And June is Half Gone!

WHERE ARE WE? Rivers Provincial Park, Rivers Manitoba

It has been almost 2 weeks since my last post and that is because we are starting to get busier around here.  There always seems to be lots of little things for me to look after which take up a lot of my day.  Susan was in Ontario with her family for the first week, but I had lots to keep me entertained while she was gone.  One thing I am doing is replacing the handles on lots of our golf clubs.

Lots are all taped up and some are coming apart

A little shine up on the handles in my shop

And a new handle

We have lots of wildfires about 8 hours north of us and we were proud that 4 of our local firefighters volunteered to spend 6 days up there fighting fires.  Good job guys.

And I made the local Brandon Sun newspaper.  They did an article on the invasion of Zebra Mussels in our water system and because I am involved in Friends of Rivers Lake they used my mug shot in the article.  

While Susan was away, I stayed well nourished by eating Cj's food and adding apple pie, ice cream, and caramel sauce drizzle to make sure my blood sugars stayed high enough.  Mmmmmm

I had to make a trip to Erickson to deal with some Manitoba Housing issues, so while I was there, I stopped by our friends Jim and Marilyn for a swing on their front porch swing, and a good chat.  Always nice to visit with them.

Marilyn and I on the swing

I always have fun being part of the goings on in the shack.  They like to make new food items and are trying to promote the sale of a lot of the stuff we had for sale when we had the little convenience store on the side.  There are some neat things and they are determined to sell them!!! LOL

Jill with her creation, a tortilla bowl

And beach bags made from old blue jeans

Lots of bug spray and sun screen

Serena serves up 3 delicious sundae's

Our dessert treat menu

But ice cream is still a favourite

And we did a cone size picture so everyone knows what our sizes are.  Our 1 scoop is not a 1 scoop by the way!!!  And the flavour on these cones is banana strawberry.  Are you drooling yet??

2 scoop, 1 scoop, and Kids cone

And yes, the supply truck showed up at the ungodly hour or 6:30 again this week.  Sheri was there to help me out again.

Susan came home on Friday and I had originally planned to go to Winnipeg to pick her up.  I would mean I would miss the Comets baseball game, but friends Wanda and Susan were going to Winnipeg to do some shopping and offered to stop by and pick her up.  Well that worked great cause now I made it to the ball game.  

I had a few other things that I accomplished in the last 2 weeks.  We moved the Starlink from the MH to the roof of the Shack.  We are hooking up our cash register to it and cancelling our internet plan with Bell.  This will save us about $100 a month.  

And we had to do a quick shopping trip to Brandon for supplies.  Superstore and Bulk Barn were the main stops.

It was good to have Susan home because I had not been able to watch the finale of Survivor because I am not techy enough with the TV.  I enjoyed this season a lot and I think the best person won.

Archie watched with me

"Music in the Park" was on Saturday night again and Jeff Worth came to entertain us.  Jeff is always willing to come even though he is busy with his own band which is becoming quite popular.  "The New Highway 25 Repaved" played at the Brandon Fair the night before coming here and they are booked for some summer festivals in the area this year.  Thanks for coming to Cj's Jeff.

More baseball and ripping up golf holes and all kinds of fun stuff happened this last week.

Jill making a volcano

Looks good!

Oops we lost this one badly

Some much needed repairs

We usually only have one employee on in the evenings during the week because not much usually happens.  Well that can change in an instant like it did for Mia.  She handled it beautifully and I just walked away and let her do her thing.  I enjoy watching our young employees learn how to work effectively.  The rush didn't last too long thankfully, but she had her hands full for a bit, but she never got excited about it.

Grill full, fryers full

And she had it all prepped up ready for the burgers and frys

And then run to help a customer at the window, and take a phone order as well

And back to the grill just in time to give the burgers a final flip

With all the smoke in the air around here, the sun gave us some interesting colours.  I took these pictures on one of my Archie runs.

The Ponderosa in the parking lot

Archie on the run

And of course Archie has to stop sometimes to dig out a gopher.  He had to dig deep to get this one.

Hes a long way in there

He did get the gopher

And of course Thursday came one more time.  Sheri and I were up before he arrived and the sun was reflecting off the lake real nice.  The geese all have little ones now and they are out early with them.

Momma and Papa goose with the little ones

And then like clockwork the Tim and his truck roll down the hill to unload us our supplies for the week,  Not a big order this week thankfully and I got to crawl back in bed about 7:15 for a couple hours.

Always amazing how Tim doesn't fall off the back 

We had a good time with our friends Ken and Rhonda for a couple days.  We spend 3 months with them in Mexico each year so are happy to see them in the summer too.  They brought their travel trailer down and spent a couple nights with us.  Jim and Marilyn joined us for supper on Thursday as well.  

L-R Ken Rhonda Jim Marilyn Sue

That was what we were up to the last couple weeks.  I saw this on Facebook and couldn't resist putting it here.  I remember as a kid there was a contest on the cornflakes box to win an Austin Mini Convertible car.  I read the contest rules every morning and looked at that car and in my mind, I was convinced that it would be mine.  I'm not sure how many entries I mailed in, but I never won the car.  Back then cereal boxes were the source of a lot of kids dreams.   Speaking of dreams, Good Nite!!

Not a Lot of Dull Moments in Our Lives.

