noah

Again, I took the mower out to see if the lawn had dried up enough to mow. It had not. The grass is getting so long I am starting to doubt if I could even mow it anyway. I may have to whippersnipper the lawn. I feel like Noah waiting for the water to dry up.

I don't think the city fields will be open tomorrow.
This week is the Ontario standardized testing for James. Unfortunately, the testing is in English and he mainly speaks/reads/writes in French. This is a bit of a disadvantage for him! It would probably be better if you took a standardized test in the language you are being educated in!

This morning I had a very efficient trip to the grocery store.
Then took James' training wheels off his bike. He hasn't got the hang of balancing it yet but he was coming along with it. No major spills but he was a bit frustrated.
We did assisted biking to Church.
The best part of worship was "Walk the line". I find it very powerful when Al signs.
Al's sermon was on different kinds of "seeing".
James listened quite intently. His favorite parts were the story about the chair on the ceiling and the picture of the cat looking at the meat and the lego death star video depicting pure joy

I am currently loving the new Lee Casement CD. I'm playing it on repeat!

busy days

On Wednesday I tried to mow as much of the lawn as I could as it was the last scheduled nice day for a while. I got the front done but only a bit of the back before I was heading out with Kim to see Jon Maracle at her Church.
I babysat Jon and Linda's little boy when he was 2 or 3 and now he's 18 so we go way back! They are a people with such a sweet spirit and a real love for native people. Jon did the music for the evening and it was really a sweet evening. Their daughter Noelle who is now 10 also sang at the start. She has a real gift too.

Thursday the soccer fields were open so James' team (Barcelona!) played their season opener. Yesterday, the fields closed again due to the rain. It was pretty funny to watch the little boys play. They were pretty good too!

Yesterday, I went to Lee Casement's CD release party. The music there was awesome too- a very enjoyable time!
I hurt my back taking out the recycling as there was a bag of waterlogged paper in the box and it was a lot heavier than I expected! Hopefully, will recover speedily.
James wanted to sleep with me tonight as he and AJ were still up after the party. He fell asleep quickly but woke me at 2am with some sneezing. Didn't wake him up though! Will have to try to fall asleep again now- I'm going to Bay Park Baptist for a seminar-y thing tomorrow (or rather today!- or rather in a few hours and I better set my alarm!)

James' morning routine

Every morning is the same for James. He gets up, goes to the bathroom, cuddles in his NHL blankie and eats his cereal and drinks his apple juice while watching hockey snippets on the NHL website on the computer. So cute to watch, but what will he do in the off season?

May showers

Do May showers bring June flowers? Or do they just bring really soggy fields?

James' soccer team gets their "Barcelona" outfits at their first game tomorrow, if the fields are open.
While the weather website says we are currently experiencing a "light rainshower" it seems to be coming down quite hard!
Hopefully, the fields will still manage to dry out enough.

Each player on the team was assigned a player from "Barcelona" to research. James got Messi. He had to answer the question "What he does well" and James answered:
Practice, passes and ... (insert soccer drawing here) get's Goals!

Inappropriate use of apostrophe but I thought overall a good summary?

Dog walking and the end of the world

Jo (from UK) posted this on facebook and I thought it was funny so I wanted to share :)

The text reads:
Just back from walking the dog & realised that HAD the world ended, I would have hurtled into the abyss clutching a bag of pooh ;o)

Not a zombie in sight

I know Gerald was really looking forward to the zombies that were potentially going to materialize, but there were none.

I was rather amused by the events section of the Star:
The Toronto Zoo opens its Sharks at Stingray Bay attraction on Saturday, which goes great with its new exhibit of endangered African penguins. Although not at the same time. That’d be a lot to digest.

The zoo’s flightless birds will have some company on the endangered list this weekend, as humanity joins them on the brink.

The rapture, by some accounts, is scheduled to hit Toronto at 6 p.m. Saturday. A fiery five-month apocalypse is expected to follow.

The Gardiner will remain closed.

