National Scrapbooking Day

Yesterday was National Scrapbooking Day!  What did you do for the day? Get any Scrapbooking done?  I did manage to get one scrapbook page done!  It's not nearly as easy to create anymore with a 1 year old in the house!  My daughter really likes to "help" mommy! And by help, I mean tear apart!  I'm sure anyone with children know what this is like.

Here is what I was able to complete:

I haven't titled the page yet, as I can't think of a great title that speaks to the page and to me.

I just absolutely love this picture of Maia!  This is just a snap shot with my iPhone! 

I love to showcase photos on a scrapbook page.  Sometimes I use more than one photo, and sometimes one photo is all that is needed.

Something that I have struggled with in the past was getting the "perfect" picture for a page.  Yes, perfect pictures are important at times, but not all the time!  This is a prime example of how a not perfect photo makes for a great layout!

I am trying my had at Project Life as well.  Not all of my scrapbooking is Project Life style, but I am liking how it is fast and easy.  If I don't have a lot of time to scrapbook, but have a lot of photos of an event, I like to use pocket pages.  If I have time, and special photos, I still like traditional scrapbooking.

I hope you had a great day creating yesterday, and hope to see some of your creations!

Have a great evening!

Luv Tracy

It's Been A While..............

Wow, time sure flies when we are having fun!  I can't believe how long it has been since my last post.  Way too long, but it sure flew by!

So, you ask, what have we been up to?  Well, our biggest and most exciting news is.................. We are new parents!  We welcomed our beautiful baby girl, Maia on May 14, 2013.

She was born at 10:27 a.m. at the Sturgeon Hospital in St. Albert.  We had an amazing team of doctors and nurses for her care.  She has a difficult delivery, and needed to spend a few days in the NICU. 

She had excellent care at the Grey Nuns NICU.  The entire team of nurses, doctors, lactation consultants, physiotherapists were amazing!  I am so thankful that we have such a stellar hospital.  Thankfully, she only had to be there for 3 days.  Then we brought her home!  And our lives have forever changed.  But changed for the better.

There are so many amazing parts to being new parents!  Learning not only about our new little bundle of joy, but also about each other as parents.  Learning patience.... Eric has been so wonderful to me and very patient with a hormone raged mama!  Oh, boy the hormones right after giving birth!  That is something that the Doctors and Nurses just don't tell you about!

Being new parents, we had to find our own parenting style.  After a lot of research and a lot of advice we have found our style.  We are following the Attachment Parenting style which was created by Dr. William Sears.  We breast fed her exclusively until 6 months, and continue to do so now even at almost 1 year old.  We also co-sleep with her.  Now, co-sleeping doesn't work for everyone, but it works for us.  Co-sleeping is a topic of great conversation.  Not only do we get the weird looks and nay-sayers, we also very unsolicited advice!  But we take it all with a grain of salt, and just let it roll off.

Now that we have introduced you to our new addition to our family, I will keep you updated with photos of her! 

Have a great day.

Luv Tracy

Catching Up!

I have some catching up to do, since I have not blogged in quite some time!

Here is what happened in October:

October 14 & 15 - Crop Weekend in Jasper

It was beautiful in Jasper!  Sunny and no snow!

Friends Viola and Kathy and I.

October 19, 2011

Baby shower for my Cousin Lisa and her Baby Evie

Me, Lisa, Evie and Great Grandma! (Lisa and my Grandma)

Lisa opening up Baby Uggs!


November 5, 2011

My 35th Birthday spent with Eric in Cadomin



Mountain Sheep



I love this pic!  Lots of snow!



The river (not sure the name) at the campsite.  Beautiful!



Eric and I!

That is all I have for now!  I will keep you updated on our December!

Have a great day!

Luv Tracy

Canning 2011

Today, I was collecting up all of my canning to put away for storage. 
I just had to take a picture of my accomplishment!

Alright, so it doesn't look like too much, but believe me, it was a lot of hard work!

Here is what I made this year:

Relish
Mincemeat
Tomato Sauce
Yellow Plum Jam
Nectarine Jam
Plum Jam
Apricot Jam
Nectarine Apple Spice Jam
Nectarine Jam
Applesauce

For a grand total of 119 jars!!!!

This will definitely taste good in the winter!

Have a wonderful day!

Luv Tracy

Flood

This week we experienced Mother Nature.  She brought us a lot of rain and with that rain, she also brought flooded river banks.

