Almost Grad time!

I know you can't see it clearly, but on the back of Paddy's dog tag it says:
I'm proud
of you
Love, Mom
Grad
2007
and the front says:
P
A
T
R
I
C
K
in a special font. And it lines up better than what I have done! All nicely in an angle across the front.

As for the cameras - spoke to Chris last Thursday before he headed off to Kelowna for the long weekend with his buds. Damned child! He bought himself a camera for the trip!! Well, there goes his grad gift!! I told him what I had bought for him and his brother, turns out if you buy a Sony camera, you have to buy Sony memory cards. Sheesh. He told me I could take his back, and I could consider it a gift for Mother's Day (which, by the way, my kids DIDN'T forget about!)

So last Saturday, back to Future Shop I went. Returned Chris's camera, and exchanged Patricks for a Canon. It was a bit more money, but turned out to be exactly what I had paid for Chris's watch 3 yrs ago. Altho, I had also bought Patrick the dog tag - he needed something engraved to mark the occasion!! LOL
So today I have taken off from work, getting ready for the big trip. Going to head up to Calgary tonight when Dave gets off work, and stay at D&D's place. Did you hear that Calgary (and north) is getting LOTS of snow today?????!!!! Then Friday, we only have the last hour and a half to travel to get to RD. Which should give us time to see Paddy before his ceremony! Chris has to work until 5, so once we've done the daytime grad stuff, guess we'll go settle into a hotel. Somewhere. Cheap. Which is something else I have to do today - BOOK A CHEAP ROOM!!

Chris did offer us to stay at his place, there is another single bed there, and he said that I could sleep on the floor, since I don't mind doing that! LOL I thanked him nicely, and politely declined. Okay, so I laughed out loud, and told him thanks, but no thanks!!

Then the dinner. If it is anything like it was 3 years ago, it will be soooooo much fun. NOT!! Their father sat on one side of the round table with his other family, and me and the kids and Dave sat on the other side. Not much conversation between sides. ~shudder~ Oh well, this will be the last time we will be forced to sit together, so I'll grit my teeth and suck it up.

After that, Patrick will be hanging with his buds, I'm sure. So we can beat a hasty retreat, maybe do something with Chris, or not. After all, it will be a Friday nite, so I'm sure he'll have plans with his buds too.

Hopefully we'll be able to hook up with the boys on Saturday morning, hang out for awhile, then back to Calgary for supper to have 'real' visit with D&D. That way they won't feel that we just used them for the bed only on Thursday nite!
LOL

And I may have to bring Gracie with us too, but only as far as Calgary. Deb is willing to look after her until we get back. But that's another story, for another time.

Until later....

gazebos

http://terraefinis.org/gw16/index.html

This is one of many pics of medieval "tents" from this Gulf Wars website that my friend Shari shared with me. Not so crazy about the "picture" on the side of it, but..... I found the one below, new, at a store, which looks pretty much the same thing to me - I know, it's hard to tell, but it DOES have the striped arms also, so I'm thinking the one above was like the one below. Make sense?




The one directly above this writing is the latest one I bought. The first ones I bought, 9x9, has a TON of poles, haven't had a chance to set them up yet, but I'm thinking its gonna be ALOT of work!! But the 10x10 Pop-up Gazebo that I bought yesterday is soooooo simple to take down - which we had to do at the store, 'cause it was the only one left!!! So I'm thinking it will be even easier to put up!!

My plan is to decorate these gazebos up - first I will have to take them out of the box and set up at least one - to see how possible it will be to add "walls", maybe scalloped edges around the top edges. Summertime project, out in the back yard! I can just see them on my front yard, hiding "modern" tents my sons or other guests could use. And I'm thinking that they would be great to take camping too!! Either for a kitchen area, or to put my own tent under!! When I bought the first ones in the middle of April, I meant to get two green ones. As I'm putting them in my car, I see that I have one green striped one, and one blue striped one. Crap!! Thought about taking the one back in, but it was cold and blustery. And the darn things aren't that lightweight either! So I made a snap decision to keep them both, just decorate them individually, instead of the same.

http://terraefinis.org/gw16/gw16-Pages/Image213.html

A Catch-up of sorts!!

My oh my...
Well, I survived (barely) another tax season. I really, seriously, don't have any idea how on earth I am going to survive another 16 or so, until I retire!! Seriously!!!

So some catch up is in order....

