Camping Trip – Fort Steele, BC

Last Friday we headed out on our first camping trip of the year. We were going to Fort Steele, BC to meet up with my parents and sisters (and their families). It’s about a 4 hour drive and we didn’t leave our house till after 7:00 pm. Too many things to get worked out on the first time camping for the year (remember last year). And it was the first time out with our new trailer. But we were so excited. We got the trailer packed and the quad loaded and headed on our way.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s off camping we go...

The drive took us forever as we had a lot of weight for our truck to haul (with the trailer and the quad). So we drove slowly and stopped a few times to check out how the trailer and such were doing. Tim had never been to Fort Steele before but at about 11:00 pm we saw the sign that said only 6 km more to the campsite. We were at the top of this huge hill that overlooks Fort Steele and we just had to get to the bottom of it. No sooner had I said to Tim that we were almost there when heard “it”! Yep, we had a flat…no we had a blowout!

Not much left of that tire, eh?

Remember last year when we went camping and got a flat? Why the heck does this keep happening to us?

I called my Dad and told him we were sitting at the top of the hill with a tire blowout on our trailer. Dad, Brendan, and Kimmy came to help us. At least this time (unlike last year) we now have a jack in our truck – two of them actually. Kimmy and I went back to the campfire and Tim, Dad, and Brendan showed up later. So it was midnight when Tim was trying to set up our trailer in the campsite. Lovely!

On Saturday the weather was kinda crappy. It was chilly and rainy. Tim, Dad, and Brendan went for a quad ride while us girls took the kids into Fort Steele and hung around the campsite. When Tim got home from the quad ride he noticed he had oil sprayed all over him. So if the new tire we had to buy that morning wasn’t pricey enough for this camping trip, now Tim’s quad has decided to spit oil everywhere. Tim and Brendan took the quad apart but couldn’t find where the oil came from. Perfect! Now our quad is down and out just like when we were camping at Pole Haven last year. But what’s camping without a flat tire and a quad problem right?

Here’s the quad all pulled apart:

However Saturday evening was great. We did a huge BBQ for Britnee’s 19th Birthday and for Mother’s Day. It was yummy! And then the girls all went to the live play Aida that was put on by the local high school. It was so good. Amazing actually! Jenn bought us tickets for Mother’s Day. How sweet eh? I loved the play.

We left the campsite Sunday morning. After church in Jaffray we headed back home for work Monday morning. It’s was an expensive weekend. But boy did we have fun!

A Year in Review (2007)

I totally stole this from another blog. Loved the idea, so I wanted to do it here too. Here's a summary of our 2007.

January

Tim started his last year of school

Bought a new car

February

My cousin miraculously survives being in an avalanche

March

Rachel announced she's pregnant

Tim finished school & is now a Journeyman Electrician

Ashlee went to the ER with a kidney stone

Tim turns 27 years old

April

Tim sold his horse Felize

Camping at Fairmont Hot Springs

Tim bought a new Quad

Ashlee bought a new treadmill

Ashlee got her wisdom teeth out

Bought an old holiday trailer

May

Grampa had to go to an assisted living home

Camping at Writing on Stone

Camping at Lewis & Clarke Caverns

Tim fought his first house fire

Jenn announces she's pregnant

June

Camping at Waterton (Belly River)

Bought a new truck

Camping & Quading at Pole Haven

Britnee graduates highschool

July

We're Pregnant

Camping at Writing on Stone

Camping in Montana

Ashlee turns 25 years old

Trent & Tara announce they're pregnant

August

Attended my cousin Kyle's wedding

Grampa passes away

Our 3rd Wedding Anniversary

Attended my cousin Carlene's wedding

September

We lost our baby

Ashlee goes to the ER with fluid on her hip

October

Spent Thanksgiving in Castlegar with Kimmy & Brendan

November

New nephew Dallin was born

December

We're Pregnant Again

Celebrated Christmas in BC

Phew, 2007 has exhausted me! Here's hoping 2008 is AWESOME!

