Today I gardened....

Ah..here we have it.. a lovely warm day...started off with a bit of a chill though.. but the day heated up as it went along. As did I.

We had some dirt (topsoil) delivered to us yesterday and today I thought I'd top up the three raised beds that were feeling a deficet of dirt in them. Worked hard...got them done. Justin slept through most of it (took about an hour), but the last garden he was awake and talking to me as I shoveled dirt. I let him out for a bit to see what he would do and of course he made a beeline for the dirt and grabbed a handful of it. Would have eaten it too! (but I thought i'd rather not let him do that).

Anyways, when I got that done I did a couple loads of laundry, had lunch, let the boy have a nap, chatted with Jim for a bit, worked on the flower garden then walked the dogs and the boy again. When we got back I worked on the flower garden again - it was hard going. This garden has obviously not had the benefit of nice dirt in it. It was like digging in dried out clay! Tough sloughing...and I didn't get it done! I'm unimpressed..but gives me something to do tomorrow when the boy naps in the morning.

I have to admit... I"m feeling a bit jealous today, my neighbours peas are up, mine aren't AND they were planted on the same day! ARGH!!!... I want peas I do! I keep telling myself, they'll come up, It's all in God's timing...BUT I WANT PEAS!!!

Okay, I'm okay..done whining now. Need to bring in that last load of laundry off the line and feed the dogs and let in the piggies so enough typing for today.

I am So Proud

So....Jim and I took Sassy for the weekend. Jim's mom Eva took care of our son Justin for the weekend, and also our other dog Riley.

Jim and I stayed at Phyl and Barry's overnight and then headed off to the agility trial put on by K9 Sports. Sassy was entered into four events at this trial.
1. Advanced Gamblers
2. Starters Standard
3. Steeplechase
4. Starters Snooker

We had fun. :) The day started late and ended late. I was rather very unimpressed with that... but that all aside.... We were all bushed by the time the day was finished. Boy oh boy did we get tired. But things went fairly well.

Gamblers....well...we had fun. Sassy and I did well in the opening, and somehow managed to blow the final gamble. Not sure why but she decided the far end on the tunnel was what she should take, but that's what she did... So ah well...we learned lots, she did the mini gamble really well (Yeah Sassy!). Did her contacts wonderfully! She was a good dog with a good heart.

Standard...ah...we did it!!!! My Sassy dog nailed this course! We came in second!!! We "q'd" (as in we ran fast we ran clear we made NO mistakes!) My Sassy dog rocks!!!!!!! woohoo hoo hoo hoo!!!! (can you tell I"m proud of my girlie?)

on another rather cool note..... Sassy decided that she actually liked her x-pen. This the dog who hates being confined. LIKES her x-pen, even wanted to go into it. HA! Cool dog.

Steeplechase...fast, furious, man...we tried hard... but not today. She popped a weave, I wasn't sure if she had...took a chance...and well...ah well...for a first attempt at a fast and furious master's level course... we done good. Sassy worked hard, paid really good attention...but just couldn't hold those weaves. AND>>> we didn't get lost on a twisty course either! So there! :) What can you do eh?

Snooker....ah...the nemesis of my life. And that is what it continues to be. 5 tries at it...still no success. We (as in me, myself and I) planned it well.. and it all went fine until Sassy decided to take the wrong end a tunnel (hmm... do I sense a recurring theme?) :) but she tried so hard and worked her heart out for me... I honestly think that today would have gone better if the day hadn't been so long, and we hadn't gotten so tired. It was exhausting being around people and barking dogs all day long. NEXT TIME...I will take Sassy dog out for a good long walk in nature and just give us both a good break from it all. Even if all we do is go lay down and read in the sunshine. And now we are home and she is relaxing (even enjoyed some beef for supper - lucky girl)

Oh... before I forget. In getting that Standard "q" Sassy has achieved her agility dog of canada title (ADC). We now have the dubious pleasure of running advanced standard courses now (NO MORE REFUSALS ALLOWED!!!). Fun fun! My dog has her VERY FIRST TITLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it's time for bed.. talk more another day... :)

Easter

The Hope of Easter Remembered.

