Mom's Birthday

So we got together as a whole clan to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday.

yes, this grand lady is 70 years young. :) Turned that way at the beginning of the month.

We celebrated late because we had hoped that my brother and this family from Ottawa could get out here to help, but that was not to be be.

Ate out at Crossroads restaurant in Elmira. They have a decent buffet. Jim's mom joined us, which was so nice. As mom says "you're family too!"

Justin was good, even ate a bit.

Afterwards we stopped at mom and dad's place for coffee and conversation. Good times had by all. Sierra rode back with us. Justin likes his 7 year old cousin. She's "fun" even if she does tease him by stealing his "tagu" (also known as tiger)

We'll all be getting together again this coming Saturday to celebrate Justin's 2nd b-day. What fun. A boy turns 2!

We've been rated

Our anniversary

If you all want to know how our anniversary went, go here.

Talked with Mom and Dad who wished us a happy anniversary. Nice to chat with them for a bit.

Received these greetings from brother Fred

Happy Anniversary to you and Jim!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hey, it's been 5 years already! Think about the changes God has brought into your life in the last 5 years, both the joys and the sorrows! All opportunities for growth and being better able to love those around us. We pray God will guide and sustain the 3 of you with wisdom and understanding as you begin yet another year together!

Okay, so it was fun

So... Mom reminded me that I hadn't talk you all how the shopping trip went.

IT WAS FUN!

Yes, I, Annette, had fun shopping for clothes with my mother! Don't all fall over in shock now. :)

First we headed to the tile place so we could pick out good tile and carpet for their new place. It was actually quite funny. We had narrowed down the tile selections to five of them. We stood there looking at them, and simultaneously, with no planning, mom and I touched the same one with "I like this one best" on our lips. We laughed. It made the choice so very easy. :)

Carpet was a fore-gone conclusion. Mom knew what she liked. Had kinda picked it out at home. Looked fine to me so hey... it's works. :)

Justin had fun running around the store. We made sure he didn't hurt himself while doing so.

Then off to pick up lunch and to drop Justin off at Eva's.

Mom and I sent clothes shopping. First off for sandals since mine had broken the week before and my pinkies were "unacceptable" to mom. :) We found some decent ones on sale at marks' work wear house.

I felt spoiled by my mother. But it was fun. I even learned the brown is NOT a bad colour for me. Go figure. Something to keep in mind for the fall.

What did we end up getting?
dress pants - navy blue, they feel really nice on.
blue jean shorts, navy blue shorts - way better than some current clothing
Three no sleeved shirts - red, multi-coloured tank that will go with Sunday skirt, orangey sweater type - no I don't know what it is officially called, to me it's a shirt, very soft and comfortable.
one pair blue jean capris'
oh.. almost forgot, one very nice light light green sorta dressy no sleeve shirt/blouse. very pretty and different than what I would normally look for.

My mom has good taste.

So, it was a nice, very fun day out. Mom and I talked and laughed alot.
She spoiled me and it was good.

Justin had a good day at gramma's too.

We were all tired by the end of the day.

He said Pee! :)

So I know, no huge biggie for folks.

But I"m a first time mom. I can be thrilled when my boy, at 23 months, pulls at his diaper and says pee AND THEN holds it until we have said diaper off and he sits on the potty.

Good Boy! :)

Shopping

I have to admit, I am NOT a person who enjoys shopping for clothes. I"m not. I'll wear whatever fits until the cows come home.

BUT my mom is coming up today.

We're going shopping together. She'd like me to have some new clothes.

I have to admit, I'm actually looking forward to it.

Justin is coming in the morning. He'll help Oma and I pick out new tiles/carpeting for the new house Oma and Papa are building. We'll have lunch and then Justin will go to Grandma's for a nap in the afternoon. And mom and I will hang out together.

Should be a nice day.

News for this week

One of our girl mice had a litter of 8 babies. hard to tell which momma as they all seem to huddle around the babies and bothering mice with a new litter isn't always the wisest of things to do.

We have a new rabbit. Very tame. Justin says "bun-bun". So we might stick with that name. We got him from a lady in London who just didn't have time for him anymore.

