Susans not so suprise birthday party

Beth Rocking out...kinda look like she is doing the robot

Susan blowing out the candles

Heather and "The Todd"
A weird couple we met...strange strange people
Jay being afraid of tiny rain
Cheryl leading the girls

Smiley Logan Danielle and Ruby dancing

Brenden and the classic thumbs up...he gets that from his uncle Brian

The kids having a blast dancing and Ruby eating her cake..too cute!

Susan and Logan

Max being a goofy kid :)






Logan filling up

Vanita holding Tyke

we saw this guy hanging around outside...we invited him in as he clearly needs help!!! LOL

Gold Dredging on Jay's Birthday

Our friend Jay wanted to go camping and dredging for his birthday (even tho he bailed out on the camping over night and left us!!! hahahah). We went to a small river near West Point and went to work. The above picture is the dredge that Jay built. The dredge consists of 2 pontoons, that float the engine and the slusse box. Not pictured is the nozzle of the hose which is 5 inches wide and it can suck roughly 110 gallons per minute.

The Dredging Machine in Action

The motor pulls through water, rocks and dirt through the hose and up to the box. Once it gets to the bos there are a series of screens and settling surfaces for the gold ( which is the heaviest object) to fall thru and get trapped.

The boys moving debris off the bottom of the river, creating a 5 ft deep pool.

The best place to find gold is at the bedrock with is under tons of rocks and debris so the dredge make this easier but sucking the smaller stuff out of the way. The heavier stuff has to be manually moved, sometime with chain and a winch. A fair amount of rocks was moved by kevin and the other boys....there were rocks flying out the the water, Eryn was scared for her life.

Kevin, Todd, Jay and Logan checking out the days bootie

Rick inspecting bits in the filters

Todd and Maddy checking it out. Logan showing Todd His loot

Brenden showing off his Photoshop Fool's gold..Bling Bling! Susie Panning and checking oh so closely for gold.

At the end of the day the filters are cleaned out into buckets to be sorted thru later.

Not all the gold is found after the sorting. Sometime when you are cleaning material from the bottom of the hole you can come across gold nuggets on the bottom. And we found some good sized nuggets. Even Eryn found some gold while she was gold panning...YEY!!!

Jay found this nugget right before the end of the second day...He was taking a picture of another nugget and this one caught his eye..lucky duck

Not only can you find gold in the river there are a lot of other "gems" you can find. Eryn found some Garnet..YEY! You can find mercury ( sometimes mercury coats a gold nugget so it looks silver), lead, and even odd car parts. Anyone have a 1986 Honda Accord?

That night Emily cooked a fab dinner like she always does and Milo cooked up some crawdads he harvested that day. Eryn is now going to be hunting after crawdads while she fishes and while panning for gold...what a multi-tasker!!! Fishing in a river is so hard..many lures went missing in bushes, tops of trees(don't ask) and under river rocks.

Emily BBQ'ing some yummy chicken

Kevin and his fishing loot.

Brenden and Maddy had fun playing on the tire swing, We see a potential future girlfriend..hahahah. Heather giving Logan and Maddy a push.

If only we had equal amounts of gold as we did ladybugs we would be rich. Ladybugs were everywhere in huge piles. Flying and landing on us all day. The USA wimps cried about their painful bites...clearly Eryn and Kevin are tough, after all ladybugs don't even bite! HAHA We gathered a ton of ladybugs and we brought them home for our gardens. We are guessing we got about 5000 ladybugs. Eryn made the mistake of leaving her car door open and they are everywhere inside.

The lady bugs covered our plants when we dumped them in our garden

Saturday night Sage and Milo spun fire for us. We always love watching them and Eryn's enjoys the challange of night shooting.

Milo Spinning

Sage spinning fire...how they don't catch themselves on fire is beyond me

Here are a few more random pictures.

Very beautiful property we were on.

Kevin Undressing Milo...this picture HAD to be shot!

Brenden being gorgeous!

Super cool goggles he got for Easter

Emily and Logan

Too Cute!

We did not become millionaires but we did find about $400-$500 in gold....or so we think. We plan on a return trip in the near future to explore more of the river bottom looking for more gold. It was really nice to spend the weekend with good friends and we are very grateful to the lady who let us use her property.

