Its been a while.

anyrate, here is nicole next to a monster truck at retro fest.  we showed up a little late so we couldn't get into the capitol theatre to see a few cars.   

The batmobile was there though.  I was a little disapointed in it being the adam west one.  I was hoping for the tim burton version.

Here is a goat from caliantess

here is a parot from the same place.

I lit my hand on fire and caught it on film.

an alligator.

we went to the alora gorge this winter.

and took pictures there.

here is us on our poach having a time.

a buffalo.

a peacock. 

this girl peacock wanted none of him.

here is a famous mill in alora.

so it seems that the beavers were eating scotts corn and making a dam out of it.  it was pretty big and they took a lot of corn.  the corn was gnawed just as you would suspect a beaver to do.  the stump was sharpened to a point just like he'd do a tree. 

these pictures are out of order, but here is the old train sign for northwood, the town i live in now.  its a railway town.

he is us in elora.  we are engaged now, but not at this time. 

a tree by the steps.

lately

here's whats been going on lately

We raised Chris's house we could redo the basement.  Dad dug it out and did the raising.

here it is.

I was really impressed.  some people thought it looked like a farmer did it, but it was solid.  the block layers wondered where we lived during the raising they were surprised to hear that we lived in it still.  sometimes on windy nights i could feel my bed shake.

i also went cadet camping.  i caught maybe four fish. this is one.  i was also really impressed with how dirty my shirt got.
 the kid in the black shirt caught a fish with his bare hands.

so, if you put rubber bands around a watermelon, it will explode.  i was disapointed that i was not more covered with watermelon.

nicole has never flown a kite before.
chris is showing off with his 2 mile string.
so i found an angry birds kite.  nicole chose transformers over princess and barbie  so my girl is cool.

thats chris's kite at the bottom, considerably higher with his string extension.

third annual rafting trip leg A.  a good crowd.  we tried a different stretch of river that went over smith falls for some excitement.  water levels were low so we ended up pushing a lot.  
so on one occasion a fish jumped out of the water and landed on the raft.  noone had the sense to grab it since everyone wanted a picture.  on another occasion a fish jumped on simone.two rafting veterens

 here we prepare for smith falls.

 i made some short shorts for the trip. so brad had a swarm of bees land on a tree near his house so he tried to get them to move the queen into a bee box.

se the stick that goes from the comb to the box?  that was not added by brad. the bees did that.

so we had to abandon the raft after it got dark so we had to retrieve it on the second leg of the third annual rafting trip.  with our supplies.

 we had some trouble finding the raft after all the high waters.  it took two hours to find for it had floated considerably far down the river, even though we had tied it among a downed tree.  

       here we are back on track.

 and we finally see the dock to lead us home.

here is detroit. we went to a baseball game this summer.

it didn't take long for it to get rained out.

it was actually a interesting storm to watch roll in. more interesting than baseball

here is the storm at the height of its redness. we had seats under the overhang so we could watch the whole storm without getting wet.

this picture is out of order.

i also went camping. a spider made a web across my morning coffee while i was drinking it.

it seems chris took my tent.

here is my tent.

i also went to a cottage.

we spent most of the time on the water.

i hold the record for kneeboard spins, even if justin proves himself apt as well.

So there was a second rafting trip this summer it was more hysterical and more disasterous than the first.
we started in shetland this time planning on ending in florence. we brought more supplies this time, but no cards. we forgot.
we got situated right away. brian was the only one to get molested by black flies. he was also the only one who wore spray to avoid them.



we didn't know that the river would divide. there was a huge beaver dam blocking the way.
we remembered our bionoculars
brad was on call so we used his ipad to track our route..
we saw two bald eagles.

braian loosing his chair and trinsje loosing her footing when we tried to make a bathroom break. brian decided to sit on the cooler since his chair sank, and he feel off, taking the beer with him. bottles do not float.

someones tree house.

also, i did some van work. i replaced the valve stems so the tires don't leak as quickly.

this is the carborator.

here it is reassembled.

i was missing a piece so scott made me a new one

we drove to the gas station to fill up.

and here is where it quit. but it is running decently now. no more backfiring and it idles on its own.