Shock

Which is more shocking:
Back to back posts or a finished project? You be the judge.



I took the kids to the park this morning. The Loops has some great parks, lots of water and lots of dirt, always a winning combination. This park sports a wading pool, lots of sand to play in, a big playground, lots of shade trees and lots of other kids to play with.



I only took a few pictures but I thought I would share them with you. When the kids get along it is fun to watch them play together. Here is PJ making mud.



Quentin hamming it up.



Sebastian, following the same mud recipe as PJ.



I like this picture of PJ, the silly face makes me smile.



Quentin making a cake. Yum.



Sebastian with his tongue hanging out and his ribs showing, for the record we do feed him.

Happy Lips

Shannon sent me a beautiful smile when I needed one the most. This came in the mail for me today it is a birthday gift from Shannon. The best part is it is a color I would not normally choose for myself, but it looks great on me. It will be a great everyday color and every girl needs as many of those as she can get. Thank you Shannon!



Here is a photo of my favorite patch of yard. I usually plant 5 wave petunias here and they take over and it turns into a riot of color. After 5 years of unsuccessful tomatoes I thought I would try them here this year. As you can see they are thriving. I am not sure if I should be cutting them back a bit at this point. It gets very hot up against the house in the afternoon and I think they are liking the heat and the full sun. Lets see if they will have time to ripen before the snow flies.



I took the kids to Paul's hockey game on Friday night. I did my best to get some good photos of him playing but most are blurry. You will get the idea though.



Here are the kids watching Dad play.





That blur in the blue helmet and black and yellow is Paul. He looked tired pretty early on in the game. He had not played in 4 or 5 weeks because they were changing the lines on the ice, I am surprised he moved fast enough to blur! He played again on Sunday and said he was feeling much better than he was on the night these pictures were taken.

We interrupt This Quiet Time

With a Blog Post!! No pictures but I can put some words down for you.

The past two days have been spent taking care of family. We have a family member here in the Loops that has been dealing with Dementia. To make a long story short she has been getting progressively worse over the past few months.

Things have come to a head the past few days and her current home situation is longer viable for her. She has been an insulin dependent diabetic for years and has managed herself very well. She has deteriorated to the point where she can longer manage her medications on her own and she has been getting lost in the community she has lived in for years. It was important for her safety that we get her some immediate care.

The only way to get her into the system is to take her to the emergency room at the local hospital, this is a grand adventure due to bed shortages. I took her to then ER today and sat in the waiting room there from 9 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon. It took over 6 hours to even get a doctor to see her.

I don't blame them for the delay. When there are people out there bleeding on the floor a dementia patient takes the back seat. I can't say I understand why the ER is the only way to get what is basically a psych. case into the hospital but it is. Once I finally got her admitted it got even more illogical to me. She needs to be moved to a room upstairs to empty the bed in the ER, she is now occupying, but wait...there are no available beds upstairs.

So where is she now? She is admitted to the hospital, but still taking a bed in the ER. This means that everyone else that comes through those doors that needs immediate care can't get it because now there are no beds in the ER because there are cases in the ER that are not emergencies that have no where else to go.

The good news: now that she had been admitted to the hospital they can't release her back into her own home once it is determined she is a danger to herself. This means she is officially IN THE SYSTEM and is on her way to get the assisted living care she really needs.

I guess in this case the end does justify the means.

Little Blessings

My life is blessed in more ways than I can enumerate for you here in a single blog post. I can bring to you today just one more way in which my life has been blessed:



She is so sweet, she brings tears to my eyes when I peek at her. Meet Rory and Debble's new daughter, she was born about 7:30 Wednesday night. She is about 3 hours old in these pictures. Debbles delivered in the same efficient manner she approaches the rest of her life. She went to the hospital about 5:00 that evening and was only 4cm dilated, she walked a lap around the maternity ward and came back to the nurses station letting them know she was ready to push. They had not even had time to prepare a room for her and she beat her Dr. To the punch, he missed the delivery altogether.

Sweet Pea has not officially been named, I might share her name when when I know it or she may forever be known on this blog as Sweet Pea. I can't thank Debble's enough for having a baby for me cuddle.



