Noise Pollution

Abbotsford Airshow starts tomorrow and the planes have been arriving for the past couple of days. Today the Snowbirds were practicing and some of the vintage WWI and WWII aircraft were flying around. It was fun to watch them - in the 18 years we've been here I've never seen them fly to close to our house when they're practicing. This was a treat today!

One of the USAF Thunderbirds - don't ask me what type of aircraft - it's just a fighter jet to me!

Again, I don't know what type of planes - they're just cool!

The "old timers"

Although a little out of focus (I'm not a professional photographer!) - still very cool - the Snowbirds.

Making a sweeping turn altogether - precision!

Trying to figure out something here.

It was exciting to hear these guys flying around - tomorrow will be even louder.

Really enjoying my time away from work. I took an extra 2 days of my flex time so that I could be off a little longer than 3 weeks. It will be a good break for me and I'll be ready to go back to work on September 7th. I just needed a break from everything.

So life is great. Ralph and I went for a hike yesterday and a good sweat-inducing walk today! Man, my butt is killing me from yesterday's hike up Teapot Hill. 15 years ago it didn't bother me as much as it is nowadays! 6 days of relative peace and quiet starting tomorrow then Ralph is off for 2 weeks and we'll do a little traveling to Alberta, then Oregon. I'm really looking forward to that since last year I was dealing with the whole post-surgery and pre-radiation stuff AND I had a wicked head cold. Seems like so long ago! So glad that time has gone by and I'm so much better! THIS year we'll do Banff again and THIS time we will be able to do more as I am much healthier. There are more things we wanted to check out so hopefully I can get some more good pictures from our little travels!

A shot of my backyard flower bed to end for today.

"For Christians, the beginning of the day should not be burdened and haunted by various kinds of concerns that they face during the day. The Lord stands above the new day, for God has made it. All restlessness, all impurity, all worry and anxiety flee before him. Therefore, in the early morning hours of the day, may our many thoughts and our many idle words be silent and may the first word and the first thought belong to the one to whom our whole life belongs "
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I think I might be getting sick. I am just not functioning well today. It all started with a disagreement with Ralph yesterday about our vacation plans. It threw me into such a downward spin that I'm still suffering from it. Heaviness in my chest, overly tired for no reason (I'm getting plenty of sleep), and just unable to function normally. I went to work but shouldn't have. Just can't accomplish anything and can't focus on anything. So I gave up and came home, crawled onto my bed and slept for about 1/2 hour until Peter decided to let Tess into my room AGAIN. Why does he do that?! 

 

Each Day a Gift from God

Every day is a gift from God - I don't realize it or appreciate it enough. A few thoughts I read today from Max Lucado:

"I will rejoice and be glad in it" Oops, another word we'd like to edit: in. Perhaps we could swap it for after? We'll be glad after the day. Or through. We'll be glad to get through the day. Over would suffice. I'll rejoice when this day is over. But rejoice in it? God invites us to. As Paul rejoiced in prison; David wrote psalms in the wilderness; Jonah prayed in the fish belly; Paul and Silas sang in jail; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego remained resolute in the fiery furnace; John saw heaven in his exile; and Jesus prayed in his garden of pain ... Could we rejoice smack-dab in the midst of this day?" 
 
And then he goes on to describe how you can start with one day and it turns out okay despite the little "setbacks" and surprises, and you realize it wasn't that hard to enjoy the day after all! So you resolve to do the same the next day and the next until:

"In such a fashion good lives are built. One good day at a time." ... "Saturate your day in His grace". 


Not enough time being spent in God's word = unhappy me! 

I must resolve to do this EVERY DAY - get up early and read; just read the Bible. Start somewhere and just read, contemplate and meditate on it. 

On to other topics. 
 
Not a whole lot different in our lives. My health is good. Had my first mammogram 3 weeks ago or so, and it came back perfectly normal! Yay! Praise God! No more cancer! The oncologist did tell me that with all this treatment (radiation and tamoxifen) that I would have a 92-3% cure rate. Or rather, only a 7 1/2% chance that the cancer will return in one of my breasts. So, I'm happy! It's very nice to be in menopause even if it is "artificial". I was getting to that point before going on tamoxifen anyway, so in 5 years' time (less now, actually!) when I go off the drug I'm hoping that I'll just continue on in menopause! Yay!

What we women have to put up with! Some women have it easy peasy. Not me. I struggled with it since the age of 12. 

So - LIVE LIFE ONE DAY AT A TIME; BE HAPPY NO MATTER WHAT; GIVE GLORY TO GOD; LIVE THROUGH HIS GRACE, "My grace is sufficient for you." Somehow, we manage because God helps us.
 

Spinat Auflauf

For some reason I decided to spend waaay more time in the kitchen than I probably needed to. BUT I made spinach auflauf, something that evokes childhood memories!

First you cook up a white sauce:

Then you chop up fresh spinach, blanched of course:

Doesn't that just look yummy?! I love the color of fresh blanched spinach.

