Looking thru my parents eyes

Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these. --Lloyd Shearer


This is my dad when he was young - he looks like such a kid in this picture, it kinda makes me laugh!

I remember being a kid and going to the hospital with my parents when my grandparents were sick. I could see the concern, the worry and the distress on their faces as they were faced with the mortality of their parents. As a kid, even as I had my own kids, I always expected that my parents would always be around. I mean, my grandparents died and I knew my parents would eventually too, but that seemed sooooo far away that it wasn't a concept that truly entered my mind. That is, until the last month. Everytime my dad blacks out, his heart stops temporarily. Now I see why my parents were concerned, worried and distressed when something happened to their parents. I am looking at my life thru my parents eyes. I have become my parents.

Blast from the past

A friend of ours is moving back to Winnipeg next week and he brought over a blast from my past:

This is a bar that I used to frequent on Thursday nights when I was young. He happened to have this shirt from a buddy who used to work there. He brought it over after he remembered that I met Chris there. Its kind of a funny story actually. I was with a girlfriend at Bullwinkle's for Ladies Nite one Thursday night when dh Chris walked by. As he passed me I leaned over to my girlfriend and said "I'd like one of those please?!" and she replied by saying she would bring him over cuz she knew him. We started dating shortly thereafter. I ended up dumping him a month later when he said "I want to marry you someday." I mean, I was 21 and in NO WAY ready to get married. But 4 years later we met up again and 11 years after that, here we are celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary in September and 2 kids later. Funny to look back at what we were like at that age. I can't wait to scrapbook this picture - brings back alot of old memories!

Memories are the greatest of artists. Maurice Baring

They are home!

Well, the kids are finally home and I am soooo glad that they are. I never realized how much I missed them. They had a fabulous time and came home with twice the amount of toys and clothes that they left with, but they are back. Its amazing how much grandparents spoil them.

And the contest at S! is wrapping up. It was alot of fun celebrating another year. There were great RAKs and the points game was a total hit. Everything seems to be winding up now - just a few more weeks until school starts and life gets back to normal. I am looking forward to school starting again.

So today we are headed to West Edmonton Mall. We usually only head over there when we have company visiting, but Kiana really wants to go and check out the sealions, penguins and sharks. She loves the aquariam and the sea lion show, so thats where we are headed today. Chris is off and she really wants some family time before he goes back to work and the kids head back to school. Should be fun.

Hope you all have a great day and thanx for taking the time to read my blog- I love you guys!

Good morning

Alright - I am a terrible person! Malachi called from Winnipeg complaining that he was sick. I felt terrible for him and I wished I could be there to make him feel better. There is nothing a child needs more than his mom when he is sick. So I felt terrible for him and wished I could help. So I called home this morning to see how he was feeling. My mom said the only reason that he was feeling ill is because he is homesick!!! I was sooo happy about that. Its only been about 10 days since he's been gone, but I am soooo happy to know that he is missing me so terribly much. Now, how terrible is that?!

My sister send me some pictures of all the things the kids are doing and they look like they are having a great time. Kiana decided that she wanted to be the next "Canadian Idol" so she needed to practise. She and her cousins decided that they would be the next hot group to hit the charts. They had a wonderful time practising all the Praise and Worship music that they sing in church.

The kids all wanted to have a fun picture taken and this was the pose they decided to have taken of them. I miss them all so much - this makes me wish that I lived closer to our family so the kids could spend more time with their cousins. The funnest part is that we are surprising our kids and my nieces and nephew on Saturday when my kids come home. My parents and sister are bringing my nieces and nephew are coming here with my kids when they come home.

On a less pleasant note, Uncle Greg and Tante Karin, Shane and Amber lost everything they had at the lake over the weekend when an F3 tornado hit Gull Lake. Thank goodness everyone was across the lake at the Poker Derby or there would have been alot more casualties and fatalities. I have contacted them to find out about account information for those of you who have requested it for donations. Hopefully we will be able to help them soon. There are alot of people who have lost everything. It makes me grateful and I appreciate the family that I have. Things are just that, things - but family is all you have. Thanks to those of you who have passed on prayers and support for all of them. Things like this make you realize that everything we have is just fleeting - appreciate what you have while you have it.

We are often too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things. Proust