It was funny. I went to the doc yesterday to find out why certain things in life were uncomfortable. Discovered I have a bladder infection --- and no, that's not the funny part. Anyways, a couple weekends ago, I had a lot of fun at the AAC Regionals and I had seen the doc there. So we spent as much time talking agility as we did actually discussing my health. I"m going to email her with some trainers as she has an active Border Collie she wants to train further. So that was a lot of fun just chatting. Anyways, you can read how that weekend went here.

Day Two of Jim being gone

Plan was to have a relaxing day after being busy, so busy yesterday with doctor's appointment, visiting, gramma over and mommy going out. That was our plan.

We walked the dogs, discovered that it was better if Brutis came over for a visit rather than us walking him. So he came over. That meant a short walk, instead of leisurely, and a quick removal of bunnies from backyard as Brutis (Boo) likes to chase and kill living things.

Once Boo settled down Justin and I headed out to Rona to see about getting some quick crete for the front bed. Gabby was on, gave us a 10% discount on the materials. Since I only had the car, Gabby offered ever so graciously to bring them to my place on his lunch break. :) Thanks Gabby! :)

Home.. realized that all the branches the deacons cut down were piled on top of the composter so thought I would clean that up. Took a while with a little boy helping. Cut what I could up for firewood, put the rest into a pile for later burning in our hopefully soon to be built fire pit.

Started to clean out the trailer. Justin decided it was a good time to go back into the house and wanted/asked/no demanded that mommy come with him. So that task ended.

Ended up watching Thomas the train for a while. Had lunch while watching Berenstain bears (it was a hit!). Justin laid down for a nap, I finished up the tree branches, did some weeding, moved the bunnies around, and then Jim called and we chatted for a bit. When he left to go to his meeting, I attempted to pump up tire on wheelbarrow. 15 minutes later I realized that wasn't working! ARGH!!!!! Chatted with Audrey for a moment about it all.

Can't work on front garden!!!! I'm frustrated just a tad.

So worked on computer a bit.

Did something else.. oh..hung out the sleeping bags on the line. :)

When Justin got up we took Sassy for a walk. Stopped at the park to play a while. Justin was hesitant about coming home, but came along well enough when he saw mommy had a bottle of juice for him. Half way home I hear "supper, supper" coming out of his mouth... think he was getting hungry?

YES! he ate pork roast (slow-cooked) and applesauce and peas and french fries. He then had LOADS of fun helping mommy do the dishes. He was just too cute.

I gave him a dish to wash. He scrubbed it diligently. Would pick it up look at it, I would ask him if it was clean "mope" would be the response and he would plunge it back into the water and diligently scrub it again. Our dishes have never been so clean! :) Mind you..that's only our light weight plastics that I gave him. I'm not silly enough to give him glass (well..not anymore!) :)

he went to bed late... 1015! ARGH! not my idea of fun, but he had a great snack before bed so hopefully will sleep well and not be starving in the morning. :) Anyways, time for me to head off as well.

My boy

Today Justin and I took his height and weight.

He is at 33 lbs and 35.5 inches tall.

He seems to keep growing! :)

Oh, What to Update?

Went out for supper last night with a couple who are involved with the video ministry from another church. Boy...did we ever have a good time. Good food, good conversation and laughter. Justin ate meat! :) What can I say, he's not a huge meat eater so I like it when he does that. Lida is a good cook. (well, except for pie which she says never turns out for her so she buys it) We had apple pie for dessert, roast beef, potatoes, broccoli, salad and carrots. Good meal. So it was a good time out. Anyways, Lida reminded me that I haven't updated the View for a bit so... here I am updating. :)

Afterwards Jim had a meeting, and then Justin and I took the dogs for a walk to the park. Justin now knows how to open the front door by himself. NOT REAL THRILLED by this. We live on a busy street. So we'll have to keep the screen door locked I think for the next while until he learns to be a bit safer. Scares a mother's heart to hear the front door slam while hearing "Park, Park". Fortunately I also heard "stoller, stoller" as he ran to the garage to try to get his stroller out. yeah for strollers! :) Justin had a lot of fun at the park, we actually went to the school playground as the rec. centre play ground was jam packed with children from the baseball families. Anyways, he had fun playing with a little boy Griffin. 3.5 years, wanting to play with Justin's trains, but Justin doesn't know how to share yet (he's still at the MINE-stage) But they had fun together going down the slide and playing trains.

