The Daily Hailey

We made it back, guys. And I am SO glad we didn’t bail out because it was SUCH a beautiful day! 💜 We clicked on the playlist I’ve been building specifically for these summer drives, and just soaked up the drive. Once we passed through PA, we saw Smokey for the first time this season, and he seemed grossly unconcerned, so we knew we were golden for a campfire!!

When we got into Christopher Lake, we were relieved to see their grocery store was open! So we grabbed a couple of water jugs. Our van was full enough that I snuggled mine the rest of the way. Dekker is also a dork, if that was unclear.

It wasn’t much further to camp, though 💜 What a breath of fresh air being back!!!

I’m stealing this picture from a friend who sent it to me. I didn’t take it personally. But this is about how it looked when we arrived. WAY less snow than the last picture I posted. Just that one weird ridge on the patio. This is SO much more manageable than it was on Friday. We made the right choice to wait a few days, even though our Dahlsjos weren’t up this time 💜

Basically the first order of business was a fire 🔥 After ALL the snow, this sucker lit first try, and burned beautifully.

Boy there are SO few pictures I can actually post on here. Ugh. But I’ll show you what I can.

We brought basic fixings for sandwiches for lunch. Buns, meat and cheese, mayo and mustard, the end. I forgot lettuce, haha! But no one complained. We just kept it super simple and easy. Brady and I had our first drinks by the fire.

I took a walk with Laela down to the water at one point. It was still quiet frozen over, but the sky was CLEAR, which is more than I can say about the last few summers. It was quite beautiful. We threw rocks and found out that ice is actually very slushy! Hopefully it will all be gone soon 🤞

Our hunt for fallen birchbark resulted in some beautiful rounds. The model isn’t half bad either 😍

Wavy certainly looked the part of camp worker today 🙌

Priority one was getting our lift in place, and thanks to the help of a few unexpected friends, we got it all lined up and ready to go! This lift is OURS. No rental or payment. Just, ours. Its a beater, but its also for camping, so its pretty perfect if you ask me!

Things we got done:

lift placed
hot water heater installed
golf cart batteries installed
fridge cleaned and turned on
basics unpacked
baby swing hung from the deck roof
beds made
braces taken off the deck
fresh water brought in
mouse poison vacuumed up
deck and patio swept and shovelled
kayak brought down to the water

Things we didn’t get done:

got cart running 😬
camp chef cleaned off
wood bin refilled
water lines (because water isn’t turned on yet)
propane tanks filled

Its not done. But its pretty close. Inside the camper as well, everything is in its area, but not in its spot. There is time, though. Last year, I felt like our site was just a big fat mess all season, and to a degree that is just going to be the case because there are so many of us. Its hard to make baby wagons and three high chairs on the deck look tidy. But I don’t want it to feel chaotic either. We’ll get there.

Dekker noted that Brady’s swing-back armrests look like exhaust pipes. At the end of this day, Brady was double exhausted 🤣🥱

It was honestly such a beautiful day. I’m so happy we went. And the kids really crushed it. There were so few conflicts, and morale was way up. It was such a pleasure to witness.

I am VERY excited to go back again this weekend. C’mon, Kinasao, get that water running!!

Brady got trapped on his lift the other day. Don’t worry. He has since been muscled into the house and is in fact not still trapped out there. But its a decent story. 

After an afternoon appointment yesterday, Brady came home with iced coffees. Its tricky to transport them into the house for him, so I met him in the driveway and took them in. However, it seemed like it was taking a while for him to get inside. I checked my phone and realized why. 

The lift was stuck! He was a good few inches down from where he needed to be. 

A couple of years ago, he could’ve just wheelied over it, but things have changed. Since Brady has no abdominal muscles anymore, wheelies are mostly off the table. He can’t self correct anymore. He rather has anti tippers on his chair again like he did when he was a newb, and they keep him from tipping too far back if he does find himself in a position where he needs to wheelie. But in this case, they didn’t allow him to go far enough back. Even if they did, he doesn’t have that abdominal strength anymore. Plus there wasn’t a lot of space to maneuver his chair around. I’m repeating myself. It just wasn’t going to work. 

