The Party

Danica wanted to invite every little girl in her class at school to her birthday party so no one would feel left out.  Space at home would be a problem with that plan, so Mommy and Daddy rented the event room at the local grocery store, and that meant there was lots of room for everyone.   Yahoo!

A very special BD cake for a special Princess.

I think Danica was pleased with the cake.

Just outside the room was a neat view of the grocery store.

The early arrivals  lined up at the window to look for other guests arriving. 

The snack table was visited often while the girls waited for the festivities to begin. 

 What a sweet group of girls Danica has in her circle of friends at school.

Everyone was asked to sign this canvas, and draw a picture on it when they arrived. 

I love how everyone signed in a line....until this creative little girl arrived. 

I admire her creativity and unique style.  The others soon followed suit, and added colours and pictures too.

Let the party begin.....

Surprise Birthday lunch

AC and I surprised the kids at school during lunch time the other day, and took the kids out for lunch to celebrate Dani's 7th BD.   Dani got to choose the place...and of course it was McDonald's.

Buppa got a big thank you hug from the girl, and a happy smile from the boy.

Amma got a snuggle.

JJ enjoyed his dessert

Dani in the box!

After lunch, Dani took us over to the grocery store for a sneak-peek of her party room.  Both kids enjoyed the view of the parking lot from the  huge windowed wall in the room

They thought this mirror used for cooking demos was really neat.

Sweet sweet memories.

Spring colours

It's a joy to walk into the grocery store these days.  The riot of colours and the fragrance are a welcome gift to this winter weary soul.    Breathe deeply, and use your imagination to catch a whiff of the fragrance seeping out of these pics.  Enjoy. 

What's this?

AC came in from the mailbox the other day with this big padded envelope under his arm and surprised me when he said it was for me.  I was shocked.  It wasn't my birthday, no other special day had come and gone, and I hadn't ordered anything on-line.  What could it be?  I looked at the return address, and it didn't mean anything to me either.  Curiouser and curiouser!

I opened the parcel and found this beautiful hand knitted shawl inside with a little business card saying "Inspired by Life.  Created by Hand    Go....Create Something!" 

AC finally told me that this was hand made by a blog friend of his, and he knew that it was coming.  This man likes to knit, and he knew I liked shawls... so... the rest is history. 

It made my day, and warmed my heart.  Thanks Jim.  I do love capes and shawls, and will wear this one with a special joy because of its "out-of-the-blue" surprise arrival. 

Pretty nice huh?  I love it!

Waterlogged

We decided it was time to have a picnic lunch in the park, so we stopped at Tim's for coffee and a sandwich, and headed over to our favorite spot.  If the wind kicked up a fuss at the water's edge, we would sit in the car while we munched our lunch.  Oh joy, our first picnic of the year. 

What a surprise we got when we drove into our parking space and discovered the park flooded. 

The geese were having a good time, but we stayed warm and dry in the car. 

All the trees in these pictures are usually on dry ground.

This tree sits at the water's edge, not in the middle of it!  Sheesh.

Exuberance

AC brought a bouquet of tulips home from the grocery store the other day, and they have been having a party on our dining room table.

No other cut flower that I know of spreads out with quite as much exuberance as tulips.

They make me smile every time I look at them.

Sleepover fun with Danica

It was Danica's turn for a sleepover, so she came over around 4pm last weekend, and got to choose any supper she wanted. It was still cool outside, but the local chip truck opened this week, and she chose to go there for a pogo-stick and onion rings. 

The onion rings were really good, but you couldn't get me to eat a pogo stick unless I was starving. Dani enjoyed it though. 

After dinner, we came back to the house and watched a video together.  Then it was time for a story with Buppa before bedtime.

A James Herriot story with Ruth Brown illustrations was the pick of the day.

Next morning she got us up rather early, so we tried to convince her to play on her tablet while we got a few more ZZZZ's.  That only lasted for about 10 minutes, so we soon got up,  made coffee and got busy with the rest of our day,.

It was a nice sunny day, so we went out for a walk around the block before lunch. Danica met a friend from school along the way, and she joined us for a walk.

Good friends.

Before taking her back home, we stopped at Tim's for lunch.   She thought it was great fun to model Buppa's hat.

Cute huh?

What a rascal.

Busy bees

I know blogs have been scarce this past little while, but life has been busy, and time has zoomed by at break-neck speed.  How did we get to the middle of April already?  With the snow storm that blew through here yesterday, it seems like January!

