Thanksgiving (aka any excuse to party!)

Last weekend was Thanksgiving, which meant a long weekend. I was lucky enough to get up to my parents place and it was awesome!!! I haven't been able to get up there since we were up for our wedding in February, and it was so nice to get on the farm again. So on Friday I packed up the woofs, the guns, my riding helmet, my boots, and drove the 9 hours up to the Husch Home in northern Alberta.

My dad turned the big 50 this fall, so we used the long weekend to have a party for him - and all the other birthdays that exist in our household in the fall (my mum is the end of August, Dad and brother in end of September, and other brother beginning of October - I'm the random baby in January, loner). It was the kind of weekend where you just get to soak up doing the things you love with the people that have grown you (kinda like a tree, I'll stop before I get lost in the simile). I was mostly busy with all the fun activities like riding, skeet shooting, bocce balling, and of course eating, but I did manage to take a few pictures along the way.

 The not so glamorous part of skeet shooting - picking up the plastic packings after.

I made my best effort to frame the shooters so they looked awesome.

Awesome.

Thomas took a couple pictures of me shooting. 

They turned out like this...

Not quite as awesome. I know I'm not super great at skeet shooting, 

but now I can't even pretend that I look vicious doing it. 

Maybe you should stick to shooting guns Thomas, not pictures. 

The house I grew up in. And made so many memories. 

Erin came over to visit, I have the most wonderful friends :)

 Now. One of the biggest things when we have a family party is how to cook the meat. We take some kind of pride is this primeval ritual, and this is usually half the celebration. For my brother and sister-in-law's joint stag-stagette party we roasted an entire pig on a spit and it was a whole day affair for the dads. They sat and nursed the pig and a few beers ("a little for me, a little for you") the entire day and I'm not sure what it is about men and cooking meat but they were just so very happy and content to be roasting that pig.

But alas, it's October now and the weather isn't quite so perfect any more to be outside nursing a pig all day, and for something a little "new" (although they've done this before), they decided to do a pit roast.

Our supper is in there. Somewhere.

So, I'm not sure exactly how it works. But they dig a big hole, line it with big rocks, light a fire in there, and throw in a bunch of big pieces of meat. Big. This year we had a huge chunk of beef. Huge chunk of pork. And a huge turkey (c'mon, it's Thanksgiving!). The fire needs to be started soon enough before putting the meat in so that it dies down to perfect cooking coals, and all I know is that usually the night before we eat the men set their alarms for some crazy time of night (3am anyone?) and are out with the pit/fire/meat situation. By the time I get to see it it looks like a messed up part of the lawn. Smack dab in the middle of the lawn of course (whole quarter section of land and the best place to dig a roasting pit is of course in the middle of the lawn).

Papa working for his birthday roast. 

The fruits of our (ok, the guys) labour!

There's a funny story behind this sign, which did its job so well to protect the meat from falling dirt. When we were fifteen Erin and I went camping. And we found this sign in the ditch along the highway. It had obviously been down for a while, it had shotgun holes in it, and we thought we were sooooo cool when we brought it home. Taking the crime watch sign. Crazy kids right. My mum made me feel awful about it and like we were some kind of terrible criminals taking the sign. A few weeks later we found an abandoned road blockade that we brought home and my mother made us feel so guilty about it that we took it back and placed it back in the ditch (what?! mothers don't like their children bringing ditch garbage home??). Such delinquents we were. But somehow the sign made it through the guilt trip of ditch-garbage-stealing and has served all kinds of purposes, at some point it got cut in half, and this latest purpose was to help us cook a bunch of meat. 

Kitty up in a tree. 

What a suck.

Sofi had such a great weekend. She played. And played. And played and played and played. And near the end of the day on Saturday she was pooped. She was so tired she let us do anything (see the above picture - "why won't you just let me sleep??"). It was pretty funny. Everyone immediately fell in love with her - of course.

This is WallE, Allison and Markus' pig. He is the most hilarious animal you've ever met. He's a teacup potbelly pig, only we're not sure what happened to the teacup because he now weighs about 50 lbs. (We say it's all love!) He's really quite the pig and has such a personality. He will let you know right away what he thinks of you, and since they've had him I've gotten to know just why there are sayings such as "eating like a pig". (tip: the way to his heart is food. ANY kind of food! I won him over with horse treats.)

Winston is Thomas and Jocelyn's little dog. He is so full of energy, so busy, and so smart. He too is hilarious. Between all the dogs (there are 5 just from our family and then we had friends bring over more!) and the pig and all the people the house was absolutely bustling. 

Winston chasing the bocce ball game. He chases any thing.

He's very ferocious. 

P.S. bocce ball is AWESOME.

Happy piggy!

Doing tricks for treats.

Winston, Belle, and part of Bailey 
(dogs everywhere! Nova the elusive picture-avoider managed to make it through almost the entire weekend with no pictures).

With my amazing brothers (there's no such thing as too many plaid jackets).

My lovely lovely sisters.

(Psst, see Nova in the corner? Elusive.)

Now, most of the weekend was spent with the big party on Saturday. Sunday night we spent playing Risk (which one should never play with the Husch girls, we got bored halfway through the whole world domination thing and ditched the boys for ice cream - and created quite the upset) and eating left overs.

All the same, I love Thanksgiving. I love what it represents and I think that we should be grateful every day of the wonderful things in life that we're blessed with. I'll try not to get too mushy, but this past year has been quite the amazing one for me.

Last Thanksgiving Keith asked me to marry him, and since then so much has happened that has made me sit there in awe at all my blessings.

Be thankful friends.

Every day.

September Long Weekend

Labor Day is a biiiiiigggg deal in Regina. The Labor Day Classic is possibly one of the biggest games of the entire Rough Rider season. They usually make a whole weekend of it, with Fan Day on Saturday and the game on Sunday with all kinds of festivities. This year they even had The Sheepdogs playing for half time, pretty awesome.

One of the highlights of my weekend was one of my very dearest friends from home came to visit. Erin and I were pretty much inseparable during high school. She would come to my fiddle contests. I would go to her dog agility trials. We did drama club together. We spent week nights at each others houses. In the mornings before school I'd bring her to piano lessons and sleep on her parents couch until we had to go to class. When I left to live in Austria for six months she was at the airport with my parents to send me off.

So, I was so so so happy when she decided to fly down to spend the weekend with us. (Pictures are courtesy of my iPhone... I'm a sucker for self portraits!)

I successfully transformed Erin into a football fan, and she even admitted that she needs to now add TSN to her satellite package.  We had way too much fun at the game. We wore the silly face sticker things. Erin cheered like a champ. We ate bratwurst and churro sticks.

On Monday we drove out to the property with Nova. The basement backfill is done and looks fantastic. We wandered the property, admired the not-yet-finished fence. We got a tentative moving date for the house and things are going to be a whirlwind in the next few weeks as we prepare. And then I'm sure it'll be even crazier once the house is here with all the things we need to get done before we can actually move in. And then... we move in!!

Afterwards we went for a tour of the lake, and ate some of the best burgers in Saskatchewan at the Lumsden Snack Shack. This is a great little place just off the highway and is always crazy busy! 

A quick peek of the basement... :)

 I am so so so so glad Erin came to visit. She's one of those friends in which it feels like true kindred spirits (yes, I was an Anne of Green Gables nerd as a child). I brought her to the airport on Monday evening and afterward went home, curled up in Keith's arms and cried.   

Reunited and it feels so good