a second mortgage on the house to buy a jug of milk. Steven (of the burnt legs) phoned from CFB Borden the other day-basic is going well for him. Well that's all for now, got a day off, got the kiddos...maybe go chicken hunting(charlene loves it).

Frank, yuppers, geese flying after legal dark-and although there are no published IFR approaches into Willow River, because it's class "C" airspace they can get away with it. In all fairness to the geese tho, the weather was VFR at the time. We've been aggressively squeezing the last drops of summer out of '09 but alas winter arrived right on schedule. Every year everyone says the same thing "maybe the kids won't have snow for hallowe'en'

yeah right, the globe ain't that warm yet. It doesn't matter what costume you buy...the kids all end up dressing up as arctic explorers, with parkas and all the rest.

The willow river was starting to freeze over when we went down last weekend, by the end of the weekend she was froze. We pulled our boat in and pulled miranda's mom's boat in as well.

We have a 1000 liter water tank on our deck and we drained it before it froze solid, it made some neat ice sculptures under the deck.

Charlie Brown makes another trip to the wood pile. Gotta go, gonna grab some lunch and head down to willow. Solo trip this time. just me......WOO HOO!!

Well it's been awhile (more blog posts are started with those four words than any other four)

What have we been up to? the usual, working and weekends at willow river.

Steven of the burnt legs has left and gone off to the military- I haven't heard from him yet but his aunt told me he was having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new way of life. So lots of overtime at work(like I need more of that) but we have two people at school that are doing well

so looking forward to being fully staffed. When I reach that holy day, I'm considering just working eight hours a day mon to fri 8 to 4... AAAAaaahh aaah(that's angels singing)

the pics are all pretty much what ya see is what ya get. Although it was pretty cool that Charlie Brown made and cooked her own hamburger on the fire for the first time. That's my girl!

Another first was me Coleman and Charlie all going for a ride on Quadzilla.

Any guesses on the first pic?

We went down to willow river for the weekend. This time we didn't have any guests, and Miranda's mother and Robert weren't there either. So it was just the four of us down there. We took the kids out in the boat and had a visit from a pair of otters, usually I deal with

twin otters, today it was otter twins. we also saw a bear on the river bank. The weather was perfect although a little hot, it got up to 29c this afternoon. It was pretty hot yesterday too, so we filled up the kiddie pool and we all went in and sat down in it. Coleman fell asleep on the coffee table and miranda took a pic.

wet willow weekend

It rained from the moment we left to go down to willow river friday evening, until about an hour before we left to come home. We still had a lot of fun though. We took Quadzilla out to these sand dunes on the side of the road and had a blast. On Saturday morning I went out fishing by myself in the rain for a couple of hours. Miranda and her mom decided to fix up the tipi- it was leaking in a few places and the fire pit was not centered yada yada yada. Despite the rain, it was a good weekend. I made what is fast becoming a tradition, my big ass pot of chili on the fire. mmmm. Those matching shirts I got us say "Rum Runners" on them, and I wanted to write it on the sand dune, but we had it all carved up before i thought of it. So the kids wrote it out with woodchips, and called me over to see it and I thought it was cute.

well, that's all for now. we're going down to willow river again this weekend so probably have some pics next week.

weekends

Some pics from various weekends over the summer. Miranda reaches in to grab me by the pickerel. One of Miranda holding up one of my pickerel, and the good wife filleting one of my pickerel. I usually buy a mid-level quality fising rod and reel, right off the rack, knowing that I'm going to wear it out or wreck it. But this year I treated myself to a very nice Quantum tour edition precision tuned reel. It was awesome catching those nice pickerel on my kick ass rod and reel. And for sis, here's the Coolman and Charlie Brown and one of Beckers and Charlie Brown

modelling their matching t-shirts. I needed clean clothes when I was in yellowknife after my Medevac and release from the hospitol. So I was in Wal-Mart in a morphine daze and ended up buying each of us the same t-shirt.

What a day

well been awhile now, hmmm, let's see what's been going on. Well I turned forty-three, the truck is great. been going down to willowriver every weekend. And today I went on a six hour floatplane trip up into Nahanni National Park did a two hour hike there and saw Virginia Falls.
Spectacular doesn't even begin to describe it...twice as high as Niagara Falls. From there we flew to Little Doctor Lake and visited Nahanni Mountain Lodge. Ted Grant, owner/operator of Simpson Air also owns and operates the lodge there as well. The good folks at Simpson Air gave me the trip for free to say thanks for all my hard work at the airport over the years.
The funny thing, I took my camera. But forgot my battery in the charger at home. Well not that funny, i guess, if you wanted to see pics.