What else.... had a great yard sale on May 19th. Mom and Dad came up from Teviotdale to help out. Mom brought a few things with her to sell as well. Jim's mom was here, she was going to help with the sale as well, but Justin wanted to play in the sandbox so she helped him with that instead. Proved to be a huge help! :) It was SO much fun. Chatting with family, chatting with people who stopped by, making wheeling and dealing. Ah I LOVE IT! :)

Then I got to clean up and I actually like that too.... the picking and choosing about what to give away at the curb, deciding what to bring to which thrift place, deciding what I should keep (Jim's mom is having a garage in August so I'm giving her a few things to sell). Anyways, it was fun. :) Someday I get to do this again! OH.. made over $300. Some of which was spoken for, 30$ (approx) to Cheryl for rabbits, 50$ to pay Jim back for Sassy's clippers, 30$ devoted for dog food (from sale of rabbits) and the rest is mine to play with!

I'll use the change to outfit (hopefully) Justin this weekend at the Hensall town-wide garage sale. Hopefully for the rest of the year, depends if people had boy children born the year before Justin or not. We'll have to wait and see.

Had some of my joy stolen away from me Sunday morning by unkind comments made. I need to deal with at some point this week. Just have to figure out a good time and so forth.

What else, oh.. finished the front bed and ended up redoing the back corner bed. Nancy gave me so many plants from her garden so she's been a real boon to me in this. Got some plants I don't have which is always nice. I've managed to finish planting my veggie gardens, will have to replant my cucumbers as the hard frost we had this week seemed to hit them. All I have left to do of the hard spring work is weeding and digging out a bit the privacy fence/window garden. The creeping charlie is having a field day there.

Oh.. Sassy definitely has herding breed in her somewhere. I have 4 bunnies leftover that I haven't sold yet. ONE of them (littlest white) has learned if he wiggles when I want him to waggle he can get away from me. Hopping bunnies are hard to catch. SASSY HERDS him back to me. It's quite a distinctive herding behaviour. Much different than her WILD BUNNY must CHASE attitude. This is a "I'm bringing this critter back to where it belongs" behaviour. Very helpful. Makes me think she's a very smart dog. Certainly saves me a lot of leg work. I need to figure out a more fool proof way of moving these bunnies about.

Mother's Day

So yesterday was Mother's Day.

Jim's mom joined us for the day. She arrived shortly before the morning service and stayed until just after the evening service.

As it was mother's day, all the ladies in the church received a flower. Justin thought he should try to beat mine up. :)

He was too excited yesterday to stay in church very long. He went to the nursery by the time of the second song which is a bit unusual for him lately.

We had a nice day.

Found out after church that a young lady from church is looking for a new male rabbit for her herd of rabbits so told her she could have our bun-bun. We had gotten a rabbit this week that was destined for the dog food pot but Justin and Jim well....they fell in love with him. Anyways, he is a bit too "friendly" shall we say, so I couldn't let Justin play with him. So Cheryl will take bun-bun and I will get some young bunnies from Cheryl. I will try to sell some of these wee bunnies at my upcoming garage sale and the rest will stick around for a wee while. :) If we get enough of them, hopefully neither Jim or Justin will like them too much. :)

We had mac and cheese goulash for lunch, followed by mom's lovely lemon pie. :)

Justin was having a hard time containing his excitement at "mamer" being over and was SO tired that we took a nice walk so that he could settle down and have a nap. That gave Jim time to relax for a while as well as he did not join us for a walk.

So Justin napped in the stroller while mom and I visited outside for a while. Mom thinks I did a good job on my big window garden too! YEAH! :)

We now have three baby birds in our nest. Two more to hatch!

Justin was so unhappy that gramma and daddy had to go to church, that I took him for a walk outside. We ended up at the neighbours house where Nancy's boy Owen was jumping on the trampoline. Justin naturally had to join him. :) Then Justin discovered that Owen has a tractor! wow!!!!! it moves fast when you stand on the pedals! WOW!!!! what fun for a wee boy. I think I know where this wee boyo will like visiting!

