The Talens' Tales

My parents came for a week long visit and we had a wonderful time with them.  We spent a morning at That Fun Place.  We also went mini-golfing one morning, but we forgot to take pictures. Another day we went the Greenwich Beach, which has very interesting interpretive center, trails to walk and lovely, quiet beach. Exploring the map of eastern PEI a the interpretive center  Walking the trails at Greenwich Beach  They have nice lookout tower at the beach.  Playing on the beach with Grandpa and Grandma.  We also spent sometime downtown Charlottetown. We stopped a the library, had Cows Ice Cream and did the Fox Story Walk together. It was a fun day. We are so happy that Grandpa and Grandma could come to visit and we look forward to the next time we see them.

 We decided to head to Old Home Week again this year. On the dairy show day, because if we go, that is the day we go. We had fun with these animals!  Gideon went on his first amusement park rides and he liked them quite a bit.  And of course the large tractor. Everyone is a fan of this one!

There is still so much of the Island and so many things to do that we have yet to explore. Last week, we did two days trips to different destinations on the Island. We used the Heritage Pass that is available for check out from the Public Library. This pass is good for one free family admission to seven different sites on PEI.  One day we visited Orwell Corner Historical Village. This was a great hidden gem of a place! The main agricultral museum is air conditioned, which we really enjoyed since we visited on a very warm day. We had our picnic lunch by the school house, watched a working black smith, took a wagon ride around the site and saw some neat farm animals. The kids all really enjoyed this site and would like to go back again!  Another day we headed further east and visited the Elmira Railway Museum. This was a small museum, but very nicely done. They have a great model train display. There are also two different train rides you can ride on while there. ...

It was my 36th birthday last week, and it was a great one.  My husband and kids got me these lovely flower, a planner for 2019 and some magnetic book marks. So great!  And Wilbert and I went out for lunch and then saw the matinee of Anne and Gilbert downtown. It was a fantastic show! It was a great way to celebrate a great day!

A few weeks ago we had a great visit from Emil, Karisa and Zeke. There was lots of cousin love...  Oom Emil love....  And Oom Wilbert and tractor magazine love...  There were lots of walks with Oma...  And trips to the beach...  They were here over Canada, so there was the annual Church Picnic, of course...  It was a cool day, but no rain.  But yes, I did wear my sweater on the beach.  We also took a family morning and visited The Butterfly House  It was lovely and peaceful and most of the family enjoyed it. Zeke was a little nervous the whole time, but over all did well. We also had a picnic lunch and saw the Young Company Show at the Confederation Center. We had a great time and were sad to see them go. Hopefully the time will just fly by until our next visit.

I will admit, we are often home bodies. We all like to be home, in our normal space and routine. But sometimes we need to get out of the house and take in some fun things on the Island. This weekend, Joash, Mataya and I went to Reading Street, an event put on by Reading Town PEI . It was supposed to outside, but rain moved it inside.   They had a great variety of activities for the kids, different authors reading and lots of free things. We were all pretty excited about the free books we got.  It was a fun event and I hope that we can take in some more of these things in the future.  And Joash has been doing jobs around the house since February to earn money to buy a Lego set he wanted. Well, Saturday was the day he finally had enough money, so we stopped by Toys R Us to pick up the lego set. He was very excited about it! It was a nice change of pace for a weekend for us.

One thing that we never got to this summer was going to Bonshaw Provincial Park.  So, when the weather looked very nice for Saturday, we decided to make that the day to go.  It was a lovely fall day. Cool, but not too cold. Sunny with clear blue skies and the tree just starting to turn color. We packed a picnic lunch and headed to the park in the morning. We walked a short trail before lunch. Then then kids played for a bit on the playground and we had lunch in the picnic area. Then we walked some longer trails in the park and went to the foot bridge and saw some fish in the river.  Overall, the kids did great. They were good hiker, though the did get impatient while we were looking for a geocache. We will have to go back later to find the geocaches in the park. This is a great park with nice trails, a neat playground and picnic area in a lovely part of PEI.

My birthday present to myself this year was to join the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club . It is an online book club and I am so excited to be a part of it. I haven't been in book club in a long time, mostly because all of the invitations I get usually end with, "and at our meetings, we usually don't talk about the book very much, so it doesn't matter if you read it or not." What is the point of a book club if you are not actually going to talk about the book? So, anyway, I am excited to be a part of a community of people who read as much as I do and like to talk about what they read. I was even more excited when I learned that the pick for November was going to be Emily of New Moon . And since I have lived on PEI for almost 7 years and had yet to visit L. M. Montgomery's Birthplace , I figured it was high time. So the kids and I hopped in the van this afternoon and drove through some lovely countryside to New London, PEI. Joash took this picture of ...

One thing Joash had on his summer bucket list was to climb to the top of a lighthouse (inspired by Wilbert and I going to a lighthouse on our anniversary). So we took the day yesterday and headed to the Wood Island Lighthouse . It was a great lighthouse with great museum about lighthouses on PEI, the Northumberland Ferry, fishing among other things. It was geared toward families and even had a scavenger hunt that Joash was able to do. If you are looking for a good lighthouse to take kids too, this is a great one! What can you find on the beach? At the top! Joash was a bit nervous at the top, so I am not really sure if he took it all in or not. But, we are glad he just made it up there. Watching a video on fishing. Gideon, the captain of the ferry. And of course the location is just lovely. We had taken a lunch along and enjoyed a picnic by the ocean and also found a geocache hidden in the area. Another item on the kids summer bucket list was a visit...