30 Years Ago Today

This morning started with the coolest message left on my answering machine. While I was over at the workshop, stuffing Jingle Bell Crop flyers into all of the kits ( which would have been a really good idea YESTERDAY before all of the packages were sealed ) someone left me a message. When I got home this is something like what I heard:

"Hey Cindy! This is Gloria. Imagine my surprise when I was standing in line at the grocery store, and I start thumbing through a scrapbook magazine and there you are staring out at me.
Do you know that 30 years ago today, we met and became room mates at college and lived together for about a year and a half ? From the photo in the magazine, I think that you are aging really well and look amazing for being "so much older". You also owe me $12.00, you bitch. I had to buy the magazine to read the article to see what has been going on in your life.
Phone me. Gloria"

I laughed so hard! It just made my day!

The First Sign Of Fall

I can tell that it is September! My mail box is overflowing with emails from ladies that are trying to organize their fall retreats at the Inn - exactly 134 emails today to be exact! It seems like the minute that the children walk out the door to go to school, everyone starts thinking about scrapbooking and getting away for some "one on one time" with their summer photos! I can tell that it is fall, those emails just keep coming!
I have to admit that this summer was a photography dry spell for me! I can't even find a photo that would sum up this summer's activities... because the exciting events of haying and working on the workshop just were too boring to photograph!
The one highlight of the past few weeks was having some of our Monday Night Class designers join me at the workshop for a planning session/BBQ and I don't think that anyone took any pictures! Shame on us! What a difference it makes to have everyone under one roof - to bounce ideas around, make a few decisions, plan for upcoming months and hand out materials. We really are a close knit team, it was great to spend time together and laugh at each other! Mike cooked us a mean steak, we had lots of "beverages" and we actually got some work done! The best part was that the electricians finished the wiring just the night before everyone arrived and so we had power, ceiling fans and lights in the building. We got to test out the new lighting system and see if you could really see true colors at 2:00am in the morning. Guess what? It was so bright that I am surprised that there were not planes circling the building, thinking that it was a landing strip! The bad part about that was that every moth in Southern Alberta was attracted to the bright windows and it looked like something out of a horror movie!
This month, we are going to be able to use the workshop for the whole shipping event. I am so looking forward to all that space! Now the next big hurdle will be getting the heating all hooked up before the weather turns cold. Then we can start moving all of the supplies from the "house" part to the workshop part.
Next weekend, Mike and I are heading out to Creston to enjoy a few days of vacation. Hit some fruit stands, do some shopping and just relax. Then I'll get to take some photos!!!! I am so excited!!!!

10 Random Things I Love About Summer

I Love...

- my veranda - it looks so funny to see this photo, taken in June, with the vines and plants barely covering the ground. It is a RIOT of color all summer long, you can hardly see the house by August as the vines have totally taken over. The perfect place for cats to nap, me to read and as of the other night's incident, bats to hide out in the hanging basket. Yikes!! What a shock, when the cat lept from the plant stand into the hanging plant and grabbed a full grown bat in its mouth, came crashing down and ran away with the squealing bat. I am going to check out the plant much more closely from now on when I go to water it!!!

- to see the girls riding down the road in the evening. At least twice a week, Megan and Marcie come out to the farm after supper to go for an evening ride. I love to hear the sound of the horses shoes on the hard packed road, and see their swishing tails as they try to keep away the mosquitoes.

- to hear the whine of the silage machines working in the fields to the east of us. From our vantage point on the hill, we can see about 30 miles or more to the east. Beautiful fields of grain and the high pitched whine of the choppers make me so happy to live in the countryside!

- the smell of the gardens. At night, the air is thick with the fragrance of blossoms that have baked in the sun during the day and are now cooling off and taking a break from the heat. Everything has grown so well this summer with all the rain. The weeds are giving me a real run for my money, though. Thank God for Wendy, my gardener, who comes out about once a week to help me from disappearing into a jungle!

- to go for an evening walk. With the ridiculous haying season this year, we are still baling and cutting in the evenings, as long as the dew permits. After Mike goes back to the field and I clean up the supper dishes (oh, what the hell, I might as well admit that we have been eating off of paper plates since the family reunion ) I walk down to the hay field to ride around for the last few rows. The smell of ripening hay is one of my favorite smells, even though it makes me sneeze. I have been trying to get in an extra 500 steps every day and so even just that walk helps out the total for the week.

