Happy Canada Day!

were actually all taken yesterday, but Blogger was - and is - having some technical issues, so it wouldn't post. Hopefully, this attempt will work! I'm trying to keep up with a daily post just to see if I can. I figure I'm stuck sitting still while I feed Tom anyway - may as well multitask. So far, so good, but no promises! And you'll have to excuse the typos and grammar errors - I'm doing these kind of quickly, with my one free hand, and several of my keys stick from sticky kid fingers and the sticky goo they leave behind. Anyway, yesterday morning, the kids were surprised with a package from my parents. Just like everything that the Big Red Truck brings, it caused quite a bit of excitement!

It's always like a little Christmas when my parents send a parcel. This is Dave, asking me to open a package of candy-on-a-stick.

the kids, after John figured out which hat belonged to whom. (He new the brown was his, because it said L for Large.) So cute! My parents just got them in the store, so each of the kids got one, for our hot Okagogan summer, which will be spent largely at the beach. The brims are adjustable, which is pretty cool. Joan also got some hair clips, and they really DO stay in, like they say. She had them all day, albeit, under her hat. She refused to take her hat off all day, even while she was inside. I was worried she would insist on sleeping in it, like she does with her pink crocs her auntie Pam sent her. But thankfully, the hat did come off as she climbed into bed - the crocs were still a battle, though.

The kids, loading up on sugar from candy-on-a-stick! Woohoo! I don't normally let them do this, but they'd already had a healthy breakfast, and frankly, what better time could there be for a crazy sugar high than first thing in the morning, when there's no chance of it interfering with sleep?

Dave also got more little magnetic finger puppets. They all had a good conversation - well, they mostly just said "Hi!" back and forth for 10 minutes or so, but at least they were friendly - then they had a nap with Ruf-ruf. John LOVES his bug pen! It took him a while to understand that the bug was real, but no longer alive. He kept telling John to be gentle with the pen, because it it breaks his pet beetle will escape. He has it stashed in a special place, so the kids won't be able to break it before he can show it to his class in September. I got some spice racks, too. They work great! I'm NOT posting a picture of my messy pantry up here, but they keep even me neat and organized. So many wonderful things. There was something for everyone, and they all made wonderful gifts, for all occasions...or just because. And all these wonderful things, and more, could be yours, with a visit to Boffo Home and Cottage, located in beautiful downtown Dryden, across from Earl's Court. :-)

Oh, and thank you for the pastry rolly outy thingy! I hope you have a new one to replace it with - you've had that one as long as I can remember. It arrived on the perfect day - we STILL had some pesky apples left over from our canning experiments. I was so sick of looking at them, I'd already decided to make them into apple pies. And while I was going to the trouble of making pastry anyway, I was going to make some leftovers into beef pies, too. I used the pastry thingy, and it went super fast! I don't know how I managed before! In the end, I had more apples than I thought, though. I made two apple pies, a big pan of apple crisp, and a triple batch of apple muffins. But I'm happy to say, my kitchen is FINALLY apple free - for now.

Better go. We're not doing much today, but we WILL be watching the fireworks! Hopefully they're better than Calgary's sad attempt. We think we can probably see them from our front porch - we can see the park they're supposedly being launched from. But we might go down to a shore somewhere instead, so we know they won't be covered by trees. We'll see. It depends when Mike gets home, too. He's had some rough, rough days lately - he got called in on his day off, and he's been working 12-hour days most of the week. Not the greatest money - just tricky jobs, and weird stuff. Yesterday, he had to take an extra job, beyond an already busy day, because our pastor's step-daughter was getting Telus services. We've been taking the kids to a Lutheran church since we moved here, because it's really important to Mike that the kids be baptized, and you kind of need to belong somewhere before a pastor will do it. He's had a bit of a falling out with the United church he grew up in, otherwise we would have asked Pastor Mckee to do it. We looked around, and the Lutherans are an alright fit - they're fairly liberal, but not as liberal as the United, and the pastor is a pretty neat lady. It's a bilingual German-English congregation. There's a separate service in each language, but the English still has a lot of kooky old German ladies who like to see the kids. Anyway, the pastor's step-daughter also has Cerebral Palsy, from being in a coma while she was a baby. She's slightly cognitively impaired, but just has mild coordination issues, so she's mobile, but needs things done in a way to make them easy. The pastor asked Mike if he could take the installation, so it would be a familiar face and he'd know how to do it right for her. He bent over backwards to get assigned the job - it was a mess tracking it down and then having to get it from the tech it had been assigned to. Then, the job itself was a mess - it took all day, and he still had his full day of regular work to do! But the pastor's been trying to figure out where we stand on things, so it gave them a chance to talk. She stopped by the house to probe me - she was here three hours! I think she's mostly wanting to see where we stand on same sex marriages in the church. She's eager to baptize the kids, though. She seems to think it would be a hoot to do so many in one day - but I'm not sure when we'll actually do it. She offered to do it in the lake at the church picnic, but wasn't sure if that would offend the old ladies. It's a non-issue though - I think they'll still be in Dryden, then. Maybe when they get home, and are back in school.

Anyway, gotta go! Hopefully, everyone can see the pictures this time. Thanks to Adrian for letting me know they weren't appearing.