Man! that was a blizzard

Its over now but for posterity's sake I will record that the past 24 hours was snow hell. The flag on the green behind our house was bent over horizontal from the wind. The groundskeepers are out there right now changing the hole location and placing in a temporary flag. It is so soggy!

Last night's charitable event held at a huge sports bar to raise money for a fellow worker with kidney cancer was a roaring success. Ashley kindly donated two large porcelain bowls. They were quite popular and sold for way more than she could have fetched for them at one of her sales.

I guess we were swept up in the moment.

There were some interesting prizes other than the usual ones like golf course prizes, weekends at someones' cottage, or paintings, golf clubs, jewelry, art mani-pedicures, and spa packages. This is what I thought was weird... shadow boxes of giant tarantulas and cockroaches and stuffed or dehydrated bats.

I was grossed out. I thought that we were not supposed to donate crap that we cleaned out of the attic. But, this was taken out of one freaky attic. More surprising were the people who wanted those grisly things....people that at first glance you wouldn't think were in a coven or a weird cult. They played hard for them too; writing their names down on the silent auction sheets and then lurking close by as someone else sidled up looking over their shoulders and put their names down taking the bids higher and higher.

The person who got them on the last bid was thrilled, outing herself and jumping up and down.

It was so warm down in Fish Creek Park today. Very quiet except for the songs on the birds and the water rushing through the openings in the beaver dam. I could have fallen asleep. A lovely day to walk with our old girl. She can go just so far and then she wants to come home thank you very much.

Blog on Baby

My baby is blogging. My older daughter Ashley the mad potter is a blogger you can find her on the side bar and now my younger daughter is writing Letters to Nora. You gotta check it out.
http://dearmissephron.blogspot.com/
She will also be on the side bar.

An afternoon with the Girls...oops and Jason too

Upon my Word!

I went to the Hillhurst Sunnyside community centre on Saturday where Ashley and co were holding their pottery show and sale.
I probably haven't mentioned lately how much I like her new glazes, but yes indeed, I do. I really like the tree motif and I would love to have a whole dinner set of that pattern.
Instead, I bought a clock. I just love her little clocks. So inventive in design and so practical, I guess that appeals to the Scot in me.
The clocks are battery operated and have a kind of Alice in Wonderland kind of feel Maybe it is the big feet.
Check out the pictures of some of her work at the cracked potter link on the side of this page.

Buying the clock salved my disappointment in not going to NYC. I had been looking forward to going to Manhattan and walking and walking and walking the island. But alas, that is not to be this year. Circumstances are such that the timing wasn't right for my travelling companion.

However, on a brighter side I discovered some very lovely people creating a walking meditation labyrinth in the park that I often walk in with Ginger. I can't believe the amount of work that went into finding distinctive rocks and placing each one just so according to a map and keeping the lines equidistant. They used a map and were very precise in the placement of the layrinth. I think one of them was an engineer. I offered them a rock as a donation. I am not sure they used it however.
I went down on Sunday and walked it and it took me about 1/2 an hour and I was not as conscious of the experience as I could have been had I not been there with my old dog. She is generally very ameniable to any kind of ourdoor walking activity but she is very, very deaf and sometimes she just takes it into her head to go off in another direction and no amount of hollering and whistling will get her back. So I did my meditation walk with one eye open for her and another to the path.

She is so wee

Shelley called and I went over this afternoon to maul the kid and drink tea. Actually little Gwenyth got the better of me and slept peacefully, not even twitching a whisker for about half an hour while I held her this way and that way and turned her over and flipped her back again. She didn't even gurgle.
And then she pooped and pooped and again and again. Then she ate and pooped again. For a two day old baby, she has amazing clear soft skin and the tiniest little nose. Dark newborn blue eyes.
She has the proudest mum who is completely overcome with babylove.
Lucky kid.
I took my camera over and took a few pictures, when I got home to retrieve them I noticed that I didn't have an SD card in. What a dope.
So, I will have to go back again. Ahh poor me.

Gwenyth Abigail Lamer

Gwenyth Abigail Lamer born April 13th 2010. Brand new.

I haven't seem her yet, can't wait to do so. I am sure she is even cuter in person. In her first pictures she looks like Shelley did when she was brand new.

Heather is so proud, and rightly so, Gwenyth is as cute as a button.

the brothers

A walk along the Grey Canal

The Winery Tour
We drove all day on Thursday after leaving Calgary with a wet cell phone. Yes, a wet phone. Apparently leaving your BB in your dressing gown pocket and putting it in amongst other things of similar colour like wet towels in a pile in the laundry room for your wife to launder exempts a certain marital unit from responsibility when the cell phone gets washed. I suffered the slings and arrows for about 6 hours on the highway. I am still confused about whose fault it was….how could it be mine? I was just doing a last minute chore.
Anyway, lesson learned. Oh, I don’t mean a lesson about searching pockets or any thing like that. I mean that I learned a lesson about doing other people’s laundry. So, now I don’t.

However we have a cure for a wet BlackBerry. Take heed. After you have dropped your phone and as quickly as you can gather your wits, take the battery out and shake out as much water as you can. Then place the cell phone with the back off along with the battery into a bag of rice. The rice acts as a decicater and after 48 hours you can remove the phone and put it together and hopefully it will work. For the first two or three minutes it read a date back in 1979 and then all of a sudden it came back to life. Better than new because it was cleaner.

This morning we drove to a little cottage winery in Westbank, the first on our winery tour. We learned that although the winery might be small the vines were old and produced a very nice wine.
We went to Mission Hill, what a view!!! and then to Quail's Gate. Seems to be a wealthy, pretentious and profitable business....who knew?
Saturday
The day is glorious, the temperature is perfect and the trees are budding and even tiny leaves are showing. We went for a walk along the Grey Canal on the north side of Vernon.
I don't know what this tree is but the clusters of tiny brow flowers had attracted hundreds of bees. The buzzing was audible for several yards around the tree.

Ihad forgotten the camera on the day that we went to the winery but just as well, the wind was blustery and a the temperature plummeted. However, the next day we went to Kal lake park and walked the hill and the warm sun woke up the birds and the trees began to bud before our eyes.
Sherry is cooking a turkey and the incredible aroma is wafting through the living room. Guess I better go help or I might have to do the dishes

Teaching Sherry to Blog

Sitting on the couch with Sherry setting her up with a blog spot account so that when she and Bob leave on their great transcanada trek in the big blue truck they will be able to keep us informed along the way. Uploading photos and telling us of their adventures.