A perfect weekend of social and exercise..

....... this is the motto of our curling team. We curl together for social enrichment and a little bit of exercise. We are not a "die hard" competitive team although we do try to improve our own skill at the game. The end result of a game is not a priority.

The ultimate display of our motto was never more evident as it was this weekend at the Yarmouth Curling Club. I spent the weekend with my DREAM TEAM as well as with another great team from our Greenwood club.

The weekend was perfect in every way... with 6 end games (exercise, but not too long); we had the "bi" on Friday night, which meant no curling on Friday night when we arrive... just the social part! Perfection on Saturday with a 9:30AM game (the usual start on a Saturday is 8AM!!!)... two games, both very close games... but we won them both!!!

Yummy home cooked meals for all our eating needs.... home made seafood chowder, chicken veggie soup (ok.. not all perfect... there was peas in the veggie soup). Supper was home made spagetti sauces... 4 different kinds to chose from.... Ceasar Salad... cakes and fudge!!!

The theme of the bonspiel was "BC - The Stone Age" and the decorations and skits were geared towards "The Flintstones". In preparing for the weekend, we all organized our food situation for our hotel stay, and car trip there, (me bringing the coffee, tea, etc, someone brought fruit, others brought sandwiches..etc). The sad part is we just couldn't come up with a costume idea. Our accompanying team always dresses up in AMAZING costumes... and we just felt we would never measure up to their quality. But once we got there, and got the creative juices flowing... we came up with our own version of the "Stone Age". We hit the dollar store after our second game and filled a shopping cart with tons of items for our costumes which included shirts, safety pins, scarves, paper, tape, markers, funky glasses and moss... yes, moss. I will show you our costumes... which were fun, and funny... and then treat you to the other teams take on the Stone Age!!

Presenting

Patsy, Cricket, Debbie & Donna

in

STONED AGE....

If you look close, you will see, pinned to our shirts, what we needed the paper and moss for.. as well as the safety pins. We spent an hour in our hotel room, 4 middle age women, trying to roll joints using note paper and decorative moss!!! We laughed at the foolishness of it... and we giggled all the way to the curling supper.... wondering what the reaction of the ladies at the club would be.

"CURLERS DO IT STONED"

And now let me present to you... the mega talented Greenwood Team of Sandra, Deena, Lisa and Caroline! We had a fabulous weekend with this group.. and our final game.. A Division play offs... were against this nutty group. It was a nice close game which ended in them beating us by one rock, or should I just say we were "Stoned" by them~!

This team is always the hit of the party and you can see why. The costumes were perfection, with even the small details taken care of... like the hairy armpits and chest hair... the accessories like purses, jewelry and weapons were all well thought out!!! What a blast to spend the evening with these fools! You should have seen them trying to eat spagetti with all that hair! Bahhaaaaa

Another small "perfection" about the weekend was that we travelled 2 hours there, 2 hours back, spent the whole weekend there... and the weather was perfect. Imagine... January, no less.

A great weekend Yarmouth... can't wait til April when Greenwood Curling Club will be hosting....

1970 Disco bonspiel!!!.

Snow Day

I am so happy to be home today during this snowy weather. The anticipation was almost painful.... no one was talking about it on Facebook (most of my facebook friends are employed by schools) and both Terry and I were even scared to talk about it. But, we both stayed up way too late... and woke up a few times during the night.. to weather watch.

Our morning was spent doing some light cleaning, some reading and computer work.... Terry stood in the window at least 20 times, watching the weather....

A great day.... I must say.

The book that wasn't a movie.

Terry never asks for anything for Christmas. I am usually left to my own imagination. But this year, he asked for two books. He had read a review, or saw a link, or heard from someone... I can't remember... that "The Last Templar" was a great book. Terry loves history, especially archeology history. This book was a archaeological mystery book. The second book was by the same author.

I bought both books and wrapped them up and he opened them for Christmas. I hate giving gifts that people know what they are.. but, it was cool to give Terry something he actually wanted for a change too.

