It Is All Happy

Retirement Party
Time for celebration and jubilation and speeches saying all kinds of flattering stuff. I am feeling just a little embarrassed and very humble. I gave the big guy a hug for all that flattery to the applause of all, then it was his turn to blush. Ha! It's funny...we all work together for years and years and never hug each other. I got lots of hugs. I didn't cry though. That is only because I still get to see everybody when I come in and work the odd shift.

Me telling everybody what a joy it has all been. It isn't a lie. In hindsight it has been wonderful and I did work with a lot of fantastic people. I look like I am about to cry. I did come close. Noah and Ben stayed close for moral support.

Some of my cohorts in crime. They are pretty in blue. Don't you love the caps? Sometimes they are hard to recognize outside of the work place because I am not used to seeing their hair.

Two of the people I will miss the most, the couriers. They made me laugh every day.
Noah still keeping close.

Sophie avoiding getting her picture taken. She would kill me if she saw this. Hahaha!

Most of my family was able to come. The cake was beautiful. The card was lovely. The people are the best.

Go On A Holiday
I should post more often. Because I have been busy and lazy, I have a bunch of pictures crying for attention. It is hard to figure out what to do with them all. They are jumping up and down saying me...me...me! I could put them all up but there would be no rhyme or reason to this post. It would be like photo anarchy. Anyway...some flowers. We are leaving for the lake and will be gone for about a week. I am hoping that Mike will take good care of my babies while I gone. I plan to phone every day and check up on their status. A couple of years ago, Mike did not do so well in the floral care department when John and I took a holiday.

Roscoe got a bath today. That is a two hour ordeal for me. Don't feel to sorry for him. He love all the attention. He is so soft now and doesn't stink anymore. This is important as he will be riding in the truck with John and me for about three hours on the way to the lake. These flowers are the creation of John. He worked hard at hollowing out the Birch stumps and he planted these himself. I think that this is the first time he has ever planted flowers!

Mike please...please remember to give water!

My shrub garden is thriving.

The roses in the front yard are in full bloom. Some kind of a bug is eating the leaves. I am going to have to spray them tomorrow before we leave. Poor things.

Today I finished cleaning house, got my hair permed (now I am curly and I won't have to worry how I am going to do my hair out in the wilderness) then I went and got groceries and some other things that will make being at the lake more fun (a rubber dinghy so we can have races or try to dump each other) The camper is loaded. Tomorrow we will finish packing, put the canoe on top and head off into the sunset. I am so excited. Say a prayer for this old truck.
See ya later!

Getting Ready...Ram tough!

Believe it or not but the rest of John's body is somewhere in the truck. He is sitting in there somehow. I haven't quite figured it out! Right now he is muttering: "What are you doing with that camera! Why do you need a picture of this? Must you take a picture of everything?" My answer: "I must have a picture of this. Sweetheart, You don't know how odd this looks to me. This my dear is a photo orportunity that will probably never come again!" Doesn't this look odd to you?

Now... I did manage to get him to smile. Where in the world did his legs go? Anyway, all that he needs to do is go and get some tires for the beast ...ahem...I mean truck and we will be ready to load the camper on it and hopefully it will get us to the lake next week. "Come on truck...be Ram tough one more time." BTW...don't you love his farmer tan? It was about plus 34C when he was doing this. I had to keep checking on him to make sure he was O.K.

I had to add this picture of Sam multi tasking. Notice the nonchalant way he has his hand on the toaster while he acts all innocent eating his popcorn? He dies not even look at the toaster! He is very gifted at getting into trouble without having you notice it until too late.

Well that is it folks. I can't think of any thing else to post today.

Fair Weather

Eh? Pretty nice! My new bicycle. The tag is still on it.
21 speed...I really like the new type of shifters they make now.

Lake Diefenbaker off Gardener Dam

Power Generators

Angela and Noah at the dam
It was lots of fun throwing rocks!


Baby Blackbird found in a low bush.
Its parents were never far away.
Non stop squawking!