Deb, we have names for women that look this good only 3 hours after delivering a baby but this blog is rated G...

In With the New

Here is Paul's new baby. It is a 2001 Ford F150, I think. He spent the entire weekend in the driveway caressing it. He is in love.



We bought it at a used car lot it was well priced but very dirty on the inside. It is in good shape, but there was a lot of dirt and coffee in it. This used lot has better prices in part because they don't detail the cars. It has been tuned up and inspected and it is in good shape and comes with 1 year of warenty work.



It came with the bed liner, has air conditioning, cruise control, runs like a top, Paul is happy, how does that go? Happy husband=Happy wife.



Paul took the kids camping in the backyard on Saturday night. I don't know how much sleep they got but there was a lot of giggling going on out there. Quentin gave up and came in the house to go bed around 10:30.

Out With the Old

A little bit of a random post today, it has been that kind of a week. This is the first week of full time kids, no school to help me keep my sanity. We had a good time and we certainly managed to keep busy. Let the randomness begin.

Here is a picture of PJ I took on Tuesday, she is showing off her new hair cut and her ability to write the letters 'SB' which she uses on her chore list to indicate the nights she does not have to clear the table after dinner because we had softball and ate the ball field.



I took these pictures on Wed. Night after our run. We had some thunder showers roll through town not long before our run and the heavy clouds combined with the smoke in the air made a lovely sunset together. They are posted out of order the first one is taken up by our house and the next one taken on the highway while driving home. The sky was so pretty I had to pull over and get the camera out.





I take my camera with me just about everywhere I go. I have faithfully taken my camera with me to every Barking Cow game this season and have yet to use it. We have been short handed on the ball field this season we have one cow expecting a calf soon and another that had knee surgery, one that broke his wrist (last ski run of the year not done on the ball field), the Giggle Queen broke her finger and another cow is out with a sore shoulder. Add to this that two of the cows have decided to take up hockey and they miss all the Thursday night games and the cows were in a bit of a pickle this year.

It is a co-ed team and you must have 3 girls to play the game, you can play short a girl if you are willing to let Auto play. Auto is not a good a player, even by the cows standards. If your team is missing a girl you write 'automatic out' in her spot on your lineup and whenever she would have had her turn at bat, it counts as an out. The cows need no help in the 'OUT' department.

This season we seem to have only 3 women able to play each game, this means I don't get to much time to take pictures. Four women is the perfect amount for a game, then we all get play a bit but you can sit and drink and play in the sand pit with kids or run to the washroom. The moral of this longwinded random thought is: I will try to take some cow pictures for you on Thursday, we have a double header and it is our last game of the season. We have our tournament next weekend.

Following that maybe things will slow down around here in the evenings and I can blow the dust off my knitting needles.


And now we finally come to the title of today's blog post and this picture: "Out With the Old" (you didn't think Paul was dumping ME did you!?!?!) Say goodbye to the ForeRunner, I will post the new for you Saturday. Until then I will keep you in suspense...

Canada Day, Eh?

This past weekend was a long weekend here in Canada, July 1st was Canada Day. We took the kids down to the festivities at the park. Here are some pictures for you.

Paul is checking out some of Q's art work:



PJ is having a great time with the brushes too:



SeaBass is looking very serious about his work here:



Here is another of Q:



Time to paint the kids:



That is Jaden next to PJ, they are sweet aren't they?



And one more of the BassMan:



This last picture was taken yesterday afternoon. We have lots of forest fires in BC and this one started up yesterday. It is about 25 K behind our house so there is nothing to worry about here. It is quite smoky but other than that all is well

We had a thunder shower just an hour ago, but somehow it made the air seem to smell even stronger of smoke. The valley is all socked in with smoke I will try to get some photos for you but I don't know how they will come out.

We have a softball game tonight. It's always fun to play in a lighting storm, why don't we use wooden bats anyway???!?



Oh yeah, I bought this full spectrum light at costco today. It was $26.00, I thought that was a good deal. I have been looking on the internet and they can be pretty expensive. If I like knitting by it I might pick up another one for my bedroom.