Please Pray For Rosa...

*update.... Rosa is home safe and sound. The surgery was a success, and she is now resting. Continue to pray for healing and good results from the testing of the lymphnodes. Today Rosa will have her mastectomy. They have squeezed her in so it will be done as day surgery and she will be sent home after some time in the recovery room. She is incredibly strong and has incredible peace about her decision. Please pray that the doctor is able to do all that she needs to do, and that she won't find that it has spread to the lymphnodes. Please pray for Henry and the girls, who are doing well so far, but for whom today may be rather scary. She does not wish to be alone during her weeks of recovery at home so please pray that we who visit her will be of help and comfort to her, and that we would not make her laugh! As good as laughing is, it's not so helpful for incisions. We have laughed a good bit together about nipples on ice and the like, confident that the Great Healer will hold her close and restore her to health.

Rosa, you are so very loved and will not be far from our minds today, especially at 11:45. We will pray that the doctors hands are sure and steady, and that you get some good drugs for recovery! May this just be a bump in the road...

We've been hit!!!!

Daniel is really down (knowing that he won't be able to go to IMAX this afternoon if he stays home), Claire, Sam and I are heading there, stuffy noses, coughs...
Last week there were 100 kids out one day in Daniel's building alone, and a large number out in Claire's. Today when I called the safe arrival line to let them know that Daniel was staying home, it was full. That's a lot of phone calls. Off to make a boy comfortable, and to have a cup of tea myself...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!!
love, Daniel, Claire, and Sam (and me too)

Happy Birthday to you, you're 102, you live in a zoo and clean up donkey poo! Have a fantastical birthday! ~ Daniel

Have a Merry Christmas ! Thank you for being so funny! ~ Claire

Thank you that you're a good Dad! ~ Sam

You know your child has a fabulous teacher when he will take a minute and help your child make a card! Especially when he will go along with said child and celebrate the fact that it is an 85th birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KYLIE!!!
(she's on the left)
Hope it's a fabulous day, and not too traumatic having to share it with Hud!!! Aren't you glad that I didn't post the pic of you wielding the knife? Thank you for being such a wonderful friend. Thank you for having such a good sense of humour, solving my christmas and birthday gift giving dilemnas, searching the US for the Nestle morsels, being an encourager, but also for being able to be honest if you see things differently. Thanks for not hogging the blankets when we share a bed, thanks for hostas and for popsicles on hot summer days. Thanks for walks on the beach and the exploring of old empty houses, a willing ear and wise council. Thanks for being you... a pew buddy and so much more.

Garden catalogues are here....the fun has begun!!! So many new things to try...white hosta for instance, blue poppies for another,wisteria is on the list and a Crimson king for the front yard... look out Karen the questions will start rolling again soon!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!!!!

Each of us has a birthday within days of each other, so it is now our tradition to go out for dinner all together in the midst of them. This year we went to Cafe Chianti where we had a very attentive but by times too involved waiter. Amazing food, MUCH laughter, good dessert, and the exchanging of gifts made it a fabulous evening. Shelly was having contractions the whole time, us thinking baby Grace might join us before the meal was done. Most entertaining I assure you. The menu was so extensive it was hard to choose but when we finally settled on what we would eat we were all thrilled with our selections. Large, very sharp knives and some interesting tools were brought out before the food so we had fun with those. Kylie especially enjoyed weilding her knife, and I actually behaved myself as I was sitting next to her and was a wee bit intimidated by her weapon. Duck in an amazing sauce, and lamb with a raspberry sauce, spicy pasta laden with shrimp, lobster, mussels and scallops were our choices and we enjoyed sampling each others fare. Tiramisu,triple chocolate cheesecake, some sort of liquer and nut filled torte, and sorbet rounded out the meal leaving us full and satisfied. We each brought a gift for a friend, and exchanged them in Yankee swap fashion. I came home with a beautiful scarf and a new makeup bag... (Perfect for the next girls getaway) Kylie and I then escorted Shelley to the hospital to be checked where they put her on the monitor, and she had no more contractions. Go figure. Grace still has twenty-eight days left so we were glad that things settled down. A granny to be joined me in the waiting room and I felt bad when we left her, scared and alone waiting for her daughter to deliver. I crawled into bed way past my bedtime, (early this morning actually), thankful for the gift of good friends.

Please continue to pray for my friend who sees the specialist on Thursday to determine the course of action they will take to deal with the breast cancer... Here's to a year of good things, and the support of good friends!!!

Speechless...

A friend was just diagnosed with Breast Cancer. I am in shock.

What we do for sentimentality....

I was going through a box of letters today, very surprised at how many I kept. I have them dating back to the eighties, this one being no different. What made this one special was the fact that it contained something. It took us only a minute to figure out it was a piece of what we think was black licorice sent to me by my sister from camp in 1989. That's one old piece of candy. It fell apart in our hands, but the letter will go back in the box with the other save worthy ones. 

Swimming Lessons...