When ever I would move one of the parents decided it was necessary to distract me by squawking. The other would go in to feed the baby. We put the baby back in the tree. It kept coming back to the bush. In a couple of day it will be able to fly for real.

The day was beautiful! Lots of sunshine and most importantly...no wind! That is such a rare thing in Saskatchewan. Usually as soon as we get a sunny day, the wind starts to blow. As the lake had very little in the wave activity area, John was able to try out his canoe with his new motor. It worked out well. I sat on the beach and fried. I guess I did not have sum screen on my shoulders properly. Ouch! Now I am a lobster for a few days, then I will turn into a snake and shed my skin.

Weekend Essay

I have been meaning to make a new post this weekend...something that had a little effort in it...something interesting...well written...maybe even riveting. Seeing that it is late Sunday evening and I am tired, that will have to wait for another day. This is how my weekend went:

Friday

Friday counts as part of the weekend because I didn't have to work. I got up in the morning and got caught up on the dishes...vacuumed and washed the floors. ( are you entertained yet?) After that John and I went to town and took my mom bra shopping. Well he dropped us off. I am not that cruel as to make him come in with us. I took her to Sears. They are excellent at fitting bras. I deserted her with the nice and helpful clerk. She did an excellent job and " found her a bra that puts everything in its proper place on her body and looks attractive as well" Giggle! Mom must have told her that she was unhappy where her girls were sitting. I should have stayed. That conversation would have been interesting to say the least. After that we went to Wal Mart where John got a pair of new pants, shorts and more squirt guns. He plans on having a lot of water fights this summer. He now has three guns. Mom got some new drinking glasses and bath mats. I got nothing. We went for lunch. We went to the Irish place on Arlington Ave. They must buy all their dishes at Salvation Army. Nothing matches. Mom's glass said Seasons Greetings! She kept staring at it...looking at me...staring again...looking at me and so on and so forth. Finally she read it out loud "S E A S O NS G R E A T I N G S?" Hahaha! Not one dish, not one chair and not one table is the same. How was the food? Great! It always is there. That's why we keep going back. After we took Mom home we went out bicycle shopping. I bought a new bicycle. We came home and went out for a nice ride. We are going to get out on a regular basis. I think John will get out more if I go with him and we both need the exercise. It is the nicest bike I have ever owned! I am going to get a little basket for it then I can take my camera with and maybe get some nice pictures. Somewhere in all of this, we took the dog swimming.

BTW...John is sleeping in front of the TV. He is holding the remote. He has just changed the channel twice and now he has his hand on the volume control. Excuse me for a second. He didn't even wake himself up that time! I should bring in one of those squirt guns he owns and let him have it when that happens. I could do some target practice. Hahaha! It is so tempting! You would not believe how tempted I am. I wonder if he would get mad?

Saturday

We went car shopping with Angela. We found a vehicle that she is excited about. Really excited! I will let her post about all of that. I am tempted though. We went for lunch. In the evening, we went to the stock car races. I forgot my camera. They lasted five hours so we did not get home until mid-night. This played us out. I slept in until 11:30!

Sunday

Well the day started so late! We missed church. I did more housework and laundry. Ye-ha! I live such an exciting life. If you are still reading this post...hmmm...I would say that your life is probably not much more exciting than mine! We went to Jonathan's and Melissa's for a bar-b-que this evening. That was nice. Now it is back to the grind tomorrow. All in all, not a bad weekend at all. I think I will go and have some ice cream now in lieu of squirting John. I have to give into some temptation and that one is probably the best of my options. Do you think?

It's All Good News

Wow! The bake sale that the kids worked so hard at went very well last weekend. I want to thank everybody that donated baking and bought baking and a special thank you to Melissa who coordinated the whole thing. A whopping $1,500 was raised! John and I are overwhelmed with all the care and generosity that was shown. A very special thank you to Jonathan's ball team and the Camsell family.

