couldn't resist...

These are Mike's ginormous electrical gloves. Dave thought they were the coolest things ever, and just had to give them a try. (Mike had to teach a seminar on electrical safety at work, so he had to hunt down all the electrical safety gear he's supposed to be using on the job (we found it all very safely tucked away in the garage.))

We're getting set to make the trip back to Dryden. We had originally planned to leave Saturday after work. We may delay that to Sunday, if Saturday is a busy day. He's even pondering leaving Monday, so he can help me finish some stuff around the house - there's a lot that requires two people, and he's been working pretty long hours this week. But we'll see - we'll let everyone know when we know more.

pictures for John...

These photos won't mean much to anyone but John, so please make sure he sees them! He had a bunch of toys that you put in water to watch them grow. When we left for vacation, they all came out of the water, so we could see what would happen to them. The little guy in the centre was a big dinosoar that hatched from an egg. It shrunk way down to the size of the Green Pig while we weren't looking! The troll thinks he's cool. They've all become good friends.

These were Fish Eggs (just pretend). They used to fill this whole bowl!

These were his marbles - they filled this entire tray when we left! Now they're right back to the little pellets they started as.



So much for thinking things would be easier with just two! We're on a two week "break" at home, before heading back to Dryden to retrieve the kids, and get them back to real life. We had lofty goals of gutting our garage, finishing the kids' toy room. All these big plans. We've gotten a lot of work done, but mostly, it's been a lot of one-on-one with Dave, who gets bluer by the day, without his siblings to play with.

We can't remember John being this out of sorts at this age, but I guess if all you know is noise, chaos, and lots of kids running around, solitude would be tough, whereas solitude is all John knew until Joan came along. But I still wasn't prepared for the level of attention a little guy can take - especially one used to non-stop stimulation! Everyday, he asks where John and Joan are. He calls thier names throughout the house. When I tell him they're with grandma, he starts wailing her name instead. Last night, he walked into the livingroom, stood in the middle of the floor, and just started sobbing. "are you hungry?" "NOOOOO!" "Are you tired?" "NOOOO!" Did you poop?" "NOOOOO!" "Are you lonely?" pause..."no," he sqeaked. "Do you want John and Joan back?" YYEEEEESSSSS!" Do you miss John and Joan?" "YEEEEEESSSS!" and at that point, he shuffled out of the room, head hung low, and flopped on Joan's bed.

Don't get me wrong - he has fun most of the time! He's discovered a love of trucks. He likes to line them all up, and drive them through the house in pairs. Without siblings around to interfere, he has quite a well-developed case of what I call Toddler OCD. I don't know if it has a real name, but with the older two, it was like a switch went off, at about 22 months, when they started stacking things, with a scary level of compulsion. Stacking, or lining up in neat little rows, taking meticulous care to get it all perfect. Dave's been doing that a lot. With John, coupled with the fact that he barely spoke, I thought it was Autism, until I was assured by a nurse that it was normal. Then Joan did it. I was a little worried when Dave didn't, but now I see that's just because he COULDN'T - his collection would be dimantled before it could reach Toddler OCD levels. And because he's quite articulate, it all makes more sense. He's just sorting. He'll build a stack of bears over there...trucks over here...dinky cars somewhere else, all arranged in neat little rows, lines or circles. Then he'll show them all to me and annouce what the collection is of, before dismantling them to start all over with a new set of sorting criteria.

Despite his being lonely, having him alone right now is a good thing. He's in a huge "what's this?" phase. He wants to know the name of EVERYTHING! It's a pretty time-consuming phase. Books aren't about stories anymore - he wants to know what every little thing in every picture is. He's picking it all up really fast! He's learning colours at the same time. He can say them all, but gets mixed up on which is which, though he's somewhat consistent with blue and yellow. He knows most of his barnyard animals just from reading a little book twice. His favourite is the cow, which he calls "moo". And there's a picture of a pig biting a sheep's ear. When he first saw it, he said "let go!" Now whenever se sees it, he says "Hey! Let go, Pig!"

Mike taught him the difference between cars and trucks, and with "Are you my mother" he learned boat and airplane, and it's all mixed to create a little monster! He loves to sit in front of the big window and name all the things that pass by. We can hear planes, and because we can see the lake, he can spot the boats, and of couse the cars and trucks driving down the road. I think he's even getting high and low..."boat down low" he says. At first I felt bad for him that we normally have so little time to devote to such a bright kid. But I know that's stupid - the reason he IS so bright is the fact that he has so many siblings to learn from!

