Oh, how rude of Mother Nature and a squirrel!

Rain, rain ..... lots of rain .... and then SNOW!  That was our Thanksgiving weekend here in Northern Ontario, Canada.  Our wood stove was constantly burning wood to heat our tiny cottage.  If you would like to know what our life is like at our cottage, then read on.

The rain didn't hold back the ATVers.  Out they went, all bundled up against the cold and the rain.  They came back drenched and cold, but quickly warmed up in our warm cottage.  There were a few times the sun came out but it didn't stay for long.  This is hunting season for partridge right now and everyone had to wear orange when out and about.  There were 2 side x side ATV's (holds up to four people in each) and 3 regular ATV's.  Good thing our cottage lot has lots of room for parking 4 vehicles, 3 trucks plus 2 trailers holding the ATV's plus all the ATV's once off the trailers.  It was quite chaotic in the back lot.  As long as there was a clear path to get to the outhouses ... no problem.

A couple of the guys ventured onto a be.a.v.er dam.  Walking carefully, it held them up, no problem.

There were lots of quilts on hand to keep everyone warm at night.  The temperature dipped to around 1C (33.8F) at night to around 4C (39.2) during the day.  So, it was a cool weekend.   

Just a few days before we were having such beautiful autumn weather and then it quickly dipped.  We are hoping that we will return to more weeks of nice weather to go back out to the cottage.  We didn't close it up for the winter, so there are still chores to be done.  We did get our screen porch wrapped in plastic and a post installed to support our roof against the snow load to come.

No quilting stuff came out with me to work on as there were just too many people in our small cottage.  Only embroidery on this pillowcase.  Not much got done as there were two babies to look after and they didn't nap at the same time.  As you can see by the date on this photo, I don't think it has been touched since.  Time to get the second pillowcase done and out of my cupboard.

Then, on Monday morning, we woke up to about 2" of snow on the ground.  Gosh, but it looked like Christmas morning.  So quiet and white.

There was enough wet snow to make a snowman.

My sister and my cottage with the screen porch all wrapped up in plastic.  

Just three of the littles that kept us busy.

I asked this one if she deliberately brought out an elf costume in the off chance of snow?

Board games came out and a bunch played or looked on.  There is no electricity at our cottage (only minor solar power) .... so we have to find our own amusement.

This was the road on my way home.  Snow on the edges and quite muddy in places.  There were some downed trees on the road; but, they were all cleared by the time I left.  So, that was our Thanksgiving weekend.  Very busy!

This is the be.a.v.er dam at the bridge that was shown in an earlier post.  The dam was built up again after the last breakage and here it is opened up again.  Probably, next time we go to the cottage, it will be built up again.  It appears that someone is managing the level of the pond so that if it does break naturally, the rush of water won't wash the bridge out.  This was the best photo that I could get as a truck pulled up behind me and I was blocking the way.

  

On the quilting side, I'm starting to play around with this new project.  It will be a quilt-as-you-go.  I just had to start something new.  Oh, that pesky squirrel.

Cherish your day, cherish your life!