The Talens' Tales

Following the Truck Parade, we spent a bit of time at a park near Nick and Dawn's house. And then off to airport.  We were nicely on time. Check-in went fine, but a little longer because of Gideon not being connected to our family. Security was a breeze and we were soon on our way and in Detroit. We easily found our gate in Detroit, had a 10 minute delay for boarding, but soon enough we were on the plane. And that it when the bottom fell out.  While on the plane, the pilots revived notice that Toronto was shut down due to weather. We waited about 20-30 minutes on the plane. They gave us snacks. Then they had us get off the plane and wait in the terminal. Every 30 minutes or so we would be updated that we were still delayed. And we were watching dark clouds and lightening roll into the area surround Detroit, too. Soon, the Detroit airport was shut down too. They brought out snacks and drinks a few different times, but finally around 10 pm (so over 5 hours of being ...

We are enjoying our summer so much, especially since summer means visitors. We were so happy to have Emil, Karisa and Ezekiel visit last week.  They flew into Charlottetown and captures some great photos of our farm from the plane.  We got to meet Zeke for the first time. The cousins were not quite sure what to make of each other. Zeke and Gideon are about 7 months apart and pretty much the same size. The trampoline is so fun! Walking in downtown Charlottetown. On the waterfront.  We really wanted to get some nice pictures of all the kids together. Unfortunately the kids were not in a very cooperative mood at all. So this is what we got. Oma, Opa and grandkids. The brothers and their kids. Gideon and Zeke.  We also had lots of fun on the beach together on Canada and took in the fireworks in town as well.  Thanks for coming to visit Emil, Karisa and Zeke. We look forward to seeing you again soon!

We have been having a lovely holiday weekend.With some family visitors, it has been a great excuse to get out and do somethings with the family. Last week Thursday we went to downtown Charlottetown and saw the Young Company show for the year at the Confederation Center. Since it is a free outdoor show, we had a picnic lunch during the show and it was very nice. Then, of course, we needed some Cows ice cream for dessert. It is so nice to eat some ice cream on water front. Traditional picture on the Cow. Normally our church has a picnic at the beach on July 1st, Canada Day. However, the weather wasn't looking all that great, so the picnic was postponed to Monday.  There are lots of fun games and activities, we have lunch together and it is right on the beach! This year they had a contest for the most Canadian outfit or costume. Joash came up with a grand plan and spent sometime time writing and drawing. I helped him tape it to his clothes before we went to he picnic...

2014 is a big year on PEI. It marks the 150 anniversary of hte 1864 Charlottetown Conference that led to the creation of Canada. So there are all kinds of different events going on all over the Island to mark this occasion.  On such event is the Celebration Zone on the waterfront in Charlottetown. It is a place where there are shows happening each day with lots of different musical guest and other sorts of performers. There is a kids section with bouncy houses and crafts and games. And it is all free! Joash has been talking about going to the Celebration Zone ever since a booklet with the schedule for the summer came in the mail. We had tried to go once before, but the gates were not opening on time, so we didn't stick around. So, we gave it another go this week and we checked it all out. Joash posing as one of the fathers of Confederation. My very on Father of Confederation and Anne of Green Gables.  Any time Joash talked about the Celebration Zone, the t...

We had some more visitors this past week. They are a couple who both taught with us when we lived in Minnesota. They were taking a trip for their 35th wedding anniversary and decided to make PEI the destination. We were so happy to have these visitors and to give them advice on what to see and do while they were here.  The ever popular top of the car self timer shot, with a just up from nap, so not ver cooperative Joash and missing Mataya who was napping.  We love having visitors!

Last week we had a busy week with visitors. My whole family came and we had a wonderful week together. It started out with Mataya's baptism. It was so wonderful to have my whole family here for that. And we surprisingly nicely coordinated our outfits, so we had to take a family picture.  The rest of the week was full of lots of other events. There was the Canada Day church picnic, taking Joash to his first Canada Day fireworks, deep sea fishing and supper at Fisherman's Wharf, a day at the farm, and a tour of Charlottetown on the Harbor Hippo. We also had lots of meals together and enjoyed some time at the vacation home my parents rented for the week. We were so happy to show our family how wonderful the Island is in the summer and introduce them to Mataya. We can't wait to see them all again soon.

