Fall Harvest

Despite our unusually cold and wet summer our garden grew, as did our grapes. Unfortunately the Italian plum and crab apple trees did not produce this year.
We managed to can some cucumbers to make dill pickles (Dave is counting down the days until he can open up a jar) and I managed to make some tomato sauce to freeze. We still have carrots sweetening in the garden soil and last night Dave and I made some grape jelly with plans to make juice with the remaining grapes (if we can muster up the energy sometime this week).

Dave was impressed with the amount of work required to make 8 little jars of jelly.

summer catch up post #3 - our big news

This summer was significant for us because I became pregnant! We found out in July and shared the news with family the first week of September and with friends shortly after. The summer months were a bit rough for me as I was terribly fatigued and queasy and Dave was on the the train (lucky him, as he missed most of the first trimester).

It was interesting attempting to hide a pregnancy at all of the weddings we attended. My lack of drinking at Gody and Naomi's wedding was noted and got the tongues wagging!

summer catch up post #2 - weddings weddings and more weddings

It was the summer of many weddings. well it started in the spring with our friends Michelle and Andreas' wedding in April (our city wedding in a nice old building that we got to explore). It was a very sweet and personalized affair (the bride wore a billowing blue dress!).
this was followed by our friends Jacquie and Herve's wedding in July. They live in France but they had the full on Manitoba wedding experience. David was a groomsmen and I was the marriage commissioner. It was held out of town and the weekend was beautiful, lots of sun and good times. David also dj'd in between the band's sets. It was great because we got to meet Herve's family as well as some fabulous girl friends who stayed at our house in the days leading up to the weekend extravaganza.
The next wedding was a very important one for the Streit family- Gody and Naomi's wedding which really deserves a separate post. David was the best man and I was the marriage commissioner. Shirley was in heaven planning and implementing the growth of the wedding from "just a simple ceremony at the lake" to a larger production that required a small army of volunteers. Who knew that the airport hall could be transformed into such a lovely venue! David was dj at the wedding and had a great time interspersing songs with call outs to the crowd. It was a beautiful night enjoyed by all. Miss Emma and Jessie were fast friends and danced many songs together.
The last wedding of the summer was Meaghan and Steven's. Miss megs and the teven planned a very personalized and lovely wedding that reflected their love and life together. The wedding transitioned into a fabulous outdoor party with dancing under the stars with music supplied by the now much experienced David at the DJ helm.

Copper (summer catch up post #1)

At the end of June David and I became the proud owners of a very handsome 7 year old golden retriever named Copper. We will be his third family. My sister's partner owned him just previously but he could no longer could take care of a large dog and wanted him to go to a good home, so we offered. Dave has long wanted a dog and the fact that copper was a golder retriever was just too much.

Copper quickly became part of our family. He was slowly introduced to the "girls" (our cats Miss Mineu and her daughter Miss Hibou) by being crated for the first week or so. It didn't take long for everyone to get along and Copper is very good with cats. Mineu tends to keeps her distance but Hibou is quite curious and likes to get very close and sniff Copper's nose, which he enjoys.

Dave requested that I share two videos on this post. One is Copper at Clearwater Lake (for Gody and Naomi's wedding in August, which will be a subject for a future post). Copper LOVES the water and when we were at the lake he spent most of the time in the water

The second video is Dave's recent homecoming after being away for a few days. Perhaps it's because Copper is a boy but he has a much stronger preference for males. He likes me but absolutely adores Dave. I try not to take it personally.

long overdue post

It's been a long time since we added a post to our blog, the last one was dated June 6th and now we're already at the end of September! So i guess you could say we took a break over the summer. Lots happened over those summer months so we'll try to catch up over the next few posts. i chatted with dave this morning when I drove him to the VIA station and got some direction on what to share in the first summer catch up post.

best brother ever

Brother Gody gave me the greatest gift of all for my birthday (which seems to be dragging along nicely). This gift was the last installment: "the weed hound" which pulls 'em out by the roots! Lined up on the sidewalk are my greatest hits.

Dan (of Dan and Renee) has some brewery hops growing in our front yard. This morning Gody popped by for breakfast with emma and brought along a trellace for the hops! Dan was quite pleased, as was I. (Gody knows where the best beer is brewed).

I'll post a progress shot of the hops growth in a week; they grow so fast.

-dave

summer???

We're impatient for summer weather but have proceeded to plant the garden and work on the yard despite the cold weather. Our lilacs and our neighbour's cherry tree normally bloom in May and are finished by June. We're still waiting for our lilacs to finish blooming but our neighbour's tree looks beautiful!

Emma was growing impatient waiting for a ride in a uncles dave's wagon. Last thursday we had gody and fam over for dinner and miss ems got her wish.

Last weekend my mom and I went to Sage Garden herbs. We had a lovely time looking, smelling, and touching all of the different herbs and plants. We carefully selected our plants and on the way home stopped by St. Leon's to check out their stock (it is becoming a tradition of mine to buy my porch planter there).