Today is an at-home day, and neck pain is at a low ebb, so it seems like the perfect time to post a picture or two, and say hello. 

JJ had a sleepover a couple of weeks ago, and these first two pics are from when back then.  He did enjoy playing with Auntie Ally's old lego blocks. 

He thought the old action figures were fabulous.

Everybody on board and ready for adventure.

Before school the other morning Danica was hanging around before heading out to catch the bus.

Dani's 7th BD is coming up this weekend, so I am sure I'll have lots of pics to post next week.  Stay tuned.

Porch time

Another joy of spring, is porch time.  Makes the house seem so much bigger when we can open up the front porch, and sit out there with our morning coffee.   The kids love to sit out there before and after school too. 

Danica had to bundle up to be out there the other day, but she didn't mind at all.  She was groovin' to some music, and happy to be out on the porch.   Me too.  When it warms up a few more degrees, it will be just about perfect out there in the morning sunshine.  Yahoo!

The magic of Spring Flowers

It's coming. Spring really is coming, it's just having some trouble with its timetable this year.  To help sweep the winter cobwebs out of our heads during a snowstorm in March, we bring a pot of spring bulbs into the house. 

Now, don't you feel better just looking at a daffodil?

This is what was happening outside, but the pot of daffys brought spring sunshine inside.

Snow is melting today, but more of the white stuff might arrive tomorrow. Sigh!  I might need to add another pot of flowers to my shopping list this weekend.  I live in hope that I will soon see them in my garden. 

Worth a re-post

This being Poetry Month, I thought I would  re-post this blog I first posted in 2006.  Enjoy!

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Peace of Wild Things

In times of mind numbing busyness, it is oh so wise to stop what we are doing and step off the merry-go-round of life for awhile. I always have a poetry book or two handy to grab for just such times. When the whirling and twirling gets to be just too much and my head becomes dizzy from the spinning, I know it is time to feast on some poetry and then step into the quiet calm of the great outdoors.

I picked up a new book I got from the library the other day, Risk Everything, 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, and this poem oozed from the page and drizzled over my hot frazzled soul like a cool soothing balm. Ahhhh, Sweet!

Goodness knows we can all use a dose of cool soothing balm on hot dusty days of the soul, so let me share it with you too.

The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


This is my place of still water.

If you can't take your body to a quiet place by still waters, then close your eyes and go there in your mind.
…do not tax your life with forethought of grief...come into the presence of still water…rest in the grace of the world…be free.


MMMMMM, doesn't that feel good?

The Birthday Party

Yes, another year has come and gone, and it was time to party. We arrived at the kids' place late afternoon on party day, and I was given the royal treatment. 

Danica sat right by my side, and made sure I was comfy.  Mommy poured me a glass of wine, and we all settled in for the party.

Danica had to try on all my rings, and really liked this one. 

It was soon time for gifts, and this was a summer bag full of butterfly themed gifts. Pretty, pretty, pretty

Danica, of course, read the card to me.

Then she helped folding the tissue paper...

...and modeling the clothes.  From a sparkly scarf...

...to a sparkly butterfly summer top.

MMMM, time for a birthday feast.  I usually choose Chinese take-out for my birthday, as it is something I would never make for myself, but do enjoy once a year.  Yes, once a year is enough for me.

Sweet and sour chicken balls are a favorite with the kids.  Might be a tad hard to eat though.

All set to dig in...yum!

Now comes the best part for the kids.  Singing, then blowing out the candles...then a finger full of icing.  

It was a fabulous and fun celebration.  I look forward to all the fabulous and fun times to come this year.  68...bring it on!

An interesting phone call from a 6 year old

The phone rang the other day, and it was Danica calling to say hello, and to let me know all about Google+, and how to use it if I wanted to contact her.  I listened intently, as she gave me all the ins and outs of Google+.

The conversation soon moved on to other things though, and by the end of the phone call my head was spinning, I had a huge smile on my face, and I again wondered if I had really had this conversation with a 6 year old.

The conversation hopped around from topic to topic, and it went something like this:

Do you know who Martin Luther King was? she asked.

Yes, he was a civil rights leader in the United States.  I replied.  I don't know a lot about him, but you could probably research him on Wikipedia later.  I know you and mommy do a lot of that together.

Is he like Nelson Mandela from South Africa?  I was reading about him the other night, and his childrens' names are very different, and I can't remember any of them.  His grandfather's name had about 31 letters in it, and I can't remember it either because it was so long.  His wife's name was Winnie, and that is easy to remember.

