Well hello there! I did not intend to let the entire month of August pass without posting at all but it happened. We had a full month and it made sense to let this little online space go a bit. I’ve been camping, reading (more on that soon), eating, spending time with friends and family. Here’s a bit of it:
We made our annual camping trip to Keats Island. This time we convinced friends to join us. They have three little girls and our kids really enjoyed having friends along.
We did have some rain on the last afternoon/night but overall we had great weather. We swam and fished and talked by the fire and went for ice cream twice.
We enjoyed our town’s annual Show and Shine of classic cars. The girls enjoyed it so much they made their own toy version.
Pearl participated in a week-long multi-sports day camp, which meant she got to run around outside every day with a bunch of other kids. One of her favourite things.
I got to go out with friends to celebrate a great friends’ birthday.
We had some new friends over for dinner.
The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts marked its 40th year and its return to a full weekend of events (which hasn’t happened since 2019). My job means I get to work at a lot of the festival events and I always look forward to this celebration of Canadian writers.
Peter and I got a chance to go away on our own for 2 nights. We celebrated 12 years of marriage and spent two nights in Harrison. We walked by the lake and explored the area and had a delicious Greek dinner by the water.
We ended the month with a weeklong visit from Peter’s brother and his family. That adds up to lots of delicious meals together and plenty of beach time. Pearl and Rose love having their cousins here and the four kids are at such fun ages and play together so well. My sister-in-law and I even got away for an afternoon on our own!
Unfortunately, we’ve also finished out the month with a nasty stomach bug in our house. It hit Pearl right as Peter and I were away and then got worse from there. After a call to 811 and a doctor’s visit, we were told it just had to run its course and after a week she started to feel better. Two days later and it hit me. I’m just now starting to feel like I’m recovering.
We’ve also, with great sadness, had to say good-bye to our beloved extended family dog, Bella. Bella is my in-law’s dog and, we joke, our part-time dog. She’s spent many sleep-overs at our house when they’ve travelled and she’s been a part of the girls’ lives weekly when their grandparents took care of them. Bella has been a key figure in Pearl and Rose’s childhood, a pet they’ve had around their whole lives. She’s had a mounting number of health issues in the past year but has retained her energy and her personality until recently. We’ve had so many fun beach days with her and she will be so missed. It was particularly hard to watch my kids grapple with their first real experience of death but I was reminded of this quote from C.S. Lewis:
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Our grief is a sign of our love and we should not regret loving.
Karissa Reads Books 
It looks like you had a very busy month! Those are lovely photos from your camping trip – what a beautiful part of the world. I’m glad you had such a fun holiday.
Sorry to hear of your loss with Bella – it is never easy to lose a pet, even if we don’t live with them. But that CS Lewis quote is one of my favourites, and it’s true, we can’t regret loving someone.
Why, hello, Justin Beaver! LOL, he has his own little chair.
Sometimes when you write about how many different people you’ve visited and seen, I feel secondhand overwhelmed! I’m not nearly as social as you, but I’m glad you’ve got so much support and love around your family.
I feel overwhelmed by it too sometimes but I do enjoy it. We spent lots of good family time just the 4 of us too and I’m thankful for that.
So sorry to hear about Bella – I always enjoyed her occasional appearances on the blog. Sounds like you’ve had a great month otherwise! Lovely pics!
Thank you. She was a very sweet dog.
Your blog was a few spots above mine on the list on Cathy’s blog and I’ve been following along this summer but this is my first comment! Love your blog and reviews! Where you live looks just amazing and it’s inspiring to see all the ways your family gets out into nature. I think we have a lot in common in reading taste so I look forward to continuing to follow you and see what you recommend! 🙂
Oh thank you so much! I’m usually more active here than I’ve been this summer but thank you for following along! I will check out your blog too.