- baby beet greens and Swiss chard - Mike and I could eat them every night for supper. However, I hate washing them, so we plant the rows, weed the rows and then plow the majority of them under in the fall, after they are all tough and stringy. But, the few meals that we do enjoy - we really ENJOY!!!

- the sunflowers in my yard are one of the highlights of the summer for me. How can you be in a funk if there are sunflowers around!! I planted all different colors and varieties, in the back of every flower bed in the yard. Then I painted the front and side door of my house yellow. It caused quite a stir in the neighborhood, as no one "got" the yellow doors. "It will all make sense when the sunflowers are blooming" I told them. Trouble was, I forgot to tell Wendy (my gardener) that I had planted them and she weeded them all out when they came up. The only ones that are left are the four rows of sunflowers in the garden that I planted in rows to cut for vases in the summer. Next year, everyone will understand about the yellow doors, as Wendy and I will be on the same page!!!

- Payne Lake tops my list of summer favorites. We are going there on Monday for a few days of camping - just Mike and me and my scrapbooking supplies. Loons on the lake, calling to each other in the dusk is the most hauntingly eerie sound. I just love it!!! I am counting the minutes until Monday morning. If that damn hay is not baled - I really don't care, I am going to the lake. With or without my husband, that trailer is leaving!

- flip flops and sandals - every color of the rainbow. I have so many that I have to store them in suitcases after the summer season. If I had a buck for every time that Mike stares at my feet and says that he could not have something stuck between his toes, I'd be rich!

- my cool basement office. This year, I have not hid out there as often as I usually do. My 13 x 19 printer and computer are down there and when it gets too hot outside to weed or water, I retreat to the cool of the basement and print photos, play with Photo shop, or do some journaling for my pages. The tile floor in my office keeps it at the perfect temperature and I can waste a whole day down there (while my family is slaving away on some scorching hot roof). I don't feel guilty in the least...I am technically working, aren't I?

I LOVE My Workshop

So this was the first shipping session that we have been able to complete all of the orders in our new space. I started on Wednesday, because Dana had to work at another job, and we finished all of the orders before 2:00pm on Thursday. That has to be a new MNC record!!!! The reason that we were able to kick butt was the amazing space that we now have in the workshop! It was so easy to alphabetize and sort, when you have unlimited counter space. (I love my Dad!) It was also easy to walk down the isles and check the delivery instructions. It was just sweet! The only drawn back was that the lighting and the plug ins are not hooked up and I did not realize just how early it is getting dark these days. We also had to run some electrical cords for the calculator and the visa machine, but it was only a minor problem. I can tell that we are going to be able to do our work in half of the time and with so much more accuracy than before. I just love our new digs!

Free Loaders

These are photos of my two, free loaders that actually have been enjoying the summer on the farm! When I come back (in another life) I want to come back as one of the cats in my family...imagine getting to lay on a plant stand, on a shaded veranda all summer long, the smells of mint, oregano and thyme perfuming the air, hummingbirds flitting overhead to the feeder and nothing at all to do but sleep and laze around. Someone feeds you breakfast, a little morning nap, watch a few hummingbirds for entertainment (don't bother to even try and chase them, as you know that lunch will be served later on), an afternoon nap, groom yourself a little, stretch to get the kinks out and then have a late afternoon nap. What a life!

Sylvester and Marmalade came to live with us because they knew that life was easy around here. Sylvester was actually Marcie's, but she could not take him to college, he was not a street wise city cat, so he came to live with us last September when Marcie enrolled in accounting at LCC. Marmalade was a little kitten that Megan and Katrina found on a roadside when they were reading meters for Alta Gas. They took pity on him, as he was pretty small and saved him by bringing him home.

I don't know why people feel the need to bring all stray animals to our farm, but they keep coming! Res (my dog) was brought home by Daniel, after he was found wandering in a field on the Brocket Indian reservation (get it? Res is short for reservation!). Daniel just never came back and got him and he became very attached to me. We finally paid to get him neutered, then paid about $400.00 to get all of the porcupine quills removed from his mouth and throat when he attacked a porcupine. (Stupid ____ dog!) One day I had enough, and tied into Daniel when he showed up, demanding that at least he could buy some dog food if he expected us to look after his dog. The next day Daniel showed up with a GIANT bag of dog food and dumped it on the porch floor with a scowl. "Is that good enough?" he growled. Imagine my surprise when at the end of the month, I got our bill from the Co-op and he had charged the dog food to us!!! Seriously! From that point on, I considered Res to be "our" dog, knowing full well that Daniel was never going to accept responsibility for him.

