The Blessed Life of an Unemployed "Stay at Home" Mom...

This is turning out to be one of the best, fun-filled summers ever! As most of you know, here in West Kelowna we've had a little bit of a forest fire problem last week. Although many were evacuated from their homes, and many more (including us) were on evacuation "alert", the firefighters did an AMAZING job and luckily the damage was kept to a real minimum.

A week ago Saturday we headed down to Summerland with our good friends Joel & Wyona. We spent a wonderful time at the beach with them, and we got back into West Kelowna about 10 minutes prior to the highway closing because of the fires. Early Sunday morning (3:30am) we got the knock on the door to tell us that we were to be on evacuation alert, which meant to pack up anything we would want to take with us, and prepare to leave the home on a moment's notice. Since I was planning on heading into Chilliwack Sunday evening, I just bumped up our departure time to that morning and the kids & I headed out of the smoke-filled air down to Chilliwack.

We had a great time in Chilliwack, it had been almost a year since I visited there last. We ate wonderful Chilliwack corn, went for a nice evening walk down at Harrison Lake, checked out the new splash park, went to Dinotown (definately Devun's highlight) and ended every day with Devun begging his Grandpa to take him on a quad ride. On our way home on Saturday morning we stopped in Merrit to see Nolan & Kendra at a ranch rodeo. Unfortunately the rodeo was a little disorganized and wasn't going to be starting until later in the afternoon, so we headed to yet another splash park to cool down and let the kids run around.

Here are a couple pictures from our trip & from our adventures here in the Okanagan.

Cabin Vacation

The kids and I took a nice LONG break at the cabin... two weeks to be exact! It was WONDERFUL! We were spoiled with warm weather, refreshing swims in the lake and great company and visitors throughout. Devun impressed both Nate & I with his abilities and confidence swimming in the lake (with a life jacket of course). Katie, although a bit more hesitant, went swimming in the lake with mommy a number of times and kept wanting to go back in. Over the course of our vacation, we also helped shovel gravel & mix concrete for the foundation of a new "sleeping cabin" to house our growing family.

Nate was able to make it up for Canada Day and the first weekend. He made a quick trip to Calgary this past weekend to attend a friend's wedding. This past weekend we celebrated my dad's aunt & uncle's 60th anniversary with the extended (yet small) Schultz family. As always, here are some pictures:

Mission Hill Winery

Before we left for the cabin for a couple weeks, we had friends from Calgary come to visit. We took Chris and Kelsey on a winery tour at Mission Hill Family Estates (which we had never done before). After the winery and the beach we went to Peachland for dinner at the Gasthouse (which has been recommended to us many times, and did not disappoint). Here are some pictures from the winery:

Grandpa & Grandma's Visit

Father's day weekend was a wonderful weekend spent with Nate's parents who came out to Kelowna for a nice (but too short) visit. We went mini-golfing, boating, car racing and spent some amazing family time just hanging out together. Here are a couple pictures from that weekend.

Linden

On the 16th of June, my brother and sister-in-law welcomed another little boy into the world. Linden Brian Schultz became my fourth handsome little nephew. Here are a couple pictures:

One day old at the Kelowna General Hospital:


Katie & Devun meeting their newest cousin: