Another year older

and yet no wiser. Yes, my birthday has come around once again. It's not a year that ends with a 0 or a 5, so it's not 'a big one'.

My parents came up for a birthday dinner for me, along with my in-laws, a rare and special treat. They, and the kids, and especially C, spoiled me hugely!

My parents gave me fat quarters of fabric in orange and purple (neglected colours in my stash), cool metallic machine threads and special needles to use with them. Big J gave me a gorgeous fat glass apothecary jar and a Michaels gift card (he does know me well!), the little bits (with some help from papa) gave me a rainbow of summer shirts (much needed) and C gave me a gorgeous 8 gig ipod nano, in the most awesome cobalt-purple colour! I have been coveting one for ages!

On top of that, there was lemon cheesecake. Bliss I tell you, bliss!

Tooolips...

I love living in Ottawa :) Tulip Festival hasn't officially started yet, but everything is in full bloom.

Near the War Memorial

Lilacs 2010

I love lilacs. My parents bought me a pair of little lilacs for my birthday last year, a purple and a white. They're small, but they're thriving, and rewarding me with a handful of small fragrant blooms this year...

After the rain...

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. ~Dolly Parton

Don't like the weather?

Then just wait a minute...

Yup, it snowed last week. This week - it's 29C at 6:45pm. I think Mother Nature has Alzheimer's, she's forgotten what a day in early May should be like...

Go fly a kite

A perfect day for it, windy and balmy and overcast. We went to the big field beside the community centre (too many trees in our yard) and the bits had a blast. Yes, I had to untangle their strings more than once, but that's OK. I did manage to get quite sunburned though, through the clouds. I'll never learn...

Blooming

Our fruit trees are mostly in bloom (the pear isn't quite there yet, but is only a couple of days away from full flower). The smell in that part of the yard is intoxicating, particularly from the plum tree, those blossoms are amazingly fragrant.

Faux Karsh

Inspired by Karsh's iconic pictures of the tulips on Parliament Hill with Parliament looming in the background here are a couple of the tulips in my front yard with a castle of a different sort :)

PQS3

I joined my first quilting swap last year, the placemat quilt swap. It seemed so low pressure and friendly... and I had a blast :) Fast forward - it's now Placemat Quilt Swap 3. And while I haven't *quite* finished the one I'm sending out yet, I received this beauty from Laura in New Brunswick (along with matching pcnic bag and sandwich container full of ymmies!). I am a seriously happy camper :)

Mother Nature is a crazy &*(%&*

April friggin' 27th people! Mother Nature is a crazy bat!

Soccer!

A new season of soccer starts. J-man is loving it. Katie is having way too much fun playing with her little friends to be very involved in the game. And that's ok, this is a fun league, they're getting exercise and enjoying our community :)

A week in the life - day 7

Playing board games together

A week in the life - day 7

I've taken all of the pictures, now I have to work on making them into a story for my scrapbook. C asked me why anyone would want to see pictures of our ordinary life and I told him - I have no idea what my grandparents' day-to-day life was like outside of what I imagine based on Leave it to Beaver re-runs. This is a gift to the future, a glimpse of our very ordinary, but very blessed lives...

A week in the life - day 6

Welcome home!

A week in the life - day 6

Bowling queen

She won a trophy (a big one), best team in their age group. She was some pleased! :)

A week in the life - day 5

Garbage day in our neighbourhood

A week in the life - day 5

A week in the life - day 4

Dinner! C cubed and marinated a beef roast, then grilled it up. Heaven! I ate an obscene amount...

A week in the life - day 4

A week in the life - day 3

Homework - a week in the life, day 3

A week in the life - day 2

Blowing bubbles in the yard on a windy day...

A week in the life - day 1

I'm trying to follow Ali Edwards' 'week in the life' project. I'll share a picture (or two) from what I hope will be hundreds here every day.

Chip truck fries for lunch.

A week in the life - day 1.

Winner!

Gorgeous and much coveted pile of fabric goodness sent to me by the amazingly generous Heather as a blog prize.

Made my MONTH!

2 years

Dear Jodi;

It's been two years. I still think about you every day, though I no longer pick up the phone to call you or write you emails before realizing you can't receive them. I guess I've accepted that you're gone, though I'm still just as heartsick about it as ever.

Miss you

March Break tea party

The bits are off school this week for March Break. I could only afford to take two days off to be with them, but I am well and truly enjoying our time together. Most of the time I really wish I could do that stay at home mom thing. Alas.

Today we had a quiet day, enjoying open windows and sunshine, baking cookies for a little tea party and just spending time together with no pressures...

9-patch quilt top

I dunno - it's supposed to be a generous twin-size quilt - this is it on my queen size bed... and there is still 4 inches of white border to go. I'm not sure if I'll be adding the white border, it might be too big if I do. I think as-is it'll almost touch the floor on a twin...

Baby quilt top

I started this with really very little idea who it would eventually go to. At the time I'd just found out that a friend was expecting his first child, but even now don't know if that baby will be a boy or a girl. I think I was just itching to make a pretty pink frou frou baby quilt :)

Here is the quilt top done. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 here, I didn't notice when assembling the squares that the solid pink has a fairly obvious difference in warp and weft, and when the light hits it right you can see which squares are facing one way and which are facing the other. Oh well, once it's covered with baby barf no one will notice :)

The dark pinky-red swirls came from my mom's LQS, the fairy tale fabric is Alexander Henry Rock-a-bye rhymes, I only had a remnant but I think it works great for these stars!. The pink solid I have no idea about, an old 1/2 yard from my stash.

9 years

This precious little girl has now spent 9 years on this planet. How the time flies!! In many ways it feels like yesterday she was born with a full head of long dark hair, yet I can hardly remember life before her.

Happy birthday my princess!

Winterlude 2010

I love that my dad comes up for Winterlude every year, and it's even better now that the bits are big enough to keep up (now I'm the slowest skater in the bunch and running out of excuses to lag behind!)

We had a grand time this year, two full days of skating, ice sculptures and Beavertails :)

Snow fun

Katie was at Brownie camp and C was working so little J and I had an only child day. Puzzles, boardgames, bowling, doughnuts and chocolate milk at Tim Hortons, and building a snowman. Snow was perfect, nice and sticky, and the temperature was pretty pleasant too.

Love this little guy...

Mushrooms...

Jonah won a trophy for the family twosome bowling tournament which was held last week. He was totally bewildered, why were they giving him a statue? He was trying to sound out the word on front of it... 'cham.... pi..... nyon.... mushroom?' No honey, it's written in English, it says Champion! Once he understood he was totally excited but it took a LONG time for him to get there :)

(For the record he and C won the Peewee father and son division. They were also the only entrants in the peewee father and son division. Not that they weren't completely deserving anyway... but Katie and I had to contend with 4 other teams in the Bantam mother and daughter division, that's why we didn't get a trophy. That, and the fact that I suck at bowling :) )