Me and My Bargain

An updated, edited photo of me.























My candle with the glass top was on *clearance*at Wally world...love those clearance shelves!

Summer

Hi...summer is here..and the girls and I are keeping really busy. We're heading off to the Island for a few weeks to "get away from it all". It will be nice to have a change of scenery. Sorry about the absence here on the blog..things have been rather turned upside down here for the past couple of months! Hope you have an awesome summer!
Heather

My Baby Girl is 17!!

Wow how could she be 17 already?? I can't believe how fast the time has gone....it doesn't seem that long ago when I was in the hospital having Lindsay. She was a good, easy delivery. The labour was short..in relative terms-4 hours! Amazing for a first baby. When the nurses were cleaning her up in the delivery room, I remember sitting on my bed, saying.."wow, that really wasn't all that bad!!"They laughed at me. :) I was SO excited that she was a girl....for many reasons...I remember looking at her thinking..wow...what am I going to name this poor child....I had no idea and felt the responsibility very heavily...yeah...I know..most people stress at this point about the idea of raising this little child through to adulthood. Not me...I worried about what I was going to name her. It seemed like such a really huge, monstrous deal! It took 2 weeks, if you can imagine that! The name we finally chose, I picked as a tribute to my Dad's mom. It was her maiden name.

Jump ahead to the present: Lindsay is a joy and a delight in our home! She fills it with humour and lots of creative artwork. I tell her that she should be an illustrator of children's books. She works hard in school and gets awesome grades...but ya know what...we'd love her whether she did or not! Anyway...
Have an awesome birthday Linds!! I love you sweetheart!!
love Mom

Yesterday

Apple blossoms...I found myself walking through an apple orchard yesterday...stopping to admire the beautiful apple blossoms..thinking..wow...such beauty..too bad I don't have my camera.....then to my delight, I realized that I had it in my purse! So out it came...and I was snap happy for awhile...after a while of picture taking....I came across these lovely little crearures:
Honeybees!





I love bees, and find them fascinating! So I paused in front of their hives to watch them...They were awfully busy and apparently didn't like me butting into their busy-ness! They started dive bombing me! One hit my face, then another hit my ear..then into my hair...wow! I haven't run that fast in a long time....and what a sight it must have been to behold--arms flailing...legs flying...yeah...Anyway..hope you're all enjoying some signs of spring! Those poor honey bees this morning..I think they will all be having an inside day today. It's cold and rainy out this morning...way colder than normal for the middle of May.
Happy Thursday!

Private Blog....

Hi there...a question for you...


Can anyone tell me how to make the blog private..am thinking of doing that...or creating another one that is for invited readers only....Can you give me a hint or two??? I've searched through blogger and didn't come up with anything.
thanks so much!

Friends of ours had to take their son out of town for medical treatment..and they have a dog...soo we took her while they were gone. She's a great little dog...she's so full of energy and LOVES to go for walks. So yesterday I took her and Goldie, our fat ol' dog, out for a walk. They're like a couple of little kids! They were so excited to be out. I walked them along the river and then to the lake. They swam around a bit and then I threw their wet carcasses in the back of the van and took them home.

A stormy, rainy friday afternoon....with Janelle

Today was a day of crazy spring weather.It started off beautiful. I got up this morning and opened the patio door....it was so nice out....I stood out on the deck for a few minutes enjoying the quiet of a 630 am weekday morning. It was 11 degrees out! Yaaay!! Spring is finally here! Our Magnolia tree is finally blooming..I'll have to take a picture of it to post..it's so pretty.
So anyway, I came back inside and within a few minutes it was pouring rain. It continued off and on for several hours then we had a couple of hours of sun....what a treat. I drove the older girls out to youth group at our church, after school. On the way home Janelle and I stopped at a park at the beach.
We played around with the camera while there....taking pictures of each other and a bit of the scenery....
She and I climbed onto a tire swing that swings in circles. Yeah..you see where I'm going with this. Not a good idea at all. Yup...we got on it and we spun...and spun...and spun....not a good plan. I cannot go round and round in circles anymore....I hit 40 this year and this is ONE thing that I'll gladly give up! Anyway...yeah...I was nauseous for about 3 hours!
We left the park just in time. As we headed down the highway home, it started to pour! Reeeaally pour! My wiper blades could hardly keep up! First it rained, and then it hailed. By the time we got home the water was shooting UP out of the storm drain at the end of our street! But one of the joys of living in this area is that our rainstorms are short lived! It was all over with in about 20 minutes or so and a beautiful rainbow graced the eastern sky.




