Have adventures

My husband and I went to a wedding reception for a couple he works with.

It was really different. They are from the Middle East (sorry to be so vague, but I don’t know more than that), and from Muslim families, even though they are less traditional.

The wedding was a mix of Western and traditional. The bride wore a Western style white dress, but had it altered to come up to her neck and have long sleeves. She wore her hair covered. The couple spent the whole event sitting on a stage on his and her “thrones”.

Some of the guests wore traditional clothing. It was really something to see a woman in full traditional dress dancing to “Gangnam Style” later that night. What was really different culterally, is that the women kind of danced together, and the men danced in another group. The men were also more animated dancers, and would also hold hands and dance with each other as a couple. Very different.

There was a reading from the Qu’ran in Islamic, a syrian musical group who sang a traditional wedding song where they danced with swords with the groom, and the food was some Western, and some Eastern. The music afterwards was some western, and some modern Middle-Eastern popular dance music.

It was kind of an adventure for me, because this was not just a comfortable family wedding. It wss kind of upscale, so my husband and I got more dressed up than we would have for family. We didn’t know many people (I hadn’t met ANYONE, these are people my husband works with at his jobsite 600 kilometres away from me), and I didn’t know what to expect culturally.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, and nice to meet some of the people my husband works with.

Today my neighbours were riding their horses past our place, and I decided to join in. It was just spontaneous.

I have had some real confidence issues with my horses since a bad fall a couple of years ago. I ride at a stable nearby on their lesson horses to build my skill and confidence, and I have done some riding at home in my pasture, but I haven’t been brave enough just to go out for a ride down the gravel road in a looonnngg time.

My mare did really well. My one neighbour is a scary rider, who put me in danger because he was leading their young mule, and it bolted, and caught my mare in the hindquarters with the rope. She was such a champ, and didn’t spook or jump at all. He should have maintained a safer distance behind us (I didn’t realize that they had caught up).

Now that I know the extent of his incompetence, I will ride more defensively, and not let my mare down again like that. I should have been more aware of the situation.

I went for a second short ride with just the wife, and she’s much better and safer. We had a great ride together. I am really hoping we can do more of this, just us two.

We got a pole barn built!

Although it wasn’t us doing the labour, it was still a lot of work. We had to get a building permit, approve the plans, make the down payment months ahead of time, level the ground site, etc.

Once it was built, I noticed that they hadn’t put one of the big doors on the back, so they had to come back and fix it.

Now, we are busy with the interior. We got three loads of clay brought in, packed it (I got to use the jumping jack, a hand-held packer), moved it around with a bobcat, and so on. We are likely putting a layer of gravel on top of this.

We are putting kick-boards up inside, and have to make some divisions for stalls, and put in a tack room. We also have to bring in power (likely this fall yet) and water (next year).

It still looks a little weird, this big red building where before there was just a little shed, but it’s a nice building.

My husband and I went on a very short trip to Jasper, which is still in Alberta. It was about four hours away by car, so still a reasonable trip.

We left in the afternoon, got there by evening, and put up our tent and had supper and sat around the campfire playing cards.

The next day we went to Jasper Lake, which is incredbly clear and very cold, and only a couple of feet deep all the way across. This time of year it was even shallower, and I walked half way across the lake and was only part way up my calf. The lake bottom was soft and sandy, and made for lovely wading.

We then went to a trail that ended at a lookout, but it was 9 K straight up, and we didn’t make it. We likely went 7 K, but we didn’t know how far we had left, and we didn’t have all day to do the trail. Still, it was lovely.

Then we went into the town of Jasper and looked around and got some ice cream. We had stopped in briefly the day before for groceries. Not as touristy as Banff, but close.

Then we headed to Athabasca Falls, which of course were amazing. There was a handy walking path all the way around it, which was good because we were exhausted after the hike.

We decided to head back that night, because my husband had to go back to work soon. So, we drove through the park to the South, which was a bit out of our way, but worth it. We saw the glaciers, and that’s where we want to explore more next time.

It was a short trip, but the first time we’d been camping in about five years, since we didn’t have anyone to look after our animals (we do now).

Hopefully we can do some more camping next summer.

This may not seem like an adventure to most people, but it was for me. I used our garden tiller yesterday, and went over the garden. We had already tilled it about a week ago, but our soil has a lot of clay, and can form big clods, and I wanted to break it up once more and kill a few more weeds.

I’m not the most confident person when it comes to power tools, my imagination is too good. This tiller though, was not much harder to use than a push lawn mower, and it has that safety feature of not moving forward, and disengaging the tines if you let go of the handles, so things can only get so bad.

I am so proud of using a tiller, all on my own! Now it doesn’t have to be something I have to wait for my husband to do.

But at least doing something fun and different. My husband and I went to the art museum. We’ve gone a few times now.

The admission seems pretty reasonable (about $13 each), and the exhibits are sooo good.

This time they had a really good exhibit of paintings from the 1800’s, landscapes, the “plein air” movement. I wasn’t familiar with all of the artists, but they were so good. Also, an exhibit of early photography, and some Canadian artists (modern landscape paintings).

My husband and I finally went canoeing (first time this spring). We live near a lake, and usually go there a couple of times every summer.

This wasn’t really a big adventure, but a nice little adventure. We went all the way across the lake, which we’ve never done before. It was perfect weather for it too.

This is the kind of fun, simple, everyday adventure that I want to do a whole lot more of instead of just getting caught up in the routine of work and maintaining our home.

Every couple of months, myself and this one member of our library board go shopping for materials for our kid’s program.

They started giving me a little more responsibility after it dawned on them that I wasn’t happy just pushing books around.

It is so much fun! We don’t have a huge budget, about $300 every four or five months, but we get lots of fun, simple stuff. I spend some of that on books that will relate to program topics, and it helps me to organize.

It is just such a rush to go buy a giant pile of glitter glue, wooden critters to paint, watercolor paper, google eyes, fun paper, stamps, and whatever else we need. Plus there’s the anticipation of all the fun things we’re going to make together!

I’m not sure why, but I haven’t been doing much that could be considered an adventure right now.

Joining 43 things is a small adventure for me, since I don’t have much to do with online groups, generally.

My last really big adventure was moving from Wyoming back to Canada. It was very stressful, but being on our little spread is great.

I guess you could say that getting horses and goats has been an adventure, becoming a librarian, learning to do a lot of work on our acreage, having a huge garden, learning to can food, learning to operate a snow blower,exploring the city closest to us, and all the progress I’ve made in my crafts are all adventures.

We used to do a lot more camping,canoeing, biking, hiking than we do now. I’d like some more of that.

For the last few months I haven’t done much in the way of moving forward and doing something really fun or different, and it’s time I did.