the death of a friend (not a real person, don't worry!), and some other stuff

First in another random post....  Here is a screen shot from my cell phone the other day.  Look carefully at the one "No Sender".  Look at the date.  Um..... creepy.  It is dated two days after some certain (wonderful) person's birthday.  Back when there was no internet.  Back when there were no iPhones.  Back when there weren't any cell phones at all.  And when computers took up a whole huge room.  Ya, so, what is up with that?  Any body else ever had something like this happen to them? (I smeared out the message at the bottom as it was personal and I didn't want you nosing around in my personal business.  The fact that you are reading my blog is enough!)

A whole lot of cuteness.... Lucy reading our devotional before bed.

We have had some random VERY nice days.

And many not so nice.

That day that school was cancelled I was encouraged to stay home from work as well.  It being a Thursday, I helped Eric deliver the paper.  Once again I drove and Eric, Mia and this time also Lucy, delivered the papers.  Those girls are troopers.  And I think they actually like doing it!

Mia had one of those moments that would have made us millionaires (well maybe thousandaires) had we been able to catch it on video.  She leaped well over a snow drift on a drive way while going to deliver the paper.  On the way back she had a little less graceful execution, however.  She leapt and promptly did a spread-eagle into the snow drift.  Face down, of course.  Rather hilarious.  And thankfully she found it hilarious too, 'cause I could hardly have stopped laughing to comfort her if she didn't!  After that, Lucy mysteriously kept falling down as well.  Odd, isn't it?

The picture doesn't really do it justice, but I took this photo to show how the snow had been blasted against the front on the houses and drifts were rampant (even though their driveway was pretty good).  It was a very blustery day!

And now for death.  My laptop had been having issues for a while.  Finally one day he seemed to give up on life.  Eric made several valiant attempts at resuscitation, but alas, he lost him.

I debated for a good long time on the next move.  iPad?  Regular old laptop of some random brand?  Spend the big bucks on another Mac?  The Mac won.  Another cheer for me for not being cheap.  A bigger cheer for Eric in pushing encouraging me to not be cheap.  And a sigh, a moan, and a little whimper for the money spent.

Eric noticed that the movie E.T. was going to be on tv, so he set up a recording.  We were all set to watch it with the kids - he even bought Reese's pieces.  The baulked, however.  And baulked even more.  Fine!  We won't watch one of the fineness movies ever made!  So we didn't.

Until the next day.  And boy, then they saw what they missed!

Eric only told us all about 249 times that he rode the bike across the moon with E.T. at Universal Studios.  That added to our movie-viewing joy.

Early on in the school year, Lucy had to do a project called "I am Canadian".  A little irony there as we still are in limbo about their status.  It has been a year since we handed in the kids' applications for their citizenship certificates.  Still nothing.  But she still is Canadian, darn-it and she still did the project!

Mia has turned into our little baker as of late.  She is taking home ec. - cooking, and gets extra points for making stuff at home.  Eric had to put a kibosh on the frequency as our waistlines were going to explode.  She's pretty talented though, let me tell you!

At work we are pulling non-relavent books off the shelves to make for many, many new books being ordered.  We thought ones like this probably aren't needed any more.  My biggest issue?  I want to take them all home with me.  I love them all.  Just say no, Carla, just say no!

I like old things much too much.

winter

Here is a quote from local news.  Not shocking with all of the posts I've done on the winter here, but it still is interesting.  We are becoming hardy Canadians.

Phillips says southern Manitoba has just come through the coldest December/ January stretch since 1949 and the second coldest in 120 years. He explains the average temperature in December was -20.9 degrees or about seven degrees colder than normal. While in January, the average temperature was -20.7 degrees, which is about six degrees below normal. Furthermore, there were nine days in December where the mercury dipped below -30 degrees and another twelve days in January. In fact, twelve is the normal amount for an entire winter in southern Manitoba. Phillips says this is the highest number of -30 degree days we've had in one year in the last century.

outdoor ed at cedarwood

This past Wednesday through Friday, all of the 7th graders at Mia's school went to camp Cedarwood for outdoor education.  After much begging from Mia (grovelling, I should say), I agreed to go.  Actually, she really didn't beg or grovel, but it makes me feel better about myself to think that perhaps she not tolerated having me there but actually really, really desired my presence.... so in my mind she grovelled.  I was asked to come along at the official photographer of the event - perfect for me!  Got to do something I love and got to take it all in, without a lot of extra responsibility! 

By the way, I asked Mia if she would write this blog post but she refused.  Perhaps I should have grovelled.....

The time was mostly about the outdoor activities.  There were seven of them and 6 slots in which the students, broken up into groups, would go to each (minus one event/activity, obviously) over the course of the three days.  They had cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, tubing, fire and bannock, ice fishing, outdoor games and indoor games.

The whole thing was rather fabulous.  Well, okay, the weather stunk, but the kids were amazingly good-natured in spite of the absolutely frigid conditions.  Wednesday was stinking cold and I thought for sure Thursday would be better.  Thursday came and it was worse.  The wind was strong and blowing across that (frozen) lake?  Oh my.  I was bundled from head to toe with only my eyes exposed and I was dying.  I walked out to ice fishing - directly into the wind - with my eyes closed most of the way.  It hurt so bad.  Crazy.  I don't know how some of those ridiculous middle schoolers whom are too-cool-for-scarves-toques-boots-and-mittens did it.  "Mighty thankful" is an understatement at how I felt for Eric encouraging (read: forcing) me to invest in really good winter gear for myself and not be my usual overly-frugal self.

