The Riddle of France

When Emma was five years old, we enrolled her in a music program that taught the fundamentals in a fun, creative way.  "Fireman Fred" zoomed his truck up and down the keyboard, stopping extra long on every F key.  There were musical magnet boards to help the kids memorize the notes on the staff.  She plunked and she plinked with the rest of them and then, at the end of the year, Mrs. Cathy assigned them all a special project.  They were to write their OWN SONG and give it a title of their own choosing. Oh, the excitement! The possibilities were endless!  Emma pored over the staff paper, humming her little tunes, until she was finally ready to present her masterpiece.  She showed us the sheet music, complete with eraser marks and corrections and smudgy little fingerprints, and there across the top was the title of her song: "The Riddle of France."  I'm sure she didn't notice the perplexed expressions on her parents' faces, but she may have wondered why we raced out of the room and what those snorts and wheezes were that she was hearing from behind the bathroom door.  No kidding, we laughed over that song title for a good five years. Little did we know it was a sign of things to come.
If you had told me 15 years ago that my little baby girl would be spending three whole months across the ocean, I'd never have believed you.  In fact, I would have stuffed one of her dirty diapers in your face and told you to go away.  But here I am, writing a blog post about Emma's French Exchange adventure while she lives it up in Bordeaux.   She's being well-loved and cared for by her wonderful exchange twin (another Emma - John has dubbed her Fremma) and by her wonderful family as well.  Fremma was here for three months last fall and we tried our darnedest to show her a good time:

 Our Emma posted this on the bedroom door

 The two Emmas with sweet friend Shanika - Fremma's first campfire!

 They don't make burgers this big in France (our day in Grand Bend)

 Horseback riding ... Fremma was an expert and was happy to be in the stables again

 Homecoming!  Something about a thorn and two roses...

 For someone who had never carved a pumpkin before...

I'd say she did pretty well!

Now we anxiously await Mother's Day.  My present this year will be a jet plane bringing our little girl home to us.  And when she gets here,YOUR present will be some more pictures!

Tidbits

Hello, blogworld. We are officially halfway through our summer holidays; therefore I shall check in with you and catch you up on our lives.  (In other words, I shall dump all the photos that were sitting in my camera.)

Here goes!

These little cuties led the way for my friend Bethany to walk 

down the aisle and marry Scott, the love of her life.

And THESE little cuties celebrated at the party afterward!

At our local Artwalk weekend, Ben discovered spray paint art.

The guy running this booth was so great.  He let Ben

do most of it ....

except the fancy stuff.

And .... the final product!!  Cool, eh?

So let me tell you about the big project of our summer - solar panels.  

No, actually don't let me.  Because it was tedious enough to live through - retelling it would require more energy than I have left.  In a nutshell:  Our backyard has been stripped of two beautiful maple trees, we have new shingles on our roof and the south half of our house is now covered in glass rectangles that, if all goes as planned, will make us enough money to thoroughly spoil our grandchildren someday.

Just a few of the amazing guys who came and helped my honey

put up the new roof.

Now I will tell you about our camping trip up north.

No, maybe I won't.  Heehee.  Actually,  I will.  We went with our friends the Lanes and, as always, managed to drum up lots of adventure and intrigue.  Some of the adventures were delightful and fun (eg. playing death ball in the cool refreshing lake which was located a convenient 2 minute walk from our campsite).  Some of them were frustrating and almost scary (eg. watching our roof top carrier bags fly off the van and into the centre of the highway) (or listening to some really loud raccoons snuffle and snort around our tents at night and then finding out the next morning that there was a bear in our part of the campground). One of our less pleasant adventures involved frequent rainfall and a large tarp.  The guys strategically placed it over our eating area BEFORE the rain started (camping pros) but once the precipitation hit, we all realized that said tarp was actually full of holes.  Most of them right above the picnic table area.

Laurie and I came up with the brilliant idea of wadding up little pieces of

plastic bag and stuffing them into the holes.  Problem:  little pieces

of wadded up plastic act as funnels for falling rain.

Brother Todd in his element - preparing a rugged tent pole
to hold up the tarp and drain the nasty rainwater.

I don't know what Duncan is doing here, but he's probably wet

while he's doing it.

