One Part Inspiration...

Raise your hand if you are confused. It's Spring! No, hang on a second. It's the 25th of December! The buds are out in full force. Then why do I have my parka on? Time to sweep out the garage. What is this snow shovel doing out? Time to dig out the t-shirts. Better layer it with some heavy-duty sweatshirts! I bought a bike the other day at a garage sale. I wonder if I should get snow tires for it? I don't know about you, but I have been noticing that the weather has been a bit menopausal lately. Cold, hot, hot, cold. How's a girl supposed to know how to prepare? Fuzzy slippers to keep warm or sandals? Make a fire or get out the iced tea? Honestly. I am so confused. Can someone please advise me what to do? I'll be cuddled up with my hot water bottle. (With the window open for some fresh air)

For the past few days, we had some young men staying with us from Winnepeg. They were on a band trip. During their stay, when they were in our home, or we were going back and forth to their meeting spots, I asked about their weather and their transportation and how big the black flies were in Manitoba. I found out about how big their school was, where abouts in relation to the school they lived. They told me there's a 7-11 on every street corner in the city. I wonder if they thought me a little wacko for being so inquisitive. Any time you are a billet, you are at the mercy of complete strangers. You have to adapt to their household rules in a matter of hours. It's a bit like a Russian Roulette. You never know what you are going to experience. You don't even have to go out of the country to have a different cultural experience because each family has its own culture. I thought back over billeting experiences I have had. On a band trip in high school, my sister and I were bil...

Today is my Mom's birthday. She would have been 84. I think about her every day, although it has been almost nine years since she died. In honor of her birthday, I am going to share a couple of memories I have of her. My mom was environmentally careful. It's interesting that today has been dubbed Earth Day because my mom was into environmentalism before it even was a word in the Scrabble dictionary. I remember her insisting that we wash out milk bags to use again. Every other family had Ziploc; we had plastic milk bags tied with a twist tie, or taped down with Scotch tape. It was so terribly embarrassing until twenty some years later, when we are reminded of it in Al Gore's film"An Inconvenient Truth" . We realize Mom was onto something after all! I remember her bemoaning the fact that cans were so precious in Ethiopia, but in Canada, there was nothing for them but to toss them in the garbage. I think at one point, she tried to save them - but in those days, there...

The Boy got his Learner's Licence on Friday. A new era has begun. The era when you have to ask your kids if they would mind lending you the vehicle. The era when you send them out to buy the groceries so that they can have the practice. The era when you wait for them to call that they are on their way, and then mentally calculate how soon they should be pulling in the driveway while you try to distract yourself and pretend that you haven't looked at the clock five hundred times in five minutes. This milestone was squeezed into the activities of a very busy week and weekend. We hardly had time to turn around, let alone tune into the fact that another milestone has been passed in our household. I will have to mark it somehow. Hmm .. perhaps I will let him take me out to Timmie's for a celebration Ice Cap. He can drive and I can make marks in the armrest with my fingernails and practice deep breathing (opposite from sharp intakes of breath when he pulls a little tooooo C LO s...

I found this poem this week in my search for the other poem which ended up to be a fruitless endeavour. I thought this was quite cute so I am passing it on. If You Give A Mom A Muffin If you give a mom a muffin, She'll want a cup of coffee to go with it. She'll pour herself some. Her three-year-old will spill the coffee. She'll wipe it up. Wiping the floor, she'll find dirty socks. She'll remember she has to do laundry. When she puts the laundry in the washer, She'll trip over boots and bump into the freezer. Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan for supper. She will get out a pound of hamburger. She'll look for her cookbook ("101 Things To Do With a Pound of Hamburger"). The cookbook is setting under a pile of mail. She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow. She will look for her checkbook. The check book is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two-year-old. She'll smell something funny. She'll change th...

Say you opened up your email and saw that your son's drama coach was asking for help with intermission snacks for the crew. Say you decided to email back and commit to making snacks for them for one night. Beware dear reader. This decision will alter at least half of your day. Let me share my experience and you will see why. It all began with a http://www.tadalists.com/ reminder I was on tap to make snacks for the dress rehearsal. I wondered to myself if I had any chocolate chips left. Chocolate chip cookies and spaghetti are two things I know how to pull out of my cook's hat. So off I wandered to the kitchen to find chocolate chips. Only to be confronted by what I had been denying for a long time. My baking/spice cupboards were a mess. I had little bits of this and that in bags (which I hate) as well as odds and ends of drink mixes, spices, etc. So I took the plunge. I pulled everything out. It was amazing what I found. Anyone need some vanilla pudding mixes? Ice cream cones?...

if you wander over to http://random-ponderings.blogspot.com/ there's an amazing video about underwater creatures ...unbelievable how God's creative streak runs through even to the deep

Watched any good movies lately? We rented "Martian Child" starring John Cusack . Didn't know much about it. The boxes don't tell you that much either. It turned out to be an engaging movie. The story is that his wife has died and he is a mess. Then he finds a kid who is in a worse mess than he is. The child believes he is an alien from Mars. When you first see "Dennis", he is in a box with a hole cut out so he can watch the world from this safe place. The story follows the journey that this dad has in trying to understand how to introduce the kid to the ways of humanity. I won't give the whole story away, but it was a very interesting concept that when all children come into the world, it's like they are from another planet and we are teaching them about the world and how to operate in this universe. I was looking for a poem that was given to me when my second son was born and I can't find it. Which is frustrating. The one I post below is a clo...

How would you answer the following questions? Hmmmm..well...since I don't know what you would say, I will let you know what I would say and then if you want, you can leave a comment. What was your favorite part(s) of this week? What is something you would like to change about this week? What is a risk you took this week? What would you like to rant about? What's on your " Gunna " list? Well, I'm so glad I get the chance to answer these burning questions . My favorite parts of the week were having a secret stash of free time, enjoying the scenery around me (one morning as I returned from early-morning drop-off, the Golden Ears Mountains were poking through the clouds. They were covered in snow and the cloud was white. It was absolutely gorgeous) pleasant interactions with friends and family as well as enjoying some funny interpretations of life in general. For instance: In the kindergarten class, they were asked "Does anyone know what bold is? " and on...

Ahhhhh. A quiet moment and actual space to sit and blog. Blog blog blog. So tonight, I am going to share with you the good, the bad and the ugly. No particular reason. It just is a good title. And because it's my blog, I will name it what I want. First: The Good: "The Soccer Award" My husband was awarded the " Abbotsford Soccer Association Coach of the Year " award. Yep. He has been coaching for ten years, and this year, for the first time, he has been honored by the community association to which he has literally given thousands of hours. I am so proud of him. He has deserved to be honored way before this but I am particularly proud of the fact that he has been given this in the final year that he will be coaching this set of girls. He has given himself not only to the game, but the life-coaching of the girls as well. Many times, I have seen him putting himself out for the various life changes that have happened to his team members - good life choices, bad life...