After all the Christmas/New Years celebrations were over and life returned to quiet, Terry was scanning the TV guide one evening, and discovered the "Last Templar" book was also a movie. He set the DVR to record the 2 part movie (2 hours each) and he set a goal to have the books read by the time the movie was recorded.

He raced through the first book... reading for hours each night. He loved every minute of it and couldn't wait to watch the movie. One of Terry's favorite movies was the National Treasure and he hoped that it would be somewhat along the same lines. I had my doubts about it, being a non-fan of suspense and adventure.... but Terry reassured me it wouldn't scare me. Besides, he bribed me with popcorn and M&Ms. What could I do.

It was a dark and snowy night when we snuggled into bed, with large bowls of snacks and the movie began. In the book, the hero or main character of the book is a woman who use to be an archaeologist, but gave it up to stay home with her young daughter. Her father was a famous archaeologist who specialized in religious and Roman history but he had died 6 months before.

In the movie, all this was the same. But that was it. The movie began with the heroin chatting with some guy at an art gallery, and all of a sudden 4 masked "Templars" break in on horseback and steal some of the artifacts. She breaks into a hero's run, grabs some sort of secular sword and attacks one of the thieves. She leaps onto one of the horses, rides out of the art gallery and follows, catches and beats up a second thief. All while wearing a party dress and expensive shoes.

After she is accosted by a police "investigator", she reams him out, complains profusely about how she ruined her shoes doing the polices' job and demands that the police replace her shoes.

You can now see smatterings of romance beginning between hero girl and nasty police man. But the deal is sealed when he shows up at her house the next day with a new pair of shoes. Fancy and expensive shoes show up

in a few spots in the movie, and with each appearance of new shoes... the movie gets cheesier and cheesier. Terry begins to more and more disgusted by the movie, and begins to explain all the differences between the book and the movie. After 4 hours (minus the millions of minutes of commercials ~ thank you DVR) the movie ends. It was a non believable, poorly acted excuse for a movie and it was more entertaining watching Terry's reaction.

His final quote....

Its like they turned the DiVinci Code into a episode of Moonlighting.

Home Grown

We had breakfast for supper the other night and it was a home grown meal. I buy my eggs from two different families who have chickens who are producing eggs. I love getting farm fresh eggs with their bright yellow yolks and they varied sizes and colors! It was particularly funny to open this carton of eggs when they arrived at my office!!!

We had home grown eggs, home made bread from Kay and ham from Meadowbrook Meat Market outside of Berwick.

Breakfast for supper... yum.

Drawing the line in the sand- well, maybe snow

As you are probably aware, one of Stephanie's cats, Tonks, has discovered the wonderful world of being outside. She spent hours on the deck this summer, watching the birds, bees, squirrels and houseflies. Outside... is a wonderful place. Exciting, wild and at its best, when it is night time.

Tonks loves being outside, on the deck when its dark. We rarely let her out then, because she is mostly black, and all it would take if for her to slip under the deck rails and we would lose her to the night... but this being said, she tried to sneak out as often as possible when it was dark.

She has noticed over the past few months that its cold and uninviting outside, and even though we have left the door wide open for her to go out, she is most certainly a fair weather kitty, and stays way back from the door, just in case we try to push her outside (which is slightly tempting).

Just after New Years though, the temptation consumed her, or she just lost her mind.. because, during one snowy but not cold evening, she forgot herself and bolted out the back door to make her night escape when she was stopped dead by the white line drawn on the deck.

We do believe that this is Tonks' first encounter with snow. She sat for the longest time watching the light snow flakes coming down and was tempted to chase a couple that dropped close to her.

After about a minute, Paralax became curious and sat in the doorway, watching Tonks. All was going well, with Tonks concentrating so hard on the dropping snow, she didn't notice Paralax. Paralax couldn't leave things so peaceful and decided to sneak up on her. Well, Tonks freaked and broke into a run, in the wrong direction and TOUCHED the snow....

After a few steps she realized what she did, and turned around and bolted into the house (leaving a tell tale skid mark in the snow) and ran down the basement... we didn't see her for the rest of the night. She hasn't attempted to go outside since!

