Hello from Sunday night

Otherwise known as the Midsummer Family Love-fest!

Chloe and I got out of town to the Okanagan, 460 km out of Vancouver, to visit my daughter Kerstin and her family.

And especially to meet this new little member: Zoe Iris Gray, (Ziggy…naturally), who is four weeks old. She is the baby sister to Ever, (Binky) 4 yrs old, and Isla, (Bunny) 2.

The Okanagan is a beautiful, semi-arid part of BC, with an abundance of lakes, orchards and vineyards and since the weekend promised to be a hot one, we bundled up a picnic and the babies, and headed for the nearest lake.

Everyone was very tired Saturday afternoon. The beach will do that. (Although Charlie and Mouse stayed at home, so I’ve no idea what their excuse is…lol)

This morning Kerstie took us to the Sunday flea market. I just love flea markets, don’t you?

Binky and Bunny stopped to inspect all the toys, but were just as happy to run around and blow dandelion clocks.

I just have to show you the treasures I found. I’m especially in love with the sock monkey, which seems to be a very old, well loved one, but at some point in his sock monkey life, someone gave him some tragic glue-on googly eyes. I’ll soon fix that with some vintage buttons. Those tiny pictures are made with 1920’s postage stamps, and the camp stove toaster is headed to England with me so Robbie and I can take it camping.

After the flea market and some lunch, we said goodbye to all our girls and headed back to town.

We stopped at a local orchard store for some yummies for our trip.

We bought some handmade squeaky cheese curds, super salty and yummy…our favourite with some fresh basil and these couple huge tomatoes, which actually smell like fresh tomatoes, cherries, honey sticks, some organic bee pollen to keep us healthy, and, we were very bad, we bought that homemade peanut brittle and ate the whole thing on the drive home. (But we couldn’t help ourselves…it was sooo moreish!)

Back at the car I picked up some tree dropped peaches. I wish there was a way to preserve their beautiful fresh green fuzzyness.

And so we took our goodies and drove out of the Okanagan and began to climb the mountain passes for home.

We stopped for some wild sage to make sage bundles and in the alpines for forget-me-nots and lupins, which are now at home, reminding us of our lovely weekend.

Thank you to everyone who left me a comment on my last post. I’m so grateful to you for visiting and for giving me the chance to meet you all. I’ll draw two names via random generator tomorrow morning 10am (Pacific time), and post the results here and on yesterday’s post. Good luck to everyone.

Big hugs XX

EDIT: Winner of the chickadee/bluetit painting is number 3 Patricia
and Winner of the towhee painting is number 37 Marion