As most people probably noticed when 6pm hit the Gardiner did indeed remain closed. Who knows what Harold is calculating now? He may want to spend more time reading the Bible than calculating to improve his accuracy.
Luke 17
20 Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

After eating the lovely at the end of the world pizza, I walked to SDM as they had some good (end of the world?) sales. Mouthwash and cookies. What a combo :)

It's the end of the world...

...and I feel fine :)

James woke up this morning and the first thing he said was "I'm not dead!". Being the loving mother that I am, I warned him that he still needed to live through the day. Ha ha- way to traumatize my own child :)
Seriously, though I did explain to him that humans can't really predict this sort of thing. And if we make it through the day, he will understand this :)
Hoping for no natural or supernatural events for Brianna's party today!

I have been enjoying this song w. Dr. Who clips

The sun has finally broken out this afternoon. I have washed everything I could and hung it out to dry. I think my dryer may be on the fritz so I am taking advantage of the sun.

I mowed my front lawn last night and despite there being no sun, apparently grass grows just fine with only rain. It took a lot of work to mow it. My arms are still sore! I have not attempted to tackle the back lawn as it is still very soggy. Sports fields here have been closed all week. This has stalled the start of the soccer season. James may have a practice game on Tuesday if the fields open. They missed the whole week of practice so they aren't really ready for a game, but it's all in fun, right?

James and I went to breakfast with Sandy G. this morning and it was nice to catch up with her and partake of a lovely breakfast:)
Working on making pizza for dinner. If it's my last meal, I want it to be a good one! lol.

Grey

There's been a lot of rain the past few days. It's still grey, though may not actually be raining so I am not motivated to leave the office for my lunchtime. My plan for the summer is to try to get down to the water for lunchtime more frequently. I love it there.

On the weekend I reorganized my cubboard and put the winter sweaters away. And wouldn't you know it- today's high was 8 degrees. I wore 2 raincoats and rainpants as well as a scarf, hat and mitts on the way in! I wanted to be warm. The office is pretty cold today but my new desk is warmer than my old desk so I am happy about that!

I am listening to Matt Maher on my lunchbreak as well, so chilling while I write this.

I meant to bring my camera so I could take pictures of the detour signs that everyone ignores so that Jordin can see them. Maybe tomorrow I will remember and take pictures if it's not raining too hard!

My tulips have all been blown horizontal by the wind. As I went in to work today I saw a number of tree branches had been felled by the wind as well. Wind and rain- great combination! At least the grass is growing well.

James slept an awful lot on Saturday night and his tummy was a bit upset in the morning so I'm not sure if he was sick or if he was growing. He seemed taller somehow.

I tried to get James to do as much of his homework for the week yesterday afternoon as he has a pretty heavy schedule of sports in the evenings this week. He was not terribly impressed by the plan. I am someone who likes to get tasks over with as soon as possible. I like completing things. I don't know why he likes to put off doing things. It's not like he's not going to have to do it if he puts it off! Anyway, I made as much headway as I could with him and we got a number of pages under the belt. Another thing is that when we work on it he likes to goof around so much that homework takes a lot longer than it would have if he had just focused and then he complains that it takes too long! But as least he has a good time while he is doing it. I somehow thought that a child of mine would be a bit more studious.

We had pasta for dinner. A few weeks ago you would find that James would ONLY eat spaghetti shaped pasta. However, we ran out and I insisted that he try a new shape. He was opposed to the idea at first but did come around and pick a shape, which he ended up liking. AND he started eating pasta sauce (as a dipping sauce for the rigatoni's that he chose). So win win, progress!

In the evening, we made polymers with PVA, Borax and glue. Was a lot of fun and not too bad to clean up. James watched the hockey game BUT I hadn't clued it that last night was the finale of Survivor, so I missed it. No quirky comments from me on this one!
In the evening

h00p and h0ller

Last weekend was a bit on the busy side with the birthday party and all. I have tried to take today a little more easy and not pressure myself to do so much.
I did make James a new pair of shorts out of some of his old pants though. Planning on another pair for tomorrow.
Made homemade pizza for lunch and it was so filling I am not planning on making a dinner.

Thinking of Manitoba with the river so swollen that to try to relieve pressure they are cutting away one of the dikes they made at h00p and h0ller. Sometimes when there is too much pressure in life you may need to cut down some walls you made in order to balance things out.