Dekker came up from downstairs where he said he flipped the breaker. However, our breakers are horrrrribly mislabelled 😂 and he had no hope. So he had found one that said garage lights and just flipped it off. Which was wrong. But he tried. I went down there with him, put that one back on, and for the life of me could not locate one that was tripped. Nothing made sense. Brady reminded me we have a small secondary panel, and sure enough, there it was. A tripped breaker. On came the garage lights!! 💡

Buuuuut the lift didn’t work. He was very much trapped, and there wasn’t much extra room to get on there with him well to do much investigating. 

We took the anti tippers off and spent a couple minutes trying to brace him so he could wheelie and hook his front castors on the landing without falling backwards, but the space was so tight and he was definitely uncertain, which makes sense. Laela came to help, and rather than gripping his backrest, we came from the front and grabbed the frame and lifted him up. He wheeled lightly forward until his castors were in place and he felt somewhat secure. Then I got behind his chair so there was NO fear of tipping back. And then for the most control and leverage, he grabbed the doorframe nearby and the railing post on the other side, and heaved himself up onto the landing. Boom! DONE! He was IN! 

As soon as he was on the landing, I got onto the lift. We had been spitballing all along who we could call, how soon we thought someone could come, and how grateful we were for a ramp out front that could be more easily utilized now that the snow was gone. Brady was suspicious there was a fuse box of some kind on the outside wall of the lift, so once there was room, I got over there to check. There was a little box indeed. When I opened it up, it was a button. Just one button. I pushed it, and it stayed in. Could it be?! An emergency reset button??? 

IT WAS!!! 🥳 What a relief!!! 😅

So the lift is back in action, and all is right with the world! Thank goodness! 

Just in time to head back to the lake and learn the tricks for that lift! Did I tell you we scored a lift for the lake?? Our dear Dahlsjos found one that someone was giving away for FREE and picked it up for us!! Ack! I am SO grateful! What more could we possibly be given, Lord?! 

I was going to blog about camping food, and as I sat down to write the post, I realized I made a post about the same subject very recently 🤣 But alas, here we are again. Can you tell I really wish we were camping?

I made this thing again.

This time around, it was potatoes, carrots, corn, mushrooms, and I added some bacon in at the end that I had cooked earlier. Threw a little bit of The Blend seasoning in and called it a day. It was delicious, and very reminiscent of potato packs that we make at the lake. This wasn’t cooked on a grate overtop of a fire, or in a BBQ, but in a big fat pan isn’t half bad, either.

We indeed are going to head up to Kinasao tomorrow. I know thats ballsy, and it won’t be as fun as it would’ve been if weather had cooperated. But I think we need a set up day before we come to stay, so one way or another, we need to make it happen! And that will have to be tomorrow! 💪

Priorities:

Move the lift to its spot by the camper door
Install hot water heater
Get golf cart batteries in place
Unpack aaaaall the things we brought into the camper
Bonus points for wiping out the mess we left in the fridge last summer and getting the beds made!

We might be able to get on the road a little bit earlier than usual this coming Friday, so if we don’t get everything done, we should have a couple of extra hours, but we just need a bit more time than that.

Pray we all sleep tonight! 🥱

Last night, as we got the babies diapered for the night, Spoons looked out the window and said something along the lines of “goin’ camping.”

Me: Yes! We’ll go camping in a couple of days.
Spoons: *concern* Walk to camp. Now.
Me: Sorry, not yet. But soon!
Spoons: Campin’ soon, ya. Kay.

I’m with you, Spoons. However, I am with you not at camp, and thats for a reason.

Ya. Nope. Yup. I don’t even know what to say about that. Anyway.

Today we got some house work done. We got things tidied. Dishes caught up. Some of the kids took the babies downstairs for the bulk of the morning so I could work on some big spread out work upstairs. I’ll show you more about that another day. I did a BIG overhaul on my yarn cabinets. Like. YUGE. SO much will be donated to the Fibrary here in town so I’ll let you know when thats gone down!

I very literally put in hours on it today, and while things are not done, I have sorted out what to donate and what to keep, and things are roughly where they will go in the cabinets, but they’re not tidy and they have long tails that need tucking. But now I know what I have. ALL my yarn is in one spot. I can see it all. No more buying something I already have by accident, or having totally different colours stuffed behind other things that make no sense. It ALL makes sense now.

