There are fires burning across the province and the skies are hazy this morning, the smell of smoke hangs in the air.  I can still hear the magpies talking to each other through the open windows, giving each other hell or encouragement;  I'm not sure which. 

My baby granddaughter is doing well, much happier since teeth have stopped erupting in her mouth, for the time being.  She twinkles.  The other night she fell asleep in my arms, exhausted from the heat.  The big guy and I spend a lot of time now in Sherwood Park, helping to get the house ready for his daughter and her family to move in. 

Last weekend Katie had a giant meltdown at Fort Edmonton Park.  She loves wagon rides and we took her on the wagon.  Life was good.  She was happy.  We had lunch and she said she wanted another ride.  It wasn't busy, there were no other people on the wagon so we thought why not?  Katie was happy, happy, happy;  very excited, clapping, squealing and then in a split second she spilled over into overexcited and then boom, upset.  She screamed, cried, slapped her head, banged her teeth with her hands, arched her back, shook her legs.  It went on and on, or so it seemed.  We cut short the ride, all the wagon drivers know Katie, and we had to physically carry her off the wagon.  She wouldn't stand, continued to scream, throw her head around, slap herself.  I put on my "fuck off" face to keep onlookers away and we went someplace quiet for her to calm down, which she did and then she started up again.  So we left. 

We think she just go overexcited.  I'm so thankful the big guy was me because I couldn't have managed her otherwise.  He's 6'5" and 250lbs and he had a hard time holding her in the wagon.  I managed to stay calm which was good for me and we were able to calm her.  Baby steps.

I spent much of last night going through photos from our trip.  Three thousand photos.  It's just work at this point and of course I'm very critical of my photos.  I always think, I could have done that better.  Of course I can only shoot what I see on that day, nothing more.  So I take a deep breath and remind myself how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful country.