Broken Blogging Fingers.... to quote Josee's sister

Thanks Josee for the great line.... but your not the only one. I too, have been lazy in blogging, and Stephanie... well, she isn't lazy, she has no internet and no memory stick. So its sort of impossible when she is an avid blogger at the best of times.. to blog... when she can't get connected to the world. Jill.... blogs every two weeks, Chantal...well, monthly, and Michelle and Scott... once a season!!! Ancient Ann.... you are the best... you blog almost every day... Thanks for that.

My excuse is ... well I am working mostly on Xmas stuff.... and I can't blog that...cause then people would find out things they are not suppose to know.

But tonight I have three crafts to design, print and cutout for Church on Sunday... because its ADVENT. We are teaching about the Jesse Tree, so we have ornaments to have fun with for Sunday, and every Sunday during advent. This is my way of procrastinating....

Today in history.... November 29, 1986. After waiting two weeks.... cause the Doc said "you could go any time".... on Nov 15... every day...waking up... getting bigger, more sore... no feeling in my feet or hands... cause I was swelling from big baby in the belly syndrome.... sore hip, cause the baby was BIG and engaged... ready to go...... chasing my little 2 year old around the house, who was also pregnant (her story, really, only she was carrying 5 babies).... FINALLY... November 29. My Due date..... I waiting patiently for this day..... since the summer. Nov 29th... now I was ready... really ready... my due date.....

Sadly.... I had to wait 16 more days...... because my big bundle of joy wouldn't land on the scene until DEC 14!~

The best part about Nov 29 is that I take great joy and humor in reminding Michelle of today... this is the day.... my big little girl was going to come. I take pleasure in reminding her everyday from now until Dec 14th..... but it is all in fun because she was well worth the wait.!

Happy "DUE DATE" Mick!!!

Part 2 - more blurry eyed and fuzzy brained

Now I am sneaking to blog... cause I know Chantal is waiting. My in-laws are upstairs folding boxes... yes boxes. We learned how to make origami boxes so now we are dreaming up all kinds of ideas on what to do with them!!!

Today, we started our day with a Holiday organizer... it was so fun and Jill was our teacher, which made it even more fun. Joan sat beside me, and was so excited and ready to buy every stamp that there is, and all kinds of paper to go into busy making these... She slowed down on her enthusiasm later on in the day...

Our next craft was a see through card "Joy".... it was really cool and I was starting to get scary vibes from the teachers at the table... feeling there thoughts turn to my "overhead" drawer in the fax room. Hee hee
Our third and last craft before lunch was our tag holder and 6 lovely tags... We used the most incredible "rolling" rubber stamp thingie that had the ink built right into it!!!! it was WOWsie according to everyone at our table. Lunch was sooo yummy. Make your own sandwiches with every kind of meat, cheese, veggies, dips, CHIPSSSS, yum.... and sweets to die for. We munched and chatted for a bit and then back to work. The afternoon buzzed by with three more crafts.... the paper box, three awesome xmas cards and a glass ball with a floating tree in the middle!

OK, they found me... so now I have go, but I am ending this blog with a pic of all our crafts....

Jill's sister and mom, Sara and Betty shared our table

Taryn, a fellow blogger, and Evelyne were table mates as well

Mary and Leslie, fellow Xmas card makers, were at the table beside us.
Thank you so much, to Myleta and all her elves for the amazing amount of work they did. The day was so fun, amazing, relaxing and amazing!!! oh, I said that already!! It was so fun to learn some new things, use very cool supplies, and meet some really nice people too.

Here I sit... blurry eyed and fuzzy brained!!!

The rest of the family is having seconds of Terry's yummy homemade chicken soup.... and I sit in quiet... clearing my head. My sister in law, Kim is on her way from the city to spend the night in the valley and we are waiting for her arrival before we have dessert (Chocolate Birthday cake and Ice Cream).

Today was a very long awaited day of friends, stampin, crafts and good food. We arrived at 8:30 at the NSCC to tables all set and ready for us to learn and create....

and they made us little bags to take all our goodies we make as we move along from one table to the other... and to take our goodies home.I have to go... cause my sister in law has arrived.... I will finish this tonight... stay tuned!

Winter is here... in the Valley, anyway.

Remembrance Day .... seems fitting that we have grey blustery skies as we stand in silence at 11:00 today to remember all those who have fought for our freedom. My hubby's both grandfathers fought in World War 2, and they fought those battles for the rest of their lives as well.

I am so proud of Michelle and her friends for their spirit and sense of duty to decorate her dorm hallways with pictures of those "X" students who have served in both wars. She and her friends also braved the rain and cold to join the community at the Antigonish Remembrance Day Services.

The snow started last night around 9pm and by midnight, when Mollie was having her last pitstop outside before bed.... we were treated to a fresh clean blanket of snow. Mollie loves the snow... not sure why. Seeing my ole skeleton faced pumpkin covered in snow, made me think that I need to take down all my fall decorations and find something a little more wintery but not Christmasy.

