Full circle

Abigail now has what Sam had last week. She was up most of the night with her cough and fever and and bad dreams and not being well.

I was hoping she'd be ok to go to drama and I gave her the morning to see how she was, but by late morning she wasn't any better and we gave up and stayed home. It probably did Sam could to have another day to rest at home...his nose is still running like a tap anyway lol! He has preschool tomorrow although half of me wonders why we should bother....not sure he gets much from it....he's not bothered about going and the teachers aren't exactly 'stimulating' shall we say........

I have high ideals when it comes to preschool education lol...and not much lives up to them.....lets just say that my children learn a LOT more at home from me than they do at school and to be honest I don't think that 'socialisation' at that age is vital ;)

They are still keen for me to teach in the Fall here in SCL...and if I do then I can tell you something - my classes will be VERY different to the classes Sam has been attending recently!!

Abby stayed inside this afternoon while Sam and I went for a walk - we headed off into the woods which have grown like CRAZY this last week after all the rain we have had!! It was like a JUNGLE in there!!!

We went down to the beehives but they were quiet - maybe because of the temperature.

Apart from that I've done laundry, washed floors, cleaned the kitchen, the bathrooms, pottered about and checked emails and blogs etc etc and chatted on my bee forum!! Oh and they came and got Bertha!!! Sam enjoyed that! And I chatted via email to Tess!

Hopefully Abby will be better tomorrow and we can go out - Sam can go to preschool and Abby and I can head somewhere together.....no idea where. Weather is supposed to be good from now on so maybe the park or somewhere. Well Lloyd wants to head out for a walk so I am off out for a while. Byeeeeeee :)

Kayaking on the lake....

Yesterday we went kayaking on lake we live close to. A sat in the front with me and spent much of the time paddling for me. She did a great job and had a blast! We saw a lot of wildfowl out there including Sandpipers and Loons. It's one of the best places in the country for seeing Sandpipers.

Dad!!!

Can you send me your 'recipe' for growing potatoes in buckets please!! I was telling people about it today and I just want to be sure I have it exactly right!!!!!

Thank you :)

Susan!

Samantha is just soooo beautiful!!! And that dress is gorgeous on her!!! Just stunning!

I use my Sobeys bags everywhere I go - all the time in Safeway and they don't mind at all in there so go ahead and use your bag :)

I can't wait until June 1st so I can comment on your blog again :)

Head over to 'Its My Blog' to check out Susan's gorgeous li'l gal in her Summer dress :) So sweet :)

Just born....

One of our butterflies just 'hatched' from it's chrysalis.....note it's curly tongue! hop on over to our homeschool blog to check out our other pictures....

Full bloom

Lloyds little friend

Lloyd found a little friend on the Crab apple blossom yesterday. Cute huh? He named it Syd little. By the way Val and Tess - this friend is NOT a tosser ;) - and he is welcome to store his boat in my workshop all winter long ;) Oh AND he can come visit as often as he likes!!! Mind you HE isn't likely to ignore me completely, make offensive comments about breastfeeding or about women in general or just be a completely jerk!. Nope definitely NOT a tosser ;)

I love you Lloyd - even if your friends are dorky :)

Thought I should add that the reason for my rant is because after storing his boat and jetski all winter long for him, Lloyds charming friend (gggrrrr) came over to get it last week. I was watering the strawberries not 10 metres away....hard to miss lol....I smiled and waved.....he didn't even acknowledge me...no smile, no hello......no how are you Jane?....didn't even bother to look my way. I mean what the hell am I???? Hired help?????????? Its my house and workshop too you know......It was me that let him store his stuff for free all winter long too you know.....How rude and obnoxious is that??????

JERK.

My weekend

My weekend catch-up!! Friday turned out to be so much fun! Well, it started out to be hellish! Sam wasn't well Friday morning. He screamed ALL morning! About ants! Normally he loves bugs of all kinds. He catches them, cares for them. Watches them. But after he hallucinated about them the other night, he hasn't liked them at all. So Friday morning he saw an ant in the kitchen and started freaking out. Refused to walk on the floors. Refused to sit at the table. Refused to go anywhere. Cried and screamed. Wanted to be carried EVERYWHERE. Would not let me leave him alone. Even had Abby carrying him. Just screamed constantly.