Anyways, that was our day in the life of "mother's day".

Justin and Grape hyacinth's

Would you never believe this boyo of mine.

He is just a bad, bad boy. Makes me smile though cause he's so cute when he does it.

Yes I know, bad mommy.

He goes into my flower garden looking for ONE thing only....a grape hyacinth to destroy. He plucks off the whole flower and then ever so carefully takes all the individual flowers off. He tends puts them in a nice, neat little circle in front of him.

Then he smiles this little smile of his as he looks for another one to decimate.

I know...sheer silliness

So.. Eric and Danielle won the amazing race. This was actually the amazing race all stars. Viewing it was a weekly event for Jim and I. Now that it's done...whatever shall we watch as we relax on Sunday evenings? :)

I have to admit, of the final three teams... These are the ones I wanted to win. They became a better couple as the race progressed. Both "grew up" a little. Danielle showed her grit. Eric actually seemed to really appreciate her. So ...it's good

I would have liked the "little person" and her cousin (Charla and Mirna) to have come in second just because I didn't much like the blondes, but that's neither here nor there.

But Eric and Danielle won.

Wouldn't it be totally cool if they would turn to the Lord and use that million dollars for good? :)

Well, it's built :)

So our new form of income and dog food has now been housed a bit more properly and they are OUTSIDE! Yes! No more male mice smell in our house! YEAH!!!! :)

I built a pen! yes me! Jim helped a bit with some cutting and suggestions and drilled holes, but for the most part I built it my own self! :) It's not perfect, but that's okay.

Wooden box for our mice to live in, in the great outdoors. Protected all around with metal to prevent errant chewing and escaping. Three houses in one box. They may eventually chew their way between houses, but I'll cross that bridge when (and if) I get there.

The only thing I forgot to do was add handles, that I'm not to sure how to add. So for now moving it will be a bit of a challenge. Since it's only 3 feet long and 15 inches wide, it isn't too heavy to just lug about though.

Only one grouping of mice is not outside yet, but that is due to the litter they are currently rearing. They will go outside in about 4 weeks. :) Hopefully one of those wee ones will be a boy and we can use him as a breeder. Even if we sell the babies for $1 a piece they will help provision our dogs with food. More then they would provide themselves! YEAH! Wouldn't that be nice? :)

I'll be keeping the field mice for another couple of weeks yet to see if any of them get "with child" if they don't... then I'll kill them as I'll need the cage soon anyways to raise wee boyo's.

Just happened

We have six babies in our lives.

Just born in the last half hour.

Sugar had 6 babies. She's a slimmed down girlie now. :)

Hopefully they will all survive.

Dad's Birthday Party

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stupid computer..... Now I have the fun of doing this all over again!!!!!!!! Stupid computer crashing after I had just inputted the WHOLE DAY!!! ARGH!!!!

Okay, rant over now. :)

Did you know my dad is now 72 years old? Isn't that a great reason to have a b-day party? yes, he did. He invited all us local family members over for dinner and visit.

Our family had the audacity to arrive first!!! Can you believe it? We NEVER arrive first for family stuff ever! When we got there, we actually wondered if we somehow got the date wrong. :)

Anyways, turned out well, Justin had napped before we got there so he was alert and ran eagerly for the toy closet (funny how quick they learn where that is). Hauled out all the cars he could get his little hands on and was off having fun. We had a nice visit.

Fred and his girls arrived (Caroline at coffeebreak rally) around 1230ish, mom started dinner. We had roast beef, mashed taters, green beans, peas and slightly frozen applesauce (my fav). Bill arrived just as we were starting to eat (great timing). it was so easy making more room for him. It was good food! Justin had started a wee bit early which turned out nice for me, I got to eat MOST of meal while it was warm (instead of having to help him eat). I still had to help him, but not as fast. :) We all ate too much I think. :)

We had a fruit bowl for dessert.

After lunch we spread out a bit. Sierra and I went to the basement, played a rousing game of multi-puck air hockey. Then used the blackboard for a while. Justin joined us for a great scribbling contest. Sierra won! :)

Justin played with big trucks while I loaded the van with garage sale items from mom's basement.

