She Finally Made It

I forgot a very important event when I was trying to catch up. A friend of mine, one of those soul-mate friends you see across a room and know it is them, a lovely woman who I met in my last year of university, finally had the time and the means to come and visit. She bravely hopped on a Greyhound and spent approximately 24-25 hours therein to finally arrive at my place with stories of interesting busmates. Then had to spend that long on the bus home again when she left. That's usually how these things work.
She was able to stay nearly a full 4 days, if you count by a 24-hour clock (she was short by about 3 1/2 hours). It was an amazing time, full of talking and laughter (ESPECIALLY laughter), memories rehashed, and a bunch of exploring. We hunted buffalo (to look at), fed an elk, fed geese and ducks and seagulls and tried to feed a pelican. We saw atrocities in relation to the birds (more on that in a future post) I taught her about geocaching, she helped me deliver flyers. We went to Costco for a hot dog and pop, and, of course, poutine. We went to the cheap theatre to watch "Up". We stayed up as late as we could (and proved ourselves to be old fogies by not staying up nearly as late as planned), and ate chips and such, while watching "Miss Congeniality" and, of course, "UHF" (because that is the kind of humour we like, among other movies, know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
I am so happy she was able to come. She lives a very busy (and seemingly fulfilling) life, so having the opportunity to claim that much of her time was wonderful. I miss having her here already, and hope she makes it back sometime, or that I manage to scrimp and save enough to go visit HER someday.
It was so nice to connect with a piece of those days again, to connect the dots in between than and now, and just realign the friendship to fit the changes we both have gone through over the past 11 years since McGill. And it was nice to have the mix of the Mommy-me, and the Debbie-me going on at the same time while she was here.
Here's to you, sweet Moosh.

The kids already want to know when you are coming again. :-D

Catching Up

I see, with shock, that is has been nearly 3 MONTHS since I last posted. It isn't that there has been nothing to blog about, but rather that we have been having so much fun and so much stuff TO DO that I just haven't gotten around to it. This will likely be at least a 2 parter, as I am only writing as I wait for Hubby to be ready to go somewhere.
Off to Value Village for their 50% off sale.
Let me see....Daughter finished her softball season with a rained out tournament. All the same, she ended up with a cool t-shirt and a really nice medal. Next year, Son will start t-ball or whatever.
I had yet another birthday. No big, blowout celebration or anything, just dinner and cake. About a week later, I took myself for an evening out. That was nice. I ate at Red Lobster (crab legs, yum!), puttered around Toys R Us (Total Mom, I know), then Canadian Tire, nabbing a few plants for my garden at 25 cents each as they were trying to clear them out, then off to the movie theatre to see "Up". Since then, I have watched the movie a total of three times...the first time was in 3D, the other times, not. The second was with a friend, the third with my family. Can you tell I love this movie?
Daughter finished her school year, and we entered into the madness of summer....Son and Daughter both took swimming lessons for 2 weeks each, one passed, one did not. We did tons of daytrips and such...plus Daughter had 4 days of Art Camp, where she created masterpieces and aside from all parental pride and bias, displayed an aptitude in the artistic field.
There were hot dog sales to run, flyers to deliver, people to see, birthday parties to attend, Chorus rehearsals to go to, a trip to the Science Center, the museum, we went to the Edmonton Ex and while there visited family, we went camping in Assiniboia, and visited family while THERE, Son had a birthday, complete with party....we tried our had at fishing, but only managed to catch our dog (poor baby.....thankfully we were able to get the hook out with no real damage)...we picked saskatoon berries by the ice cream pail-full, we geocached until we dropped, Daughter had a sleepover with two other giggly girls, we celebrated our 10th anniversary with no pomp and circumstance at all....and took our little family out to dinner with the money we received, to Applebees. We will whoop it up at a later date, when time and money are easier to come by.

And then the kids went back to school. Daughter goes all day, Son goes afternoons. Life has settled down a little, and I have hopes of someday soon reaching a peaceful level of clean in my house, as opposed to the harried slap-and-dash attempts to do 3 days of cleaning in 3 hours.
Well, looks like I caught up after all! Hopefully I will keep up a bit better now, so I don't have to try to remember 3 months all at once. :-D