In the end I had to just leave him on the bed crying for a few minutes while I had a break for a shower. I just needed a break. By lunchtime I managed to get him to come outside. He refused to get dressed but he did ut some shoes on and come outside. By 2pm he was willing to come and look at the ant hills and by the time Lloyd came home he was fine and back down by the hives with me and had forgotten his fears thank GAWD!!!!!

I was exhausted by then though!!! Definitely needed a night out!!!

And what a night out it was lol!!!!

Val picked me up at 5pm and we headed in to town. Met Tess at 5:45pm at the scrapbook store and we headed to the big yard sale at Clover Bar Ranch. All our plans had changed because we had found out that day that the yard sale was a week earlier than normal. It's normally the last weekend in May! Oh well -w e all wanted to go so that was fine! We got there just after 6pm and didn't leave until 9pm!!! It's a whole subdivision (new housing estate) of garage sales (like car boot sales but out of their garages) and you walk from one to the other all evening.

It wasn't as good as normal as not many houses had sales but we still managed to find bargains and had so much fun chatting and looking. I think Tess thinks I'm a little bit crazy - she laughed at one point and said she was a little bit scared to see me drunk!!! Hahahaha! Thankfully Val is used to my wacky sense of humour and just tends to roll her eyes ;)

I got plenty of books (at least enough to annoy Lloyd with). I also found a lovely white rocking chair for the front porch ($10!!!!) and a dish thing for strawberries....not sure what you'd call it - but it is shaped like a basket but its china and it has strawberries in a design around it. Val says its very me :) and that was 50c :)

After the yard sale we went to East Side Marios and had dinner and Bellini's it was a lovely evening! I had such a fun evening - so lovely to spend the evening with Val and Tess! Thanks so much both of you for coming out! And thank you for sharing the funnel cake with me - that was amazingly delicious!!!! YUM!!!! :)

We have to do it again soon! Charlynn!! Cori!!! Sharon!!! And anyone else Everyone else!!! You should all come and join us :)

Off to have dinner and then I'll write about Saturday!!! :)

Taking it home....

This is a bit of a dig at a certain post on LP...but yet another reason I'm glad we have the Expedition! I think the kayak would look a bit silly on a little car!!! And with the amount of junk and dirty paddles and everything else we cart back in the back of this vehicle, it gets a LOT of use :) Some people just don't have a clue!

By the way I though 'luv to scrap' meant 'luv to scrapbook' duh at me!!!! It obviously means 'luvs to scrap ie fight!!!!

Kayaking

This afternoon we took the kayak out on to South Cooking Lake. It took a bit of persuading to get Lloyd to go out as he thought it was going to rain or be too cold, but it was lovely out there - the kids had a blast and so did we :) We'll probably ache tomorrow but it will be worth it :)

Boo!

Thought this scary bee face was funny!!!!

Our first butterfly!

Today our first butterfly made it's appearance from it's chrysalis! We were very surprised at the bloody mess it left behind!!! First of all the chrysalis goes black and then not long after, the butterfly makes its appearance! Isn't it beautiful?

We have 5 more chrysalises that will hopefully turn into butterflies....and we also have four moths to watch too! Now to get some orange Gatorade to feed them with!

Home again!

My Hummingbirds are home for the Summer :) Last night at 9:30pm Lloyd phoned from Safeway and while he was on the phone, one flew onto the feeder on the porch for the first time. There was a break in the rain. I've been watching the feeders so carefully :)

I thought I had heard a Hummingbird a couple of days ago before the rains started. Now I'm pretty sure I did! I'm so happy to see my little friends back again!

The year before last we had two Hummingirds here. Last year we had five. This year I have 6 feeders hanging. I wonder how many birds we will get.

