Another year has passed and I find myself feeling the desire to blog. Maybe it is a time of year thing that causes me to be introspective and then want to publish my thoughts; maybe it is because I need to connect more with sisters since I'm all alone now; maybe it is that a lot of interesting things have happened to me lately...(not
that interesting); maybe it is because brent went to bed and i'm not done talking; or maybe it is a bit of a everything. Anyways, for whatever reason i'm here.
I'm sad summer is over and my kids have gone back to school. I miss them. We had such a good summer with lots of family bonding. That's what summer is to me--time to spend with my family. Sarah is gone. I am the lonely Clarke. Today when we got to church e said "go see adriel?" and then after church she asked "go see auntie sarah?" Eliza was at church today and she asked if I missed Sarah and I got a little lump in my throat! First no sister movie night last night and then an obvious absence at church. (Yeah and Sarah, I don't think brent resented that he couldn't spend time with me--just the inconvenience of me leaving or of him having to go upstairs to watch tv. i was so bored last night!)
Brent took the week off before back to school to go camping. Inspired by our success last year with forestry camps i investigated the forestry camps on the island and found one that sounded really nice up in the alberni area. it is kind of scary to go camping at a unknown campsite so i asked brent to go check it out when he was in alberni for work. (sometimes it boggles my mind when i think about how much more than me he travels around on the island) he doesn't go up to alberni that often, but as luck would have it, just a couple days before we were going to leave he was up there. He mentioned to a coworker that was up there with him that we were going camping and his friend said "why don't you just go camping in my cabin?" He has a cabin on Shawnigan lake and he let us use it--the only catch was his son was using it for the labour day weekend and so we would have to cut our trip short.
So we took him up on his offer. The lake was beautiful and warm and his cabin was right on the lake. You might think that since we were in a cabin we weren't really camping, but it was mostly like camping. The cabin had no electricity and no running water. It did, however, have a flush toilet; we just had to bring water up from the lake. The only downside was that his cabin was totally in the shade the whole day. I'm sure in 30 degree weather one would appreciate the shade, but the temperature dropped down to below 20 for most of the time we were there. Brent and the girls spent a lot of time out on a canoe fishing. Nat caught a small trout that she couldn't keep and other than that they had very little luck. Then on the last day a boat came over and was fishing right off of our bank so Brent tried it from shore that night and caught a little bass on his first cast. I was a little unprepared for them to actually catch a fish and made him let it go. Nat was really upset with me for this--even brent was a little bummed. oops.
The first morning there I was walking past the cabin and saw a flash of something black by the wall. I stopped and looked and all of a sudden a black head popped out from under some planks of wood a lot closer to me. I screamed and it disappeared (of course) I had no idea what it was. The head seemed too big to me to be a rat and the face too round. Of course after that happened I couldn't help but look over tentatively every time I was near and I caught sight of it again and saw that it had a white under belly. Brent was ready to pack up right then. I had to convince him that I didn't think it was a rat--but I saw it so fast, how could I be sure? It reminded me of our Japan days when we'd spot a cockroach and how we couldn't stand to go in the kitchen for awhile and would usually end up going out to eat. Luckily there were no more sightings. Since we've come home and I've had a chance to research, I think it was a mink. There was even crayfish remains on the dock collaborate my belief.
The evenings were spent reading Harry Potter by candle light. We finished the fourth book while we were there and one night we watched the movie on a laptop. Since there was a fire ban we tried roasting marshmallows over the candles. We also invested in our own skip-bo and the girls really caught on. Other then constantly fighting over who got to sit on the canoe seat when they went out without me, the girls got along really well. On the last night the girls and I sang campfire songs. Mic had mentioned how much she liked that at the reunion so I decided to do it with our meagre group. Of course Brent the non-singer wouldn't participate. Nat said while we were singing that that was the best night of all.
I've just realized how late it is. I have to get to bed. I won't make any promises but I do want to tell you about the more Clarke-like portion of our trip, so I will try to get back on and finish.