I think the only time we feel really bad for him is when he's playing hide and seek. We couldn't tell what he was doing at first. But he'll burry his face in the couch, or put his face against a wall. Then he'll say "Two Four Six...here come!" and he'll run around the house like a loon. After a few seconds of zooming around, he'll stop at another wall, and start all over again. If he ever manages to find himself, I'll let you know.

Tom is doing well - he's basking in all this attention! He gets more cuddles, more playtime, more feeding time, more everything! We think he's looking bigger, but we'll know for sure the next time we can get him on a scale - doc appts and shots all around when the kids get home! Yay immunity! He's definitely a lot stronger. As the first baby I've had who will happily sleep on his back, (the others were carefully propped on their sides, or *gasp* allowed to sleep on their tummies, for the sake of sleep) we've had to work harder at tummy time for him. We mostly just do it on the bed, like we did for Joan - the therapists all told us it's the ideal place, because you can be at eye level, so it's more enjoyable for all, and they can just splay out on the bed when they need a little breather. It's paying off - he can roll from back to belly now, and he can wiggle himself right out of his seat. It's that miserable stage, when they're compelled to get freedom, so they wiggle out. But once they're on the floor, they still can't do anything but lay there. When he figures out the belly-to-back maneuvre, and how to sit, he'll be much happier, I think.

I tried to get all organized and get a back-to-school list for John, but apparently, we don't need to buy anything. They'll be giving him everything on his first day (Sept 7 - the countdown is on!) and then we just pay a fee. I tried to find the name of his teacher, so I could let him know, but we won't find out until the first day, when the lists are posted outside. I hope he gets a good one. As of yet, his old teacher hasn't been assigned to a class, and a different teacher was in the kindergarten spot. I hope she doesn't just follow him up - I know he liked her, but I had some issues with the way she did things. It would be nice to have someone different.

Anyway, better go. Mike's working latge, so I have extra cleaning time today. I should probably make use of it. Or maybe I'll just play a rousing game of "car or truck" at the window with Dave.

Day 7

The night in Saskatchewan was our last on the road - and by far our worst. The mosquitoes were nothing short of unreal. No matter how fast we moved, the van was filled with them. Compounding the problem was the fact that the passenger window was stuck open. To try to keep them out, we had blocked the window with cling wrap. But it wasn't enough. We settled down to sleep with the hum of mosquitoes all around us. And it was hot and stuffy to boot. So it was too hot to be under the blanket, but if we took it off, we got eaten alive. The humm alone was enough to keep us awake, let alone the stffiness, heat, and blood sucking bugs swarming around us. We were going so crazy, we took the van, sleeping kids and all, for a drive with all the windows and the back hatch open to blow them out. But we couldn't close it down fast enough, or seal the window completely enough, to get rid of enoughof them to sleep. We had two choices - lay awake and suffer, or just hit the road. We chose the latter, getting on the road at about 4:30 a.m., after a miserable, sleepless night.

We rode into our next destination - Flin Flon - at about 6 a.m. It's a mining town, with copper and zinc I believe, and it looks a lot like Sudbury, with slag fields and stunted trees for miles around.

This is Flinty, the town mascot. The town is named after Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, a character in The Sunless City.

Flinty, in his trout-shaped submarine, which he uses to escape a bottomless lake (which actually has a bottom of gold).

The tourist office has lots of cool stuff, and a little campground. The kids liked the train.

The kids trying to get the gear to turn.

We only stopped to gas upin Flin Flon, then we pressed on to The Pas. We'd post a picture of the Manitoba sign, but there wasn't one along this route - not many tourists, I guess. Mike didn't believe me that The Pas would be largely native. I won that bet, hands down.

One of Mike's many, many futile attempts to fix the broken window on the road. The bugs were so horrible, we had to let the kids out to give them hope of escaping the swarms. But he could only work for a few minutes at a time, before being overcome. So we'd all pile in for a quick escape. The kids wound up covered in bites from all this. It was horrific. 

John found a baby frog on one of our roadside stops in rural Manitoba. It was the tiniest frog we'd ever seen! The kids took turnsd holding it before we set it free in the grass.

We took a detour north to Grand Rapids to get gas - the reserve had a Shell station. I also needed diapers, so we had to find a grocery store. All we found was a windowless steel building, like something right out of Nunuvut. It was pretty neat inside - a bunch of locals gabbing away. Way overpriced food. I'm going to assume they go to The Pas for groceries, because if that was really the grocery store, that town eats very, very poorly. There was very little real food. All the meat was frozen. There was just a few apples, oranges and peppers for veggies. The milk was $6 per gallon! My diapers were double what I'd normally pay.

