So I was supposed to be updating my site and Facebook page with the latest card options, but I was excited to be asked to make a dinosaur image for my old personal trainer’s son. She told me he loved velociraptors, tyrannosaurus rex and pterodactyls. I have a fairly extensive supply of dinosaur stock, and decided to go with the smaller velociraptors so that I could keep the little boy a larger size. I love that he was wearing a red jacket in his photo, really helped highlight him in the photo. 

Speaking of personal trainers – I am so happy to be back in the gym full time! I don’t usually talk about my weight, because weight is a number and doesn’t define a person, but after having my son I felt like I was living in the wrong body. So I worked hard on my diet over the last few months, and lost the 40lbs I gained and lost 7 inches off my stomach area. Now that my body fat is reduced I feel athletic enough to really enjoy the gym again. I am focusing on building my lost muscles, but I’m not striving to go back and do a fitness competition anytime soon (yes, I did compete in a body building competition as one of my past adventures).

Today I was finally able to get out to the family ‘island’ on Davie Lake – and my Uncle visiting from Vancouver Island was able to come too. My husband’s family owns some land out on the lake, so we are building our cabin on one of the sections. I haven’t been out to the spot in almost 3 years because I was either super pregnant, just given birth, or had just returned to work from maternity leave, so it was great to see all the hard work that has gone into clearing the land and building the structure. Keep in mind there is no road access to the Island, so everything from cement, to plywood, to roofing all has to be floated across on a barge. We did have a bit of a hiccup right at the start of the launch though….

The first launch of the year never seems to go smoothly, this year we all hopped in the boat and tried to turn the motor over only to hear a winding down rawr rawr rawwwrrrr . . . the battery somehow died overnight and now there are four of us in a boat floating away from shore. Thankfully we are prepared boaters and did have oars to paddle back to shore. After some checking of the connections it was determined that yes the battery was dead, and yes the jumper cables were too short to run from the truck to the battery in the boat.

My husband is an electrician though, so uninstalled the battery from his truck and jimmy-rigged up the sketchiest jumper connection ever. (we are in a metal boat, in the water and the battery is literally next to the gasoline tank). The jumper cables were not able to get a good connection to the terminals and he states that “this could go bad” while fiddling with something – and I know his workaround wasn’t the way a layperson should do things. At this point I had my back turned living in blissful ignorance of the potential boom, zap or arc. I tentatively turned the key and the motor purred to life. . . . and nothing exploded! Hurrah, our children still have parents.

The site needed a good tidy after the rush close up last year, thankfully we had a sort of burn barrel handy so all the cut off pieces and loads of leaves could get turned to ash. The tarps . . . so many tarps! . . . got folded up and I scoured the cabin floor and surrounding area for all the fallen nails, screws and other sharp metallic objects. Now that the site is all cleaned up, it is ready for more messes throughout the rest of the summer. To maximize building time this year my husband is going to spend at least 2 nights out there at a time, otherwise you loose so much time driving back and forth to town, as well as wasting time loading and unloading the boat. There is still much to do, but it is making leaps and bounds!

After letting the fire burn itself out it was time to come home, we would have stayed out longer but our tiny humans needed us. At this point Neil had too much sun making the couple of beers hit harder, so I drove the boat back! I had faith in my skills, but Neil has always been the captain, so this was my first practice run. I pretty much couldn’t see a thing because I am much shorter than all the guys, so could barely see around my father-in-law. However, I made it across, I did not ram the boat into shore, and I did not flood the boat with our back wake! Go me! Of course once we landed the guys needed to take the battery out and reinstall it into the truck, which was cute to watch. It is always a classic photo op when men gather around a vehicle engine.