Deroche 2022

Friday:

On Friday afternoon we packed up our Yukon and headed over to Deroche for our annual VanDelft reunion. 

Saturday:

The last few weeks have been so crazy busy for Will and I that we were unsure if we could afford to take three days off, but then we realised we needed the days off in order to recover a bit before jumping back into the insanity. And we are so glad we did go! Already Saturday morning we felt like the haze had lifted and we were able to enjoy ourselves. 

It was very windy on Saturday morning but thankfully James didn't seem to mind. 

I took the kids for a walk to the playground. The promised playground that they had spent all week looking forward to. And it was non-existent! All that was left were two swings. Oh how they were so disappointed... 

Well, we made the best of the swings and then kept going on our walk to find more to explore. 

Auntie Nadia and Soph had taken Delilah on a walk of the grounds earlier that morning and so Delilah decided she was taking me and William on the walk and pointing out everything to us. 

Explaining to William how the teeter-totter table works. 

On another walk later on in the day, followed by Trevor, the guard dog. 

Seeing what we can find

Trevor quickly discovered that we had lots of food crumbs and scraps for him to clean up. He was often roaming around our campsite looking for things to snack on. 

I took this picture because James was sitting on the mat there and Trevor came and sat right next to James with their backs juuust barely touching. 

On a walk with William

Will set up these lights for our tent - very handy! 

Sunday:

Madilyn and Ben were up before our kids were ready to leave the tent on Sunday morning. They knew they couldn't get out, but still wanted to be a part of the action out there. 

Off for a swim with Uncle Pete. 

I didn't get a picture of it because I was swimming too, but on Saturday Delilah learned to swim all by herself! Leading up to the trip she kept telling us how she was going to swim all by herself, close her mouth, and put her head underwater. A brave statement for someone who up until this moment would only put their feet in!

On Saturday she started off only on the edge, then had some piggy back rides, and eventually was confident to doggypaddle herself around. By Sunday evening when Will took her swimming she was bold enough to jump into the pool all by herself! It's so special to see her progressing and learning to enjoy something that used to scare her. 

The weather forecast had predicted a lot more rain than we ended up getting. Very thankful for that! 

A bunch of people went swimming Sunday evening but Ben and William played with glowsticks instead. 

Monday:

Delilah picked some flowers

Jonah and William 💙

Looks as though they should be having some deep conversation about life.