Today John's brother Art phoned and there are not one but three matches amid the nine siblings that were tested for stem cell donation. Double Wow!

We had a very action packed weekend. We enjoyed Buster Days. The parade did not disappoint.

Bring it on!

Police with sirens

Local Dignitaries

Marching Bands

Floats

Even the casino from around about Saskatoon was represented...throwing candy to the children. Hmmm...

Best of all: loud fire trucks!

Very loud fire trucks

And of coarse...the mandatory traffic jam after the parade

We had so much fun...we watched it twice! I hope you enjoyed it too.

Trouble

"SAM...SAMMY! NO!...SAMMY!"

I can hear his mother say. I jump out of my chair and come running to see what the damage is. From the particular pitch his mothers voice has attained, I am expecting a real mess. I figured at the very least he had managed to pour out a bottle of corn syrup or something. I round the corner. I laugh. "Thats it?... Just toilet paper?" Maybe it was a whole roll, but really... even though Sam's middle name should have been:
Trouble


When you have a big brother who is so rational and helpful...
Who even demonstrates how to roll it back on...
And proceeds to roll it back up...sort of...well it is still usable...
Hey!...Is Trouble scoping out the shampoo? It doesn't look like Trouble is paying attention!

Anyway... it was decided, seeing how fascinated Trouble was with the bathroom, that maybe a bath would keep him out of living up to his should be middle name.

I guess not!

I haven't posted for a few days. I have been very busy working almost full time and learning a whole new job. It has been a bit of a bumpy ride. When I come home, I am physically tired and mentally spent. It is hard to teach an old brain new things. It seems the more I focus on trying to assimilate the new things that I need to learn the more I screw up the easy things that I know or in other words the harder I try the worse I perform. It didn't help matters that on Friday the computer program that we use was glitching due to changes I.T. was doing. I was frustrated to tears...only about maybe three or maybe four tears. I managed to get my big girl panties on! Fast! This is a very humbling experience because I ace my mail room job.

I was very, very, very happy when Friday 4:30 came along and was met by my husband, daughter and two grandsons right outside the front doors of the hospital. They took me to Kingsman Park and we went of the train ride, carousel and ferris wheel. It didn't even matter too much that I was still wearing the gray man shirt that I am required to wear at work. I will not be posting any pictures of me wearing this very unflattering shirt. It makes my arms look humongous and the color is awful.

Today, we went to the town parade. It was a blast! I will do a post on that later. This post is getting long enough. Anyway...thank goodness for grandkids! They have restored me. They make me laugh and they give great hugs.

The bake sale fund raiser is going great. More about that later as well.

I may be a bit sporadic with my posts in the next month and with comments at blog sites I visit. I have been coming around but sometimes either I am to tired to even think of what to say or I don't have time.

It's A Dogs Life

Reasons It Would Be Nice To Be A Dog

I would have nothing better to do than wait around until somebody fed me or played with me. If they seemed to be taking their time, all I would have to do is make sad eyes at them and then I would get my way.

If that didn't work I could always manage to get some treats from my young friends. They usually cooperate! I would simply hang around and enjoy the ambiance.

I would have time to watch the world go by...no stress...no worries. "Look a car! And another car. A bird! Where did it go? Car...kids, Hey, come here! Can we go swimming?"

I would still have a mission in life. What is better, than to make people happy. With a face like that...anybody would smile. I would have no enemies and everybody would like me. Even if I ate the bread off the counter that I was not supposed to eat, like I did today, I would be forgiven.

I would still share. "Here take it! You know that you want this bear. It is only a little crusty! Hey! A little slobber never hurt anyone. Come on..." At this point, I would act indignant and if that doesn't work maybe I would just chase my tail.

It would only take small things to amuse me. I wouldn't have to comb my own hair. I wouldn't get into trouble if I forgot to cover my nose when I sneezed and if somebody didn't like it I wouldn't even know. I would get ice cream occasionally. I would always get to lick the bowl. Yes...sounds like a good life to me!