10 summer highlights

In no particular order:

1. The pig roast... Arta keeps hoping this will NOT be an annual event... the salads were amazing, even though Steve kept chanting the line from Simpson's "You can't make friends with salad! You can't make friends with salad!")
2. The baptism down by the lake. Who ever thought Arta, Mary and Richard would be on the same program giving church talks?!
3. Hot bread coming out of the oven: whole wheat, white, german rye, sesame/bran, orange, russian black bread, country seed, whole wheat raisin bran, etc.... the day before leaving, Fania admitted that she hates arta's bread.... or rather... hates how the bread undid two months of hard work at the health club.
4. The annual meteor shower party.... maybe there weren't quite 80 meteors per hour, but the sky was astonishing, as was Wyona's serenade of musical theatre.
5. Campfire at the beach.... and sorrow when the campfire ban was put in place.
6. The evening stakeout (complete with waterballoons) to catch the racoon who had been terrorizing the compost bin. Arta was NOT going to be defeated!
7. changing the course of the little canadian stream (architectural work)... Rebecca did not enjoy stepping on a nail there, but was happy her tetanus shots were up to date!
8. Watching the small people learn to take off their life jackets and swim on their own
9. Alex (and nathan) going off to extreme fitness/torture camp: torture to have to get up early in the morning, and the further humiliation for Alex of having Fania send him to camp with his sandwich wrapped in what he called "toilet paper" [translation: a napkin]
10. Having Doral and Kelvin hang out at the lake for longer than a week.... and then play games with the kids.
11. hanging out with family and friends... LOTS and LOTS of family and friends.
12. Playing "werewolf", settlers, and D&D, bridge, kick the can & sardines, boardgames, 'the word game' ("I am thinking of a word that rhymes with....")
13. The mirror ball dance parties (at Wyona's and Arta's)
14. Ice cream (in its D-Dutchman, soy dream and goat milk varieties)
15. Birthday parties: Andrew's, Naomi's, Leo's, Nathanial's, Miranda's)
16. Storms (the lightning for Miranda's birthday, and the storm that smashed 5 of rebecca's pots)
17. Sitting on the porch, enjoying the blessed katabatic winds in the evening
18. Flashlights moving from house to house and people found their way back to where they would sleep for the night
19. 24 hour open kitchen
20. The snorefest: thank you to Kelvin, Doral, Steve, Rebecca, Ceilidh, Dalton, Thomas, Arta, Duncan, Alex, Meighan, Kiwi, Leo, Mary, Naomi, Rhianon, Xavier... we don't know about Fania, whose door was closed
21. Hanging out in the emergency ward with Dalton waiting to get a cast on his broken arm (which no one believed was 'really' broken.... When Dalton phoned Arta to tell her, Arta asked Dalton if Rebecca and Dalton could swing past the grocery store on the way home to pick up some crow for Steve)
22. Taking a loaf of bread to the beach, and letting the kids rip off pieces and drench it (and themselves) in honey
23. The year of almost no hornets, blackflies, wasps, bees, or other stinging beasts of torture.


OK. That might be more than 10, but maybe some of you can add more of your own? It is time for me to go turn up the kiln.....

rebecca and arta