Happy Birthday Lee Lee!!

The bestest sister a sister could have. An hour away is pretty darn good but across the street would be great! But could Mark and Chris take it? Probably.

2nd Annual Gopher Contest

Well, it's that time of year again and I had been waiting for this very day since the last gopher contest last Spring. The gopher contest is hosted by the Game and Wildlife Federation. Last year it was just Lee Lee and I but this year Dixie joined us. The rule is that if you have 3 on a team then only 2 of you can shoot at any one time and the 3rd person is the runner. Running to get the tails. At the end of the contest it's the amount of tails you collect that determines the winner!

This is where you register. It's $20.00 per team.

Here I am getting ready. The bucket contains the scissors (for cutting the tails), a hook (for grabbing those gophers that after being shot go back into thier holes), extra ammo and snacks.

And away I go!

The pouch is for holding extra ammo and my second clip. Not a hair clip. A clip that holds 10 rounds of bullets. See the gopher tail in that baggie? I know. Sweet!

Here are Dixie and Lee Lee. Lots of gophers around but once you get out in the field they seem to disappear!

We decide to try a different field.

Off to yet another field. We actually had some good luck along this road.

As we were going to another piece of land we saw a friend jogging along the gravel road who graciously took our picture. She thought we were hillarious in our matching t-shirts! We are a team and teams need to look like a team right?

We were a little disappointed in the amount of tails we got but it really doesn't matter because gosh, it's alot of fun! And....there is always next year!

This is the prize table back at the place where we registered. See the bags of tails? The winning bag had 147 I think. We "The Gopher Girls" had only gotten 22 tails but they upped our number to 29. That was nice. Last year we came in 8th out of 12 teams. But this year there were only 7 teams and........we came in dead last.

But as you can see. We are still happy.

As we were leaving a guy came up to us and offered us a consolation prize. A free lunch at Subway! Sure! Turns out he was the owner of Subway. Thank you Lane.

Until next year.....and many thanks to Dixie for supplying the land!!

In Memory Of Our Suburban

1997-2011

Our Suburban is gone. We bought this suburban in the Spring of 1997 when we lived in Regina. It replaced our old blue government issued (it beeped when you backed up but we disabled that lovely distraction the day we brought it home!) one that we had bought the year Seth was born (1994) just days before giving birth (November 2). In fact the first time we drove that old suburban was to our friends Halloween party. I was Little Red Riding Hood and Chris was Forrest Gump. Anyway....back to the story of our suburban (above). The one that left us today.

This subruban served us well. Very well in fact. It took us to California to visit my sister and her family more than once, Montana to visit my parents when they lived in Lincoln, ski trips to Montana, Utah to visit my parents when they later moved to St. George, Las Vegas for my parents 50th wedding anniversary, our move to Alberta, to New Brunswick to visit Chris' family, many trips to the lake, school field trips, church, errands, gopher hunting, Friday night date nights, friends cottage, camping trips and many other places over the last 14 years that we owned it.

I loved driving it. I felt safe. It had 4 wheel drive so I knew I would never ever get stuck anywhere. And I didn't. It was no fun scraping the snow off the windows though in winter. See the flower decals on the back window? They have been scraped off by winter. Lee Lee bought those decals in Hawaii for me a long time ago. I hope the man who bought our suburban will enjoy our truck as much as we did.

Bye "my favorite truck ever"!

P.S.
See the picture below? It really isn't that red in real life. The sun must have been bright that day. Anyway, see the steering wheel cover? It's brown and doesn't match at all. But I love it. I love it because Caleb gave it to me. He gave it to me one year for Christmas when he was little. He bought it at the dollar store for a buck. I will miss that too. I know...silly.