However, the highlight of the day for me was Laela pulling out my first volume of my blog books 💜 Its been a long time since I did them, but it was such a fun project, and I have kind of anticipated the kids wanting to crack into them. She read a few posts aloud before putting it back on the shelf and getting some lunch going. It was fun, though, to hear her read my writings and to hear the kids respond. I don’t know. It was oddly nerve wracking, but also I loved it.

I need the rest of the kids to have baths/showers, but other than that, I think the “have to’s” are done for today.

Instead of camping, we did work in the house. Yarn stuff. Laundry. The entrance closet. A bit of garage tidying. Ordered groceries. It feels good to be productive. But even more so, I am really looking forward to being productive at camp.

Me and you, Spoons. Though, realistically, you won’t help 🤣

They’re different…

The plan we had was excusing the kids from school today and heading to Kinasao this morning 💜 Setting everything up through the day with a fire crackling in our site. Getting things clean and freshened up as we shivered together with our friends in our favorite place.

Unfortunately, that is no longer our plan :/ The camp sent out an email earlier this week saying they can’t safely turn the water on yet. Which makes complete sense, but also totally sucks.

So, the plan we have is going tomorrow 💜 Just for the day. We’re going to bring as much as we can possibly fit into the van in terms of tools, bedding, cleaning supplies, and everything that we could save for next weekend. Why not now, right?? Just work we won’t have to do next week. How amazing would that be to go back to our camper for our first full weekend and have it all ready? Also, inevitably, there will be things we forget or have to change, and the more we do now, the less we’ll have to remember and organize next week. Just because some things could be left, if we can, why wouldn’t we?

The kids will come home after school and we’re going to finish up what we can, all the way down to loading the van. And if it can go smoothly and everyone contributes and does their best, hopefully we can have a fun wind down evening as a family.

Thats the goal. Work hard tonight, and get our butts to camp tomorrow for a rip roaring first day!

Dekker here 👋

Yesterday I came home from youth and told my mom a story about it. She thought it was really funny and wanted me to blog about it. So here goes.

So yesterday, we did “Ew, Gross” for our game. One of the challenges was drinking a Happy Meal. Basically, Carc took everything from a happy meal and put it into a blender. A coke, burger, fries, and a yogurt tube. Not the toy. And then just blended it up into a drink!

There were four team, and each team picked a player. I was chosen because I had already done this challenge in the other youth group, and was the only person on my team who was semi-willing to do it.

Carc had pre-mixed three of these drinks, so they were already ready when the game came up. So they just mixed the last one and handed them out. The refrigerated ones were like jelly, and when you flipped the cup upside down, it wouldn’t come out, DQ blizzard styles. Sick, hey? Naturally, I ended up with one of those ones.

So I took the cup and turned it to drink out of it, but nothing came out. So I took a knife to it, cut it up, and tried to drink it again. It still didn’t become liquid. So I asked someone else there for a glass of water, and poured some into it to water it down. I ended up with the top layer being softened, and drank that layer. And then I would cut up the next layer, water it down, and drink it. Five ish layers. By the end of it, the water had soaked down to the bottom, so the last layer was so soupy, I didn’t even have to cut it up.

This was a competition. The four teams were racing to see who could drink it the fastest. A few people threw up. I did not throw it up, and I won!! I got a pack of skittles, and the whole team got brownies.

I felt really good about this. I’m a monster, Mr. Grinch.

Ok, so its Hailey here now, and I have to say, this kid was SO stoked to tell me this story 🤣 Never ever would I have thought Dekker would be my kid drinking happy meals at youth. EVER. Its such a fun side of him to see come out. He is pretty level and stoic sometimes, but he is also rambunctious, just in a different, less stereotypical way.

Also.

🤮

Gross, man. Gross.

Wavy stayed home sick today. It was a very low key day by design already, so she sat on her big stuffed llama and read for most of the morning. Around 2:30, she was visibly tearing up, and saying she was tired. But she did NOT want to go to sleep. So I casually suggested she read in her bed. Not sleep, but read. So naturally, she fell asleep. Perfect.

Laela came home a little early and went to her last piano lesson of the season 💜 She came home with a prize – a mini Jenga! She came in, put her books down, and said she wanted to play with Wave.

I love when she wants to play with Wave!! It is not always the case, as it goes with aging and siblings.