Which is a good thing since it started so late. We headed to the beach yesterday after our Sunday afternoon naps. Joash loved seeing everything that is on the beach, especially the seagulls. He like listening to the waves and didn't mind sticking his toes in the water. He did not like touching the sand with his hands, however. I think it was because it stuck to his hands and he couldn't figure out how to get it off. We buried his feet in the sand, which he thought was pretty funny. On days like this, I am even more glad that I live on this island.

Sorry for taking so long to get back to blogging. But it has been busy here. I have been busy healing. It is going really well. I am in very little pain and rarely notice that I have had surgery. I am still not as energetic as I was before the operation, but each day is getting better.  I have been busy taking care of this little guy, too. He is on the move in his own style that is a cross between an army crawl and normal crawling. But he can get to where he wants to go and he is enjoying his new found freedom. He has also figured out how to sit back up after crawling, so that makes like a lot easier for Mom. I no longer have to rescue him from his tummy. It is also Old Home Week on the Island, which is as close a fair as you get here. Yesterday was the parade, which was quite good. It was a nice warm day, and I was certainly glad that I was not marching in the parade.  It is sort of weird watching a parade that doesn't have any high school marching bands in it. There are a f...

When I first visited the Island while my husband and I were dating, he was pretty specific about when in the summer he wanted me to come. I think he was already trying to win my heart over to living on the Island, because he told me to come at the end of June because that is when the lupins bloom. Well, it is a beautiful time on the Island, and one that deserves to be shared. So here are some lupins for you. Joash admiring the lupins. Lupins come in several different shades of pink and purple. My attempt at capturing what the ditches look like. Sorry about the shadow. I couldn't quite figure out how to get the best angle this late in the day. Hopefully you get the idea.

Well, Joash had his 6 months check up and he is doing great. He weighs 17 lbs and is 26 1/2 inches long. He has great hearing and vision and is right on track with his milestones.  He also got his 6 month immunizations today. Notice I said immunization. Not "needles" which is what they call them here. I find that really weird because we never called them that in the States. We went to get our "shots." When I was talking about this with Wilbert, he said that sounded much more violent than needle, which is true, I guess. So, I have decided to call them immunizations and just avoid the whole issue altogether. Joash is also trying new foods. In Canada, they recommend that you start with meat, because they want the child to get as much iron as possible. Here is Joash's first taste of chicken. He was not a fan. He gagged pretty bad on his first bite. But, he will eat it when mixed with his cereal. When he got his immunizations, they said to try and mix the meat with ...

I know that this blog is on the internet for anyone to see. That creeps some people out, but I find it interesting to think that a lot of different people could read my blog. Since we are living in the farm house right now, we are answering the phone and listening to messages, since they could be something farm related. And the other day, we had the strangest message I had ever heard. It was a little hard to hear at times, but what we could make out from it was that someone in Ontario had been reading my blog and was trying to connect with me for some reason and wondered if the people at this number were related. This person would try again later and did not leave a number for me to get back. I was scared at first. Of course, it would be easy to get the farms phone number it is the only number listed under "Talen." But why would someone who has read my blog want to talk to me? What did I do wrong? Who did I offend? Or was it something good, like an offer to write or to make c...

The nice thing about being married to someone from another country is that you get double the holidays. Today, for example, is Canadian Thanksgiving. How nice to have another day to focus on being thankful and getting to eat some wonderful food. Yesterday we got together with some new friends from church for a traditional Thanksgiving meal. And it was wonderful. Today we will be spending time with family. I have been baking up a storm and will probably blog more about that later this week, depending on what it left over. I truly have many things to be thankful for and lots of them I have already shared on this blog. I think one of the great things about blogging is being able to look back and see all that God has done in our lives and how much we really have to be thankful for. So, even if you aren't Canadian, I hope that you take time to reflect on all that you have to be thankful for.

PEI is known as the potato capital of Canada. Our house happens to be very near one of the larger potato farms on the Island and we have several potato fields around us, so I have been able to witness what it means to harvest potatoes. In some ways, it reminds me a lot of a typical Midwest grain harvest. There are huge pieces of equipment moving down the roads and through the fields. There are lots of trucks driving back to the farm with full loads and then back out to the field. They work until crazy hours of the night, especially when rain is on the way. And yet it is very different. The equipment is completely different. The overturned soil is red, not the rich black top soil I am used to. I find it amazing to see how many potatoes they get out of the fields. It seems like the trucks come almost non-stop. Even though it is a different kind of harvest, it is clear to see that the seasons change, even though the evidence may look a little different. It is a testimony to me of God'...

