Blissful Week

Mirror post WITH VIDEO here at Rachel's blog

We came back from “the most talked about event of the summer” on Saltspring Island with a convoy of Americans in tow. The Fullers, of Albuquerque-tribe fame, stayed one night while Rachel, Max and Otto, 3/4ths of the infamous Chicagwigians, stayed for a week. Kevin made fun of Canadians, the peasants that we are, while we in turn made fun of how Rachel pronounces Saltspring “Salt SPRIIIIIING” and how Beth pronounces Saltspring “Deer Island”!?!? Yes, you had to be there. Perhaps next year?

After a full week of “living our life as rural-dwelling Canadians”, I believe Rachel now understands what we mean when we say that Gillian only manages to occasionally use her “special pass” to leave the compound. A vast tour of Victoria and the local environs this was not… though we did manage one evening downtown (somewhat stressful given all four kids like to run everywhere) and one evening at the Lagoon (which Gillian missed through built up exhaustion).

And hey, I love hanging with unschooly families more than anything but... when ever-enjoyable Helen and kiddos were over the other day, I admittedly did state that “this is what it would be like if I had three wives and 7 kids… and it’s not pretty”. No offense to anyone!


Here’s the only documented proof that we had Albuquerquites in our house!!!


A dead deer on the property brought much intrigue. What started with “hmm, maybe we should leave those bones where they lay” ended with a full-on archaeological reconstruction project. I’m not sure we would have thought to do something like this on our own… a clear indication of why we need to hang more often with fellow unschoolers…


I’m positive we would never had thought to do this without Max, the concoction king, in our midst. Our back patio has been a fragrant haven of late as many bags of spices (RUFun remnants) have been deployed to great concoctitory effect. Many a faux meal has been constructed and deconstructed with sand, apparently, also a key ingredient. And I don’t care if concoctitory is a real word or not, I like it…


Sunset over the inner harbour shortly after we watched a very good street entertainer. Max was the guy’s biggest fan and proudly laughed at all his jokes, in turn making the busker laugh and nearly propel his juggling chainsaw into a row of tourists from Switzerland…


Boys grazing on blueberries…


Water ballooning fun:


It looks like we had a computer lab type thing going on here...


We spent an evening at the lagoon bird watching, hunting for clams, digging for treasure, collecting stones and driftwood, burying Playmobil and riding on an anchor. All of which was quickly abandoned when the ice cream truck ventured by. A real treat for us since the one ice cream truck that ever gets near our place zips by, music blarring, at a very high rate of speed on its way to more profitable sales at the lake. Max and Otto apparently have three different trucks that stop along their street EVERY DAY. They didn’t seem to mind yet another trip to the ice cream truck…



What a great and wild week we had: double the fun, double the exhaustion, double the laughs, double the mess (haha - as if that were possible).