We can NEVER move

I don't mean that is the sense that we love where we live soooo much that we could never, ever leave.

We do like our house - we've done lots to make it our own - and we like the neighborhood that we live in. It's in a good area close to all the good stores, there are lots of parks to walk to and a great bike path for walking and biking.

But the reason we can NEVER move is because of the collection of address lables we have.

















This is only about half of the ones we have received. Some were very large and gawdy so I just recycled them.

Now I use snail mail about once a month during a good month. So this would likely be a LIFETIME supply of address labels. I do send Christmas cards via snail mail (they are just more fun to receive in my books than e-cards) but I have a whole other collection filled with Christmas labels.

The charities seem to be using the labels to guilt us into donating. The problem I have is that you only get the labels AFTER you have already donated. Then they send you the labels so you will feel like you have to donate again because of the nice gift they sent you. Seeing as I have so many, I am sure their tactics are no longer working.

We'll be here until we are old and gray and snail mail doesn't exist. We'll stick our address labels to the crosswords we'll spend all day doing. At least we'll be together AND we'll know where we live.

I'm Baaack!

My computer hard drive became corrupt last Friday. Why you ask?

Was it a virus.

Nope.

It was either the way the operating system was installed or the way Dell partitions their drives.

Either way it was Dell's fault. Meaning the hard drive is replaced since it was still under warrantly.

How long have you had your computer, you may ask....

Since the end of March.

IF is crashes every 6 months I will have A LOT more grey hair.

Thankfully I am not in the middle of a module right now. Had I been, this would have been a much BIGGER deal. Really it was a minor inconvience and meant less blogging and emailing time. AND I will now back up my pictures more often. Somehow I am really good at keeping my work files backed up but not so good with the pictures. Lesson learned.

I didn't lose anything though. My sister-in-laws brother recovered everything for me - yay!

Did ya miss me?

Why I love THIS province

A while ago I was in cyber space reading strangers' blogs and I came across a comment on one about this province I live in that was not very nice. Basically to the effect that they could never live HERE.

I have to say that I take offense to that somewhat. Whether I should or not is up for debate but I am an honest person and I do.

I was born here and have lived here most of my life. BUT I have travelled Canada extensively and the US to a smaller degree. I have enjoyed all of the places I have been. Each has it's own unique characteristics that makes it special. I do comment on occaison that I prefer living here, where it's small but not too small AND it's affordable ( a BIG plus with the housing markets as they are these days). BUT I try not to put down other places because I prefer instead to see the beauty in all places whether I would choose to live there or not.

Tell me that isn't beautiful? This is from our trip up north last week. Granted these don't grow down here but so what? Here we have a very different but EQUALLY beautiful ecosystem (see Flickr pictures from petting zoo). That's one of the things that I love about this country and province. It's ability to be so utterly different in so many ways yet we, with all our diversities both human and landscape, together, form one country. One that I am proud to call home.

So put us down if you will - feel free to do that while you commute hours a day back and forth to your job. While you do that we'll be having supper together as a family.

We will likely never live anywhere else. Visit yes, appreciate yes, but we will always come back. This is our home and we love it.

The myth of summer...

Why do I do this to myself every summer.....

I think, okay, we have no preschool, no lessons, no kindermusik etc plus I finished up a module in the middle of July and won't take another until the end of October..... SO therefore we will have all this extra time.

NOT.

That's the myth of summer for me.

So instead we have gone on two trips already with a third less than two weeks away. Not to mention the many play dates - gotta love those - adult conversation frequently interupted by kids having fun!

Not to mention that I am marking comps all weekend and doing student counselling 3 evenings next week.

So much for having all this extra time to tackle the to do list that's been accumulating all year....

Maybe in the Fall when Jack is off to school every afternoon or is that another myth too?

Tell me now, don't let me live in denial any longer......

I am never going to get that list done am I?

Okay, Okay, I'll quit blogging and get to it!

Nah.... it'll still be there tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

I see a theme here.

Mmmmmmm.....

Just had a fabulous home cooked meal prepared by me and my partner in all things.

I made garden potatoes on the BBQ with butter and onions (there really is NO substitute for real butter!) and grilled peppers, carrots and zuchinni.

Jay, my BBQ king, grilled up some chicken drumsticks that were divine.

And for dessert (GOTTA have the sweet stuff to finish it off!) we had fudge from our Banff exersion the other day.

Mmmmm.......

Of course, my sentiments were not shared by our resident picky eater. Jack noted the the carrots were grilled. I believe YUCK! was the adjective of choice. AND the potatoes had skin on them. In his eyes, skin is a four letter word. It took weeks last year to introduce the skin of fruit into his diet. Mostly with threats of you eat that or else..... No seriously the kid doesn't easily accept change in his diet. Wonder where in the world he gets that from ;)

Mmmmm Summer

Summer, to me, revolves around food. Of course!

BBQ'd hamburgers, mmmmm.

Grilled vegtables, a new favourite, mmmm.

BBQ'd hotdogs, mmmm.

BBQ'd greek ribs - Jay's specialty - double mmmm with sugar on top

New potatoes, mmmm.

Fresh garden peas, mmmm.

Baby carrots from the garden, mmmmm.

And another new favourite, French Vanilla Iced Capp from Timmy's. MMMMMMMMM, especially on a hot day like today.

And speaking of summer, I don't want to jinx it though, we have had beautiful weather over the last 2 weeks. Yesterday was 31, I almost had the audacity to complain but instead I just turned on the A/C :)

Tonight, Jay and Jack hit the football game. They lost, as usual. The team that is, not Jay and Jack :) It's nice to have a team here, but boy you really have to be loyal to continue to cheer for those guys.... There is a curse!

Kamden and I took a nice long walk around the lake while the older guys were at the game. We saw ducks, geese, baby ducks, baby geese, a fountain and a waterfall. It was beautiful.

Summer days are the best days!

More of my amazing talent....

Yesterday, Kamden and I dropped Jack off at camp and headed downtown. We wanted to hit the Farmer's Market for some garden fresh veggies and I had some shopping I needed to do at stores only located downtown.

We headed to the mall first and on the way in I noticed a Second Cup and decided to feed my ever growing addiction to coffee.

Let's just say that the white shirt I happened to select to wear that morning is still in the stain removal process......

It's a talent folks! Didn't just spill a little either. Nope. Had to be all down my front. If I am going to spill, might as well spill big. No sense doing anything half way....

I just wonder how long I walked around with coffee all down my front before I noticed. Because when I did notice, I had just had a drink and I hadn't spilled that time:-)

I am ALL class!

Mental note: the cup holder on the stroller is for sippy cups, NOT to go coffee cups with the little hole to drink from. Active two year old in stroller = coffee EVERYWHERE including on my shirt!