So here are a bunch of silly pictures of us at the beach/park.















I have a couple more pictures and I video that I was going to post but my camera battery died again! It's gotten alot of use lately....guess I'll add them tomorrow.


Okay...so the video and the other two pictures worked now...here we are getting ourselves(okaay MYself) sick on the tire swing!

Our Easter

This is the weekend before Easter..we celebrated Amanda's 14th bd....and Courtenay made the cake.





A late birthday present for my nephew...here he is checking out the undercarriage of his new truck.



"See Auntie!"





Walking to the park after Easter lunch


Tom pushing Silas on the swing.


Lindsay in the slide.


My brother, Tom and I with our kids.







Amanda, swinging




Court playing on the motorcycle

Photography

As you may be able to tell by looking through my blog...I love photographing nature! I have posted a ton of photos on my FB account. In a recent conversation with a friend he strongly suggested that I publish a coffee table book of my photos. He gave me the name of a company that will self publish them for me for a very reasonable amount of money. Sooo...I am contemplating this.
It means that I'd need to get a higher quality camera...but we'll see how it goes..
I will have to check into the details and see if it's something that I can swing. Well thanks for stopping by.
I was trying to add some of my latest pics on here and my camera died after one download...and it really wasn't even one of the ones that I was wanting to put on..oh well..will add the other ones later. (this is one that Janelle took of me the other day at the park.)




I'm not sure why I had such a goofy look on my face...maybe because Janelle and Seth were taking lotsa pics...who knows...anyway...I've just uploaded the pictures that I was trying to upload yesterday when the camera battery died.

Easter Monday

We had friends over to visit last night and they also have 4 kids. They took our 3 oldest home with them and left their youngest here. Janelle and him had fun last night and today.


Here are some pictures from today.




Here they are climbing around on the playground equipment.






First stop: Tim Horton's for coffee for me and hot chocolate for the kiddos. MMMMM!!


See this...it's hot chocolate!! mmm yummy!

Seth took our picture.



Thanks for the hot chocolate! Do you like my cheesy grin?? =-D


Then we went over to the pier and spent a bit of time there before we headed home.

Happy Thursday.

Here are a couple of pictures of an old hotel in our area. Around the time of World War 1 it ran into financial difficulties which led to it's closure and the eventual salvage of anything reusable. Only the concrete shell was left.
I noticed that they've got strings of lights hanging on it. Must be pretty at night!

Do you lose pictures?

Today all I have for you is a question. Does anyone other than me have photos disappear from your blog? I came on today and I see several empty spots that used to contain pictures. { :-S] [--]==

This is....Spring...?!

This was the view out our front door this morning!! This is April people!!! Not February...but....after saying that I must admit that we had snow last April too! Only it was more like the middle of April last year! aaaaargh

SO..what better way to beat the snow "blues" than to get outside with a hot coffee and a camera and enjoy the great outdoors!! I headed to the lake and went for a walk...breathing in the glorious freshness of a cool winter day. I wish I could bottle up that smell and post it on here so that you could smell what I'm talking about!



























Who ever thought that a seagull could be a thing of beauty?










A huge fish that was laying on the beach...that's my footprint next to it for some perspective on it's size! Sorry if this picture makes you nauseous! :P


A bunch of sea gulls. They're funny to watch. I noticed that even sea gulls have personality! There was one little one that kept "complaining" very loudly and then there was the big one that was bossy and had a really deep "voice"....





















The moss was about the only thing that has any colour.



Do you see the "peach" in the distance? It's a summertime concession stand. Peaches are the theme for our city, since we are surrounded by orchards.