We talked some more about Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, while I shook my head in amazement at the topic of this conversation.  We then moved on to what she had done last night.   Mommy had taken them out for dinner and a movie.  

Oh, I said.  I always liked Disney movies. 

Walt Disney?  She asked.  I was reading about him the other day, and his daughter, Diane, just died in November last year.  His other daughter, Abigail, is still alive, but I can't remember her age.

Well, I don't know anything about his family, but I always enjoyed his movies.  I replied

Do you mean Saving Mr Banks?  She asked. 
  
I don't know.  Is that one of his new movies? I asked incredulously.

It is a movie about Mary Poppins and Julie Andrews, with Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks in it. She chatted on. I read about it in the theater when we were there last night, and it is now playing at the Empire Theater. 

Oh.  I replied almost speechless.

We talked some more before she said good-bye to rush off to do other exciting things with her day.  I rushed for a pen and paper to jot down, as best I could, what she had said.   I knew I had to blog about this most amazing conversation.

She absolutely astonishes me.  She is so interested in people, and wants to know their names and birth-dates.  We watched a movie with the kids during March Break week, and at the end of the movie, she went to the computer to look up each actor, find their birth-dates so she could calculate their age now,  see the country where they were born, and what the national anthem of the country was.  We then had to look up who wrote the anthem, and what his birth-date was.  We listened to all the national anthems and chose which one we liked best.   Amazing, just amazing.  I must admit that I have never ended watching a video in this way.  We had to pause the screen when the credits started to roll, so she could find out the actual name of each character, then look them up on Wikipedea.

My head is still spinning, and I imagine it will do so for years to come at the actions of this most amazing child.  Hope I can keep up with her questioning mind.









 


 

Conversations with a 6 year old.

I have been pondering this blog for a few weeks now, and decided that this was the morning to try to put some thoughts down on "paper".

A few weeks ago, Danica had a dentist appointment, so she didn't come to our house to catch the bus that morning.  Daddy took her to the appt. and would drop her off at school after.  They had to stop by our house on the way to school though, to pick up her snow pants that she had left here the night before.  When they arrived, she looked really pale, and she told Daddy she didn't feel well..  He thought she was just looking for a way to get out of going to school and told her to get her pants and let's get going.

She went into the bathroom, and I told Daddy that I thought she genuinely needed a rest as she looked wiped out to me.  We assured him that we would give her lunch, allow her to rest for a while, then take her to school if she felt better in a little while.  He thought she was just pulling-our-leg a bit, but went on his way to work without her.  We made a bed for Dani on the couch, turned on one of her favorite TV programs, and she snuggled down under the blanket for about half an hour.

After lunch, we gave her the option of going to school, or settling down on Buppa's rocking chair for the rest of the afternoon.  She gave it some serious thought, and finally said, "I still have a lot to learn, so I think I'll go to school."  We were surprised that she chose school, but after some thought, weren't.  If that makes any sense at all. 

On the way to school, out of the blue,she asked what the population of our little town was.  I said there was a lot of building going on, and it was growing fast, so I didn't know what the exact number was these days, but she could probably email the Mayor and ask her.

Oh yes, she replied, I could ask Wendy LeBlanc.

My goodness, I said, I am impressed that you know the mayor's name.

Yes, she said, and Rob Ford is the mayor of Toronto.

That's right.  I said with more than a tad of amazement in my voice. Trying to carry on the conversation, I asked,   Do you know who the premier of Ontario is?

Yes, it is Kathleen Wynne.

I was flabbergasted at this point.  Do you know who the prime minster of Canada is?

Stephen Harper, came the quick reply.

How can this 6 year old know this?  I then  asked her if she knew who the president of the US was.
She was silent for a few seconds as she gave it some serious thought.  She then said  It is a different sounding name.  I gave her a hint and told her it started with a B, and she soon had it  Barack Obama.

By this time we were at the school, so the conversation ended there.  We signed her in at the front desk, and continued on our way for the afternoon. We were both shaking our heads in wonder at the conversation that had just transpired with a 6 year old.

It doesn't stop there though, I have an amazing phone conversation to share with you too, but I'll save that for the next blog post.  Stay tuned......

March 17th at our house

This is what went on at our house before school on the 17th. 

Shamrocks firmly in place, and hair clips added to the do.

Is that Amma peeking at me in the mirror?

We even had time for some St Patty's Day crafts before the bus arrived.

We pack a lot of fun into those 20 minutes before the bus arrives in the mornings.