We have a nice picnic area on our farm down by the river.  We spend a lot of time down there and we often take our trailer down there and camp overnight

Here is a before the flood pic:

June 2009

This is what the picnic site looks like now after the flood:

There is a ton of river silt on the ground.  Up to about 4 inches thick in some parts.

This picnic table and wood have been repositioned by the water.  They are not supposed to be in the bush!

Our grain field.  We had just underseeded this field this year.  Hopefully the underseeding survives.

This is a fence in between two fields.  There isn't supposed to be a lake here.



Flat hay filled with river silt and sticks.

Flat hay.

Molly checking out the grain field.



Another shot of our grain field.



The power of water is amazing.  There is no stopping water when it wants to move.

The good thing is that our home is safe.  Our trailer is safe as well, as we didn't move it down to the river for camping.

Have a wonderful day.

Luv Tracy

Bottle Baby

We have a bottle baby named Harry.  Harry was born on June 5, 2011.  His momma didn`t love him :(
We were watching for her to calve, because last year, she was a heifer, and she didn`t like her calf then.  We decided to give her one more chance and keep her over for this year.  Well that was a mistake! 
On the 5th, Eric and I were over at the neighbours helping him handle cattle.   So before I went, I checked the cows.  I knew that this cow would calve sometime today, so I went over to the neighbours for a few hours.  At 11:00 I came back home to check on her.  She was still farting around doing nothing, so I went back to the neighbours.
I came back home to check on her at 2:30.  She had the water bag out.  I went back in the house to have a bite to eat, and would check her in 30 minutes.  At 3:00 I was heading back out to check on her progress.  That is when I heard a deep bellowing coming from just behind the barn.  It sounded deep like a bull.  But we don`t have a bull right now, so I knew it wasn`t that.  So I ran out there and momma had just calved.
The other cows were up with her too, and bugging her.  I chased them away.  I called Eric to see where he was and that I needed help.  He was almost home.  He was only 2 miles away.  I could hear our truck racing from the time I called him!
The cow was doing ok with the calf at this point.  Kinda licking it.  Not really hurting it at all.  Eric arrived and I said to him, ``maybe she will take him this year``.  He said, ``just wait until the calf starts moving``.
As soon as the calf started trying to stand is when the cow came ``unglued``.  All she would do is bunt it and knock it down.  So Eric and I decided to bring the cow into the head gate.  Sometimes with cows, if you get the calf sucking when they are in a head gate, they will calm down enough and take the calf.
Well, this cow is very much a pet.  She would let Eric milk her and not bat an eyelash.  But as soon as the calf came in to try and suck, she just blew up and started kicking and writhing in the head gate.
Another trick we tried was putting a paper bag over her head.  That works with sheep.  But didn`t work with her.  We tried everything with this cow.  She just had no instinct to be a mother.
We brought her into the headgate twice a day to milk her out, so we had something for the calf.
She was good with walking in, she was great with us.  As soon as she seen her calf, it was like Jekyll and Hyde!
So, now we have a bottle baby named Harry!
Harry is a good calf.  He really likes his milk!  We have taught him how to be a pail bunter (drink from a pail instead of a bottle).
He is getting bigger everyday!  He is quite rough at times.  He wants to play, but he is just at the right height to take your knees out!

Harry drinking from his pail.  There is a nipple on the pail and he sucks the milk.  The pail holds alot more liquid than a bottle does.

Harry following Eric.  He is like a puppy.  Notice his tongue sticking out!

Eric teaching Harry how to eat hay. 

It has been a while...........

It has been awhile since I last blogged!  I can`t believe how fast time goes by!  What has been happening since I last blogged?  I will post pics with a description telling you our story!

Molly and Eric playing on the bales in March!



Eric got the ski-doo stuck! 



Trying to pull the ski-doo out with the Rhino!  We finally got it out, but it took quite a while!



Eric "pimping" up the Jeep!  He put on a new bumper and winch.  April 10, 2011 

Our road was flooded with the run-off!

You can see how much water was on the road!  It washed our road out, the county had to come and fix this!

This was a whirlpool on our farm.  You can see the shiny culvert under the water!  There was so much run-off that the culvert couldn't handle it all!

You can see right down the middle of the whirlpool!  This was really neat!  Eric and I played in the water for qhite a while!

Molly!



May 20, 2011



We have been very busy with life in the last few months!  
I had the opportunity to take a photography class in April, and I am experimenting with taking pictures differently.  I love the last picture of Molly.  Something different for me!
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday Monday and will chat soon!

Luv Tracy