I married a man who likes his pie. It is good thing I come from a family of pie makers. I learned from my mom, who learned from hers, who learned from hers and who knows how far back this really all goes. My grandma really has the art of pie making down. She made two pies every Saturday for many, many years. One time when we were all together and I was getting another lesson in pie making, my mom asked grandma why she made two pies every Saturday while my mom was growing up. My grandma laughed and said she wanted a new oven early on in her marriage, so she promised my grandpa that if she got a new oven, she would make two pies every week. So, the new oven soon arrived and my grandma made pies every week for years. I will confess that we cheat on the crust. My mom uses Jiffy pie crust mix and the pies turn out perfect every single time. I never made a pie crust from scratch, so I was thrown for a loop when I discovered that neither of the grocery stores in Edgerton sold Jiffy pie crust ...

Okay. I have a confession to make. I am a horrible speller. Horrible. I love computers because they have spell check. I would be completely lost and helpless without it. I can most often tell when a word is not correctly spelled, but I would be hard pressed to say what the correct spelling would be. My third grade teacher, who had been teaching for several decades already told my parents at parent teacher conferences that she could not figure it out. I could read anything put in front of me, but I could not spell to save my life. And yet, I was an English teach for the past six years. Grading papers was no problem. I most often caught spelling mistakes and my students are blessed with the wonders of spell check as well. The worst was writing student responses on the board. I would often have a great word in my head to summarize what the student had said, but because I did not know how to spell it, I would have to pick a synonym that I did know how to spell. My students quickly learned ...

This was the leg of the trip that we were the most apprehensive about. Would Canada really let me in the country? Would they make us unload the entire trailer? Would we be there for an entire day? We really didn't know what to expect. We had done several things and made lots of phone calls before we left to make sure we had everything in order. As we packed, we made a list of everything that we taking with us. I numbered and labeled all of the boxes. We did as much paperwork and form filling out ahead of time as we could. So, we left my parents place around 7:00 AM. We had decided to cross the border at Port Huron/Sarnia. We knew it was a busy one, but we also knew they would have the people there who knew how to process all of the things we needed to do. It is also only 3 hours from my parents, so if something went horribly wrong, I knew someone would come and get me. We arrived at the border around 10:30. The first thing we needed to do was stop on the US side of the border and g...

Finally we have the internet hooked up and going! I have so many things that I want to post about and that I know so many of you would like to know and see. I think I am going to break it up into some different parts, so be looking for a bunch of posts in the next few days. Just briefly, we are settling into our new home well and getting unpacked. Our house is cute, but certainly has a character all its own. Wilbert went for his first day of work on the farm today, so our routine is starting to be established. I think I will end for now. More to come soon, starting with the trip out here.

I just received the request for my passport from the Canadian Government, which means that they are ready to issue my visa! So, I still have to send it in and wait for it to come back, but things are moving along and we will hopefully be on our way soon! Hurray!

I feel like I am living in a bubble right now. All of our summer plans are finished. My Canadian paper work is not here yet. So, we cannot move on the next step in our life yet...moving to PEI. My paper work is not late. It takes 5-7 months and in mid August it will be 6 months. But I am getting a bit impatient. But, I know I should not be. God's plan and timing is perfect, I believe that. Really, it is all that is keeping me from going crazy. There are still things we need to finish before we move. Getting the title for the trailer, selling our house, etc. So, I am thankful for time to do this. I am thankful that Wilbert can work for the farmer he is working for as long as we are here. We covet your prayer right now. Prayers for our patience as the last few things fall into place. Prayers that the paper work makes its way through the pipeline of government quickly. Prayers that when we do finally move, the travels will go okay for me as our baby continues to grow. "Now faith ...

Like I said earlier, we forgot our camera, but here a few pictures from the family of our vacation in the Fundy Bay area. A view from the Fundy trail. A lovely water fall in Fundy Trail Park. Kayaking through the Hopewell Rocks at High Tide. Walking around the Hopewell Rocks at low tide. Wilbert by Third Vault Falls in Fundy Park. On the trial to (or from) Third Vault Falls. I think it must be to the falls because I look pretty perky yet. The sea caves at St. Martins at low tide. At high tide this is all pretty much under water.