Easter Sunday

It's Easter Sunday... Childhood memories include church, candy, and uncertain weather.

As a child I remember waking up on Easter Sunday to find a basket of candy Easter eggs - and a chocolate bunny - at the foot of my bed.

When my kids were young, I'd hide chocolate eggs all around the house for them to find. (Sometimes - weeks later - I'd come across some they had missed... Yum!)

One Easter memory... When I was a child in Red Deer, Alberta, I woke up one Easter Sunday find the ground covered with snow. Disappointed that I couldn't dress for spring, I nonetheless put on my new Easter outfit - with my warm winter coat on top. Then we went to church.

But... while the church service was on, unbeknownst to us, a warm Chinook wind arrived, warming temperatures so much that all the snow melted! An hour after entering the church bundled up in winter coats and boots, we stepped outside into warm spring weather! 

I'll never forget that Easter Sunday... or the power of a Chinook wind!

My father caught the picture of us leaving church, taking off our warm winter coats, on his 8 mm movie camera.

We laughed every time we replayed that family movie.

Memories!

Spring Flowers

The cycle of spring flowers is starting anew. I find it so exciting!

First flowers to appear in our yard are hellebores - white in the front garden bed ...

... and yellow in the side.

The flowers aren't very showy - I really have to look for them. They look like they're hunkering down, trying to get out of the cold! Most even bloom downward! I wonder how/why that happens. I wish they were bigger, brighter and showier - but I'm happy that it's spring!

Maundy Thursday

Yesterday was "Maundy Thursday" - part of Easter's "Holy Week," which culminates in Easter Sunday.

I don't remember ever learning the meaning of "Maundy."

Then I saw this explanation which happened to pop up in an email.

 

According to this article, Maundy Thursday commemorates the day that Jesus gave the commandment: LOVE ONE ANOTHER! 

To commemorate it, maybe we should give each other cards - like valentines - with those words... LOVE ONE ANOTHER!

I know I could use a regular reminder.

Grandma Can't Do It

Our granddaughter loves gymnastics.

Last time we saw her, she showed us her latest move.

I wondered how high I could lift my leg. So I tried...

No, Grandma can't do it!

Grandma needs to work on getting up off the ground without support.

First Amaryllis Bloom

I have been watching the first of my four amaryllis bulbs flower...

First a bud. Then after a few weeks, the first sign of a flower...

Day by day, it slowly opens...

A few days later...

More changes.

Why is it taking so long?! (Is our house too cool?)

This has taken weeks... But it's finally beginning to bloom!

Nothing is rushed in nature. (Why am I always so impatient?)

Home Show

Terry and I haven't been to a "home show" in years - ever since we had a major renovation done some 20 years ago.

But this year we were given tickets, so we headed over.

There was so much to see!

(Even hairstyling!)

I was surprised to see so many "seniors" there... like us.

Is everyone remodelling their home?! Or just shopping for a comfier bed?

Terry was like a kid in a candy store... He talked to various reps about sheds (for our son) ... about permanent generators - in case we continue to have lengthy power outages.

We even spent a few minutes talking to a landscape designer - who used to babysit our kids when they were young.

We thought we'd be there for an hour and a half - but ended up staying for four hours!

Walking ... to Date

I've been counting my daily walking steps for a while now (using my cell phone health app to count my steps). I try to walk 10,000 steps a day.

To add motivation, last year I signed up for "virtual walks" - pretending I'm walking in different parts of the world - places that would be interesting to see. Via Google maps street view, I can see the scenery around me as I walk.

Trying to finish my virtual walks motivates me to walk a little farther every day.

As March draws to a close, I'm hoping to finish my 766 km virtual trek in India soon.

Recently checking my totals, I see that I've walked almost 2000 km since I first started, last spring. 

As my current walk draws to a close, I'm already thinking about my next trek: Should I do a second Camino de Santiago trail? Or should I do one that's several thousand kilometres long, like Route 66? There are shorter walks too, but I don't want to finish too.quickly.

I'll have to decide within the next week.

Spine Poems

My friend Kay recently mentioned that she had started writing "spine poems" by arranging books so that their titles make up a little non-rhyming poem.

Her book club did it one day with the titles of all the books they had read together. Then they went to the library and created piles of "poems" there with real books.

I was intrigued, so I looked "spine poems" up online. 

One online article suggested piling books up in "spine poems" around the house.

A new way to look at book titles: as lines of poetry!

Remembering...

My photo app sometimes reminds me of photos I uploaded years ago...

