Who'd Have Ever Guessed....

That right now there would be three 10 year old boys playing road hockey on my driveway, and two of them are from Korea! These are the twists and turns that your life takes when you open up your horizons. We just came back from skating at the arena for 2 hours, had cookies and hot chocolate afterwards. One of the parents from our school owns a finance company and sponsored free skating for all the school families for a small donation to the local women's shelter. So these three pals and their "big brother" Craig, chased each other around the ice for two hours and helped raise money for a good cause. It was such fun to see everyone again after being apart for the March Break. It was good for them to see someone besides the people they live with!! :):) Of course it was fun for ME to see all the other moms and dads too! For a little while it was just the 4 or 5 of them on the ice! All that wide open space!!!



We had some other really fun outings as well this week...after that crazy weekend!!! We made a trip into London to do some shopping. We began on one side of London and visited the Asian food store. This is a lot of fun for all of us. For Kevin, it was fun to be able to buy some treats from home, things he hasn't had in a long time (since he finished the care package full of delicacies from his mom!!) Mi-Chew, geem, shrimp chips, Shin-cup, Jin-Jin jellies, etc..... For us, we get to buy some of OUR favourite Korean treats, which we have come to love!!! We loooooove the sour lemon balls!! I love Cuttlefish chips, which look like Crispix but taste shrimpy...heavenly!!!! Then we drove across the city to go the Christian bookstore and bought a couple of CD's and used the bathroom. Then we stopped at EB GAmes and purchased some games and another guitar for Guitar Hero. One of the highlights of that trip was going to Tim Horton's!! Kevin always talks about the time that he had a coffee at Starbucks, which is almost sacrilege to every true Canadian. We would counter his story with the virtues of Tim Horton's coffee and donuts AND Timbits of course!!!! After helping all morning by raking and carrying wood, I treated all the boys at Timmy's. Kevin and I had a coffee and the other boys had hot chocolate. We all had a donute too. Joe's friend Logan came with us as well. Our family size varies on any given day.



The weather has been nice and warm. We visited the sugarbush this week too. The tree are very straight and tall. A few trees are actually outfitted with taps and pails but most of them are hooked up to a modern line system. We all dipped our finger on the tap to see what the raw sap tastes like. For the sap to "run" you need warm days and frosty nights, so this past week was perfect sap-running weather. A very Canadian outing. I went with a friend of mine who is also hosting a Korean student for the entire year. We made it a little educational field trip:) We enjoyed a horsedrawn wagon ride, visiting with friends in the sunshine, one of us did not particularly enjoy the horsedroppings, and instead of having pancakes with Maple syrup at the bush, we spent the equivalent amount on a large jug of Maple syrup and made french toast at home. We also picked up a package of breakfast sausages at the store to add to supper. I thought this was very thoughtful since Ray was at work all day and couldn't join us. McLachlan's has a great woodchip covered playground, the kids played outside here for an hour on the teeter totters and with the basketballs. They had such fun together and the weather was fabulous.


Of course....we werent' on the road everyday! This just shows the enduring appeal of Archie comics! Excuse the coffee table....I call it the lived in look. And if you ever come over...please put your feet up on it! We ALL do. (PS- I spy, with my little eye, something that is black and white....Joe made this fabulous little cow bowl in art class at school. He is soooo proud of it. It is has the cutest...Wallace and Grommit type of face on it. He talked about it for weeks, giving us the latest updates on it each Tuesdays and all things his teacher said about it to him. He even named it...that's just Joe.)

The Day My Sky Got Bigger

I've always been content with my little piece of sky. I have to look straight up if I want to see the stars in my backyard and then only if you're not standing under one of the trees. On some very convenient moon cycles, I can set up my telescope in the livingroom where we get a few hours of lower horizon....we even caught a lunar eclipse that way once.
Yesterday, the big walnut tree in our backyard was cut down. (Go Hughie go!!) I really love my tree and the abundant shade that it provided. I love any tree but by no means am I a tree hugger...well...I HAVE hugged that particular one, so maybe I am. But now it is down...not gone, that will be finished tomorrow....
It's passage saddens me somewhat...but I'm getting a bigger sky in return. I'll see more of the sunset, God's signature blessing that signals nightfall every single day. I'll see more of the same stars that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob saw. I'm trading off...it's a fair trade.