Just as we were about to leave (due to tired Justin) Judy, son Shane and hubbie Henry arrived. So we visited outside with them for a while. Mom announced cake, icecream and strawberries just before we wanted to head off again, so.... we stayed a bit longer. Still think we all ate too much! BUT mmmm.....cake, ice cream.....Strawberries...YUM!

Nancy our newest neighbour, was outside when we got home so Justin and I visited for a bit. Turns out Owen (her son) is 9 years old now and was celebrating that achievement in life. She gave Justin a left over goodie bag. :)

Transferred garage sale stuff to basement, walked the boy and the dogs, and then relaxed with Thomas the train. Justin just LOVES thomas.... :) tain tain is a frequent cry in our household these days.

And that was our day. I'm tired, yes, I really should do those dishes...all 8 of them....but I'm really bagged and my bed is calling loudly to me. :) Good night!

Sunday Afternoon

So it's Sunday afternoon, I"m sitting here waiting for Justin to wake up and thought hmmm... should probably update the View! So here I am.

Our life for past week or so....

Easter Sunday we went up to visit Mom and Dad. We left right after church, Justin slept, Jim relaxed and I drove. We arrived, Justin stayed sleeping, Jim and I went in and enjoyed soup with my parents. We had a nice visit over our meal. After lunch I checked on Justin who had just woken up. So mom and dad were able to enjoy their grandson for a while too. :)

We needed to leave after a couple of hours because Ina was in hospital (lady from church). She was having some trouble breathing. We had a short visit with her. Then Justin and I left to stretch out little boy legs while Jim visited longer. Justin had a chance to talk with the nurses and enjoy a juice and cookie. Lucky boy! :)

Then this week Jim had a cold so our Monday day away became a Monday stay at home so he could rest up a bit. He was a bit better on Tuesday so we slipped up to London to run a couple of errands. Tuesday afternoon, and all day Wednesday I spent (with Justin) reorganizing the basement. Jim needed to get at the network thing and all my garage sale stuff was in the way, plus we were getting tired of having wood shavings all over the house, so the purchase of three inexpensive shelving units at Wal-mart went a long way to helping get things in better shape. Now Justin can play in the same room I am in while I do laundry or fuss around in the basement. Jim's weight stuff will be kept more sawdust free and therefore more useable. AND Jim can fiddle around with the network thingey to his hearts content.

Thursday afternoon I went fishing while Justin napped.

Friday morning Justin had book club. Boy..all the kids were wild! :) Made me think a storm was coming. I had book club as well. We read "The 100 Secret Senses" by Amy Tan. Some of us liked the book, some of us well....didn't. I read the start, a piece in the middle and the ending. I found it a hard book to get into, the end of the book though made me think I should have stuck it through. I might pick it up again one day.

oh I almost forgot. On Friday night we all had a lovely meal with the pastor from the CRC church in town. They hosted. It was fun and the food was good! :)

Saturday Justin and I left Jim at home and drove three ladies from Church to the RCW ladies conference. It was held at Drayton RCA this year. Mary Clark was the speaker. She heads up women's ministries within the RCA.

Her Topic was "God's hospitality". I found her hard to listen to, not because of her, but due to the fact that she had to keep pausing for the translator. I probably lost the first 10 minutes while I adapted to the listen, wait, listen, wait routine. Most of the women I talked with struggled with the same issue. Although I appreciated the need for a translator, I really wish that there hadn't needed to be one. Her topic was a one that women in our classis needed to hear and probably didn't really hear because of the whole listen and wait routine.

Mary's whole point was the use the gift of hospitality that God has given to each of us, and use it to advance the kingdom of God. Hospitality is the giving of ourselves to others. Once I understood that this was her definition of hospitality it all made sense...but it took me a while to get there.

You see MY definition of hospitality is someone who makes you feel comfortable from the moment you get in their door and who LOVES having people over for dinner or tea or whatever. I DO NOT see myself as having the gift of hospitality at all. NOT saying I don't like having people over but I find it a whole heap of work and I worry about this that and the other thing and AHH. Just fills me with horrors most of the time. What if I can't get the house clean enough or what if I serve the wrong food or what if the cat or the dog or the _____ does something it aught not to. and ... it just goes on and on.