Our Christmas 2007

The Saturday before Christmas Tim & I headed to Jaffray. We were going to BC in search of a White Christmas. Boy did we find it! They had a crazy amount of snow. So awesome!

Every Christmas Eve my family goes carolling to all of my mom’s side of the family. (We have a very large extended family.) All the families wait for us to come. Our crowd is getting pretty big now and we were even missing Kimmy & Brendan as they spent Christmas with Brendan’s family in Alberta. After carolling we ended up at Granny’s house. We took some snacks down there and spent the evening with her. After Granny’s we headed back to Mom & Dad’s and we had to do a little Christmas sing-song. Jayda just loved the mic and Parker thought he was Rod Stewart dragging his mic stand all over the place singing Rudolph. It was so cute.

Christmas morning was pretty slack. There was no getting up early in our house. Kimmy was missing and she was the one that usually got us up super early cuz "Santa came". The best part for sure was going over to my sister’s and watching Jayda & Parker. Priceless. They were so excited about EVERYTHING. Parker got out of bed and told his mommy about all the presents under the tree. She asked him "Who brought all these presents?" And Parker turned to her and said, "Uncle Tim??" Dang that Uncle Tim. He got all of Santa’s credit!

On Boxing Day Kimmy and Brendan came to Jaffray. We were excited to see them. We missed them on Christmas. Tim and Brendan had to keep themselves busy so out in my mom’s front yard they decided to build a snow cave. A gigantic one. Tim and I made one last year at our house, but we don’t get the snow like BC so it took forever for us to shovel enough to make a little snow cave. Tim, Brendan, & Kimmy got tired of shovelling (I just watched them.) and decided to get my dad’s snow blower out. They went around the yard and made this HUGE pile of snow for the cave. And there was still tons of snow left in the yard. Nothing like Alberta! Everyone around stopped by to see what we were making in the front yard. It took a very long time to hollow out but finally it was done. My contribution to it....well Jayda and I made that little snowman by the entrance. Helpful aren’t I?

Tim tried ice fishing for the first time ever. Ya, it didn’t go so well. Nothing! I was bored out of my mind – staring at a bobber in a hole forever...not so fun. Maybe it would have been better if they were actually catching fish.

Then on Saturday Trent & Tara came out to Jaffray to hang out. So much fun! They did some ice fishing (caught nothing again), snowmobiling, sledding, tubing, and had a bonfire. And Tara was my life saver when she showed up with her morning sickness meds which I used a bunch of to "try" and keep my morning sickness at bay. What a sweetie!

Sorry this is such a long post. I should keep our blog more up to date so I don’t have to write novels like these. Oh ya, and ignore the typos cuz this is too long for me to re-read.

Christmas Lights & Baking

After my venting this morning and my update on Friday of what we were up to mid December. Let’s move on to the end of December and talk a little about getting ready for Christmas.

We went out and bought a bunch of outside Christmas decorations. Of course the day we plan on putting them out it had to have been the coldest night we’ve had all winter. That wind cut right through ya. But we got them up with our frozen fingers. It for sure wins over last year’s. But I'm no photographer -- I find it VERY difficult to take a picture of outside lights. So just trust me that they looked good in person. See the presents under the tree in our yard?

Can you see Santa climbing our chimney?

I did some Christmas baking again this year. They turned out much better than my last year’s disaster. They look yummy right? I’ve been told they were. I didn’t eat them. The morning sickness kept me from enjoying the sweets. Blah! However Tim was a little upset that I didn't icing the sugar cookies. It was 11 pm and I was tired. No icing for you!

Here Comes Santa Claus...

Look what Tim and I were up to on the weekend...

I'm so excited for Christmas. I just love it! However it was a little weird decorating the house and not having any snow. At least we got a little dusting of the stuff this morning. I think next week we're going to work on our outside decorations. Merry Christmas!!

And the winner is...

......a tie! The score is 8-8 for the pirate and spider.

