FAR FAR AWAY

It does feel like I've been to the ends of the earth and back lately. With the trip to Alberta to visit my brothers and one sister, getting the darn crud going around, then preparations for an open house - well I'll tell you I have been a bit played out. You would think that with getting the latest and greatest flu needle, I would not have gotten the "love flu" from my two little grandsons, but no. Obviously, they had the one flu that was not included in the shot this year. Oh well, now it is Auntie's turn to be down with the "love flu". If you are wondering why I call it the love flu, well it just makes sense tgo call it that after the littles have been hugging me while coughing in my face, touching me with nasal drippings on their tiny hands and of course in the case of the three year old - well maybe you don't need to hear that he ran his booger encrusted hands all over my clothes while telling me that he loves me. Now you see!

This week has been the start of Christmas around the place. First I did up my pots in the front of my garage with some greenery. Then I bought a big pot of poinsettia and put them in the living room. Next I got two wintery baskets. One for the coffee table and one for the entry way, and that is as far as I have gotten. No worries, lots of time till Christmas. The kids are going to help me put up a few lights outside once it warms up - maybe next July hahaha. We are sitting at -20C right now and that does not include the wind chill factor. We are going down to -25C tonight. Tomorrow and Tuesday will not be much better, but slowly the temperature will get warmer toward next weekend. Because of all the Christmas that is happening, we will have to do it on Sunday. When I was growing up, the only thing we had to look forward to in our community was the school Christmas concert and for the old folks the News Years do. As our kids grew up and over time it has gotten busier and busier. I often wonder why and have come to the conclusion that I think people don't want to spend time by themselves. I find that so sad. How can you get in touch with yourself and with God if you are always busy.

 Somewhere around December 16th, the grandkids and some wanna be grandkids will be coming over to decorate their trees. I have a small tree for each of them and they get to decorate it with the ornaments (one for each year) and whatever else I have on hand. Then the fun part comes. They get to pick what prominent spot their tree will have this year. So funny, once grandson puts all his decorations on only one half of the tree. His brother gives all his decorations to Dakota and tells her to do it. Meanwhile Dakota and Zack decorate to the nines. 

Yesterday, my granddaughter had a play date with 15 of her closest friends i.e. all the girls and a couple of boys in her class as well as some neighbourhood girls. They made cake pops. Nicole hasn't posted any pictures yet and no one has heard hide nor tail from them today. I am going to assume that it was a success and all are sleeping off the after effects of the sugar and all those kiddies. My daughter-in-law Nicole is a trooper. She will go to the ends of the earth for her husband and kids. She is great at planning and doing family things.

We got a "family" pop-up trailer this past summer to tide us over until we either find a cottage or I lunge head first into a motor home. I really do not think that trailer will sit for any length of time. She, the kids, aunty and uncle Gregg will be on the road all summer. I can hardly wait so see where all they go. We live in a province that has BIG lakes, as well as lots of forest with many, many, many campsites available. Oh, it is not all honey and roses here -- we are after all the mosquito capital of the world.

Today, I took time to work on an Angel for the top of someones tree. I am doing it in hardanger and when I am a bit further on into the cutting and stitching I will post pics. On my needles, I have a dress going for Dakota. I haven't worked in the round for so long I seem to have forgotten the rules etc., so said dress will not be ready for the Yule Tide season. Such is the life of a needleworker - we are never on time for anything!

Take care, stay warm and enjoy the week that leads up to the start of advent. Is anyone doing any special bible study for Advent. I am going to try. I am not sure though which one I will pull out to do.

Blessings

Jean

MY HOW TIME FLIES ---WHEN YOU ARE HAVING FUN

Like so many other bloggers, I intend to blog frequently, but life gets in the way and even though I think "this would make good blog fodder", I never seem to get around to it.

We have had lots of action in our family this fall. We had three new babies born, one in August and two in September. August's baby is a boy, the middle of September baby is a girl and the finally little one is a boy. Along with that, one month later my oldest grandson's mom had a baby girl. It will be wonderful to watch them all grow up together.