Combine with the white sauce.

I could have saved tons of time and all these dishes if I had just used frozen chopped spinach. Next time ...

Then you make the pancakes:

Flour, salt, eggs, milk and water whipped up to this:

You have to fry up the pancakes in a bit of oil, every single one - otherwise it's just not right.

And when it's all baked up it looks like this:

Mmmmmm ... yummy.

I also made a strawberry rhubarb dessert type of thing that turned out delicious.

That's enough for one day. Started a new book, "Left Behind in a Megachurch World". Interesting!

More Gardening & Tessie

Well, we just can't seem to get enough of working in the yard. Ralph and Stephen started working on the other portions of our brick wall in the backyard. Unfortunately I have no pictures of it - silly me! Will do that tomorrow. BUT it's starting to take shape, and in fact is nearly done - just needs to be filled in and then I can transplant my peonies and buy some ornamental grasses. I want to plant those alternately which I think will look pretty good. I will only have room for 3 peony plants and 2 grasses. Then Ralph will start working on the REST of the flower beds to the right of the existing cedar trees.

Thankfully the neighbour's maples are starting to leaf out and I think today's and the next few days' worth of warmer sunshiny weather will help them to pop out even more. I look forward to having a bit of a privacy blocker there again - lush and green all summer long and it also provides lots of shade in the mid- to late-afternoons. That helps quite a bit when it gets stinkin' hot around here.

There's just something really therapeutic about mucking around in the yard, digging in the compost, potting up plants, planting seeds, digging up stuff, gettin' your hands dirty - you know? I just LOVE it! If only I could have a proper vegetable garden! I'm still dreaming of building some raised beds so that I can grow proper pole beans, cucumbers, peas, potatoes and squashes. I splurged this year and bought a couple of currant bushes that are a cross between black currant and gooseberries! I know ... what am I thinking?! But THIS IS SO COOL! I just HAVE to try it!!!! I bought 2 and planted them on the side of the house and of course loaded up the flower beds with compost from our slowly-becoming-emptier compost bin behind the shed. Man, that bin is FULL! Or rather was full. Thankfully it's about 1/2 full now and the City has started picking up garden compost every 2nd week on garbage days so we don't have to put ALL of our grass into the compost bin.

Anyhoo - life is good. NO WORK = HAPPINESS!!! I could get used to this. I shall try not, repeat NOT to think about work until Monday morning when the alarm goes off!

Annnnnd ... reLAX!!!

On another note, Tessie is not doing so well - she has what the vet believes to be a partially torn ACL, great. That means surgery. OR, with any luck with a reduced activity schedule, no jumping up or down and some "Recovery" (glucosamine product) she will heal up but two weeks since the vet's visit she is actually worse than better despite less activity. Poor little puppy, she is not going for walks or anything. Right now she's sleeping in her little bed at my feet. I miss taking her for a walk. She'll get better eventually. That Recovery product sure is expensive.

I also bought some for myself (human formulation, of course) and am waiting for the Cancer Agency pharmacy to get back to me if I can even take this stuff while on tamoxifen. They probably won't call me back until early next week.

Oh well! I will wait. I need something for my joints - I feel bursitis settling in to my right hip now too. Ah, the joys of aging, but more on that another time. I close with a pic of me poking my head through the hole in the board while stopped at Falkland the other day.

Just got back from a 3-day visit with Greg & Carol in Sorrento. Had a great time. For some reason I ended up doing all the driving THERE and BACK as well as WHILE THERE! I don't mind driving actually - it helps me to stay calm by being somewhat in control.

We drove to Falkland among other places. Nice little place - very isolated though. Not sure I could live there with dial-up Internet!

Mom at the Cheese store in Armstrong - playing tourist!    

It feels so good to be away from work for a little while. I was sick once more in April - 3x in 12 weeks was more than I could handle and the last virus hit me so hard that I nearly despaired of ever being well again. Fortunately I DID get better again and life goes on.

A storm is brewing back at home.

Trees!

Finally we bought some cedar hedging and planted them in our "wall project" in the backyard. Time to block out the neighbours who love to criticize everything we do. I don't know why we didn't do this YEARS AGO!

The first of the trees are in! Stephen helped a lot - digging up the compost from the pile behind the shed, carrying the trees from the upper yard down to the lower portion and lifting them into place, which I could NEVER have done! We did this all on Easter Sunday! Of all days!

The last trees are going into place. Can't wait for them to grow together more and provide a real wall of living green privacy! 

It was a great workout for me! 

Ta-da!

LOVE IT! If only the weather would warm up now so that I can get out into the garden and weed those nasty dandelions outta there. Have to be patient - the warmer weather is coming eventually. 

Speaking of weather - here's a couple of shots of the hail we've had recently - typical April weather, remember the old adage, "April showers bring May flowers"?! 

But this was ridiculous!