The vampire slipped in at 4 votes. Horrible! Tim did the pirate and Britnee did the spider. And me...I did the vampire that apparently in the photos it was hard to tell what it was. But I don't think we'll invite Brit over next year to participate cuz she almost made Tim lose.

Nilsson Pumpkin Carving Contest

Tim won the contest last year with the haunted house and I won the year before with the scarey face. Let's see about 2007...

Let the voting begin!! Vote for your 1st choice as we don't do 2nd or 3rd places. The winner is all that matters in the Nilsson Pumpkin Carving Contest as 2nd place is just the first loser. The pumpkins have been submitted by Tim Nilsson, Ashlee Nilsson, and Britnee Wright.

Vampire in a Graveyard -- Spider -- Pirate Skeleton

(Click on the photos to enlarge them. Then you'll be able to see the details better.)

Thanksgiving Weekend

It's been ages right? I know, I know. To be honest I haven't really had anything to post. I've sorta been in a funk this last month and a half...if ya know what I mean. Just been feeling a little blah. Anywho, enough with all of that.

Totally had a blast on Thanksgiving a few weekends back. There was a lot of travelling involved but still so much fun. Friday after work Tim, me, and Britnee (my sister that's living in Lethbridge now) all headed to Jaffray. Well let me back that story up a bit. Thursday night and Friday morning I got everything ready and packed so as soon as the work day ended we could head to Jaffray and hopefully not arrive at midnight (of course it was snowing that day too). Well no such luck. Tim phoned me at 7:00 in the morning to say he got a flat tire on the truck on his way to work. Crap! Our plan was to take the truck, not the car, to Jaffray cuz we needed to haul the quad and the dogs out there too. So I tried to get everything finished up at work early so that I could go get the flat tire repair. We seem to get flats all the time. I had another one my car not two weeks before this. Anywho after 2.5 hours I finally got the flat repaired and the guy didn't even charge me for it. (Sometimes it so sweet to be a chick!) But then I had to do a few errands before I could head home. Of course none of that went smoothly, but eventually I got it done. So back to where I was previously...finally we headed to Jaffray -- driving in the snow and arriving very late. Not to mention we were squished like sardines in the truck. With the quad in the back of the truck it didn't leave any room for the dogs. So the dogs got our back seat (thank goodness they're good travellers) along with our bags. Tim, Brit, and I squished on the front seat. Lucky me, I got the middle which the back rest that won't even recline a bit. So uncomfortable. And that was our Friday--a 3.5 hour drive.

Saturday morning we got up early so that we could catch the ferry. This time we jumped in with Mom and Dad. Their truck is much more comfortable. It took us around 3 hours to get to the ferry. The ferry was fun. I hadn't been on it in years.

Then we met Kimmy & Brendan (who live over there) at Ainsworth Hot Springs and we all had a swim. Then headed down the coastline of the lake for about 1.5 hours to Castlegar where Kimmy lives. They just bought a place over there cuz Brendan started school at Selkirk College. Their home is so nice. We sure filled it up as everyone in my family was there. It is so beautiful in the West Kootenays.

Sunday we had Thanksgiving dinner. It was so yummy. There are no complaints from me when it comes to turkey dinner and pumpkin pie. Mmmmm. Then we all headed back to Jaffray. We did the two Passes instead of taking the ferry this time and arrived back in Jaffray in 3 hours.

Monday morning Tim was so excited to go for a quad ride that he set the alarm clock (crazy I know). We went on this totally fun ride with my dad and my cousin Todd. We were gone for so long. We couldn't get to the top of the mountain cuz of the snow, so we cruised around on all the different trails at the base of the mountain. After the ride we packed ourselves back into our truck and headed home. Exhausted and dreading work in the morning.

Easter in Fairmont

We went camping at Fairmont Hot Springs for Easter. We had a blast. The weather was amazing. We got so much sun in the pools. We slept in our tent and no bears ate me. It got down to about -5ºC (that's around 23ºF for you Americans), but we were totally warm as we have super nice sleeping bags. We had a little Easter Egg hunt and my niece and nephew loved it. It was a great time. And then we had to come back to work.
**I'm making a weird face in the picture cuz if you look close you'll see my dog just put his dirty paw on my white shirt!**

And this...