On a recent trip to my old stomping grounds - Alberta, two of my children and their family were able to come along. For the first few days, I took the Yelllow Head Route and went to Vegreville to see my oldest living brother. He is not doing to good and I needed to see him, so off I went. The rest of the family took the southern route the Trans Canada Highway and ended up in Calgary. I enjoyed my time in Vegreville seeing some Nieces and Nephews that I hadn't seen in a couple of years. Then I headed south on the Queen Elizabeth Highway between Edmonton and Calgary to join up with my kids. We had a hoot there, having many family gatherings over a four day period. They arrived in Calgary on Sunday afternoon and I followed on Tuesday. I am not sure what activities they did on Monday, but on Tuesday they went to the wave pool in Calgary with some of their smaller cousins and then went back to their hotel while I drove from Vegreville to Calgary. Love the speed out there 110 KM/hr and you can generally go 120 without getting a ticket. For dinner on Tuesday as many as could make it gathered at my sisters place for a chicken dinner. The place we get it from is a local company called Chicken On The Way. One time when I was out I had a hankering for it and now the tradition has sort of taken over. We had the chicken and corn fritters from there and supplemented it with home made coleslaw, spinach salad and dessert. It was good, and we had an awesome time visiting over food. The only thing is our calculations were out just a bit and I think we may have supplied 1/4 of Calgary with lunch the next day. Everyone got to take a big bag of food home. On Wednesday, my nephew put winter tires on my car and his co-workers graciously thanked me for their lunch lol.

Nieces and Nephew enjoying the chicken dinner

After the dinner a few of us who were left, started planning a party -- more to follow in a bit. On Wednesday, my kids along with some cousins went shopping to one of the newest shopping centers in the Calgary area called Cross Irons Mall. The kids wore their costumes and went trick or treating in the mall while the adults shopped - this went on simultaneously. They then went for dinner at my youngest brother's house and then went trick or treating with their other cousins or as my nephew use to say " my other kind of cousins". That is how he differentiated the families. All in all I do believe the kids had a good Halloween.

Jeff's Halloween Creativity - Jeff shown in picture above.

That day we did some more planning and purchasing of goods for the party. The party was actually a Breakfast Baby Shower for my Son and his Wife Nicole. We started planning on Tuesday night, gathered all the ingredients, pressies, etc. and called the invitees on Wednesday and at 8:30 a.m. Thursday morning we had the shower. Nicole was pleasantly surprised and we all had a great time eating, playing games, taking pictures, holding the babies and for them opening the gifts. Geoff, Nicole and family then took off home. Daughter Gabie and I stayed on till Saturday.  We hung around on Thursday visiting. Then Gabie and niece Christine took off to have some time together. In the evening I went to visit with my brother for an hour and then went out with a friend I went to school with many years ago. He still lives in the area we grew up in and has a couple of ranches in the area. He has an Outfitting Business and with that gets to take hunters all over the world. As well he has a hunting business in Mexico. An interesting life for sure. It was nice to see him. He certainly looks like his granddad. On Friday my daughter, my niece and I headed west from Calgary to Canmore ---taking the back roads. So after snow, rain and much fog we weren't sure if we would make it. Thanks to Jeff and my new tires we had a great time seeing scenery not seen in a very long time, seeing the sun and generally having a great time. Yes, Alberta along with the rest of the prairies has had about 5 sunny days since mid September. For the most part it has been either cloudy or foggy. In the case of that day, we had to drive very high into the mountains to get above the fog. It was so, so nice to see the sun. We then had dinner and did a bit of shopping in Canmore Alberta, then headed back to Calgary for the night. The next day we headed home to Manitoba and since then have been extremely busy.

The stitching side of life has been zero until today when I finished off a sweater for my new grandson. With it being a long weekend up here, I do intend to be very creative though, so will post as things happen. 

In the meantime - enjoy your day.

Blessings

Jean