Inside though....the dog....was.....going....bananas!!!! You see, our roof was being replaced too. Two crews, three trucks, three trailers and all the vehicles belonging to the tree and roofing crew AND the ones that belong to this household. People walking in her backyard, people breaking trees, people pounding overhead and things shaking on the walls. It was time for an outing.

A two minute walk from our house feels like a million miles away. I'm a big fan of the middle of nowhere. It's the closest middle of nowhere I have access to at any given time, so I make do with what I'm blessed with. As we leave the house Blixie tugs at the leash with anticipation, knowing exactly where we are headed. I let her off the leash by the carwash where it always smells like cherry detergent. She is off like a shot.

We walk along the ATV trail at the edge of the stubble fiels. It is quite sandy there and she runs along taking in all the tantalizing fragrances that are unearthed as the snow cover recedes. So many fresh burrows. We follow the drainage ditch between fields to the still frozen bog in the back forty. We spot a deer through the thicket although she has heard us long ago. We slow down to savour the stillness. All you can hear is the distant drone of traffic, a robin, and a long freight train is coming, heading west, laden with double stacks of containers. We have to cross some standing water but there is just enough of the furrow sticking out, still frozen, that my feet stay dry. Blixie, on the other hand, has been places that I choose not to follow. She is covered with mud, sand and burrs(it's been much, much, much worse)....but this is what a happy dog looks like. My spontaneous outing will end with a bath and a haircut, so I stay out a little longer, not ready for chores. We step onto the edge of the bog, find skunk cabbage already starting to poke out, and climb onto the back of an old bent willow to see if we can spot that deer again. Eventually the time comes to round the furthest point of the field. This means that each step will take us closer to home. I slow down even more to stay in the quiet but we're dragged along the rows of corn stubble with its generous infringement of pokeweed. It will be even wider this coming summer since all the prickly pods have burst open scattering seed already. No matter, this dog is happy, she flushed out a ground hog....what's a little grime.

This Is The Best Day I Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever Had...

..
Those were the words that I heard over and over in the car on the way home from the hockey game, spoken by Kevin.

He leaped out of bed first thing in the morning and his excitement and enthusiasm knew no bounds. It was a nice crisp cold winter morning, perfect for a hockey game. The mood for hockey is just not the same when you change out of your shorts into your hockey equipement. It was fitting that we should come in scarves and mitts!!! I got at school just before 2pm to pick the kids and their bags up and transport them to the arena. When I arrived at school I was just in time to witness the only thing that could make the day EVEN better. Cody, a friend of the boys, had made up a composite stick for Kevin and when I saw him he was smiling so broadly I thought his face would crack!!! The entire team seemed so excited to be playing a game where Kevin and Francis, the other Keystone student, would be playing. This was evident on the bench, as the other guys always chatted with Kevin and patted him on his helmet to show that he did well. In this picture Kevin has the blue helmet on and our friend Josh Verkley is sitting beside him, and they chatter the whole time.... The only thing the pictures don't share is the sound of the crowd. The entire parent fan section, sitting right behind the bench, would cheer LOUDLY when either Kevin or Francis would get the puck. Toward the end of the game they were put on a line with the best players to try and get set up in order to score. KEVIN CAME SOOOOOOO CLOSE!!! He had a clean shot but he missed, and he is disappointed but it wasn't enough to spoil his fun. He skated hard, played hard, and just enjoyed every minute of it. He couldn't believe how fast time went. The periods are 10 minutes long and he said it felt just like 3 minutes.... It was a lot of fun to watch them....I hope to get some more pictures some time since the coach took a lot of pictures....we'll see. Everyone had a lot of fun on this afternoon....and now the season is REALLY over. The next thing we'll throw our energy behind is baseball! (And track and field...it is neat to see how the boys focus on the event of the hour and when it is over, they just move right along!)


I had a great time at the game but I was looking forward to a fun event of my own!!!! I went to London and saw Avalon in concert with my good friend Renata!!!! I have been a Greg Long fan since his very first album and followed his career along to Avalon. It was SUCH a good show, very informal and they sang all my favourite songs!!! That was the best. They rerecorded their best songs as group members come and go. Lots of variety, including an acoustic set. For the second half of their show, Greg Long went into the crowd to take requests from the audience. There were a number of teenage girls behind us (who knew the words to every song!!) so he came right over to where we were.....he's shorter in real life than you might think, but isn't that always the way? Still has an incredible voice and so does his wife Janna. It's always a thrill to attend a good show and hear great "live" music, vocals were live but they sang to tracks...