The two Emma's taking their turn at supper dishes.  Do dishes ever really get
clean while you're camping??  Not in that little bucket of water, they don't.

To finish off, I will just throw in a few shots of Ben's life - he's clearly not getting an ulcer or anything 

this summer.

 

Ben and Lulu having couch cuddles.

The ultimate good life - Mom serves spaghetti and salad to
the boy in the bathtub.

Couldn't resist this hilarious picture of Scout, Ben's leopard

ghecko.  Peeking at us from behind his rock!

Well, there you have us.  In all our summer glory!  Hope you're having a great holiday too, wherever you are!

Eat your heart out, Laura Ingalls...

My parents are both from farming backgrounds, and I often think there's a country girl inside of me just busting to get out.  As a kid, my favourite books were the Little House on the Prairie series.  Oh, how I longed to live the life of Half Pint, little Laura Ingalls.  Okay, so maybe I would pass on playing catch with a pig's bladder, but other than that I couldn't imagine a more perfect existence.  Life in a log cabin, living off the land, animals all around me and contentment in the simple pleasures of life.  Growing up, I tried to reinvent Laura's childhood as best I could in the city.  I climbed trees, collected insects (yes, "collected" as in euthanized them, pinned them to a corkboard, and labelled them - maybe that's more mad scientist than pioneer), raised rabbits and ran wild outside.  And that was just in the city.  Once I got to my relatives' farms in Leamington, I truly came alive!  My Opa would let us collect eggs in the henhouse (we were a little intimidated by the clucking Mama hens, though), ride on the tractor through the back fields with him and scavenge in the haymow for baby kittens!!  Even as I write this, I can feel the excitement of climbing through the bales with a flashlight, listening oh-so-carefully for the soft little "mews" of those babies.  My uncle taught us how to pick tomatoes.  He still laughs at the memory of the city slicker cousins coming for a week to earn some money in his tomato fields.  One summer I came for the sole purpose of earning enough to buy myself some Coca Cola shoes.  I never said I was all country.

This spring, my brother-in-law Todd mentioned that we could easily tap the three maple trees in our yard.  Country Steph's heart leaped at the thought!  Make our own maple syrup?   How rustic, how back-to-nature, how wholesome sounding.  How Ingalls!  The kids were right on board, too, of course.  Here's how it went:

   Ben and Emma strike a sap collecting pose

 Emma strikes her father on the head as he pours the sap into a huge pot

 We watch the huge pot boil.  And boil.  And boil.  

  7 hours later, we stare in disbelief at the bottom of the pot

 Ever so carefully, we pour the syrup through a coffee filter. 

(No one likes dirt and bark bits on their pancakes.)

 Ta Da!!!

 Saturday morning celebration

 Uncle Todd, the man of the hour

We did it!  We brought a little bit of country into our citified lives.  Next year, listen for the sound of our log cabin going up in the back yard.

Happy Birthday, Mom!!!  Here's an acrostic poem for you on your special day. (This should take you back to my elementary school days):

L - Love, love, love.  This is what she does the best.

I -  Irreplaceable ... No one like my Mom.

N - "No" ... this is a word she hates to say!  Especially to the  
       grandchildren.  

D -  Does she ever stop DOING things for us?  Nope.

A - Amazing cook!  We all look forward to eating at Oma's house.

My mom is one of my very best friends in the whole world.  We walk our dogs together, talk about everything under the sun and laugh, laugh, laugh at ourselves.  When I've had jumpy legs the night before, she sympathizes with me.  Unlike my husband.  Or brother-in-law, for that matter. 

Mom is one of the most upbeat people I have ever known.  People just want to be around her!   She smiles and laughs really easily - John has always loved her "hearty German laugh." I can't count the times I've heard, "I love your mom.  She's awesome."  I even have friends who want her to adopt them ... and grandmother their children. 

Speaking of which, don't even get me started on Linda Ann's grandmothering skills.  Honestly, sometimes I think my entire family would rather just move in with her and make it official.  She is the great Matriarch, the ultimate Nurturer of all children Hollingsworth/Konrad/Burnard... They drop in for after school visits and snacks, they want to sleep over at her house, they call her in desperation when their parents can't drive them somewhere.  Oma is the great constant in our family and all the kids feel safe under her fierce protection.  