* Let's see, I missed my aunt & uncle's 60th wedding anniversay (on the Island) on the Easter weekend. Just the wrong time of year for me to take off!! :-( Turns out, Colin ended up having acute pancreatitis hit him, hard, on the Thursday before Good Friday. I took him to the ER, we had no idea at the time what was causing him to double up with the pain. So that's where I spent a good amount of time that weekend. But by Tuesday, he was home, took the rest of the week off from work, and has been fine ever since!! Not a nice thing to suffer thru!!! They really don't know the "why" of why it happened, but the doctor said it wasn't my cooking!! Whew!!

But one thing about it, he certainly got his complete physical (more or less). And yes, his past drinking probably played a part in it, but the good news is that his tox screen came back CLEAN!!! Our mom had her first attack last year (hers was to do with her gall bladder), I sure as hell hope it ISN'T hereditary!!

* Also missed Dave's aunt & uncle's 50th wedding anniversay, in Manitoba. Tax Time again, there is NO way I can take any time off at that time of year! Go figure, eh? But... we have been promising for YEARS to go out & visit them, this will be the summer that it is finally going to happen!! Dave may even get his wish and we'll take the motorhome!! I know, I know!! Me? not camping???? Sheesh, I must be getting old!!

* Been working on collecting "things" for the Medieval Feast next August. I've found some cool funky things for it. I'll post pics another time. But I'm learning how to make chemise's and tunics. Actually, I copied the outline of a simple chemise that I had bought from a new friend of mine, who is in the SCA in the States. She and I hit it off, but that's another story!! I even managed to sew the sleeves to the chemise in WRONG side in (or is that "out"?) Boy, was that a DUH moment on my part!! My Home Ec. teacher would have been sooooo ashamed of me!! But gee, guess that's what happens when you only take a semester & a half of Home Ec! Then it was off to INDUSTRIAL ARTS!! Now THAT was fun!!!

* The wildlife is baaaaaaaack!! I have pictures of snakes, and flowers, and birds. Gracie kind of lost out as I was attempting to survive our tax season. But we're getting back on track with our walks once again! Another thing to be posted... later!!

* Oh, and get this!! Most years I do the MS Super Cities Walk. Didn't last year, and tons of people were asking me where my pledge sheets were. So this year, I put out my pledge sheet at my desk at work, and by time the walk happened on April 28th, I had managed to raise $1,950. I went in to the office on the Tuesday after the walk (May 1st), found out how close I was to the $2,000 mark, phoned Dave at work, and the darling man donated that last $50 so that I can honestly say: "I RAISED $2,000 TO HELP CURE MS!!!" How about them apples!! LOL

* It's Patrick's Grad coming up on the 25th. I was racking my brain trying really hard to come up with something to give him as a Grad present!! I had given Chris a really nice dress watch, engraved, 3 years ago when it was his grad. Patrick informed me at the time "Ewww, I don't want one of those when I graduate". Turns out when I spoke to Chris this week - he's not even sure where the watch is!! ~big sigh~ Well, there went $300, down the drain! They use their cell phones to tell what time it is!!

As I was speaking to Chris, he "hinted" that he would like a digital camera for his grad, cause he had broke his last one. To tell you the truth, I really hadn't thought about his grad. But yep, he is done his 3 years of college, and even tho he won't be attending his "convocation" ceremonies, he is technically a graduate. Jeez, what kind of mom am I??????

Okay, I had already been playing with the idea of getting Paddy a camera. Had been keeping flyer ads on the table, doing research. Not exactly something they can keep for a lifetime, but it will be used. Went shopping finally on Saturday morning, after Gracie & I did our river walk. I started with finding a jewelry store in town that had advertised "steel" jewelry. I figured Patrick couldn't wreck STEEL!! I ended up getting him a dog tag, then took it over to the engraver's to be made pretty. Okay, one part is done.

It's camera time.... checked out one store. Okay, not there, even tho that is where Dave got me my Kodak Easy Share. Over to Future Shop - I can say that here, because I've had really good service with these guys!! (the tv I had bought for Dave on xmas eve died on us, and we had no problem having the store replace it!!) And they had a ton of cameras to choose from. Altho, I can honestly say it was a good thing I had some experience with digital cameras, otherwise the guy would have sold me more stuff!! LOL

I ended up buying these two Sony cameras - one in black, and one in silver. Sony 7.2MP Digital Camera (DSCW55). They both have internal memory, Paddy will just have to get his own memory card. Or I may give him my old one that you can put about 80 pics on (128 MB) 'cause I had bought a 2 GB one for $42 - holds like 1265 photos - for grad & vacation time. Chris has his own memory card, from when he had a camera. Which he dropped when the zoom lens was out, and it broke, hence the "request" for a digital camera. LOL What's nice about this gift - IF they also get one from their father, this IS Future Shop, there is LOTS of other goodies that can get in place of.

Okay, think that is it for now!! Whew!