Showing posts with label picnic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label picnic. Show all posts

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Afternoon at Keys Point

We took an impromptu trip up the lake. It was a gorgeous day and the sun was shining brilliantly on the lake so we decided to go up and visit Cam & Nicole's cabin. We babysit baby Hazel for Cam & Nicole and they're building a cabin up at Keys Point, a 15 mile ride up the lake.
Before we could go, we had to do a little maintenance on one of our snowmachines :) and unhook the tobaggon load of wood Paul and the kids had hauled in.
We all piled onto three snow machines and Quentin drove Cam & Nicole's ATV. They needed to get it up to their cabin before the lake thaws so they'll have it there for the summer.

Quentin on the Honda and Joshua driving for he and Deborah on the snowmachine.

Abigail & Anna on the snowmachine pulling David, Benjamin & Caleb.

My self portrait with Paul and Sarah is tucked in between us.

She stayed pretty snug, but her hat kept sliding off.
Igiugig means the place between waters. We live on Six Mile Lake and the Igiugig between it and Lake Clark stays open all year. We hugged the snow and ice that are still remaining to stay out of the water and off the sand.
This pressure crack stretches across the width of the lake. It was easy to find the best spot to cross. The trail we were on is used so much it's like a highway and we just followed the tracks others have made.

When we got to Keys Point, Paul pointed out some wolf tracks to me.
Cam & Nicole's cabin sits right on the lake. When they are able to get up and work on their cabin, they live in the shed in the middle while they work on the main cabin. The shed on the right is used for storage.
It was our first trip to their cabin so the first thing we did was nose around and check everything out.

The wood stove in the little shed.

The bucket for washing clothes in the storage shed.

Next the boys gathered wood for a fire. Here's David carrying a log almost as big as he is.

Caleb's doing his share.

They had the fire going on the beach and in no time we were all sitting or lying down and relaxing around it.
The beach in front of their cabin is all small pebbles. The little ones filled their pockets full. Below Sarah is showing Abigail her treasures.
The boys worked on their rock throwing skills. It quickly became a game where they threw to hit a large boulder so that the rock would skip as far as possible past it onto the ice of the lake.
They were concentrating so hard that they screwed up their faces as they threw. I caught them all looking goofy at once.
We tried to get a good family picture. I set the camera on a tiny tripod on the beach and let it run, then I snipped it to make a picture when we were all looking.

The sun started going behind the trees so the light wasn't great for the pictures on the lake.

Joshua jumping for joy.

I had a hard time getting everyone to hold still. (It could have had something to do with Paul throwing snowballs at them.)

He's still at it...

It finally broke out into a huge snowball fight!

Joshua

Joshua making another snowball before Deborah or Quentin hit him with one.

Benjamin eating snow.

Quentin

Loading up the sled and snowmachines to head home.

The ride home was beautiful.
Paul and I pulled the sled on the way home. The kids bundled up tight to keep the snow from blowing on them.
Just before we got back to Nondalton we stopped to look at two fishing holes. They have a net spread beneath the two holes. Apparently they have been catching a lot of delicious fish.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Mother's Day Picnic

We went with Lavonne & Josh, her Mom, her Auntie Dorthy and Alec and the Martin's up the lake for a picnic on Mother's Day. It was a gorgeous day although a bit cold and blustery. The water in the lake is lower than we've ever seen it and it makes the shore line a beautiful road.
The boys in the trailer behind our ATV got a little spattered with wet sand. They thought it was great.
We brought lots of food, roasted hotdogs and huddled around the fire.

Paul and Deborah with Claudine's new puppy.
Sarah

David
Sometimes Paul is like a little kid taking a bath, he doesn't want to get in and then he doesn't want to get out. He wasn't too excited about the picnic because it was cold and windy and the ATV had just started leaking gas the day before, so he had to fix it before we could go. But, after we got there, Paul started having fun. He had always heard about people tree-topping, where you bend a tree down to where you can hang on and then swing over to the other side of the tree. He'd heard that it works well with birch trees and he'd always wanted to try it. He didn't have any problem getting the kids excited about trying it with him.

Paul quickly found out that he weighed too much for the tree to lift him. So he became the guy that climbed the tree and bent it down so the kids could hang on and try to soar.
He started with the older kids, and thankfully for the Mom (that would be me), they didn't soar too well either.
Quentin
As the kids got smaller they bounced around a little (especially with the help of the older kids) and had a lot of fun.
Joshua

Caleb
David

Benjamin probably could have soared the best, but he didn't appreciate the opportunity and didn't want back on after one half turn.

I caught Benjamin off by himself practising a little later.

Even Sarah wanted to try...

After trying every tree that looked at all promising Paul and the older kids gave up and turned their attention to spear making. By this time, Alec had caught three beautiful lake trout and the rest of us were cleaning up and about ready to go. Paul, on the other hand, was just warming up. The boys had seen some spruce hens, so all the kids from Caleb on up took thier spears and went with Paul to see if they could hunt up some supper. They didn't spear any spruce hens, but they had a wonderful time spearing other things...

And then, we loaded up and headed home.


We would have driven home into the sunset, but already the sun doesn't set until close to eleven o'clock at night.