Greeting from small town Alberta, home of.....
well I'm not sure what it's the home of,
but this weekend,
it's the home away from home of sports boy and his drag along family.

The boy is attending ball camp, and currently dad is with him and I am
enjoying the peaceful existence of hotel living.
I'm really not an "away from home" person, but for short stretches,
it is pure heaven to be away from all external distractions.



So, scroll down to the last picture in my last post......

the broken window is in the master bedroom, a rather large, expensive window,
which became the latest victim of testosterone laden teenage boys who possess more energy and enthusiasm than forethought. It seems that despite living on 4 and a half acres, the best place for pitching practise is outside my bedroom window.
In the past couple of years, this trio of boys has put a boy sized hole in the downstairs playroom wall , broken two holiday trailer windows with golf balls, cracked the bottom half of two mirrored doors and shorted out the hot tub in mid winter.

So, it seems, my lessons and lectures on civilized behaviour are the thing of the past.

The plan is when the estimate for the window comes in, they will be using their boundless energy and enthusiasm around the acreage to work off every penny of their debt.

My gardens will be weedless this summer : )

The picture is not blurred... it's my eyes

trying to keep up with the ever moving son

and his sports.........






















but today I have just finished packing for a weekend trip up north.
3 days in a hotel with a spa, high speed, and room service.
While sports boy attends Baseball Camp, I will relax.
He's really excited about this opportunity, baseball pro's are coming from the States to work with them for the next 3 days..........



I hope his first lesson will be choosing the proper backstop for pitching practise.

April has been a month of pressure for me, and as
tossed my last deadline project in the courier basket today
I did a mental dance of joy, being too physically tired to actually kick up my heels.
My desk is a disaster, because I work better with piles all around me, and all in all my office looks like a war zone, but I am caught up, in fact ,I am ahead of myself for a while.
All I have to do is remember how to breathe..................
One month has gone by since my last post and so , today I bring you
April's leftovers.............

• April 08 is our first mortgage free month.... what am I doing with the extra cash??? Soccer registration 125.00, new soccer cleats 65.00, (I am praying he doesn't outgrow these mid season!!!!) BLUE socks ( who says boys don't do the matchy matchy thing?) 10.00. Baseball registration 120.00, ball transfer fee ( he's playing out of area) 25.00.... 100.00 ump fees, new ball cleats (soccer cleats aren't good enough for his level of ball and you can't wear metal cleats for soccer) 95.00, compression pants that hold a can ( I do want more grandchildren) 58.00, BLUE ball socks.... (soccer socks are not the same ) 2 at 8.50 each, ball pants, 35.00, gold ( cause his black one won't do) under armour shirt @ 55.00, 10 bucks for a belt , 30.00 to re lace his glove , 200.00 ball camp registration and 3 nights in a hotel for said ball camp 450.00 .... if he keeps going like this we may have to re mortgage. As well as soccer and ball, he has been playing doubles badminton, which gained them a silver medal and the opportunity to play in provincials. But not real silver... if it was we'd be melting the thing down to pay for his other sports.


• my cyber friend mark took a longer blog break than I did, but is now posting at his typical manic rate. He posed a question, and I decided to answer it here. What ring tones do you have on you phone? My cell phone rings a lot, so I figured that rather than cringe everytime it rang, I'd have a little fun with it........., so here they are:

When my daughter , husband or son calls I hear Lou Rawlin's drawl out...."Ain't No Sunshine when she's gone......" because face it, when I'm gone, so is their sunshine. When my colleagues call, Bob Marley sings "Wonderful World, Beautiful people...." because I love love love my job. My friends let me know it's them with the instrumental "Give Peace a Chance", just because I love this song as much as I love them, and when I hear it, it lifts my spirit, again, just like them. Bureaucrats have been assigned "Take this job and shove it" (music only, but I sing the words in my head), because I do not like this part of my job. Blondie alerts me to unknown callers by belting out "Call me......" to which I answer back.... "later baby", and I do,...... if I want to.

• snow has just melted.... again.... having had a week of blizzards a couple of weeks ago. Finally things are turning green, and in about three weeks we will be planting our gardens. I'm planning a smaller one closer to the house this year for an herb and kitchen garden. My soul aches to be in the garden again.