WHERE ARE WE? Rivers Provincial Park, Rivers Manitoba

Well another busy week has slipped by us.  We have been home 5 weeks already!!  I guess I will get my whining done early.  Have been having lots of problems with my knees.  My right one aches quite often and clicks and twists, but those things are only temporary.  My left knee does all of the above and for a couple days got quite sore and swollen.  Oh my, it sucks to be old.  Almost 71 you know!!!  Sue took a couple pictures to show Dr. next week.  Ok enough whining!!

A lot of my responsibilities around here involve being a gopher.  Go for this and Go for that.  I have to keep my eye on the big list on the fridge.  Sometimes it is small, but sometimes it gets quite large.

And I am in charge of making sure we have a list of Ice Cream that we need to order.  Each one of these is an 11.5 liter pail, so that's a lot of ice cream.  This weeks order is just short of 200 liters.

On one of our Brandon trips we slid by DQ and saw this neat promotion.  Maybe we should do something like this at Cj's!!  The whole $2.00 goes to the Humane Society.

Archie enjoyed it!!

And a couple of things to share.  Somebody is coming to visit us soon and they are coming in a camper!!!  We got their site all booked for them but you will have to wait and see!!

No its not Rowdy and Missy from Alaska, because they wouldn't be allowed in the park!!!

And along came my favourite day of the week.  I urged my sore bones out of bed at about 6 and headed over to the shack.  Look who drove out from Brandon to be with old dad!!!  Thanks Sheri.

And much like Santa, down the chimney hill he came in a big cloud of dust, bearing goodies for all the boys and girls!!!  Much Ice Cream and hot dogs and slushie stuff.

And when he had unloaded he got in his truck and with Sheri following him on her way back to work, he was gone to the next delivery!!!

Later that day, we packed up and headed to Oak Lake to watch our granddaughter Emma play baseball.  She doesn't look like the baseball type, but we were wrong.  She seems to love it and is quite good at it.  We had fun watching her.

Then Friday Sue and I were up at 4:30 to head to Winnipeg for her flight to Toronto at 9:42 am.  We are notoriously slow travelers and have to allow lots of lead time.  We arrived at the airport at 8:30 and she jumped out of the Jeep and was gone.  She is going to attend her aunts celebration of life and to visit with her sister and other family in North Bay Ontario for a week.  She took Flair because it was really cheap, but they restrict you to bringing the clothes you wear plus a change of underwear and that is about it.  Otherwise you pay lots of dollars to bring a bigger suitcase.  She just barely got by with a small backpack.  Hope the weather stays warm for her!! lol.

And there she goes!!

Northern Manitoba has been plagued with wildfires and the smoke has been blowing right at us.  We have had an inversion for the last few days so anyone with asthma or the like has sure been suffering.  Not me, doesn't bother me a bit!!!  I guess I'm a lucky one.

 

Jim and Marilyn came to camp for a few days.  It is different for them to be here on a weekend.  They were posing for a picture that I sent to Sue!!!

Saturday morning saw us heading to Souris to watch Grandson Silas play ball in a tournament.  His team is doing quite well and it is a fun age group to watch.  Good luck in the tournament Silas!!

Souris is famous for its swinging bridge. The old one used to be quite scary, but of course with all the new safety in the new one, it doesn't move very much.  There is a little bit of the old one left and a cat has claimed it, it seems.

And the new bridge.  The bridge connect the two sides of town on each side of the river.

They have a lovely museum there as well.  I don't think it was open but we didn't really have time for touring it anyway.  

Beautiful spot on the edge of the river.

Lots of lilacs in bloom right now.

Geese out showing off the babies

Saturday is "Music in the Park" night again.  Tonight we have Rob Holden from across the lake entertaining us.  He is just getting back into performing and this was one of the first times he has been on stage for 28 years he told me.  He used to tour Canada with bands when he was younger and can really tickle the strings on the guitar and has a great voice as well.  We were pleased to have him on our stage.

We had a good crowd listening to music tonight.

Rob kept us all entertained

The only pay the performers get is whatever the crowd tips them and I throw in free supper and ice cream.  Rob announce that he would be donating whatever was in the tip pail to the firefighters who are battling the wild fires north of us.  Our local fire department has 4 guys who have volunteered their time to go fight the fires, so Rob will be giving them $250 bucks from the donations he received.  What a great thing to do!!!  Thanks Rob.

Got a picture of the girls with their Chapmans Ice Cream hats on Saturday night.  They all work hard to make sure everyone is fed and that they get their fair share of Ice Cream Treats.  Good job ladies.

Emily, Kinley, Jill, Mia

Sometimes they even invent new items to add to the menu.  Jill like the taco bowl!!  Might be a hit, who knows.

I spent some time fixing up golf clubs on Sunday.  Lots of the handles are wore out and taped up, so we have some new grips for them.  They will look like brand new!!!

I also mounted the Starlink on the shack so we can use it for the internet there.  That will save us about $100 a month on Bell fees.  Notice the dish is flat.  We have had real good success with getting a good connection since I disabled the motor and made it stationary.

And we got our flowers for the golf course from Walkers Greenhouse.  They start them all and pot them for us and bring them in their trailer.  It sure makes our golf course look better. 

Next job is to place them on the golf course

Walkers Green house

This week we were having awesome northern lights apparently.  I never stay up late enough to see them, but someone up near the fires got this picture.  The wild fire on the bottom and northern lights above.  I am so glad we don't have any threats of that sort of thing happening in our part of Manitoba.  The closest fire to us is about 6 hours north of us so we are quite safe.  Good Nite!!