AND THE BIGGEST THING???? What if my guest does something that freaks me out and makes my house feel unsafe to me.???? What if???? STUPID I know. After all...GOD LOVES ME! He won't let anything happen to me that I can't handle without his help. I can trust his promises. I can. See...it's taken me years to realize that! (sometimes slow on the uptake)

Anyways, back to Mary's talk. Hospitality...giving of ourselves to others. This doesn't mean as a church that we need to start new programs. What it means is us, as individual people, stopping to take 30 minutes there, 1.5 hours there just to sit and see the people around us. See what their needs are and just go out and meet those needs. Simple, straight-forward meeting the needs of people. Showing them Jesus through our actions. She kept telling us.. STOP. Think outside box. Think outside the walls of your church. Do it differently.

For instance... we could see a struggling young mom and offer to help her do her shopping. We could do someone's laundry for them. We could offer a cup of tea. Different needs, different ways of helping. We just need to stop and look for those ways of helping/showing/teaching.

Overall, it was a good message.

In the afternoon we watched a skit "what kind of tater are you". one of the ladies from Drayton put on a skit about different types of taters "agi-tator" "peace-tator" "spec-tator" and so forth. It was not bad at all. it was actually fun to watch these ladies be different taters. :)

There were quilts hung all over the church. Made more than one woman wonder out loud what was with all the quilts. Turns out Drayton church, for the Mennonite Central Committee, makes quilts. These quilts are distributed world wide to people in need of well.. quilts to keep warm. They gave them out in Equador, Africa, and other places. Wherever there has been a disaster (God or Human made) and there are people in need. That was way cool to see. This year Drayton made 63 quilts over the winter. Good to see that in action.

I enjoyed the fact that there was a babysit. Justin had a blast. He even napped! :) He ate a bit, didn't drink as much as I'd like, but he had fun. He had a good sleep last night. He was a happy boy, well, at least until he learned that no, he couldn't bring that lovely airplane home with him. :)

I enjoyed the book table. Even picked up a couple of things. One a book that I think will be helpful with homeschooling in the future, some scrapbooking stuff and something else that I can't recall right now. Spent less than $25. (I had a personal limit of 40 so I did well).

So what didn't I like?
1. The agenda pushing... we have a women's conference coming up in Chicago... boy was attendance at this event being pushed. yes, I would like to go. Will I go? No... not at 149$ hotel bill per night and paying daily parking PLUS $350 (about that) for the conference itself. Cannot afford it. WILL NOT ask my church to foot the bill for it. A conference like this should be able to be held elsewhere for a lot less. Also many of the topics seem like "fluff" to me. Denomination wide conferences I do believe should offer more than "fluff".
2. the "tolerance" stuff. We have to tolerate. I agree that we have to tolerate people over things like building structure, clothing, taste in music and such like. Over such things, the overwhelming concern should be .... how do we reach people for Christ and teach them well. I do not agree that we should tolerate bad doctrine. I don't think that evangelism outside the church is more important then having people that will hold to the truth of the gospel. There must be room for both. I think that once bad doctrine is allowed a strong foothold, what is to stop it from becoming more prevalent?

so how does one resist this?

Justin's been learning new words lately.
Today he surprised me with Here it is (when I asked him to get his boots). Eat! at breakfast (when he wouldn't eat.... I think I was supposed to or something).

And then here we are at wal-mart....needed to get something there... anyways, walking through the toy section just to see if there are any good deals (sometimes we find amazing deals there). not today though...but what do I hear from my boyo toys! toys! (very excited commentary from this 21 month old lad). followed by a mournful toys...toys... as we move further away from said toys (6 six trucks in a box). Daddy distracted him with a push toy which was kinda interesting but not a keeper (but got us away from the trucks).

Then came tain tain! Tain tain!

Thomas the train caught his eye...

How does one shut out mournful tain tain noises from a boy child?

One realizes that thomas the train sells for outrageous amounts of money is how! :)
Doesn't make it any easier though..... such a mournful little voice.....