Our last free loader is Rex, our old farm dog - really, really old farm dog. As a pup, she had a bad habit of chasing and killing cats. We tried everything to break her from her killing cats. Nothing worked. Until someone told us that maybe she could be trained in the same manner that farm dogs were trained when they were chicken killers. "Tie the dead cat to her collar" my Uncle Vic instructed me. Let the cat stay there until she can't stand the smell. (At this point I was desperate and so I thought it was worth a try - as disgusting as that sounds). So, the next time that Rex killed two of our black kittens (not little ones, but lanky adolescent cats) Daniel and I got some rope and tied the two cats to her collar. We only made one miscalculation. We left the rope a little too long and there was some "lead" in the rope. When Rex moved around, the cats would sort of "flop". We did it in the evening, thinking that by the next evening, we could release the cats and bury them. What we didn't plan on was the Swanns ice cream man to make his monthly appearance.

So imagine this scene... Rex really likes the Swanns man, because he always gave her treats. She is jumping around his van, anxiously awaiting her reward and the two, black, stone cold, dead cats are flipping and flopping around with every jump that Rex makes. Just enough slack in the rope to make them flop really good with every jump. I realize what is happening, rush to the door to try and call the dog off...the Swanns man takes one look at Rex, with two dead cats flopping all over, puts his van in reverse, speeds out of the driveway and NEVER COMES BACK!!! I am sure that he thought that were the hill billiest, red necked, cat haters that he had ever met. Luckily for me, no police or SPCA agents ever came to haul us off for cat abuse.

The end of the story, Rex is now 18 human years old and those two, black kittens were the last cats that she ever killed and we never got ice cream delivered to our door again! We are probably written up in some "incident" report and black listed from home deliveries for eternity!

Happy 50th, Mike!

I guess that a good thing to do before you take a significant birthday photo is to ask the subject to remove the toothpick from their mouth!!! What was I thinking? While at the family reunion, Mike turned 50 years old - we did not plan it that way, but what a perfect time to celebrate with his family! Every sibling was there, and Mike was spoiled rotten with gifts. This is the rag quilt that his sister, Joy, made for him. Megan and Murray gave him chrome rims for his Rhino - can you believe that he has a pimped out ATV with fancy rims and a stereo??

I got to thinking about the fact that out of Mike's 50 years, I have been around for 31 of them. Actually more, when you figure that we went to the same school, until he moved to Tofino for the last two years of high school. But officially, either as a girl friend or as a wife, we have celebrated 31 birthdays together. (God, am I ever old!!! )

There has been a lot of milestones during that time...

- Mike bought his roofing company and then later the eavestrough company

- he lost both of his parents, when they were both still very "young" and I have both of mine

- we bought a farm (again, what were we thinking?)

- we sold the roofing company, six years later we started back up again as the person who bought it from us moved away and shut down the company.

- Mike lost two sisters and one brother

- I sold my flower shop after 17 years and became a SAHM for five

- we homeschooled all three of our children from kindergarten through high school (21 years)

- we sold our roofing company to our middle son when he turned 20

- we became empty nesters right after that, as Andrew finally moved out, and to my relief took with him all of the trucks, trailers, dump trucks, ladders and all of the shit that has been blocking my driveway and yard for 20 years. I no longer have to reserve parking to be able to get my groceries into the house!!

- I opened a scrapbook store at the Bloomin Inn and became a stay away wife for three to four days per week for the last NINE years!

- we paid off our home quarter

- Mike had a bad accident that totally changed our lives.

- we sold all of our livestock, except for the horses ( hard on Mike)

- Mike has had two amputations, due to the work accident and is scheduled for one more this fall, but maintains his optomistic attitude and his work ethic. I love that man, even though I make fun of him all of the time.

- I bought a house and had it moved to the farm, to house the headquarters of Monday Night Class and we then put an addition on it, making it the most beautiful scrapbooking space that anyone could imagine. Even though Mike had his doubts about setting up a completely different house, road and yard, ($$$$$$), he loves me enough to support me (even though he thinks that I smoke crack on a regular basis!)

It is hard to believe all that has happened to us and that we survived it all. Happy 50 years, Mike!