This series takes me back 17 years. My youngest son was studying in Germany for a year. I decided to visit him during Spring Break. I was still teaching at the time.

While I was there, he and I took a train to Frankfurt to visit three of my mother's cousins. I had met them before but he hadn't.

It was a memorable trip for us both!

Another memory from that trip - before the era of smart phones... It happened a few days before we visited these relatives...

My son was expecting me to arrive by plane in Stuttgart, where he was studying - but my flight from Canada to Frankfurt was late, so I missed that second connecting flight.

What to do?! I had no cell phone and, in fact, had no contact information for my son except his email address. I didn't even have his dormitory address, though I knew the name of the university.

When I think back, I was really unprepared!

I begged the Air Canada agent at the Frankfurt airport to let me use his computer to email my son. He reluctantly agreed. I also switched my second flight to a train trip because they told me it was faster. 

Arriving by train instead, I wrote in the email.

His first thought - Which train station?! (I had no idea there were 2!)

Fortunately he guessed correctly and was there to meet me! I'm so thankful that he was! Lots of adventures on that vacation!

Gardening Lesson

Let's go outside and pick up pine cones, our 4-year-old grandson suggested one day recently when he was spending the day at grandma's house.

Good idea! 

He must have remembered from last fall when we first did it.

We each got our own garbage can and gardening gloves and got to work.

Eventually he looked up at the trees and said: There are lots more up there...

Yes, but we have to wait till they fall down to get those. 

(But it was such a good observation!)

Spring Driving

Moving from winter into spring has its subtle signs...

Muddy cars and trucks...

And the inconveniences of sharing roads with construction vehicles. 

Not sure why the driver (below) stopped in the middle of a turn and left his truck for a few minutes, blocking traffic in both directions...

Did he jump out to ask if he was at the right construction site?! Not sure how we'd have fared if it was the wrong site and he had to turn around!

I guess it's all part of spring in Canada. As they say, we have two seasons: winter and construction season!

At Grandma's House

Jericho likes to keep active at Grandma's house. 

Let's make a building, he suggested recently. 

Why? I asked.

I want to knock it down.

In that case, empty boxes make the best kind of buildings!! After the "demolition" they're easy to "rebuild"!

Artful Cat!

 The things I see online!

I sent this photo to my two cat-loving kids.

Beautiful!! Weirdly realistic!! It made me wonder how many "food artists" are out there!

I've never tried sculpting with food!!

Fascinating Geography!

There are so, so many things I don't understand! Here's a puzzler for me... Like many children, I learned that March 21 was "equinox" - equal hours of daylight and darkness. It was taught as a kind of universal fact. But as I check my weather app, I see that March 17, this year, was equinox in Montreal...

But much farther south-west, in Indio, California - where some of my relatives spend their winters - equinox arrived a full day earlier on March 16.

That's 5 days before March 21!

Here in Ottawa, on March 17 we were already a minute past equinox. Yet we are taught that equinox is March 21 - which is also considered the first day of spring. 

It's a puzzler to me!

Almonte: Sunday Snapshot

Last Sunday, we were again in Almonte with our son's family.

Looking at the pictures I took, I was surprised to see how varied the day had been. First church... with an opportunity for Ivy to ring a church bell. It was harder than it looked!

Then coffee and snacks...

Next -  a view of raging waters!

It was cold so we didn't linger long!

Then a Sunday skate...

Mid-afternoon we headed home. It had been a busy, varied day!

Why?!!

I wonder why...

I only planned to buy a dozen eggs - but I ended up getting two dozen...

Simply because the sign said there was a limit of  four!

Interesting marketing strategy!

Shopping With Terry

We entered the store together. Then I made the mistake of giving the empty shopping cart to Terry as I headed off to look for something in the pharmacy department.

I found what I was looking for - then began to nibble on "free samples," keeping an eye open for Terry and our cart.

I eventually saw something else I wanted to buy and picked it up. (Now I had NO free hands for free samples!) My hands full, I headed off in a serious search for my husband and our cart.

After circling the perimeter of the store twice, and not seeing him, I decided to get my own grocery cart...

Eventually we saw each other in the ice cream section.

 

As I was looking at frozen treats, I turned around... Terry had again disappeared - this time leaving me with BOTH his grocery cart and mine! What to do?! I couldn't manage them both!

After a few minutes, I moved my stuff into his cart and headed off...

We eventually found each other again thanks to our cell phones... He phoned me to find out where I was!

(For us, the real reason we each need a cell phone is to find each other in big box stores!)