Global Warming???

It's hard to imagine global warming when we're hit with a series of spring storms here in Alberta. Don't you just hate these depressing storms?! I'm just glad I haven't taken my snow tires off yet. It's been nice and warm and sunny here - the trees are budding out, tulips are blossoming, grass is green, and then...wham...this morning we awoke to piles of snow and fierce howling winds. It was over by suppertime, but it'll take a few days for the snow to melt.

You'll have to excuse the quality of the following pictures taken in Sara's front yard - they were taken with my phone - but you get the idea!

Beautiful frosted tulips.

Rose bushes bowed down by the heavy wet snow.

Almost buried yellow tulip

Ditto - red tulip

And a final shot of the rose bushes.

Lloyd and I are off to Winnipeg tomorrow morning. Hopefully when we get back on Sunday it'll be spring again.

You're Never Too Old

...to swing at a pinata for the first time. My 62nd birthday party was as good a time as any to try my hand at batting the super strong saguaro cactus pinata.

Since Sara and her family were going to be away on Mother's Day and my birthday, she and Charlie decided to have a small birthday party for me this past weekend. Charlie (6 years old) loves birthday parties and insisted they go to the Party Store for special decorations. We ended up with a Hawiian themed party. Here are some images from it.

Elly has a turn.

My new pink Cricut.

Kenzie, Charlie, me, Max, Sydney singing Happy Birthday

The pinata before it got bashed.

The Hawiian hula girls, Kenzie and Charlie

Trying to Stay Ahead

I thought I should work on layouts of baby Hannah before Tate is born in June and Quinn in July. It's so hard to stay ahead, or even caught up, in my scrapbooking.

When we were in Lethbridge a couple weeks ago to see Hannah and her family, I was unable to get on the internet. So to fill in time while Mickey was on the internet (could never figure out how she could get on and I couldn't), I used a digital scrapbooking program to create 8 digital pages in an hour - unlike the 8 days it usually takes me to make one page the 'real' way! Those digital pages were 8.5 x 11. Since I usually work with 12 x 12 pages, I decided to incorporate my digital pages into 'real' 12 x 12 pages by printing the digital pages and adding them to 12 x 12 pages. I know this is fascinating information for you non-scrapbookers. The following four hybrid pages are the results of that exercise. The final page is one I did from scratch. Have a look-see.

Birthday Cards

I love birthday cards. I love getting them. I love sending them. I love making them (although once made, I hate sending them away). I love searching for them.

A number of years ago (who's counting...I've had many birthdays, after all), while looking for a birthday card to send my sister I couldn't decide between a funny one or a sentimental one...so I sent her both. That started a new tradition. I now spend the year buying funny birthday cards to send to Wendy, trying not to duplicate the ones she sends to me. It's not unusual for us to receive 7 or 8 birthday cards from one another. Already, two weeks before my birthday, I've already received 5 very funny cards from Wendy, and have a stockpile of cards to start sending her next week (our birthdays are 8 days apart, with mine coming before hers). This giving and receiving of birthday cards is something I look forward to each year.

The whole family seems to enjoy this tradition of ours. The other day when a particularly funny card arrived, Lloyd took it and showed it to our daughters who were upstairs visiting Amy. Yesterday when 7-year old Kenzie brought my mail down, (did I ever mention that Lloyd and I live in Amy's basement suite?) she said "Here's your mail Grammie. Two of them look like they're from Wendy" and she had to watch me open them so she could read them too and laugh about them.

It's a challenge to find cards that Wendy hasn't found. To that end, I avoid Hallmark and Carleton stores, unless absolutely necessary. I've found great cards, different cards, in interesting places...Bubbles Car Wash has racks of unusual cards, as does the truck stop in Vulcan. A couple of stores in the artsy-fartsy university area of Edmonton have an even better selection of non-Hallmark cards. Not that I have anything against Hallmark cards, but everyone has them and I'm looking for the unusual. Indigo and Coles book stores also have a different variety to choose from.

I've had such fun doing this with Wendy that a couple years ago I included my sister in-law, Cath, in my birthday-card-a-rama. She loved it. And this year I 'graduated' my oldest daughter, Jenny, to the multiple card birthday. She got a big kick out of it and called me a couple of times to remark about the cards she was receiving. What the heck! I figured when you turn 37 you're old enough to get funny "ha ha you're old" cards. What else can you do if you can't laugh at the ravages of father time!!! Welcome to the club JLQ. I hope your birthday today is a great one.

The Story Writer

I love this picture of 6-year old Charlie that Sara took at Easter. She looks so serious sitting on a rock by the lake at her Grandma's place writing in her new notebook. She is excited to be learning to read and write and loves to practice her reading and writing.

In case you can't make it out, the story she wrote goes like this:

"Charlie is the most specialist girl in the whole wide world. I know why I even think that she is the most goodest cause I am Charlie. The End."

I love it. Fearing that I'll forget what her original spelling is supposed to say, I wrote the story in more traditional spelling and tucked it behind her story on the scrapbook layout. The small ribbon attached is for pulling the translation out so it can be read.

I enjoyed using bling on this page. It looks better in real life.

Visit With Hannah

The highlight of the trip Mickey and I made last weekend was visiting my new granddaughter, Hannah Rose MacKenzie. She was 12 days old when she finally met her Grammie and she was on her best behaviour. Her mom, Avril, was doing well and the whole family seemed to have adjusted well to the arrival of their daughter/sister.

Alex, Mike, Kenny kissing Hannah, Avril

Snuggling with Grammie

Hannah

Mutual Admiration Society - at least I hope it's mutual

Peaceful Hannah

Mickey gets a turn with her.

Me with Mike's family

Lloyd finally met his newest granddaughter this morning. I'm waiting for the pictures Mike took of them together. I don't think it'll be too long before Lloyd and I head down to Lethbridge for another visit with Hannah and the boys.

Mickey and I travelled to Lethbridge on Friday via Vulcan – home of the legendary Mr. Spock. It was an exciting trek through the back roads of the universe, which is Alberta when it can’t make up it’s mind what the weather in April is supposed to be like.

We heard dire tales of 34-car pile-ups on the intergalactic nightmare called the Queen Elizabeth II highway so like the clever space travelers that we are, we darted around on the more scenic, and practically empty, secondary space lanes.

The sky around us was particularly tumultuous, filled with beautiful mists and billowing waves of vapor. Yet we escaped without a drop of precipitation falling on us, and nothing but clear roadways, although we could see evidence of the previous night’s deluge of snow and rain.

And finally a safe landing at Vulcan where we disguised the noble Enterprise as a tourist attraction and drove the last hour to Lethbridge.

A lovely space trek on an interesting meteorological day.