Dinner in the field

Dale's mom entered a contest at the local credit union to get dinner in the field. It used to be a common practice that during harvest, dinner would be brought to the farmers in the field. Eleanor still does this sometimes for Dale and Ken and those working with them.

So, to make a long story short, she won, and we all had dinner in the field last Thursday the 14th of September. In this picture you see Dale, Ailsa and Aleta next to Ken and Eleanor, Jeff and Rick from the credit union, and Dave and Charlie, two retired men who are helping with the harvest, driving the swather, the stone picker, or helping fix the combines when they have a breakdown. Standing on the combine are Courtney and Kim and their daughter Taryn; Courtney has been driving the truck this fall.

We're standing on Dale's land, that he bought from his uncle a few years ago. It's next to land his dad owns, and all of that used to belong to their dad, and before them his father. So now there are 5 generations of Leftwiches on this land, three of which are in this picture.

Helen Solmes from the local paper, the Miner-Journal, was dining with us too, and she took this photograph (thanks for sharing the photo, Helen).

As you can see, it was a bit cool. We'd had hot weather almost the entire summer and it just turned cool the very day of this dinner. Since then rain has impeded the harvest, but the weather is improving and hopefully everything will dry out soon and they can finish before it rains again (or snows!)

Harvest

Dale and his dad are very busy these days harvesting their wheat, oats and canola. Eleanor, Aleta and I made a trip to the field one gorgeous summer day to see them. Here are a couple of videos. The first shows Ken driving the combine, and the second shows Dale in his combine, with the truck coming to load the wheat.

Cheeks? What cheeks?

Aleta had her 2 month checkup this week (and two nasty pokes in the leg too - OUCH!). She's a healthy 14.2 pounds and 22.75 inches now, having already doubled her birth weight. I don't know about those growth and weight charts. She's in the 97th percentile for weight and 75th for length. But breastfed babies I think cannot be put on the same scale as formula fed babies. She's just a healthy girl. She has started to experiment with the different sounds she can make and it's really funny to listen to. Will try and capture it in a video clip soon!

I'm smiling now

Actually, I've been smiling for a few weeks but it's taken awhile for mommy to capture it well on camera!
 

My Leftwich cousins

A couple of weeks ago (geez, mommy is getting slow about posting stuff), all of my cousins on Dad's side of the family came to visit me! That's Liana (holding me), Kimberley and Pamela Mechor. This was the first time I met Pamela. I had met the older two on the way back from Alberta. I think I'm very lucky to have such beautiful and happy cousins.


Although you can't see it here, Pamela and I had a tongue-sticking-out contest. She kept sticking her tongue out at me, and I couldn't resist it anymore, so I got her back. It was a fun game and seemed to make everyone around me laugh.

 

Zeddie thinks we brought her a new bed

Cute, but forbidden! Try and tell her that, though.


I figure that as we were eventually able to dissuade her from jumping on the counter (with the occasional lapse of good judgement), we can probably get her to stop jumping in the crib. At present the crib is right beside our bed, so it makes for easy access. Hopefully when we get into a different house we'll have more room and more interesting places for the cat to explore thus turning her attention elsewhere.