Action Adventure Boys

While W may have touted "No Child left behind" we prefer
"No child left INSIDE"

Jonas putting his new camp bike through it's paces.

Sam checking out my new kayak.
He followed us for about 2 miles one evening as we paddled the canoe and enjoyed the sunset and baby loons.

It's SCIENCE!

As I've written before, the kids spend a lot of time up here catching wild things, and I tried my hand at photographing the wild things.

One of the cousins had "the talk" with her mom while here at the lake. I can't imagine my boys ignorant of the facts of life after watching all kinds of critters mate and reproduce.

Of particular interest in this area right now is a beautiful loon pair that lives just one bay over from ours. They have two tiny black babies that often ride on mom or dad's back. We've heard that loon babies will fight to the death if resources are scarce in order to insure that at least one of them gets proper nutrition. With these doting parents, however, that hasn't happened... yet. There are also lots of predators below the water (snapping turtles, muskie) that would love to have a baby loon snack. We have been watching the pair, anxiously checking to make sure there are always two little bits of fluff on the water. So far so good!






In addition to the lessons in biology (and sometimes microbiology, but we won't talk about that), we get quite a bit of other "ologies" up here too, especially in the area of meteorology. We were surprised by a pretty big hailstorm the other day.




This afternoon Sam went diving in the lake for what looked life golf balls. When he pulled them up off the bottom they turned out to be smaller than a golf ball, the softest hue of pink and felt "like soggy ping-pong balls" as Murray put it. They definitely had a plastic kind of texture. But our guess was that they were eggs. Turtle eggs, to be precise. But turtles typically bury their eggs in the sand or even up in the lawn. We were puzzled, so we cut one open.



Turtle egg omelette, anyone?

What happens when you put the kids out in the wild and read a lot of books to them? They turn into little Bacchuses. We just finished reading Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis and Edmund described the little boy Bacchus as a chap who looked as if he might do anything. Big brother made Jonas this Bacchus crown while he was feeling guilty for getting Jonas into trouble. It doesn't look like he has any difficulty finding his own trouble!



Sam's been reading almost a book a day. The latest was A Wrinkle in Time, preceded by several Chronicles of Narnia books, cowboy action adventure stories, etc. He just started The Golden Compass and I'm hoping that it keeps him occupied for a while.



So, what happens to a kid after a long day in the sun with so much adventure to be had? They sleep like this:



Sweet dreams everyone!

Happy Canada Day!

Canada Day is July 1 and it is basically Canada's birthday.  You can read up on it here.  Canadians celebrate just like we celebrate Independence Day––grilling outdoors, beer, fireworks, live music and bug spray.  

I made a Canada Day White Balsamic Vinegar pie (recipe here) and it was mighty tasty if I do say so myself.

We shared pie and beers with Erin and Murray on their dock, looking out over the lake toward downtown Kenora.  It was a lovely way to celebrate!