Thank you, Mom, for being one of the most powerful influences for good in my life.   You mean more to me than you'll ever know.  I won't say all the things that Lillian already said in your mushy-gushy birthday card, but you are the best Mom ever and I hope I can be to my children what you have been to me.  I love you!





  

Aunt Bet's Birthday!

Today one of my favourite people turns 89.  You might think a person could get depressed by turning 89.  Not this person.  I was at her house yesterday and she laughed and said, "Next year I can start turning my age around again!!"  Ever since I've known her, Aunt Bet has loved to turn her age around ... she was 83 when we met, so that year she considered herself a youthful 38.  The next year she graduated to 48 and so on.  You get the picture.   When she hit 88 last year, she had to kick that habit but it won't be long and she'll celebrate her 09th birthday! 

Aunt Bet (Betty Routliffe) is a special person to a lot of people.  I can't speak for anyone else, but here are a few reasons I consider her to be an awesome person:

1. She is ALIVE!!  There's really no other way to say it.  She wants to experience every new day to the fullest.  She is a lifelong learner, always reading, always asking questions. She watches the news and KEEPS UP with the world. 

2. Aunt Bet loves God with all her heart.  And she is passionate about telling others about how much He loves THEM.  Her dentist, her neighbour, her paper boy, her furnace repairman ... I can guarantee they have all been told that they are precious in His sight.

3. Queen of the one-liner.  Hands down - no one comes close.

4. She pulls out a rifle and shoots squirrels if they try to dig up her flowerbeds.

5. She says stuff like, "Isn't that glorious?" and "Oh heavenly days!"  No one says stuff like that anymore.

6. She looks better in a bathing suit than most of us two generations younger than her.  Oh, she would disagree ... she's horrified at her thinness but honestly, the woman runs up and down her beach steps twice a day each summer and swims by herself in the Great Lakes.

Aunt Bet prayed for us to find the right van ... here she is with the kids

 in our "new chariot" (as she calls it)

I am so thankful that God brought this special lady into my life.  She is one of a kind and has taught me more about life than anyone except my parents.  

Happy Birthday Aunt Bet!!

Astonishing Christmas

Let the stable still astonish:

Straw—dirt floor, dull eyes,

Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;

Crumbling, crooked walls;

No bed to carry that pain,

And then, the child,

Rag-wrapped, laid to cry

In a trough.

Who would have chosen this?

Who would have said, “Yes,

Let the God of all the heavens

And earth

Be born here, in this place?”

Who but the same God

Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms

Of our hearts and says, “Yes, let the God

Of Heaven and Earth be born here—

In this place.”

Leslie Leyland Fields

My Day Off

I have officially spent an hour cleaning my fridge.  Before you sigh and think, "Blast that girl!  Why is she making me feel guilty for not cleaning my own dirty fridge?" ...fear not!  For it is not the INSIDE of my fridge that I have laboured over.  Oh no.  We wouldn't want to do anything that productive on our one and only day to clean this week.  No, what Stephanie Dawn has done is taken down one photo at a time from the OUTSIDE of her fridge, peered carefully at it, washed the outside of the little plastic frame that holds it, scrubbed the little spot on the refrigerator door that houses said photo - with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser no less - and then returned it to its rightful place in the display.  She has also reorganized her calendar/important quotes area on the bottom fridge door and cleaned that with the Magic Eraser as well.  She then moved on to the important task of sifting through the assorted magnets that litter her refrigerator's exterior ... last year's Focus on the Family Christmas magnet? .... into the circular file!  The little golden teapot and frying pan magnets?....ugly, but actually quite useful since they're small enough to hold up the corners of my "Important Phone Numbers" list, so they can stay.  Ben's Vancouver Canucks magnet?.... obviously I won't get away with chucking that one, so it's holding up the chunk of papers I have clipped together beside the calendar.

Meanwhile,  six feet down the hall sits my bathroom floor, screaming to be scrubbed.  Especially after last night's plugged toilet fiasco where I found John, plunger in hand, wading through poopy water all over the floor and sopping up the disaster with old towels.  blah. 

But thank goodness my fridge looks good. :))

Ok, off I go to clean the bathroom....

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