Nothing too exciting, just some pics of the kids. Sam and Claire have the same teacher just half an hour apart, Daniel had no pics taken as he was swimming lengths. Hard to capture in the midst of flailing arms and splashing legs. Claire used to be terrified of the water so lessons didn't go all that well. Spending the last two summers in the neighbors pool has eased her mind and she's now ready to give it a go again. I'm happy her fear has been alleviated.

Sam tried to swim by himself last week when the teacher was out of reach with another child and Sam started going down, down, down. Myself and some other parents stood up, me just saying Sam over and over, ready to haul him out if need be. She must have heard me, and seen the others as she whipped around and made a dash pulling him up and out. He was fine of course, and now has a bit of respect for the water. He might even have a little fear, something I never thought he would have about anything. Then again, he isn't big on the dark... He then managed to jump so far off the diving board that instead of landing in front of the teacher enabling her to catch him, he landed right on her face pushing her under as well. Not once but twice!!!

 

Claire and her teacher Brittney
not quite brave enough to jump, but not willing to go back to the ladder either
I did it Mom....

 

Claire's ice fortress.... she thinks her Barbies will love it. brothers taking on the others in a snowball fight...
me looking dazed...ready to head in

 

Fun for Friday....

Create your own Friend Quiz here

Repeated Aggravation...

Whenever I peel vegetables, I inevitably go into a fit of sneezing that lasts for at least half an hour. It is driving me mad!!! Chopping the peeled vegetables then becomes dangerous as each sneeze has me flailing the knife around wildly... there must be a solution!!! I just finished peeling potatoes to throw in with my roast and I am exhausted from the effort!

We got our storm day!!!!

The roads are messy after a night of freezing rain,and now the temp is up above freezing. Everything is melting but it is supposed to freeze again this afternoon with some more snow. A friend called today to tell me that he saw celebratory fireworks over my house last night on account of the snow. Good imagination he has, but we were very excited! So today we have played hard outside and I convinced them to come in and eat, dry off and change into dry gear and out they went again. I expect that they will stay until supper and want to go out again after. Off I go...

Daniel and Ahmad defending their side of the front yard from the hooligans on the other side!

Sam and his buddy Mikey. Hard to believe they are only five months apart in age! Even harder to believe that they both start school this fall!

 

My crazy underwear and pj clad boys celebrating the fact that the oldest two got their snow day. What better way to enjoy it than start wrestling before they even managed to have breakfast!

 

More snow....

Still not very deep but oh so fun Sam jumping and twirling with joy!
Claire just wishing that it would come faster so her fort could grow faster.....
We are under a winter storm watch at present, with warnings of freezing rain and ice pellets to start this evening. So far we just have the snow. The valley schools closed at lunch before the snow even started, but we had a full day. We're holding out for a snow day tomorrow!

 

IT"S SNOWING!!!!!!

Sam thrilled that he can finally put his Spiderman shovel to use. Despite the wretched drive home this afternoon on super slippery roads, witnessing many cars crawling and even some overturned, I am so excited to see the white stuff and am hoping that we get a big enough dump for a snow day tomorrow!

It's friday...and we made it!

*edited to add....I just had the week's strangest experience. Daniel took the dog for a walk after school. When he returned home there was a kid at the door. I asked him who it was, he answered Patrick, and I told him to let him in. "Hi Patrick, come on in". "Thanks" he says, "Daniel and I are really good friends!" Funny, Daniel has never mentioned this kid but anyhow, Patrick wanders around the house telling me that he was wandering around the neighborhood and ran into Daniel. "I was pretending to be homeless" he said. "Does your family know where you are?" "Yup"...Interesting.... "I'm a migrating creature" "Ok then Patrick....where do you live?" " On James St." "Well, if you would like to stay, that's fine, but you need to call home." Patrick heads to the front door. All the while Daniel keeps giving me odd looks... "Patrick, who is at your house right now?" "My dad, I have two but only one is at home." Again I suggest he call, Daniel hands him the phone. He holds it for a couple of minutes, continuing to walk around telling me how he is fine out and about wandering because he has good senses. Eyes, ears, smell, touch...."Patrick, (getting frusrated now) if you wish to stay you need to call home." He goes to the kitchen and hangs up the phone. Again heads back to the front door. We're ready to tell him goodbye, the cat meows and he walks back into the house to talk to the cat. Yikes.... finally he opens the door and heads out to wander some more. In talking to Daniel after, he claims that he really does not know this kid well at all, he's not even in his class...he doesn't play with him, he just pops up here and there at school. I just pray that he makes it home safely and that if something happens to him, that at least someone saw him leave my house in one piece...

And from the mouth of Sam....

While looking at huge red and white industrial smokestacks on the Halifax Harbour, "Look Mom, those chimneys are helping God make clouds!!!"

And totally unrelated, why is it that normally my slow cooker is really slow and needs extra hours to cook anything and when I put it on early to compensate for that since it is swimming night does it cook the meal by lunchtime?!?

How far will she take this....

She gags at the smell of food, she survives for days with very minimal amounts of food, she prefers to have nothing touching on her plate, and her latest is the fact that she uses a different utensil for each item on her plate. A spoon for her corn, and two forks. One for her rice and one for her salmon. At least she ate that meal! That's my Claire.....