She trucked downstairs and found her sister sleeping. She was understanding, came back upstairs, and asked to go play outside with the neighbour kids. Out she went.

When Wavy surfaced, she sat on the couch and watched everyone playing outside. She didn’t ask to join, but she was definitely sad. And then Laela caught a glimpse of her and came running in! She was SO excited to play with Wavy!

It was a slow motion version, for sure, but Laela was so happy to have her sister to play with, and Wavy was so happy to be asked 💜

Laela: Bro, its sooooo leaning!

This felt like a nice sister thing. I loved it. I know sisters tend to go through stages, and sometimes they really dislike each other and sometimes they can be best friends. I really hope they can be best friends someday 💜

Another day to be grateful for 💜

Coffee and the morning with Cher. We haven’t had that in a while. It was super nice.

I added things to our packing/set up list for camping this weekend, and I ordered groceries.

I had a social worker meeting that was both heavy and informative. Goodness this job is hard.

I fried eggs for lunch.

I crocheted a bit on the blanket I’m making for the camp auction, and I got the final design how I want it! I think… 😬

Kids came home from school, except the one that went to a friends house.

I took Rowan back to the eye doctor to get a prescription for drops for his newly acquired infection 😩

We drove back to town, filled the prescription, and went home in time to get supper going.

Kids biked outside.

Kids delivered papers.

Aaaaand all thats left is going for a walk with someone I’ve never met before to talk fostering.

Oh and then I’ll eat! Heyooo! Good thing I remembered to eat lunch today! 😅

After a pretty rough night, I felt pretty crusty today. Tired. Low. All of those less desirable feelings. And do you know what sucks about feeling that way? Your family still has to eat! 🙄 I know. Ridiculous. And on a day where I just would’ve preferred to be a slacker.

Ok so I still was a slacker. Totally. But a slacker who still made sure everyone ate supper. Hear me out, though, it ended up being good!

Someone brought over some groceries for us the other day. Just as a gift. Just because of love. Which is crazy, by the way. Included in the groceries was a bag of these HUGE kaiser buns, all soft and fresh and bonkers delicious. We ate some on Saturday, and I grabbed the rest for supper today. Also from these same people, I cracked out a few packs of sandwich meat as well. I went to slice cheese but had some that I had shredded for a meal recently that was leftover. That worked. Plus basic sandwich stuff. Mayo, mustard, etc. So. Sandwiches.

We had tacos a couple of days ago and there were lots of veggies left. So, some lettuce for sandwiches and the rest in a big bowl with everything else. Boom. Salad.

Aaaaand a cantaloupe that I was hiding in the fridge because it was ready before I was. The whole fridge smelled amazing. It was time. Today was the day.

So my crappy slacker meal turned into a delicious meal of yummy summertime camping food. It wasn’t the perfect day for it, I suppose, considering that meal really should be eaten in the sun and today was overcast. But I am not nitpicking. It worked out. Everyone got lots of delicious good food, and I barely had to do any work.

Win. All around. I can’t wait to eat so many more meals like this around a campfire. 🔥

My mom isn’t home this Mothers Day. I always love spending the day with her, but this year, someone else gets to. I guess thats ok 🤣 I tease. Its not. I tease again. Anyway.

I love being a mom. I knew from very young that I wanted to be a stay at home mom like mine. And my prayers were answered with a hefty yes. For that, and for her example, I am so grateful.

My mom and I do not mom 100% the same. Not so terribly differently, either, but a little bit. And she never makes me feel like I’m doing it wrong, or she knows better, or like I’m in adequate. While I greatly value her opinion and her experiences, and sometimes I WISH she would offer me some more input, she really makes it known that she trusts me. Which feels pretty precious to me.

I miss you, mom! I hope you are feeling so well loved and celebrated today, because you are loved, and worthy of celebration! 🥳

Meanwhile, I praise the Lord for giving me the opportunity to raise children. Whether they’ve been with us forever or for a time, I have so loved each and every child that has come into our family over the years. Being a mom is truly a dream come through, even on the hardest of days, and it is not lost on me what a privilege it is to have children to call my own. I know how many people ache for children, or how many ache to care for their who cannot. There are so many complicated dynamics to being a mother, its hard to write about it.

But. I am incredibly grateful for my mom. And I am incredibly grateful for the kids who made me a mom.

Happy Mothers Day 💜