• my husband bought a "sea can" ,a 8.5 x 45 foot aluminum box, to hold all the "stuff "that has cluttered the garage . I can hardly wait to get out of my car and walk a straight line into the house. By the end of the summer I hope to have an organized storage shed, and a car only garage!


• Scout, the incredible growing dog, has learned how to jump off the deck this week, which means I have two choices when I leave him home alone. Leave him on the deck and worry about him getting out, or leaving him inside to party all day. Wednesday's decision to leave him inside didn't work out so well, so yesterday I made the decision to leave him on the deck. When I arrived home, I opened the slider to let him in..... no Scout.... I called him..... no galloping footsteps. I panicked and ran hysterically outside screaming his name at the top of my lungs. When I finally stopped screaming I heard a small, pitiful whimper. Running to the other side of the house I found him.

Apparently he jumped over the gate and after his escape antics, decided he wanted back on the deck..............

Hopefully he's learned his lesson. ;)

Now I know it was mean of me to grab the camera before the screwdriver, but it was a photo op I just couldn't miss. I seriously don't know how he managed to squeeze his fat head through the rails, but I had to unscrew it to free him. He was a very grateful pup.

I am not nearly done, but the Cree Princess has crawled up beside me and told me she loved me..... and well , priorities you know.

I'll be back........

continued tomorrow (after Sports Boy's first ball game)

ttfn

I never thought this day would come,
when we sat in the lawyers office, years ago,
pen in hand, mind swimming , heart pounding,
as I tried to comprehend
what we had gotten ourselves into.
Throughout the years , I imagined this day,
dreamed of this day,
a day in the distant future.....
Perhaps I envisioned balloons released and
multi coloured confetti falling from the sky,
fireworks bursting above me,
angels bursting into songs of jubilation
with cheers and applause from the world at large.


So I feel a little let down.....


no balloons, fireworks or applause....


just the comforting knowledge that

this little piece of the world .......

is finally OURS...

we are MORTGAGE FREE.

Friday's Leftovers.....

Spring is taking it's time to arrive,
as the snow recedes and the mud replaces it's crisp white blanket, our land is looking dismal. No more white, not yet green, that period of brown, highlighted only by the bright and shining sun.

• Daylight savings time has made me sluggish this week, and despite the fact that it happened on Sunday, the boy was an hour late for school on Monday. All of the clocks had been changed, but my husband was gone and the boy and I listen to our bodies .Apparently our bodies said it was 7am, not 8. My body is still an hour behind.What used to be sluggish in the morning is now down right catatonic.



• The incredible growing pup is a whopping 16.3 kg as of his vet visit yesterday, a 10 kg (22 pounds) increase since we got him the beginning of January. Mud and puppies , especially hairy puppies, mean that we have bathing him down to a fine art.



• I was in a Tim Horton's Drive thru this week, when I took this picture......

I was going to label it,

"where's a cop when you need one?"

but instead, as of yesterday, I will label it " thank you for giving me a lecture instead of a speeding ticket when I lost my mind for a few seconds and forgot to set my cruise control, while grooving to Jimmy Cliff and enjoying the sunshine . You deserve a coffee break whenever you want."

• My son is eating us out of house and home....

he was a preemie and I've always joked that he never got out of his 2 hour feeding schedule.

This is a typical school day breakfast.....

If there is a correlation between breakfast and learning, this boy should be on the honour roll

• My husband is opening a new business, with two of his good friends/co workers. When they told their boss their plans, giving him two months notice, they were promptly fired. So now I have an unemployed husband. The upside is that he won't have money for garish gifts for a while. Oh yeah, to answer your question liz, yes 11 of the golden roses went back, ( he gave the other one to the Cree Princess who was mesmorized by them) He doesn't bother reading my blog, although it's no secret. Although with more time on his hands he may start checking in..... if that's the case, " I love you , hon, even if you are unemployed and have occasional lapses in taste ;)"

ttfn

I've been watching Oprah's Big Give which started a couple of weeks ago.
It struck me as sad that on both shows they featured soldiers returning from Iraq,
young men with families who were desperately struggling to keep their heads above water.
Yesterday I found out that 6256 returning US soldiers
had committed suicide upon their return to civilian life.
In my youth, it was the Vietnam vets that came home to destroyed lives....
people associated anti war with anti solider....
Regardless of how we feel about this damn war,
or the corrupt administration behind it
please take some time today and each day after to
really and truly support these families.

I am a mud puddle girl at heart....
and today my heart smiles :)