There were actually some cool things there. There was a park that had the first railway line in western Canada. It followed an old 5km portage. It was originally a cart, which would have been pulled along by a horse.

It was a pretty rough place, and I felt very out of place. But we found a park by the river, and let the kids run around for a bit.

Dave is trying to give Ruf Ruf a ride

 Tom, having a stretch in the grass

The hydro dam at Grand Rapids - the reason for the town's existance

Pelicand hang out at the dam, waiting to pick of the food rushing past.

After Grand Rapids, we headed back south, towards Selkirk.

Along the road, our van hit a milestone - 200,000 miles!

We went through Gimli, which has a beatiful beach. We had planned to take the kids swimming, but after the night we'd had, and knowing that we'd be getting in late even if we didn't stop, we decided to press on, to the dismay of all the kids. As it was, Mike and I had spent the day trading off behind the wheel, taking turns sleeping and driving. I wanted to get in as early as possible. So we grabbed some burgers by the beach for dinner, and pressed on to the border.

Ontario at last! After this, it got too dark too fast for pictures. But we joined the Winnipeg cottagers into Ontario. We'd never seen the road to Kenora so busy! But we rolled into town just shy of 11 p.m. or so.

It had been a fun, but greulling trip on the road. Our game of avoiding the Trans Canada took us through some pretty neat places. But everyone was very, very glad to finally stop moving!

Day 6

Ah, sweet sleep.

We woke up ready to take on Saskatchewan! We had a few things we wanted to see, but we were behind even our loosey goosey schedule, so we didn't have much time.

The kids were getting restless by Saskatoon - particularly Dave, who seemed to be getting road-weary. So we stopped at the big river-front park for a run-around break.

The boys, digging in the dirt. Saskatoon was as beautiful as ever - Paris of the Praries, I think they call it. I've only been there twice that I can remember, and I always think we should stop and stay a while. There's lots to do there. But we didn't have time to do anything but chill at the park.

Our first major stop was a national historic site at Batoche. It's the site of a battle between the Metis and the Canadian government, basicly over how the land should be subdivided - the settlers did strips, like in France, but McDonald, who wanted to survey for the railroad, wanted them to do blocks. The Metis dug in their heels. A battle ensued. Many died. The whole park was very pro-Metis. The woman running the admission building was Metis - and very obviously biased. But it was pretty interesting, and the kids enjoyed it.

Ask any of them their favourite part, and they'll say the golf cart! Because the park was so huge, they had golf carts you could sign out. Because we had so many little kids, and it was such a hot day, we snagged one. It was the only way to see the park - there's no way we could have seen the far reaches without it. (And it was super-fun!)

Joan, hanging out in the military tent with her flowers.

The kids explore a Metis rifle pit at Batoche.

Batoche was pretty neat, but they were closing up the park, so it was time to go. When Mike returned the golf cart keys, he got a nice surprise - when we arrived, there was an elderly couple visiting from Edmonton, whose battery had died. So while I was slathering everyone with sunscreen, he gave them a boost. As a thank-you for being a good samaritan, they gave him a Metis cookbook. It's a pretty cool book - it's almost all wild game recipes, so I'm not sure we'll ever do any recipe as its written, but he was really tickled to get it.

We had decided early on that we were definitely camping that night, so we set off. But on our path, we saw something I didn't even know existed - a ferry on the praries! 

This is the road leading to the ferry, which crosses the Saskatchewan River. It's just a platform, which runs on two cables, so it diesn't get swept away. The operator saw us coming, so he pulled the ferry over - it's that little platform you can see on the other side.

This is looking back over the river, while we're on the ferry.

After this, we headed way up north, and wound up camping by the side of the road just outside Flin Flon.

Day 5

We used Oyen as a recharge base. We did some laundry at the hotel - enough to have everyone back in clean clothes. While we did that, the kids gorged on the continental breakfast. We brought plate after plate of muffins, waffles and eggs up to them. After such a light dinner, they were starving. I think all told, we ate a dozen hard-boiled eggs alone. Then we headed into town to finish our laundry, and get John a haircut. This picture is of the kids playing "choo-choo" -Dave's favourite game. Although it looks like they're having fun, they were largely bored, and were at each other for hours, and they each spent most of the time in time-outs just to keep them apart.

