Kyle Maclean – Page 3 – Maclean Family Blog

Babies’ First Camping Trip and Hike

On June 29th to July 2nd when the babies were about 2 months old,

we took the babies out west of Bragg Creek for their first camping trip to what is probably my favourite campsite within an hours drive of the city, Little Elbow Provincial Campground.

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This was the first time we took the twins out of the house for more than a few hours and it couldn’t have gone better. They slept really well in our tent trailer and they absolutely loved being in the great outdoors.

On our second day we took them for a hike up Nihahi Ridge which also went really well. We took a break around 4/5ths of the way up to feed the babies on the side of the mountain.

Our good friends Sarah and Levi joined us on the second day with their 1 year old Piper and Levi and I went for a walk down to the Elbow river so that he could get a little fishing in.

The trip really couldn’t have gone better and gave us an idea of what we could look forward to for the rest of the year as we take these babies on one adventure after another (aside from the 4am epic tandem puking session on the 3rd night but I guess it would have been too much to expect that there wouldn’t be at least one challenge to overcome).

We Got a Little Snow

Calgary got walloped over the weekend with a steady stream of snow and bitter cold that was capped off on Sunday night with a big dump of snow with temperatures hovering around -28C. Thankfully the snow stopped when it did as I was starting to run out of places to put it.

I know that a lot of western Canada was hit pretty hard this weekend and that some places got it a lot worse (or better?) than we did but it was still a pretty noteworthy event for Calgary. The good news is that it’s predicted to be +8C by the end of the week.

We Got a Smoker and Made Smoked Chicken Minestrone!

We finally bought a smoker which brings us one step closer to being able to make our own sausages using our own gear. The only missing piece now is a sausage stuffer and some know-how. If you have any recommendations on those fronts, hit me up.

Bradely Digital Smart Smoker — Bradley Digital Smart Smoker

So far we have smoked a couple of venison roasts and a whole chicken. The roasts were only ok but the chicken was fantastic. I’ll describe what we did with the chicken below.

The smoker works really well and produces a lot of steady smoke. The smoker has what appears to be a kind of gimmicky feature; Bluetooth. That’s not what sold me on this particular smoker but I have to say now that I’ve tried it, it’s a game changer. I can set the smoker up and forget about it until I get an alert on my phone that whatever I’m smoking has reached the target temperature, or change the oven temperature from my phone etc. It’s pretty slick.

Continue reading “We Got a Smoker and Made Smoked Chicken Minestrone!”

Taking a Page (or a Box) From Finland

Apparently, for the past 75 years Finland has had a program wherein every mother who gives birth, is given a “Baby Box” which is packed full of stuff for newborns including things you might not even know that you need, and the box itself is lined with a mattress and serves as a bassinet made from non-toxic materials. The idea is to give everyone a little bit of a head start no matter what your socioeconomic background. This program is credited in part for Finland’s exceptionally low infant mortality rate.

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Movement!

I felt one of the babies move for the first time last night!

Janet was told that she should expect to feel movement starting anywhere from 20 weeks to 24 weeks in. When 24 weeks rolled around with still no definitive movement we were starting to wonder if we would ever feel them moving. Janet said she had been feeling a “flutter” from time to time but nothing that couldn’t be explained by borborygmi.

Apparently babies in utero tend to be most active at night while mom is sleeping as her daily activity tends to lull them to sleep and that fits with our experience as I felt the girl move while laying in bed as Janet and I were going to sleep.

Now that Janet knows what to look for she says she thinks she has only felt the girl move so far. We are both looking forward to feeling the boy move next.

General Tips for Cooking Wild Game

We were lucky enough to fill our freezers this year with wild game after a successful hunting season and that has allowed us the opportunity to share some of that bounty with friends and family.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people don’t have much, if any, experience cooking with wild game and there are a few things to know. Before I get to that, I’d like to touch base on why some people think they don’t like wild game, specifically, that “gamey” flavour. Continue reading “General Tips for Cooking Wild Game”

Baby Bump Update

Janet asked me to post this on her behalf as she was experiencing some technical difficulties:

From top left to bottom right; the first picture is December 22, then January 5, January 11 ending with January 21. Not going to lie I feel bigger than the pictures portray!

Janet Pregnant 2017-01-21 — Janet’s baby bump 2017-01-21

New Year’s Eve Eve Bouillabaisse

Ostensibly, this blog is supposed to be about our family, but I love food and food is no small part of our family.

I love hunting and fishing for food, gathering and growing food, cooking and preserving food, experimenting with food, and to share both the food that I make, and my ideas with others, so I’m going to document some of my experiments/favourites here. If it becomes distracting or annoying we will figure out a solution to segregate any food posts that I make so as not to detract from the main purpose of this blog. I also love booze, so watch out for that too…

So, to get to the point, we sent some deer and elk meat from our bountiful hunting trip this year back east for Christmas with our friend Matt. Matt generously reciprocated by bringing back 4 nice lobsters for us which we made short work of, but the best was yet to come!

I had been wanting to make a bouillabaisse (a french seafood stew) for a couple of years and with the big pile of lobster shells we finally had the opportunity to make a stock which would do the bouillabaisse justice.

Below are recipes for the lobster stock and the bouillabaisse we cooked up for our dinner on the eve of new year’s eve.

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Christmas Tree Hunting

Shortly after waking up today the snow began to fall, and then it really began to fall. Finally some legitimate winter weather!

We had planned to go and cut our own Christmas trees with Diana and Jeremy and our friend Sean and his son Solace. Unfortunately, Diana ended up having to work, and Sean was feeling less than chipper. Janet and I deliberated about postponing our plans until next weekend, but with forecasts calling for daytime highs below -20°C next weekend we decided to strike while the iron was hot, or, at least not quite as cold.

We loaded up the thermoses, and dogs and chainsaw and hit the road.

Continue reading “Christmas Tree Hunting”

Twins!

We went for a 6 week ultrasound as prescribed.

The technician worked her magic and we got to see some exciting images up on the screen and as the technician was finishing up she turned to us and said “I can tell you right now that it’s twins.”

I was speechless.

I had barely signed on for one and now there would be two? At once?!

After some time to process (and a bottle of bourbon) I couldn’t be more excited. We can’t wait to meet and get to know these babies!

We have since learned that they are dichorionic and diamniotic fraternal twins, or in other words, they have separate placentas and separate amniotic sacs and they originate from separate eggs so they are not identical. This is great news as it is the lowest risk scenario as far as multiples go.

Not only are they not identical, they are not even the same sex, we’re having a boy and a girl!

boy or girl? I can't remember which is which! — Baby A