Most of these photos are of Mia because I can't really post photos of other kids, unless they are unrecognizable.  But she is super cute, so you'll probably be more happy with her lovely mug anyway.

Mia was least thrilled about ice fishing, and don't tell her but I can't really blame her.  Sitting still outside on ice with the wind whipping around you for almost two hours is few people's idea of a good time.  I can see if you had a little warm shack around you how it might be fun, but these kids were out in the open.  They did have a little shack with a fire to go into every once in a while.  Some kids even did catch real live fish (as opposed to dead ones...).  This here is a Northern Pike.

It was great to meet more of Mia's friends and her teachers.  She loves her teacher, Mr. Carter, with good reason.  He is a great guy.  He obviously loves the kids but he also holds them to high standards.  And he pushes them.  Sometimes we aren't sure how much they are learning in his class as Mia talks about how they go cross-country skiing and snowshoeing at school as well.  Or the latest, in honour of the winter olympics: watching the movie Cool Runnings!  Mr. Carter (aktma.... that is also-known-to-me-as, Mr Kotter or MC Hammer  - his initials are MC) is an avid skiing and participates in biathlons, no less.  Apparently he is training his whole class.

You can see in this picture how miserable it was at some points.  The wind was blowing so hard it was one big hazy mass of snow at the ice fishing area.

Hopefully no one will mind that I am putting this picture in.  This guy was the only one of many willing to go down the tube slide backwards so that I could take a picture.  And I can't really blame them.  It was the craziest, steepest tube slide I've ever seen - and iced-up really, really well!

Mia had hurt her knee cross country skiing and was a little done with going up and down the stairs on the slide, and done with the cold at this point.  Couldn't really blame her.

Part of my excitement in going was also that I had worked at Cedarwood for four summers.  I had only been back once, the summer Eric and I got married, to see the place after the main lodge had burned down.  Those were some very significant summers in my life in many ways.  Very few memories where stirred up, however.  The place is so different.  I guess 20 years will do that.  Only one building remains that was there when I was there.  It was were I lived and hung out with many other staff, but it has now been renovated to house full time staff.  The fact that it was winter, and how that changes the look of a place, made a big difference as well.  Really, it is just as well.

Now the place holds memories of my daughter, her friends, and her a part of her life.  So Cedarwood is even more rich than before!

snowboarders extraordinaires

Before the snowboarding.... here is a selfie by Eric after a newspaper delivery run.  He hasn't had a lot of nice newspaper delivery Thursdays.  Then again, we haven't had a lot of nice any-days for the past two months.

Here is Lucy to report on last Friday's (The 31st of January) events.  Good ol' mom had to work.

On friday me,Mia,Maddy,Cade,Alex,daddy,and uncle jared went snowboarding on holiday mountain.There was a carpet that took you to the bunny hill, it was so much fun going down the hill!I kept on falling down but it still was fun.Alex helped me learn how to snowboard down the hill.

After we did a few runs down the bunny hill we went to this big steep hill. I was a little bad but i survived down the hill with my daddy. Everyone went down good except me.
(side note:  Apparently Lucy did great for her first time and don't worry, I don't think that she is really being that down on herself.  And best part - she loved it.)

Apparently Cade learned quickly and just went for it.  He took on the hill and started flying down.  I guess he didn't really take time to learn how to stop, so he just figured it out on his own.  He had the right idea but had never perfected it (or even tried it?) so he bit it pretty hard - end over end for 11 feet.

Eleven feet?  Yes, well, apparently he and Uncle Jared measured it after the occurrence.  The best part of it is that he really thought it was more entertaining than anything.  Wasn't too fazed by the tumble.  I like that.

red velvet ninja cupcakes (aka: bloddy cupcakes)

This little post is by Lucy.  In her writing this first paragraph, we've discovered that she is pretty stinking hilarious!

On friday i invited my cousin Riley for a sleepover.  On saturday we made cupcakes and opened a store.We called it red velvet ninja cupcakes.  It was not a success for us.  They were all lumpy it was so cool.  When we frosted them my mom (aka blogger) said that they looked like bloody cupcakes.

We ate one of them and Riley lost her tooth.

This is mom (aka blogger) now.....  The girls wanted to sell the cupcakes but didn't have to many customers (Lucy's bedroom wasn't exactly a bustling byway).  That is the main reason that she said "it was not a success for us"... they didn't make a lot of coin.  I was a customer however.

They even wrote out receipts.

I ended up suggesting to the girls that we should bring the cupcakes to Kim (my sister, Riley's mom) at work.  Even though they wouldn't make a lot (or any) money by doing that, and they wouldn't have a bunch more sugar to consume, they would be doing something nice for her and the rest of the people working that day.  At first they weren't thrilled by the idea but then the were happy with their decision.  Giving is better than stuffing your own face.