Friday March 28

Yesterday was gorgeous and sunny and warm really by the time after school came around and I was in charge of bringing. Nicholas home from school with Tobin since his little sister was home sick that day and it made it much easier for the mom to not do pickup. So I just let them play at school until after. Four o'clock while I sat and enjoyed the sun. My feet were hot because I was wearing wool socks and clogs so I took my socks and shoes off and sat with bare feet. Then you can see what happened. 

Classic! Somebody else's yucky chewed up gum on my bare foot. Yuck. I had a piece of paper in my pocket, my grocery list, so I  was able to use that to get the gum off. 

Tomorrow morning I need to be at the Capitol Iron lower parking lot by 7 am for the Barges outrigger sprint race VYPC is hosting. I am in charge of the concession for the day as well as racing at 9am with my adult rec crew. I will be in seat five. Anyway, I am tired right now and would rather not go around packing up all the stuff I need to take in the car. But I don't know if going around at 6:30 tomorrow morning is a better idea or not. 

Wednesday March 26

Trees by SJD. 

New stuff on art gallery outside end wall. 

Tree with paper loops hanging off it in Fernwood square. They have words on each one. There were more on it than that yesterday but it was super windy last night and a bunch of them blew off. 

Tuesday March 25

Yesterday we were all back to biking again after forever driving because of people bring sick. After school, Tobin rode his own bike home from school and Julias had his first cello lesson with Gillian Epp. She is right in Fernwood village near by where toonie taco used to be. It's a nice corner studio with big windows. 

With sun streaming into the windows and into my phone's camera lens. 

Today Julias had an orthodontist appointment and we need to make an appointment to go ahead with getting his braces on etc now. The orthodontist said 18 months most likely and it will be about $6000 when we are done. 

Sunday March 23

Yesterday we were invited over to the Orme's for dinner but only Jeff knew about it ahead of time. The other three of us found out about 45 minutes before we were supposed to be there. That was just a mistake on Jeff's part, not some kind of intentional surprise. It was nice. We took over bananagrams and Dutch blitz and played them after dinner. And came back home with the Operation game. 

Today Tobin was invited to a friend's laser tag birthday party and Julias and Jeff were allowed to play too but just pay their own way. Turns out there was extra pizza for them too. Which is very nice of Magnus' folks. We biked downtown and I headed to the library and The Market on Yates while they were playing laser tag. 

We played Magic tonight. Me against Julias. Jeff against Tobin. I tested two decks out against a red white deck that Julias made today mostly from newly opened booster packs. His deck was very effective. 

Friday March 21

First day of Spring. 

One of the new routers has stopped working for the wireless internet upstairs so Jeff and I whipped out to exchange it for a new one at Future Shop. At Uptown all during spring break they have a short zipline set up and it only costs something like $11 to do it, five bucks of which goes to an education fund for Baby Iver here in Victoria. So anyways, I took some pictures of it. 

We have been doing a lot of sorting out stuff upstairs and cleaning up and getting rid of some toys. In the process, Tobin found one of the chicken feathers some one had saved from the last time they were moulting. He wanted to make a quill. So he carved the end himself with a Swiss Army knife and I told him where our bottle of black ink was and he tried it. It worked really very well considering his lack of experience. 

So he did a bunch of real and fake writing with it including three pages of scrawl with the label Romeo and Juliet. He was being Shakespeare. And then Julias found a chocolate coin in the stuff on his dresser and gave it to Tobin so we have been the playing "buy the play of Romeo and Juliet for one gold coin" game. 

Tuesday March 18

Tuesday we went up to Nana's for the day. On the way up we stopped at The Hub which is my old elementary school. Nana was just finishing having coffee with some friends there and we had a go on the really old teeter totter. 

I took along two old sheets to turn into bandanas for Jeff with the serger. Julias had a go on it too and made a tny little quilt of a bunch of fabric scraps. Both boys learned spinning a bit and Julias made a bit of a skein on the spinning wheel. We were going to go to Bright Angel Park as well but it was raining by then. We all ate dinner together with Nana and it was a nice relaxing kind of day. 

