Sick of the tick?

So sorry to leave you staring at a tick fot two months! And for the record, we did get the head out it was determined. Ticks have surprisingly small heads apparently (thanks Josh!)
So I'm only typing with one hand because I'm nursing our new baby, Juniper Bella Rose Baker! She was born on Sept. 8th, at 12:10pm after a 2.5 hour labor. It went so fast I almost can't call it a "labor". I couldn't really get into that laborland groove... it just started and then blammo, here's the baby!
She weighed 8lbs at birth with a pretty big head.

anyway, here are some pics of Aloka before her haircut... Josh took these. Some of you all may have seen them!

Aloka got a tick

Aloka was complaining about having a bruise on her head today. Then tonight she felt her head and she said she had a bump there. I asked her if she hit her head today as I was feeling for the bump and I felt something hard and small, more like pimple size but more prominent. I have never had a tick nor seen one on someone, but I moved her hair away and sure enough there was a little grey oval thing which I could only assume was a tick. I called Richard in to the bedroom (Aloka was just going to bed when we found this) and we got out our trusty "Smart Medicine For a Healthier Child" book and read about ticks.
Aloka was completely freaked out. She already has a thing about bugs. They really creep her out, and she's heard about lice so she has a small fear of bugs in hair. She was scared, and kept asking if we'd ever get it out. It was luckily pretty quick of a surgery!
I rubbed some thick vitamin E oil on the tick, and Richard heated up some tweezers after a few minutes of letting it not get any air, and he gently pulled it out. Neither one of us have any experience with ticks but knew we didn't want to leave the head in. I wasn't sure tick heads were so small, but Josh said they're teeny when I called to consult with him.
Anyone with tick experience, feel free to reassure me this head is still attached!

a bunch of pics from the summer

I'm finally on a satellite connection so it's a little faster and a LOT more expensive, alas! I'm just uploading the cool little video of Josh and Aloka actually catching tadpoles, which we just found out are bullfrogs!! Josh is going to put them in a larger aquarium and we're hoping they survive. So far, they're doing great! Josh read a little about them online to determine that bullfrogs is indeed what they are, when he was concerned because our frogs didn't have any signs of legs yet and still have their tails, where other friends of ours who caught frogs in the same pond have already started growing their legs. Bullfrogs apparanely take a year to grow legs and drop tails. Here's the video:


And:
Presenting Aloka the photographer:


And here are a few from Kokanee Creek Provincial Park at a friends birthday. The last picture is a mama duck with her babies!


And this is from when we went for a trolley at Lakeside Park in July:

Berries we picked on our land (this was just the beginning of a bazillion strawberries, huckleberries, and saskatoon berries, aka service berries!)
And these are just a couple photos from my birthday/rock moving party:

My sister Larissa came out for our birthdays!

and a quick update, i'm still pregnant. 40 weeks tomorrow, but i told the baby to hang on in there so i could take Aloka to her first day of school starting on my due date!

Also, i don't think i blogged about this so there's some folk who don't know i cut my hand pretty bad 3 weeks ago. i fell while holding a glass, and crushed the glass with my right hand, had to go to ER for stitches and it's been a difficult recovery because we use our hands for lots of things as i've discovered. It was a gross nasty cut, and i was going to put a picture up of the injury but i decided to spare people! anyway, it's healing, and i got the stiches out a week ago. i'm loosing a chunk of my skin (the cut was on the fleshy part of my palm below my thumb) but once it scabs and comes off i can finally get my hand wet again! i can't wait. More later!

a Father's Day blog

I'm so behind in my posting that I realized I never got up these wonderful Father's Day pictures. Josh, I and Aloka went to a beautiful pond called "Grohman Narrows" and had a little picnic, then collected tadpoles!

We brought a jar, and Josh caught 4 tadpoles with his hands! It was so much fun, and he still has them at his house. They are growing and happy and Aloka gets to watch them as the metamorphosis into frogs! The still don't even have their little legs yet but they're getting much bigger! I'll put this post up with the photos, but check back in a couple days for a really cool video too, it will just take me a bit to upload the movie.

Bellydance at Marketfest

Well, I did my first performance as a troupe member! It was really fun, and since we're a professional Bellydance troupe, we get paid for it too.
I love doing Tribal Bellydance, it's an empowering and strong form of dance for women, much different than the showy Egyptian Oriental style of bellydance that's more for performance.

It is great for pregnant women, and originated with women doing it for other women, particularly women in labor. There is another troupe member who is also pregnant, but not quite as far a long.

Waiting to enter...

Aloka is the one in the red shirt, watching the performance... there were people surrounding us!

Presenting our beautiful daughter!

Isn't she cute?? She got her face painted a couple weeks ago at the Saturday Market here in town.

Happy Canada Day everyone! July 1st is Canada Day (the birthday of the country) here, for you American family and friends. We had a GREAT time! Aloka and I walked over to where all the festivities are at Lakeside Park. It's a very family friendly event, and people had been there all day. We got there around 7pm, the fireworks are over the lake at 10pm and I was waffling about whether or not to keep Aloka up. We ended up staying, and Richard got off work at 8pm and walked over to the park to join in. We also invited Josh and Ellie, but they couldn't make it unfortunately. We weren't sure where we should sit to watch fireworks and wanted to be able to get out of the parking lot fast. We had parked in front of the soccer field at the park, so we decided at 9:40pm to go drive somewhere where we could see the fireworks from our car and then just zip home. When we got to our car, we realized we were in the perfect spot, so we just threw down a blanket and sat on the field in front of our car. Low and behold, the fireworks were literally being set of right in front of us on the other side of the field! So we got the best view in the entire town. Aloka snuggled on my lap, and we watched the beautiful show. Then we got into our car and easily got out and were home within 20 minutes! It was perfect!

On our way to Lakeside Park to hang out with friends while waiting for the fireworks to start. Aloka of course saw a heap of her friends there. Pretty much everyone in Nelson it seems like!

Just yesterday, we went for a walk and found a huge wild strawberry patch (High Alpine Strawberries) right next to our house. There are zillions of strawberries, but these were the first ones to ripen! They were soooo delicious, and Aloka ate pretty much all of them!

I have so much more to post, i'm incredibly behind. I go on maternity leave on July 13th, so after that I'll have more time to blog hopefully! I have lots of fun photos of Aloka and Josh collecting tadpoles from a pond we went to on Father's Day, plus Birthday parties galore she's been attending. Coming soon!