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Updates!

It’s been a busy five months!

Looks beautiful and serene, doesn’t it? Nope. This photo is one of many that represents our fighting with beavers up north.

beaver-dam

Unfortunately, they’re doing a lot of damage to the property and risking flooding the road, so we’re required to get them to move on to a different location. This took several months to sort out. We haven’t checked on it in a few weeks. I’m afraid of what we might find, but it’s going to have to happen sooner rather than later. Cross your fingers for me. As a bonus, we did get some really beautiful fall colours to look at while we ripped apart the dam for the 100th time… and we found a really fantastic chip truck nearby.

fall-colours

We got some fishing in, some days more successful than others…

fishing

Hallowe’en included pumpkin carving and running out of candy at 7pm… (we had 150 kids in less than 3 hours!)

Along with the holidays comes lots of baking, which I absolutely love. I made our usual family favourites, carrot pudding (shown pre-mixed below), gingerbread, whipped shortbread, fudge, and this year I made pretzel brittle which was a huuuuuge hit!

baking

pretzel-brittle

Woodland Trail Studio was so busy this holiday season, I didn’t even have time to update the website! Our Instagram usually has in progress and finished pieces, so check that out for the latest there, and the website will get updated eventually!

wts

Ocean City, 2014

It was an early start to the day, but with a 10+ hour drive ahead of us, leaving at 4am wasn’t too terrible!

sunrise-there

<3

sand-dollar-heart

No idea what these things were, but they were coming in and out of their shells. We felt badly and put them back in the water, but the tide brought it back on the beach… so too bad weird creatures, it wasn’t meant to be.

log

My view 90% of the week – I spent as much time on the beach as weather and sunburns allowed!

shells

The boardwalk and pier!

pier

H2Oi is a car show held in Ocean City every year – this year it featured 10x the normal amount of police, including mounted police and bike police… and one poor guy that looked exactly like Jonah Hill didn’t get any break from people shouting “JONAH!!!” at him alllll week.

jonah-hill

This is the small horseshoe crab we found, a bit bigger than the size of my hand.

horseshoecrab-small

This horseshoe crab was HUGE! So big it could have been a helmet, but I wasn’t about to put it on my head!

horseshoecrab-big

One morning there was a neat layer of black sand on top of the beach, wonder where it came from? Volcano?

black-sand

beach2

heart

The view of the strip from the balcony on one side. Great place to watch the cars go by!

strip

Pano of the view from the beach on one side to the bay on the other!

pano-view

I pretty much lived by this chart all week! I was so hoping to find a shark tooth at low tide, but sadly we didn’t find one. It was a great time looking though!

low-tide

shell-holes

Tiny blue crab!

bluecrab

Sand Crab!

crab1

clouds

crab2

The sunrise as we left… so beautiful!

sunrise-leaving

Stumpy the chipmunk

“Stumpy” is our overly-friendly local chipmunk up north. He’s got half a tail (hence his name) and personal boundary issues. He’s no stranger to taking the easiest path (across your shoulders, arm, lap, etc.) to seeds, and has even crawled up a leg or two!

stumpy1

stumpy2

stumpy3

stumpy4

First trip to Algonquin for 2014!

Our first trip up this year, and wow, did we see a LOT of wildlife! It was a rainy, gross day; perfect for a drive through Algonquin Park. A couple of detours due to flooded roads, but we finally got up there!

We saw:
6 moose (1 calf, 5 bull)
20+ deer
3 beavers
1 muskrat
12+ wild turkeys
several assorted hawks/ospreys/birds

haliburton-deer1

haliburton-deer2

Is it just me, or does he look unimpressed?haliburton-moose1

haliburton-moose2

haliburton-moose3a

Cheeeeeeese!haliburton-moose3b

haliburton-osprey1

haliburton-osprey2