 I took John for his haircut. This is his "before" - at least the closest he'd let me get to a before - or an after for that matter. As I said, it was a rough morning, with a bunch of bored, grumpy kids. He got his haircut in a girl's basement - the salon downtown was all booked up, so we looked online, made a few calls, and found a girl named Darcey, who had turned her basement into a studio. She was nice until I mentioned we were going home to Ontario. I had forgotten I was still in Alberta. To thaw her icy glare, I spent the next few minutes explaining how we're NOT southern Ontario, and we're actually closer to Calgary than Toronto. She warmed up a bit after that, but she never treated us the same again.

Oyen is pretty close to the border - another province down!

Straddling the border is a town called Alsask. It's an old army base, with a radar tower, shown here. It's a relic of the cold war - it formed an early warning system to search for Russian missiles headed for the US. The town that grew up around it nearly died when the bas was closed down. It went from 800 people to its current 150 or so. A lot of the buldings rotten away and were torn down. But instead of just letting it be, the town errected signs to commemmorate where each building once stood, and what business or family home was there. It was really eerie. There were ghosts of old city parks and playgrounds, and it once had a busy little downtown. Now there's just a few houses, and signs to mark the rest, with an abandoned base with barracks and offices nearby. 

Just inside Saskatchewan, we saw a point of interest, and decided to turn in. We found...a rock. According to the plaque, it's a buffalo rubbing stone - the buffalo would rub on this rock, to shed winter fur or just scratch an itch. They used it so heavily, a trench has been worn around it, and the rock has been polished to a smooth sheen. John was inspired to try it out, too.

After that, we were off to check out The Great Wall of Saskatchewan, just outside Smiley - a must-see for anyone following this route. It's a rock wall, built from stones pulled by a farmer from his field over the course of 30 years. Now, it's a half-mile long, ranging from 6-12 feet wide and tall. He's built a road along it, so people can see the whole thing. At the end, he built a little sod house that you can go inside, and he's filled it with antique stuff. He has a quest book you can sign, that's just a 3-hole school exercise book. People from all over the counrty had signed it.  It took us a while to find it. There wasn't much signage, but there was one sign directing us to the Johnson's farm, cafe and stone wall. So we headed up and found the Johnson's farm. We went on, but saw no wall. We wound up prowling all over their farm, looking for this thing. In the end, we went back to town and asked a local. She said it was on the left, "you can't miss it," she said. "And if you don't see it, well, there must be something wrong with you all." We went back, and there it was, plain as day - we hadn't gone far enough. It is a real site to see - it's really worth the trip off the beaten track to see it. This guy built this entire thing entirely by hand.

This is inside the soddie he built at the end of his road. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Exploring the antique kitchen stuff he'd moved in. He had an old ringer washer, too.

He put in an old water pump too. It was non-functioning, but the kids had fun trying to get water out. You can see the soddie in the back - he'd faced it with his stones.

A view of the Great Wall of Sasatchewan. No photo can do this thing justice. It really needs to be seen.

Dave decided to add a few rocks, by picking up pebbles from the road, and sticking them in the holes

Dave, perched on top

All of the kids by one part of the wall.

Sadly, we didn't make it far past Smiley. It was a small town called Rosetown. When Mike suggested earlier in the day that we stop there, I laughed at him. In the end, he quessed it right. There weren't many good camping spots, unless we wanted to squat in a flat field, so we actually ended up getting another hotel. Not as luxurious as the first, but it let us all get another good night's sleep, to hit the road early the next day.

Day 4

The morning of day 4 was rough. We'd been camping for a while, and were getting weary of all the work involved. So as I made breakfast, Mike wandered off with his cell phone. I fantasized that he was phoning to book us a hotel that night - and in reality, he was! He'd booked us into a hotel in Oyen, AB, which is right near the border of Sask. We needed to recharge, and have a good night's sleep, and make good time, and it was just the carrot we needed to cover Alberta in one day.

Our frst stop was Bar U Ranch, just south of Calgary. We lived there for more than two years,a nd never knew it was even there! It's a national historical site, of what was a HUGE ranch. It's bread and butter was cattle, but they became famous for breeding these ginormous french horses. The owner was never able to find a good horse, capable of the heavy work of an Alberta ranch, so when he found this breed, he decided to breed them for his neighbours. I forget the name, but they're called the gentle giants, because they're HUGE, but have really nice temperaments.

We totally lucked out on ths one - when we arrived, we were told the wagon was in use by a camp group. But as we were looking at one of the old horse barns, it pulled around the corner, and the group's leader invited us aboard, and we got their tour. The camp leader took this photo.