Different casing?

This place mandarin design tells you how you can do different things to add variety to your blog. I have to admit, I don't understand exactly what all of them do...but this one seemed pretty straigt-forward. I'm guessing that with time I can learn to change the colours to this thing as well. :) Right now I just think it's a kinda cool way to add some variety to a rather basic blog. What do you think?

My Niece

Heard from my sister Joan. She lives out west with her family. Apparently her daughter, my niece, Nicole made the front page of the Chilliwack Progress. You can check out her story here. Look under the "golden imaginations" storyline. I think it's rather cool! I have a talented niece. Not that I didn't know that already. :)

Gardening and Justin

So yesterday I was out working in the yard. Justin spent most of the day outdoors with me.

First he decided that sleeping in the house was NOT going to happen. He was so tired and yet so determined to be busy so I threw him into the stroller and took him with me to walk the dogs. 1/2 an hour later, he was in dream land. So I walked home, parked the stroller in the backyard and set to work. I thought he'd be awake in about 1/2 hour. WRONG!!! 2.5 hours he slept in total! I got a lot of work done!

I worked on digging out the stump and roots of the lilac tree. I'm so fed up with that thing. Last year my dad was kind and cut it down for me. A nice man from church hauled it off to the dump for me. (lovely people I have intersecting my life). :) I had hoped to get it dug up last fall but that just didn't happen. Funny how life is.

So...I didn't get it all done but I did get most of the roots out of my flower garden, and... I got a good ring around the stump! I am so looking forward to getting it out!....wonder if I can do it...wonder if my brother Bill will ever get the time off work to come help before clean up.... ah... the wondering. :)

I also got the veggie gardens turned over and the compost mixed as well.

I even had time to put the piggies outside for a couple of hours and get them all cleaned out. If spring continues the way it has the piggies will be outdoors all the time in a couple of weeks. Won't that be nice? I won't have to clean them as frequently, they'll put on grass weight and keep the weeds eaten (from the gardens) (making it much cheaper to feed them)... ah...will be nice to hear wheeks outdoors again. :)

Justin came out with me in the afternoon for a bit. It was fun to walk him around the gardens. I showed him our anemones which were starting to flower, and the crocuses and other spring bulbs. He touched them ever so gently. I showed him what bad plants are....creeping charlie and grass in the flower beds! ARGH!!! Told him we'd have to fight this battle together! He just said "ah" and looked. Not sure he was really all that impressed.

When I walked around back with him he wanted down so I put him to stand next to my small greenhouse...courtesy of my darling husband...and Justin went from standing to crawling RAPIDLY toward our small pond! He thought it was fascinating and almost fell in. This of course caused me to react quickly! I let him splash for a bit then brought him in for a clothes change and good washing. Needless to say, when he went down for a nap, I gave our rather dirty pond a good cleaning. We'll have to watch him this summer that he doesn't fall in if we're not around.

As you can tell, he already has this fascination with fish. :) This is Midas. He is a nasty fish he needs his own aquarium. If you put him with other fish he'll attack them until they die. Apparently in the wild they are a rather peaceful fish, but in captivity they really like having their own space. He is a type of cichlid...from south america I think. I'm sure Jim will correct me if I'm wrong. :)

PICTURE OF ANNETTE AND JUSTIN

I was doing some re-organization of my digital pictures when I saw this one of Annette and Justin. It isn't too apparent in the picture, but Annette is carrying Justin in a basket full of laundry (clean I think), and he loved it. This picture was taken back in January, so he has moved on to think other things are fun, but it is a great picture of my wife and boy.

MAC trial

So Jim and I just got back (well okay...we've been back for about 1.5 hours) :) We were at a trial in London this weekend.

A trial you say? Whatever did you do wrong this time Annette?!?!?!?!