Today, I made a big pot of spaghetti sauce, using all the "low sodium" stuff like canned tomatoes, tomato sauce...paste... you know all that. I thought I would add an extra teaspoon of chili seeds to the mix, to offset the lack of salt flavor.... wooooooo.... zippy. Those little seeds are pretty powerful. Dad loved it, as he loves spicy food but I was having difficulty with mine, and needed a tissue or two to get through the running nose.... The rest is in the freezer for the next couple of weeks. yipee....

A big congrats goes out to Stephanie, who has just found out she made the Dean's list this year, and although she was attending the Dean's supper anyway, to receive an award, she is now going as a "member" of the list, instead of an "honoured guest". So, she will be off tomorrow to buy a dress for the occasion and she will keep us all posted on what she buys. I am very excited for her, as she has worked very hard these past few years in school, and she deserves this honor!

Michelle just let me know that she is coming home on Thursday for the weekend.... that is pretty exciting to me!!!

Winter decorations.... Dogwood flowers.. Polar Bears (my mom made these in 1972) and an evergreen tree... ok, dogwoods are not wintery... well maybe they are somewhere south, but these are my least vibrant colored flowers I own!!!

I can't believe we have tomorrow off. I am sooooo thankful....

Its been one of those weeks...

The new look of my blog is because I am getting sick of my old one. Also, I had to take the Xmas Tree off, as it was driving me crazy!! A new feature, though, is my sister, Gail, is now a blogger. Amazing how fast it is catching on. Anyway, if you love quilting or kids, I am sure you will find lots to interest you on her blog.

Between Halloween and busy work, crazy evenings, the time has just flown by. I have a few bits of news...

That was quite a storm. Terry, my resident weather watcher, tracked the storm for the past 6 days and knew exactly when it was going to hit and where would be hit the worst. So it was no surprise that we were hit in the night with more wind than rain and that New Brunswick got hit way more than they were expecting. Almost half of our community is without power and in predictable form, the Power Company is not promising when power will be restored to the 100,000 people in Nova Scotia without it. My home is one of the lucky areas that has power. church, this morning, was full of stories from the kids on who has power, and who doesn't. What blew away, and where they found things!! One family lost their portable garage down the street somewhere, but gained a very large trampoline. The kids thought that was a fair trade!!

I am the third on a list from which the Security Company that monitors our school calls. At 3:21am I was on my way to our school as the alarm had been set off... in the hallway of our school. The first two on the list did not respond to the phone call.... caller id? or power outage... who knows but when I arrived at the school (in my PJ's)at 3:35am, I sat for 50 minutes in my car waiting for the RCMP that were also called. The power was out all over the community, and the winds were pretty strong. It was absolutely amazing to see the trees bending and swirling in every direction. At 4:15am, I decided to drive around the building to see if any windows were broke by limbs. I was totally sure there was no fowl play here, as the weather was too crazy for even the most desperate thief but because I didn't have a flashlight, I wasn't really comfortable going into the dark building on my own. As I drove around the back and then west side of the building, I slowed down to look down the hallway to see if I could possibly see any damage. All I saw was the firedoors in the hall slammed shut. and then the light came on.... Of course, when the power goes out, the magnets that hold the firedoors open, will let go of the doors, and the motion of that would set off all kinds of alarms as we have probably 12 sets of those doors... Arg... So I drove home, having never seen the police, and I didn't even call the alarm company. Ugh... I was really glad we turned the clocks back and I got to reclaim that extra hour of sleep this morning.

I did a really neat thing yesterday. I was clicking around on my MSN page and remembered that I use to have a "My Space" that I wrote in for about 6 months in 2005. I had forgotten about it and once I started blogging, I never gave My Space another thought. I searched it out and found 6 months of writing, so I decided I would like to archive it as it talked about a few really heartwarming things that I had forgotten about. So I copied and pasted my 6 months of space blogs into a word document and now have them archived. So now if My Space ever gets deleted, I have a few memories of Xmas 2005, and a few other memorable moments from that year!

Halloween was very quiet here on our street. I had treat bags ready for my 6 favorite little visitors filled with toys and treats, plus a couple of buckets of goodies for the regular trick or treaters. My first visitors were my special neighbours, Dustyn and Patrick and later, my Miss Ashley. But as the evening wore on, my nagging headache (a side affect of my Flu Shot) developed into a pounding cannonball and I had to lay down. Therefore, I missed my three Gillespie Girls and Terry didn't recognise them, so their treatbags are still here on my table. I will search them out at school on Monday.

Even though my house is full of fall decorations, I spent Saturday afternoon, sorting and wrapping Xmas gifts. Terry leaves for Ontario on Wednesday and what a great opportunity to get gifts to the family there. Not only will he bring Xmas gifts to family, but in his stops along the way, he will be delivering a coat rack to Stephanie in Fredericton, that I dug out of the "Big Garbage" day here. Her little apt has no front closet, but a nice corner for a tall coat rack. He will be delivering a box of juice bags for my sisters sewing projects, also a few bags of apples for my aunt in Quebec city.