Detour II

Yesterday blogger was having issues and I got some warnings about recent posts being deleted but the deletions don't seem to have affected me in particular. I must have posted before the site started having issues.

After a few nice days, the rain has returned.
Kristin posted James Morrison's "Please don't stop the rain" on FB and it seems appropriate for today.
I got up at 6 and biked in the rain until 7. I love biking around the city when it is quiet.

The detour on Union street is still pretty new to everyone and so I am still amused by the amount of cars that will ignore the detour signs (maybe as my father experiences- they may often be wrong) and drive up to the big no entry sign and see the big piece of machinery on the road and have to turn around. Happens quite a lot!

Birds

An interesting warning note on the university website to watch out for the birds.
http://www.queensu.ca/news/articles/nesting-birds-campus

There's also an article in the local paper http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3119664

Detour

We were notified that part of Union st. was going to be shut down starting Monday, so I changed my bike route on Monday. And of course it wasn't shut down first thing Monday so I could have gone my old route that morning. But now it is completely shut down and so my commute is actually quicker on the way in to work. I bike down Alfred St. to Union and where in the past it would have taken a long time to make a left turn as Union is closed there, it takes no time at all :)
I used to bike down Victoria so I could safely make that turn.
So, I am currently benefiting from the construction season. At least on the drive in to work.

Today I had another day off! For all my extra work in the exam session I get a few breaks. But we are driving hard at the timetable so I won't have another day off until after it is done.
I spent some time with a friend who is going through a bit of a rough time.
I got a call last night from a different friend going through a rough time.
Then I got an email today from a 3rd friend who told me that a mutual friend of ours was at the hospital as her baby seems to be coming early (not due until the end of June)
So, complicated life is anyway...

I have bugs in my eyes

Happy Mother's Day

Because I have a new computer that does not have my photo manipulation software installed- the way I get the photos on the blog now if to upload them to Faceb00k (which reduces their size) and then download them again. This means that today's assortment is in mixed order. I didn't think anyone would particularly mind. These are pictures from yesterday when the tulips bloomed and the boy turned 9.

Full day

Today the boy turned 9 years old!
It was a long day. Not as long as the one 9 years ago. Not as painful either.
James was up early, excited about the day.
He was very pleased to open his presents.
Then shopping as we needed to get some things for the party.
Then I think I helped work on Lego structures. I'm getting pretty good :)
Then we had the party. James had invited 7 boys to laserblast. One cancelled by email last night so there should have been 6, but only 3 showed up.
Still we had a good time with who was there.
Then AJ came over and actually is still here- the boys are having a sleepover.
Getting 2 boys to sleep is much more difficult than getting one boy to sleep! They have too much fun. One can hope they will sleep late in the morning. However, this is doubtful.
At one point in the evening, I took the boys to the park and there was a car driving down Kingscourt that came to an abrupt halt. There were a number of women in the car that were shouting at each other and one was ordered out because apparently when she drinks she isn't so nice. Hopefully, they'll patch things up when she is sober?

Flowers today- happy mothers day!

Hope you enjoy mom!

Day off!

I took a day off today!
Though it started off a bit rougher than I had hoped. There were just a couple of things that I needed to get set up online before I abandoned my computer for the day. And of course, my internet was down. So I quickly scooted over to Kim's for 15 minutes and did what I needed to do while she was getting ready for her work. Then I headed home.
Took James to the bus.
Dropped a car seat off to Kelly.
Then I went with a friend to her Church ladies group meeting. Then we went shopping and got some things for James' birthday.
James is getting very suspicious about where his birthday presents are hidden. He thinks they will be in the shed (and there are some in the shed, but are well hidden) A couple of GIANT boxes have already arrived for him- from my parents and my bro and Karrie. He is SO excited about this birthday. He has been telling everyone at school every day. I am sure he won't be disappointed though!

How to win at soccer

If you want to win at soccer, you can watch this link for tips. It cracked me up when someone sent it to me on FB.

I spent the morning listening to a Matt Maher music mix. Quite enjoying that.