We settled for a couple of dinky cars on sale for 82 cents a piece...way better than one TAIN TAIN for 7.49 a piece! Even if one has to deal with a mad boy throwing a truck because it's not a tain tain!

He is VERY happy with the truck now though. :)

The week before Easter

Snow...that's what I can say... SNOW! We have in excess of five inches of snow on the ground.

It's supposed to be spring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice thing about our walk this morning, I could just let Sassy run because no one else was up. Somehow fresh snow brings out the lagging behind abilities in Riley so we didn't quite make as good a time as I wanted, ah well, snow can be fun! We broke a fresh trail for almost the whole walk. We did meet a lovely Kelpie/Cattle Dog on the way back. She had a most excellent recall! I complimented her owners on that. And then we talked a bit about a raw food diet. They seem interested.

What has this past week been like?
Justin has a cold and is breaking two molars in at the back (I'm fairly sure) hard to check since he likes to bite down and those teeth of his are sharp!

Jim had a crazy week with meetings almost all day Tuesday, Bible study on Wednesday and so he had Thursday to try to get a sermon done for Friday, plus two more due for Sunday. He worked hard and got them done.

As for me, I had Coffee-break on Wednesday, it was a weird meeting to me. Started off sloppy but ended up with some good discussion where you could tell that people were thinking. Rather neat that part. I did dislike that they forewent the prayer share time in order to start the lesson after a lengthy announcement time. So that didn't help my feelings of dissatisfaction when the study commenced, so my guess is that the start of the study may not have been sloppy but more that I needed to get my head in the right frame of mind.

Justin and I had fun at toddler time on Thursday even though we got there late. :)

Good Friday sermon was well-done. People seemed to like it. Justin napped in the nursery (shocked me to hear that). Jim's mom came up for the service and for lunch.

Oh, and I got my order in to William Dam for seeds. So nice that they have their on-line ordering all set up now. VERY convenient, and saves a stamp too! I just ordered a bunch of different veggies.

March 29, day away

Yesterday Justin and I spent the day away from home.

First we stopped off at Jo-Anne's house. She's a cousin, Justin is learning to call her Aunt Jo-Anne though since Jo and I go way back and it somehow seems wrong to me for him to call her just Jo-Anne, so... anyways, we had a nice visit. She's in the middle of year end stuff for work and has oodles of reports to get done, life is a bit hectic for her a the moment. We'll stop in again for a visit again I think. :)

Then we went to the market to check things out there. Picked up some Maple Syrup. Used $20 of the money I got for selling the golf clubs.

Off then to see "kat" about some chicken she promised us for the dogs. She did a no show. Rather frustrating that. Ah well....

Visited with Jacky for a short while at her job as well. Brought her the puzzle that I found for her oh.... too long ago. So glad that she liked it! Justin almost lost his favourite "Ta-gu" (also known to the rest of the speaking world as "tiger" to Jacky's tablemate, but Jacky rescued him for Justin. :)

Had a short visit with Barry at his job. Totally surprised him! :) Didn't stay too long as Justin found everything there just fascinating, he was tired, I was tired, and well... Barry had to work!

Stopped in at Wal-mart on the way home and actually found some rubber boots for Justin to wear. Only one pair fit him (other than some yellow ones that Justin wouldn't put on) so he has some "cars" rain boots. They should stay on him a bit better than the other ones even though these are still a bit big for him. Needs growing room though.

Then home. Thought about surprising MaryLou but since Justin was so tired I thought that might not be the best idea, so we just headed home. Justin fell asleep just before we got home so I kept driving since that way I knew he could get a 45 minute nap in.

Tried to go out for Dinner with Jim at the Malibu but service was very off tonight. Justin ended up losing it so we left. We ended up having dinner at McD's. Quite the let down after thinking.... Pickerel dinner with salad bar, but hey...what do you do?

So that was our day. Jim's day wasn't quite as productive, but he did okay. Today on the other hand, he'll be gone all day to London. First for a meeting with another pastor, then to work at mom's until he can visit with some parishoners later in the day. Justin and I will go to the Library, he'll have a nap this afternoon and I'll find something to do around the house (other than read a book). Probably clean the upstairs of the house. :)