What we have been up to

Well were to start. We have neglected to be on here so we are shamed to all the family and friends we left behind in Canada. We are just plain bad at keeping in touch. We always have something on the go. We built our chicken coop finally and have been working hard on the terrace. We were house sitting for a couple weeks too so that took up a bit of our time. When we aren't working we are usually fishing (which isn't often). Our fish count is 29 so far this year (totally helps they just stocked the lake for us). We went cat fishing, and it was my first time. We used some nasty deer liver as bait......I know what you are thinking...yum yum!!! After hours of sitting there in the dark stinking up the outdoors we called it quits with zero catfish. We sure do miss our boat.

The baby chicks used to be so cute, not they are kinda scary and still not full grown, although they look it. We didnt get our chickens sexed so we didnt know what we would get. turns out we got 8 Males and 7 Females. We plan on only keeping 1 rooster so we will be eating some very soon.

See they are SCARY!!!!! Red eyes and everything...lol

The garden terrace slowly coming together. Once the flowers grow a little there should be more color and the pond and sidewalk should be complete soon. Send donations to..... jk

Hummingbirds everywhere...I hadn't seen any until I came here now they seem almost as annoying as bee's buzzing around your head. I think it just bugs me that i can't get a good shot of one. They like to hover and stare at you a while. We had a female so fat with eggs she could hardly fly up to the feeder...it was classic.

The Chickens have grown so much already. They should be laying eggs by next month so we are pumped for that. We have planted our vegetable garden along with our flowers garden.....yes it's true I have already had my first set of peas...YEY peas!!!!!! We also planted zuccini, carrots, a million tomatoes, and lemon cucumber....if you haven't had these you have to..so yummy!. In the orchard for fruit we have cherries, peaches,nectarines, pears and 3 different kinds of apples. With blossoming fruit trees come the honey bees. We were lucky enough to have a swarm. They swarm when the hive gets overloaded, so they swarm onto a tree and they send out scouts to find a new spot for a new hive. Luckily we know many bee lovers and we had someone come and gather the swarm to be out in a bee box and taken to an organic apple farm. We expect honey in return..lol





Yep there are thousands of bees in this clump. They are apparently pretty relaxed during this whole process and they just cling to eachother so if the bunch starts to fall it looks like they are dripping and they fall in a clump. The Queen is somewhere in this clump so the key is to make sure she is in the bucket, if not the colony may die.

They put this bucket on a post, punched the limb with it and the bees fell into the bucket. they had a string to pull the lid closed. Very high tech.... a string, a post and a bucket...hahahaha. Glad it was them.


Brenden has been writing up a storm. He wrote a short story for school and won first place, we were so proud. He's been writing sequals to Star Wars, which he seems to be addicted to. When he's not writing he is either drawing (Star Wars stuff), or reading. He's been reading Spiderwick and the Hobbit. There is a picture of Brenden reading to Logan....isn't he cute!!!!



Brenden showing us his first place award!!!






Brenden Reading to Logan
Logan being of so cute...ya ok I posed him...I can't help it its in my nature.



Brenden being a goofball


Kevin had be subbing a few shifts here and there as well as working on a property clearing a huge pile of brush. It will take him weeks but it's money. When he's not subbing, cleaning up brush, or being tortured by his wife (haha) he's studying for an exam. He is trying to get a job as an air traffic controller but its not an easy job to get. We were thrilled to see he was accepted to write the test which is the first step. In the very rare instance he gets free time he tries to beat my score playing "Free Bird"on guitar hero, but lets face it, its not going to happen (so not true, he will get me yet).

A days load of fish.

I have been working on a few projects. I am doing a few brochure designs and working with Art in the Garden. Its a show where artists sell and show their work in a garden setting. Its been really fun so far meeting artists and seeing new creative ideas. When I am not working on the garden and assorted projects I am usually sewing, watching Scrubs (so addicting), or playing video games. Life is tough when you dont work let me tell you. Being broke ensure I stay at home which i probably a good thin considering the cost of gas. I was talking salsa lessons but keep forgetting to go....hahaha I know typical forgetful Eryn. Below is a picture of a sun halo that i saw on Mothers Day. The boys took me fishing and we had a picnic. We didnt ctch any fish and I got a stupid bad sunburn but we had a great day. I haven't been taking many pictures because I am too afraid to venture out far by myself. There are scary animals out here you know!!!!



Brenden Fishing on Mothers Day

You all know me well enough to know i cant spell and my grammer sucks so get over all the mistakes I made on this post...lol.. We all love you and miss you very much and we will try harder to stay in touch.

Love,

Eryn, Kevin, and Lord Brenden