Side note.... Pika, in the best cat toy ever... A Wicker Emporium bag. They all take turned getting into it.. This was the first turn. The bag is now shredded and in the garbage but not before several days of hide and seek. We had to throw it out when we found the handle of the bag snugly wrapped around Tonks body, with no bag attached. Bahhhhaaaaaaaa

Bean bags

This is how I get myself into trouble! Just before Christmas, the music teacher from my school was flipping through catalogues at my desk looking for things like bean bags and dancing ribbons. She said she was going to order some beanbags for fun music games in her class.

I helped her locate some to buy in the catalog and they were a whopping $25 for 12. That is nuts, for a big of fabric and beans. Sooooo.... big mouth .. me.. said "Oh, you can make them so much cheaper... really!". She said "Oh, I can't do that, I don't sew". I offered to make them, and we bantered back and forth, "oh, no, I can't ask you to do that"... "oh for heaven's sake, they are so easy to make, and I have tons of scrap fabric". Back and forth we went, and I practically bullied her into letting me make them. She finally agreed, and we talked about size.. and then her final statement was.. "oh, ok, so then... I will need 60 of them!!"...

Bahahhhaaaaa. Joke was on me... but honestly, I loved making them.. what a blast to cut out a ton of little squares with my rotary cutter using all kinds of spare fabric. I just kept stacking up squares and having fun choosing silly prints.

I just kept pulling out little bits from my scrap pile and remembering what I made with the fabric originally. After I sewed all the little squares, turned them, snipped the corners and loose threads, it was Terry's turn to iron them flat and fill them with rice.

He pinned them shut for me and I started sewing up the final seam.

Terry sort of mentioned that I had a few more than 60 in my pile. I knew that too, but I was having so much fun cutting those little squares, I didn't bother counting them!

In the end... 106 bean bags have been stacked on my sewing table.... oops... that was too much fun!

My 2011 Project

Have you ever sat around the table with family or friends and start trying to remember how old one of your pets are, or what Christmas it was that you had the big snow. Being a military family, we could usually connect what happened to where you were living. There are certain markers in ones life that you go back to when you are trying to date things... you know, before the kids were born, or when we had the "Cordorba".... or when we lived in a certain city.

Well, we now live at a residence that we have lived at for the past 20 plus years, so the "where we lived thing" is not as useful as it once was. There are other markers we refer to for remembering, but its getting harder and harder!

While working on some of my memory book scrapbooking events for other people I have thought about, talked about, planned out how to do a Family Memory book.... and this is the year to do it. Terry and I will be married 30 years this summer and I think its a good time to work on a 30 page memory book. One page per year... filled with facts and pictures... cars, houses, kids, pets, etc... not a lot of journalling, some though.

I have worked on some time line facts over the past month, enlisting the help and memories of relatives and friends. It is amazing the things people remember.... What cars we had, how Christmas's went... what renovations we did.... what trips we made...what pets we had and when the came and when they left....

Happy New Year

The first day of 2011. A beautiful, somewhat warm, somewhat bright day. My entire immediate family has been here for approx 24 hours. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to have my two lovable daughters home, and my two wonderful borrowed sons. You know, the sons I now own, but didn't have to raise! hee hee...

In the past 24 hours we have had nibbles of shrimp, bacony water chestnut thingies, and bread dippie stuff. We have eaten luscious strip loins on the BBQ and tenderly cooked lobster.

Champagne at midnight, along with 2 rowdy games of dice.....

We have vegged on the couch, with wine, making lists of everything under the sun..... things for Stephanie to bring back to Korea. We recorded dates and events in a long "timeline" list. This particular event will help me in my new 2011 project. Our Rock and Roll puzzle has been a constant center of attention for everyone for about 12 hours....

7:00pm on New Years Eve...

7:00pm on Jan 1, 2011

Meanwhile.......

After lunch the family took a walk to our beloved trail by the river to try and pull together some family portrait shots.... everyone had a camera in hand... and the pictures were a blast.....

A great day... with lots of laughs... and some really awesome pictures..

How lucky am I. Happy New Year 2011