The pictures are not good. I didn't use my flash as I didn't want to scare the little lady off on her first evening here. The light was poor from the grey skies and I was taking the picture through a window. I'm assuming it was a lady anyway - the light was so poor I couldn't even see clearly to see if it had a Ruby throat! And we had to get Jasper inside at one point because he was hiding beneath the barbecue ready to pounce lol!

At one stage the little Hummer flew down to my flower bed and had a look at my Irises!!! Hopefully I can get some better pictures today now that the rain has stopped and the sun is out again :)

Anyone new to my blog - if you do a search in the top left box for hummingbirds you will find all the pictures I have taken in the last two years of hummingbirds visiting my porch.

Summer visitors

For much of this Summer I won't get to watch the birds from the kitchen window....the diggers arrive next week to dig out the basement, and my view from this window will change for a few months. But for now the birds are still visiting. The male woodpecker was here for much of the day, but this female stopped by and looked at me as if to say 'what do you think you're looking at'?????

Thursday ramblings...

Sam is still sick, so I have spent much of my day doing laundry, pottering about in my bedroom while he lays flopped on the bed listlessly, occasionally throwing up. It's still from the cough...all phlegmy - sorry - you really wanted to know that didn't you???? Poor little guy has no energy.

I spent some time going through Abigails homeschooling paperwork.....checking what we have done this year, what, if anything we need to work on before the end of the year etc etc. I sorted out some parcels to go in the mail.

Abby worked on maps today and story starters as well. She also sat on the bed and read some stories to Sam.

Linda phoned about the camping trip next for Chris' class. It's Thursday and Friday night at the lake and I may or may not be staying Thursday night. I already said I can't make it Friday night as I have plans (lol Val - YOU know why I cant make it the Friday night!!!!It's THE Friday night of the YEAR!!!!!) But the camping trip is sounding good and I am so so pleased they are going - they're using our tent as one of the tents which is fine - in fact they may use both our tents if our old tent still works - we'll try it this weekend and maybe I will camp out with the kids. If the ground dries out.

It's STILL raining - but thats good really as it means the ground is getting SUCH a great soaking and the pond level was soooooo low this year - we didn't get the big flood we normally get this year - normally when the snow melts we get this big flood and the pond overflows but that didn't happen this year and the pond level is really low so hopefully this will help a little. The fire bans in Edmonton have been lifted already so thats good.

Tonight Chris has the dentist - some quick work before his orthodontist appointment. Lloyd is taking him so I can stay home with Sam in the warm.

Last night Lloyd and I ran into town to get some dog food and grabbed a coffee. I picked upa new book to read. 'Me to We by Karl and Marc Kielburger. You can read more about it at:

www.metowe.org/

The book that’s showing the world that one person can make a difference is now a New York Times Best Seller! Me to We is a philosophy, a manual, a manifesto and a movement. It's about finding meaning in our lives and our world by reaching out to others.

Chris has a leadership meeting at school right now so I have to go pick him up in a few minutes...he's organizing the leaving party for when they graduate Junior High in a few weeks. He was chosen to run leadership a couple of weeks ago when the teacher who was running it left to have a baby.

Laurie came home to say a boy in Chris's class was expelled from school today - so I will be interested to hear what happened and if thats true - as its not a boy who is normally in trouble! In fact this is a boy who was Chris's swap partner for Christmas gifts last year and came to our door on Christmas morning with a gift for Christopher!!!

Lloyd is on his way home from work :)

I hope Sam is better tomorrow - Abigail has requested to go somewhere specific and I am supposed to be out for dinner with Val in the evening. We were supposed to be going to Smiles10101010101010101 (lol I don't know her real name lol) party in the evening but its postponed because Tina's little guy is in hospital, so we are going to go out anyway.......after Sam being ill I am soooo looking forward to it :) Not that I wasn't anyway but...well you know what I mean :) I just hope Sam is well enough that he isn't clingy! Mind you he normally clings to Lloyd and not me anyway lol!