Actually it was an agility trial. It was put on by MAC. If you want to know who MAC is go here. It was held as part of Agility Association of Canada. You can view their website at this location. It was a well-run trial. They have had a few trials at the Western Fairgrounds but this was our first opportunity to trial with them.

It was rather neat. As Jim and I were sitting awaiting Sassy's turn to run, I noticed some people sitting behind us laughing at some of the antics of the dogs, and how the handlers were doing things. It was fairly obvious that they were having fun AND that they knew nothing about what was going on. They were just enjoying watching the dogs. I took the opportunity to talk with them a bit about my current favourite dog sport. A couple of ladies I ended up introducing to the lady who helped train Sassy and I into the sport. One had a malamute the other a border collie. They were quite intrigued about the possiblity of doing this with their dogs. It was fun to talk with them a bit. :)

Sassy was in two events today. Starters Standard and Advanced Gamblers. She came in second in the Standard and well...a somewhat distant fifth in Gamblers. I went not expecting to do very well so was quite pleased with how we did. It was our first trial of the season, we hadn't trained a whole lot, my handling was awful...I knew this! And well... we just wanted a good warmup before a more serious trial in a couple of weeks. Okay...it's not really a more serious trial... just that I entered more events and would have a somewhat higher expectation of doing better after having one trial under our belts after one year off.

We missed out on a qualifying round in standard by four inches when Sassy got a gleam in her eye and leapt off the a-frame! BAD DOG! Bad handler...needs to reinforce proper dismount from aframe!!!! But it was a fun run! :) Sassy was FAST! If she hadn't have missed that four inches into the yellow we would have come in first!

Advanced gamblers was a higher level of competition than what we ever done before so....not getting eliminated was like...wow!!!! She didn't get the gambles but....a lot of that was handler error...boy I learned lots! And some of it was just... she didn't understand, she tried hard but just didn't get it. (just means more training on my part). Once again....stuff we learned! :) This too was a good run...if only for the lady I met who when I was walking the course said...hey...relax... have fun. Try this, it might help. So that was way cool. So nice how people help others out.

Anyways, I have a boy who is not too happy with life and should probably go check on him to see what is up. Keep well all!

I went visiting

So my boyo Justin and I went to visit his Opa and Oma this past week. We were there from Tuesday to Thursday. It was good to see Justin reconnect with my parents.

My mom had SO much fun with him! She kept giving him little kisses! Justin even learned something new....listening to Oma's no was just as important as listening to mom-mom's no! AH!!! Hard lessons for little boys to learn!

Justin had a blast exploring a new house. He was just simply delighted with mom's duck planter that my sister Judy gave to Dad?(I think) a while back.

Dad sat outside with us one afternoon. I was raking the lawn up a bit and Justin was in his stroller. Their dog Heidi is somewhat untrustworthy so Dad made sure that grandson Justin would be safe. It was nice to see them together.

Dad is currently in a whole heap of pain. He is just plain sore..if not from muscle spasms, just from being sore. Sometimes you could just see that he didn't know what to do with himself. He takes a muscle relaxant at night which helps him to sleep.

He's had a bit of a problem with his bowels which isn't so nice. This makes it hard for him to eat well. And sometimes it seems like he just doesn't quite know what's going on...but after three months in the hospital I don't know how aware I would be either! Just sad to see him a bit confused yet.

BUT they both know that God is in control of it all. And they both really rely on God which for me is just so wonderful to see. I just marvel at them sometimes! They are still my greatest heros.

My mom is tired. Taking care of Dad 24/7 is taking it's toll on her. I'm not sure what to do to help...except be a caring daughter with a laughing son who can help ease the load just a tad. God holds us all close.

Our plan is to go up again in a couple of weeks for a day. Just to visit and to hopefully give mom some of her own space again. :) Who knows... maybe I'll make a nice meal again for them.

I surprised Jim by coming home early. He was both delighted and saddened by this. He had hoped to give the house a good cleaning for me and my early return sort of spoiled that for him. :) I thanked him for his thoughts and he was happy I was home so it all worked out well.