Sunday 13 July 2008

Cowboy hats and banana pancakes

A final blog update before we head off to Europe for 3 weeks holiday. We'll be spending a week in Cyprus visiting Jim's father and a fortnight in the UK seeing family and friends.

Here in Southern Alberta, we are in the midst of rodeo season at the moment. The Calgary stampede concluded this weekend and Medicine Hat's own stampede starts the week after next.

With cowboy's everywhere you look, the traditional attire has crept into Ralston too, which is how we found ourselves this morning dining on our regular Sunday breakfast of banana pancakes and maple syrup whilst wearing cowboy hats! We blame our guests MaryAnne & Ed who arrived in them and started some competitive hat wearing!

Joking aside, we may look like clowns to our UK audience, but this really is how the locals dress in the summer and in some cases in the winter too!

In exchange for a traditional Canadian breakfast, MaryAnne also did a spot of renovation on our "issued" kitchen chairs. One of the more challenging aspects of life as an army wife is losing control of your choice of home and in some locations (like here) your choice of furniture too.

Although, most of what we have is pretty good, the kitchen chairs we were given were 20 years old and covered in a ghastly patterned velvet fabric. Technically we aren't supposed to alter our accommodation or the furniture, but MaryAnne has done a rather good job of bending the rules and covering over the old fabric on her own chairs, so I asked her if she'd do the same with ours. It's amazing what 20 minutes and 50 cents of fabric can do!

1 comment:

  1. Some good pictures there Clare and Jim. You been keeping tabs on our holiday?

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