Cool, cool Fort Qu'Appelle!

There are lots of great reasons to live in Fort Qu'Appelle and we are still discovering all of them.  One is that there are lots of great artists here.  This weekend, Sue Bland had an exhibit of her work.  I remember in Abilene taking the kids to a museum with children's book artwork.  Sue has also written a book that she illustrated and it was fun looking at those illustrations as well as some of her other work.  And she has endeared herself in my heart as one of the best artists ever by the fact that she encouraged and facilitated for us to join in the creating too.  She had a "playroom" all set up with fancy bought and found papers and supplies for us to make collages and birds.  Dominique really got into it, she made the flying kite scene.  I made the garden above it when I discovered that our seedlings had frozen and died outside. 

Ivan and Emora made birds.  They are best seen as the sunshine plays with them, but we have made numerous discoveries about the birds.  First, they move!  Oh yes, as we move in the room, so do they!  They fly in the sky....

...settle in the trees, soar over the hills.  They also appear in the morning as shadows on the closed curtains.  That was one morning of delighted yelps one morning.  Then when we thought we'd seen them in every possible way, another morning brought yells of "come look mom".  Ivan noticed that in the day, the birds are also in shadow moving across the opposite wall with the light from the window!

Then as if that wasn't fun enough, the kids sat in an old desk at the art center, with ink well and when we discovered and opened a drawer under the seat, Sue gave the kids prizes of jewelry and wooden frame.

After our jaunt at the art center, we went to check out the lake melt.  These walls are up in anticipation of flooding.  Two years ago the entire beach, park, volleyball courts, boat dock, parking lot, fields, camping areas and road were all under water- it's taken 2 years to recover.

I think it's still a bit too cold even with my wet suit.

Skipping stones is fun no matter what age.

Loving the warmth!  Dominique and I had our first soccer game.  We played a super strong team.  The first half was not so bad, but we fell way behind in the second half.  However, the kids never stopped playing!  They kept digging right to the end and said they had fun, so I'm super proud of them.  It was fun time with Dominique too.  The drive was 1hour 20 min. each way and a 1 hour game, so we were gone all morning.