Here's the new coat that Tim bought me on Saturday as well. It's kinda a funny picture of it, but it's super cute. I love it. My sister, Britnee is going to be so jealous. This is totally her style.

How great it is to be loved by Tim!

Valentine’s Day came early for me this year. Yesterday I was getting ready for church and Tim brought me a little package. I just love little packages. He said I get my Valentine’s Day gift early cuz I was all dressed up and I needed a little something extra. And these are what I got:
These earrings actually match my wedding rings (I can only find a picture of my engagement ring).I just love my new earrings. Tim’s too good to me. On Saturday he bought me a new coat too.

Now what should I do for him for Valentine’s Day?

Merry Christmas

Well we had a very busy Christmas and it flew right on by. We had a good time though. We spent Christmas in B.C. at my parent's house. Before Christmas we made a trip up the mountain on my dad's snowmobiles. It was pretty fun, but super windy up there. And it was snowing so we didn't get a good view that day.

We also went on a hay ride around town to check out all the lights. The little kids loved it and we all about froze to death by the end. We saw some pretty amazing Christmas lights though.
On Christmas day we got some sweet gifts. Tim bought me a video camera and I got him satellite TV. You see out in Stirling (in the middle of no where) you can't get cable. The cable companies call it a "dead area". Tim tried putting up with the rabbit ears on top of our big screen HD TV, but I guess the three fuzzy channels didn't cut it. And I have been wanting a video camera for ages. We got many other super nice gifts from our family as well.

Now we're back home and working again. Those six days that I took just zipped by. Today is Tim's last day of work for the next three months. January 2nd he starts his 4th Year Electrical schooling. By the end of March he'll be a Journeyman. We're pretty excited. However it'll suck for the next three months without Tim's paycheques. The EI he gets while is school is pretty terrible, but at least it's something right?

Nilsson Family Newsletter

Christmas Baking

Well I'm trying to do some Christmas baking. I actually really enjoy it. It's just kinda hard finding time to do it in the evenings after work. Anywho, Monday night I started with the Whipped Shortbread and I had problem after problem. I started the dough and I ran out of flour upstairs in my pantry. I didn't worry as I was sure I had a bag or two downstairs in my food storage. I went to check it out and to my surprize I had three bags of sugar and no flour. Now I live out of town so it's not like I can zip over to the grocery store. I started by phoning my Aunt to see if she had some...no answer. Then I called my cousin next door and she said she had some in her food storage that I could us and I said I'd replace it tomorrow. She called me back a minute later and she, like me, only had bags of sugar. She didn't even have one cup. Then I remembered that I keep a little canister of flour near my stove for making gravy (easier than bringing out the huge tub of flour from my pantry). I barley got one cup from it. But it's all good. I continue with the recipe that ends with a pinch of salt. I finished up and put the dough in the fridge and plan to bake it tomorrow as now it's too late and I'm tired. Fast forward to Tuesday (last night)...I bake them all (3.5 dozen) and then do a taste test. THEY WERE HORRIBLE! I don't know how much salt I put in, but it sure was no pinch. My beautiful cookies taste like salt blocks. So I have to toss them out and start all over again tonight. They look yummy though, but don't taste them. I'm starting to think the cookie stuff is not for me.
My Chewy Gingersnaps were much better. Thanks to Tim's sister Rachel for the new recipe. They're wonderful.

Presents

Last Friday I finished all of my Christmas shopping and on Saturday I wrapped the presents. It took me forever. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't feel the need to do ribbons, bows, and such on each gift. My back was super sore from sitting on our hard floor in front of the tv wrapping. Here's a picture.