Part of the special tour was being able to see one of the horses bred there up close. It's hard to tell how big it is from this photo, because we're up really high. This horse wasn't born at the ranch - they bought it from a woman with five kids. On weekends, she would load all her kids on this horse, and set it loose on the farm. Now and then, a kid would fall off, and all they had to do was lead it to the nearest fence. This horse would just wait patiently while the kid climbed on the fence, and scrambled back on, whether it was on its rump, or over its nose and down its back.

Joan on one of the displays

Dave and Joan, checking out some horses in the coral. Dave loved this ranch! He's definitely our biggest animal lover, and ran around yelling "horsey! horsey! horsey!"

After the ranch, we burned through to Calgary. We entered the city through the south, so we took the kids to see thier old schools, and then to see our old house. it was kind of bittersweet - especially seeing Joan's school, which was our biggest reason for staying in Calgary.

We headed north to Vic's neighbourhood, and had a good visit. William is an alert, happy, not-so-little guy. We did tghe obligatory baby swap:

Vicki with Tom

Mike with William

After a short visit, we headed to Drumheller, to see the Tyrell Museum. I wanted to show John that museum the whole time we lived in Calgary, but we'd never gotten around to it.

People often ask us how we manage so many kids. We do stuff like this, which is unloading at Tyrell - we pick a spot, and make each kid sit still there until we're finished unpacking everyone. They're learning to listen - they don't run around as much as they used to.

Mike and John.

The kids are looking at a carp pond - the museum has a cool garden display, to show what the vegetation would have looked like.

Billy and Vicki - with little William

I probably should have taken this shot at Vicki's place. between too-dim museum lighting and too many distractions, it didn't work out terribly well. But it's the Walchuk kids, with all their Walchuk kids!

It was a cool museum, and John loved it, as we knew he would. I'm glad we were able to take them. They had a lab, that you could see behind glass, and the coolest water display - it was a plexiglass floor, so it felt like you were walking on water. It freaked the kids out. Joan actually fell, because she couldn't tell where the floor was. Dave was just completely freaked out, and got through it by shuffling his feet the whole way.

There were a lot of Japanese tourists. One group of very bubbly girls asked to get a picture of Tom. I'd be a little weirded out, but I'd been through that before - some Japanese tourist went home with pictures of a young John by the reflecting pool in Washington. Not sure what they do with babies in Japan. I know our Korean convenience store ownder in Hamilton said it was considered dangerous to take babies outside until they're about 6 months old - maybe they do the same.

After the museum, we parted ways with Vicki and Billy. We tried to continue up the road to Oyen, but were low on gas, and being evening in rural Alberta, we weren't sure what we'd find, if anything. We pulled over and asked a local farmer, who told us we'd have to turn back to Drumheller, so that's what we did. But it was a smaller town than we expected. The Shell was already closed, so we couldn't use our AirMiles gas certificates. They didn't even have a TD, where we could deposit a paycheque. So we scraped up enough pocket change to put some gas in at a PetroCanada, and raided the cooler for supper. As I recall, it was yogurt and peanut butter on celery, with oranges for dessert.

And that's about where the bugs began. It's been so wet on the praries, the whole place has exploded with mosquitoes. There were so many, it sounded like it was raining, even though there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Our windshield degraded into a big greasy streak, despite constant washing. It was so bad, we had to stop at a gas station along the way just to scrape them down. I got out to look, and the front of our white van was literally black. Ewww.

Despite all the setbacks, we got to Oyen, at about 11:30 p.m. It was just a Super 8, but after camping so many days, it felt like the most luxurious hotel in the world. We had a hot shower in our sparkling white tub, climbed into our clean, crisp white sheets, and Mike said "that was one of the best experiences of my life." I couldn't had agreed more.

Day 3

The van, in our campsite at dawn

the brook our site overlooked

We slept well, listening to our babbling stream. I woke up first, and got breakfast going. We actually brought our grain mill, to make buckwheat pancakes on the road. The kids love them, and once you get used to them, white pancakes have no taste, and just don’t cut it. Because it was daytime, we let the kids out of the van to explore, but not without plenty of “GET AWAY FROM THE EDGE!” from us.

The kids, nom noming on pancakes and bacon. Mmmmmm....

After breakfast, we headed for the showers. It was a bit room with a shower stall, so we all went in together, so we could clean the kids too. It was a coin shower and we only had five loonies, so we had to do a bit of juggling. Whoever was in the shower had to give the next in line warning, so one could jump in as the first was finished, so we wouldn’t waste valuable shower time. We did the kids all together. Joan doesn’t like showers, John doesn’t like having his hair lathered and Dave just hates water period, so with all three of them together, the screams were deafening. But we all got through, and back to the camp for pack-up. The first thing the kids did? Play in the dirt, of course.