The Family Reunion

It has been a very long time between posts - it has just been more that a little crazy around here for the last two weeks. We started our "summer vacation" officially, with the arrival of Pat and Lorrie and their seven dogs. (only my sister in law would go camping with seven dogs!) They arrived on the Tuesday before the long weekend. We decided to camp at Cottonwood for a few days, before moving to the location where the family reunion/possible battlefield would be taking place. Those few days were quite peaceful. Then on Thursday, we moved to Hiawatha Campground (sounds like a good place for a battle, eh?) which is in the mountains, west of Burmis, Alberta. We had booked all eleven sites at the front of the campground, so that we were all together and could play games and visit.

I sometimes wonder what we spend so much time in planning everything, as it was quite obvious that no one can stick to a plan. Even though the sites were not supposed to be used until Friday, people started arriving early on the Thursday and we were almost half way full, a day ahead of reservations. The poor man running the campground was gracious and didn't seem to mind, even though we started moving fire pits and tables to suit ourselves. Then it rained and rained and rained.

Luckily for us, the worst thundershowers and rain happened late at night and not during the day, when we needed to be out and about and not trapped in RV's. The most "sparks" happened during the day, as people (who obviously second guessed the person put in charge of planning) changed those plans constantly, with regards to events and food. The day that we really needed it to be nice, mother nature did not disappoint us and we were able to meet at the grave site for the interment of Mike's sister, Mary's, ashes. Then it rained and rained

While at the service, I was able to snap a photo of Mike and his six remaining siblings. As you can see, Vivian was our one casualty at the reunion. She took a header out of a 5th wheel trailer and broke both bones in her wrist, and severely compacted all the bones in her hand. A night in the hospital, setting of the wrist early in the AM and without any pain meds, she made it the rest of the weekend (although she self medicated, liberally, with alcohol) and on to the interment. All done without any pain medication. She wouldn't even fill the prescription that the doctor gave her until she got back home to Red Deer. Man, she is one tough cookie! Then it rained and rained and rained.

We got home after the long weekend, just in time to start the push to get ready for the big 4 couple, 170 guest, 50th anniversary party for my parents and three of my Dad's first cousins (who were also married in the same year) Rather than hold four anniversary parties, we combined them for one giant party at my parent's farm. What an extreme amount of work!! These are the signs that led the guests down the road:

The signs said:

Did you remember...

Your supper meds...

your teeth...

your spouse?

There were also signs that directed the "old cronnies" were to park and then signs for the "really old cronnies" and then a sign for the "fat,lazy asses" to park, where they would have to walk quite a bit further. It was hilarious, as was the game of "Goldy Weds" that we had the four couples play, to see which couple had been listening to each other during the 50 years that they had spent together, and which couples had turned their ears off years ago. I had to watch every episode of the Newlywed game for months to come up with enough questions that would stump the four couples. It was a riot!!! Some feuds almost broke out between couples who thought that their spouse should know the answer to a particular question. It was pretty funny when my mom told the crowd that the first New Years Eve that my parents spent together as a couple was one year after I was born!!!! It was a calculating error that caused the answer, not a revelation to the family that I was illegitimate!! The best answer happened when my Dad had to run to the bathroom. His best man jumped up and declared that he would fill in for Dad because he "knew everything" about my Dad. The question was "How many natural teeth does your spouse have?" to which Eldon replied "1 -1/2 teeth" - my Mom could have killed him!!

This is a photo that I took of my Mom and Dad, in their yard on the farm - just as much in love as they were when they were wed 50 years ago. My Mom has never had a driver's license, my Dad patiently waits for her wherever they go. They are joined at the hip and always have been. I have never witnessed a fight between the two in all of the years that I have been alive. They bicker about how things should be done, but they NEVER fight. Both of them know the meaning of compromise and they are truly "soul mates".

They answered almost all of their Goldy Wed questions perfectly, but were beat out by Auntie Karen and Uncle Allan, due to the illegal question about the false teeth - way to go, Mom and Dad!!!!

So this was how my last two weeks of summer vacation played out -

- seven days of camping with my husband's family

- seven days of camping with 12 dogs

- cooking for between 25-45 people for all meals ( did I mention 7 days????)

- hosting Mike's 50th birthday supper

- guests from the reunion that did not go home and stayed for another week (at our house)

- clean up house for arrival of anniversary relatives

- set up for 50th anniversary party - two days

- prepare food for 50th party - 170 guests - cook everything but the beef, which was catered

- have house guests during the party

- be the MC of the party, don't eat anything because of nerves, have a few too many drinks. You guessed the rest!

- clean up after party, return borrowed chairs, tables, cooking stuff - one day ( while suffering from a hang over)

collapse.

End of summer vacation - THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!