Christmas Decorations

Okay Mom, you asked me to post some pictures of our decorations. Well, they're really hard to photograph. They look pretty terrible in these pictures. But at least it'll give you a good idea. You'll be here the beginning of December so you'll see then why I love what Tim's done. The photos just don't cut it. I bought a centerpiece yesterday and that's on here too. It's much prettier in real. It's all sparkly and stuff. I'm also adding a picture of a gift I received from my aunt. It is a photo of Jospeh, Mary, & baby Jesus.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

So yesterday Tim and I tried to put some lights on the outside of our house. Well no such luck. Even with a tall latter we couldn't reach everything. So it ended up we had a straight string of lights along the top of our garage, a break, then another straight string above our window. Too ugly. With the peak over our main door we couldn't reach that part. And you can't really tell from this photo (taken back in June before we bought this house) but the slope of the roof is super crazy so we couldn't even stand on the roof to decorate the peak above the door. So instead we bought two spot lights (one red & one green) and pointed them at the house, put a lighted snowman thingy at the front door, and tried to string some lights on our tree in the front yard. We ran out after the first three wraps around the tree. I'll have to pick some up tonight. Maybe I can talk Tim into putting some lights around our doors and windows (fancy eh?). Ya our neighbours are totally showing us up with their decorations.

Okay I found a picture that shows the slope of the roof way better. See, that's why standing on our roof is almost impossible.

Oh Christmas Tree...

Yes, we did it. We put up our Christmas tree. I figured why not. Christmas is less than 6 weeks away. So last night we hauled our decorations out of the basement and we put everything out. It looks like we have way less in this new house. I guess if you go from 900 sq ft to 1600 sq ft house it'll look emptier. Maybe I'll go shopping to get some more decorations. This year (for the 1st time since we've been married) we're going to decorate the outside of our house. Yipee! We haven't been able to in the past cuz we don't own a ladder. Well we still don't own one, but now living in Stirling, my uncle is just down the road and he has one. I'm excited. If Tim didn't have to work every Saturday then maybe we could get them up. Anywho, here are some pictures of us decorating the tree last night.

And November's Here

Well November is now upon us. I don’t have much of an update for everyone. Things have been pretty much the same for Tim and I. Tim’s still having fun with the Stirling Fire Department. It’s keeping him extremely busy on top of his regular job as a electrician and church stuff. I’ll have to get a picture of him all dressed up. And what I am up to? I’m not really sure. My days zip by and I feel as though I get nothing accomplished.
We don’t get to do a whole lot with our horses these days. It’s dark when we leave for work and dark when we get home. Our foal, Jet, didn’t care for the snow last week and now he’s super fuzzy with his lovely winter coat. He’s friendly and loves people (which is nice). He’s also really good around our two crazy dogs. They’re pretty wild and yet Jet is fine with them (his mama is the same way). Jet will let both Diesel and Dexter eat out of the same bowl as him. And I don’t know why my dogs like grain, but they do.
With it now being November, we’ve started looking around for a few Christmas gift ideas. A lady told me last week that her house already has all her Christmas decorations up. I’m not quiet there yet. I think I’ll leave my Fall pumpkins and scarecrows up for a bit longer. I don’t have Christmas fever yet. I think it’s because all our snow melted last weekend. When is it okay to put your Christmas decorations up? My neighbor has his lights up. Is it too early?
So that’s a little update from us (well mostly me). Tim’s my silent partner when it comes to this whole Blogging thing. Occasionally I can get him to sit down for a second to read what I post, but that’s about it.

Pumpkin Carving

Last night we carved our pumpkins. We were going to wait until today to do them, but Tim has to write his exam tonight for the course that he was in all weekend. We both had a hard time carving our pumpkins this year. There are many toothpicks holding the designs together. Last year not one single toothpick was used. Here’s a little note to all of you that I wish someone shared with me before we started carving last night – cut out the little details first and leave the big stuff to last. I learned the hard way. However, most of you probably already knew that.

Vote for your favorite design. Tim and I have a competition going.









Here are our pumpkins for this year (2006).









These were our’s from last Halloween (2005).