This is a shot of the juniors boat from Saturday. You can see me in seat 5. 

Monday March 17

Today we are going on the Bowen Queen ferry to Pender Island. It costs around $48 even with our ferry card, which saves $22. It is a beautiful sunny day. It's just past 8:30 am right now. As Julias and Tobin were waking this morning, the full moon was setting directly out their window and went red just before it went down.  

Lili and Pamela are already on Pender getting things ready for Sam's birthday party. 

We went back to Sam grandpa's place for a fire on the beach and roasting bannock and hotdogs on sticks over the fire. And we came back on the 3:30 ferry so we were home in time for dinner. 

And actually. Once we got back Tobin and I biked to the downtown library and back. He went on his own bike on the way down and came back on the back of Edgar. And it was obvious how he really needs to switch up to his bigger bike now. 

Sunday March 16

Last night we finished watching the second half of The Two Towers. Tobin hadn't really seen it before. He liked it. I hadn't seen it in ages and Jeff hadn't seen it since he saw it in the theatre which was probably when Julias was only a couple months old and it was a major deal to leave him behind for three hours. In breast feeding terms, it was a long stretch at that point. 

Today everyone except me has gone on their bikes to Oaklands School for a bit. Tobin is now permanently switched up to the bigger bike with hand brakes. He is very comfortable on though and can get up the hills way more easily. 

Saturday March 15

So yesterday afternoon I got a call from Marianne saying that they really needed me to come and race in the Crazy 8's race today. In Nanaimo. They meet at 7:45am near Departure Bay. So I said um, um, I will call you back after I talk to Jeff once he gets home from work. Then granny can over to get help with her new iPad mini before they go to Hawaii in a week and we forgot about Toin's piano lesson and Marianne phoned back and I had to go interrupt Jeff and granny and talk to him about it. So anyways I said yes. Pretty basic really. Get there do one race and then leave to come home. 

So I woke up at 5:45 and left to drive to Nanaimo for 7:45 and we raced at 9. I was actually in the juniors boat because that's where they were seriously short of females for the mixed crew. The juniors boat ended up being only half juniors in the end but we won our race. Wasn't that nice. Only moderate rain while we were on the water. And the wind and waves were only at the newcastle island bay end of things, but that just made it kind of exciting. It was a bit stressful for Rhianna to steer in the windy waves but it kept us all focused. 

We got medals and chocolate bars. The. I got changed and drive back home. 

This is my yogurt in the car before I drove back home. It wasn't bad; I listened to the librivox recordings of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes until I ran out of downloaded ones and then I listened my quirks and quarks podcast. So I wasn't bored. 

In the afternoon we all went to the Archie Browning. Arena and did public skating. Julias and Tobin got to try out their new skates for the first time and I rented hockey skates for the first time. Most of the Glovers met us there too. It was pretty fun and my feet got much less sore than in the figure skates we had before that were actually too narrow for my feet. 

Wednesday March 12

Today was beautiful and sunny so we biked everywhere today. Tobin and I had to go to the doctor's for prescription refills and we got our chests listened to in terms of coughs/ asthma. Tobin was a little wheezy and my lungs were great. I got advice to use the Neti pot so that I clear my sinuses and don't end up coughing from irritation of that. Tobin got advair. So we biked to the doctor on Edgar and on the way passed Tobin's preschool friend's house. There was a ton of movie equipment trucks and people on their street  and it was blocked to cars. They are filming Gracepoint at their house for 3 days and have sent the family off to a hotel to stay. Kinda cool. I didn't get any pictures though. 

Then we biked all on our own bikes, but not Jeff because he was at work, downtown to Wendy's work which is on the 8th floor of a building right next to where there is a big crane and construction going on. Then we walked over to Chinatown to the honey bun place and the bubble tea place for lunch. And then to the library after. So that was lots of biking for someone not used to it in recent weeks because of our never ending colds and coughs. 

The second day of skiing at Mt Washington Esther's group went and did downhill and we headed to the Raven Lodge for snowshoeing in the morning and skiing in the afternoon. Sam and Lili and their dad were there to meet us and the came back to the chalet to sleep that night in the place of the Callo group. We ended up playing quite a few sequential games of Bananagrams before bed. It was fun.  We had four or five people at a time playing. That was Monday. 

Tuesday we basically just cleaned the place in the morning and then left at 12 to drive home. I think Imogen and I left it cleaner than we found it. Isobel and Julias were really tired and done with being up there. I think tired of noise and people too. The other kids went out to toboggan while we cleaned. Isobel pared the van practically by herself. Then Imogen drove us all home. And Tobin and I biked down to the library, him on his little bike, after we got home, the weather was so nice. He is reading primary chapter books and found some he really likes. Boy vs Beast. 

Sunday March 9

We are at Mt Washington right now and it is lunch time. I am sitting in the Nordic Lodge just after having had lunch. The Glovers and the rest of my family have gone back out on the cross country trails. I have Laura's backpack while she is out on a lesson so I just need to wait for her to get back before I go back out again. Laura is the German student who is staying with the Callo's right now and I think maybe her backpack has stuff in it like her passport and such. There is a busy ski racing event going on so the lodge is packed full of people and backpacks and kids and adults walking around with clanking medals hanging down their chests.  There was a food employee walking around for about 5 minutes with a plate of food, cheesy looking burger and fries, looking in vain for the table that ordered it. When you are waiting for your order, you get an old ski tip mounted in a wood block with a number on it. And then they can find you to give you your order. But this guy just kept walking around and looking until eventually I think he went back to the kitchen area to ask if where the people were sitting because then I saw him walking straight towards the thickest group of racing folks all jammed around several tables. 

Oh, Laura just came back in so I can go out ow and catch up with Tobin and Jeff. Tobin was keen on trying the blue square trails next time. 

We did go out to the blue square trails. Laura and I went off quickly to see if we could catch up with Jeff and Tobin and we did and went out for quite a ways all together and got back and hour and a half later. 

Then tonight after dinner we went tubing and now I am so very tired. And stiff in my legs. 

This is a sign in the Raven Lodge. 

Wednesday March 5

Stuff from today. My vest completed today. Second time around it is much much more what I was hoping. Still has a pocket, which I sewed on correctly this time. 

The yarn is stuff my mom spun at her week long class. All wool. Gorgeous! 

I went to dance class tonight and I have a snippet of a video that I can't seem to post my blog. Not with my phone anyway.  

Sunday March 2

Today it rained mostly all day and I worked on finishing my vest and only just now got it done all the way up to knitting the neckband. As is typical, I had to take back part of it tonight when I realized I had forgotten the last few decreases on the front neck sides. So, while I watched most of the Oscars streaming live on the internet and projected onto to our music room wall, I knitted. 

Tobin had a very amicable play date with Arlo and we had roast chicken for dinner. 

The picture is from the sunroom window of the neighbours shed using my iPhone but zoomed in a bit so not as sharp as it could be. 

And a pun off the internet. They are made of bread, don'tcha know. 

Happy Sunday.

Oh also, Julias and I had a very successful trip down to value village to get him snow pants and snow boots for my Washington next week. We realized today that he has nothing in that category except rain pants and hiking boots that might be too small now. 

And also also, we think Tobin is responding to nasal spray with regards to his plugged and runny nose of two days ago. It's markedly improved today. 

Saturday March 1

I walked to Meggin's tonight to return her fabric that we used as props in the movie and I had a cup of tea there. It was nice and purely social and rare for me to do that. I had dry desert lime tea. Not bad. 

The photo is my jar of hot water that I am drinking tonight. Very exciting.