Here We Are At Last!

So, we flew out of Halifax on Thursday evening and landed in Toronto where my cousin Stephane picked us up at the airport and brought us to his house, in which Tante Doris also has an apartment.

We spent the night at Tante Doris' apartment, sleeping on the floor and we got up early the next morning. We spent a few minutes with Logan and Rykauna and Hudson who had all grown up SO much since we lived in Toronto and are now quite big. And then we hit the road, with Tante Doris driving. We had breakfast near Barrie at Tim Horton's and pressed on northwards.

Along the way, we chatted it up with Tante Doris. We talked about all kinds of things and it was really neat. Tante Doris is exceptionally wise and wonderful and I love her tremendously. We arrived at Uncle Phil and Aunt Pauline's in Timmins at precisely six o'clock on Friday evening, just in time for supper. Cousin Danielle and her husband Harry were there also and we had a very nice visit. Sophie and Courtenay arrived a little later. We stayed up chatting for quite a while until my parents arrived from Collingwood on their way home from visiting Chad and Leanne and baby Jelena in Detroit at almost eleven thirty, and then we went to bed.

Saturday morning we had breakfast and a nice visit with Mom and Dad and Uncle Phil and Aunt Pauline and then we got all dressed up and headed to the Cedar Meadows resort for Melina and Mylan's wedding. It turned out to be a lot of fun because all kinds of people were there like Jesse and Vince and Robb and Angele and Candy! That was fantastic and fun and I realized again how much I love all of them. It was sad to be leaving them.

After the wedding we headed even further north, arriving in Kapuskasing with my parents at about eleven o'clock. We went pretty much straight to bed and had a nice deep long sleep. Sunday morning we got up nice and early, had coffee and breakfast and headed off to meeting. (Dad lent me a suit with suspenders, so I wore it and it was nice.) Everyone remarked how much weight I had gained ... which was not Janelle's fault, she makes wonderful food, but it's me who keeps putting it in my mouth!

We had Matt and Kim Arsenault and their three wonderful and exciting children with us for lunch and Mom and Dad's house and that was really nice and then we went for a walk to the rock quarry and circled the village before coming back. All in all, so far it's been a very nice trip. Except for the snow we woke up to this morning ... that was almost heart breaking.

Flying Out Today!

So, Janelle and I packed our bags last night and this morning went to our last day of work before holidays. Mind you, it's only a one week holiday ... nothing quite like the last day of school ... wow, I can't believe I actually complained about school. High School was a hundred times better than having a real job. (Not that I want to go back or anything.)

I just checked us in and printed off our boarding passes ... now all we have to do is wait. Well, actually, we've also got to finish packing, and there's probably a billion things to get ready that I haven't even thought of yet. Oh dear. Anyway; I'm excited.

Getting Pretty Excited!

Ok, so there's two more days until we fly out to Ontario! Pretty exciting. We haven't even started packing...

It seems like the trees all just exploded into green in the past two days. Four days ago, I could look out my window and see nothing but gray trees with tiny yellow buds, everywhere. Now, all I see is green everywhere. I used to be able to see the ground and all the houses, now everything is green, in just two days. Is that abnormal? Or did I just not notice it all those other years? Ah well, it's wonderful! And the weather is great too! All of a sudden we're getting 30'C weather! (Or rain... but at least we're done with the snow for now.)

So, funny story, there's an old guy who lives in our building, he's got weird knees so he's in a wheelchair and he's always real cranky, even if you're friendly and cheerful to him. So anyways, I was walking along the sidewalk to our other building when I met him coming the other way from the grocery store. There was a shopping cart with two wheels on the sidewalk and it was a wide sidewalk so it's not like the shopping cart was in his way or anything, and he stopped and tried to knock the shopping cart off the sidewalk. It took him a lot of effort and he couldn't get it on the first couple tries, so finally he stuck his legs out and drove his wheel chair into the cart and knocked it over, then he just kept on his merry way. I thought that was funny. This is the same guy who, when we had a toilet back up and flood the hallway, complained that his newspaper had gotten soaked and we ended up having to buy him a new newspaper.

three wheel kiss

janelle here. i'm thinking about getting rid of facebook, so i'm starting up a chatty random blog so i can keep my posting fix alive :).
you can find it at threewheelkiss.blogspot.com (i'll explain the name later) and patrick posted a link to it on the left (<--).
i hope 3dhippo readers will mosey on over to the kiss every now and then and post a comment for me!
xox

super awesome fun victoria day(s)

we had a super awesome fun extended weekend this week! dan and katie came to visit late sunday night and stayed until tuesday after supper. patrick is fighting a cold, and it was rainy and dull outside, but we had a lot of homemade fun and laughs and we miss dan and katie so much already!
it was all awesome, but here are the highlights:
-janelle and katie went shopping on monday, and bought anniversary presents (happy third to us! yay!) - a new magic bullet and a new set of glasses for the kitchen because we're clumsy and break ours a lot.
-rebekah daigle joined us for a yummy supper - katie made her famous macaroni salad and we had burgers too, and we all pitched in and made a rainbow cake that looked awful but tasted fantastic. three cheers for a great group effort!
-we 'helped' dan study for his major final exam. during this quizfest/conversation, patrick revealed that he once (or twice...) put a partridge's beating heart in his mouth. all kissing was curtailed.
-on tuesday, janelle got up bright and early to make smoothies for breakfast. the new blender isn't as good as the old one, and the smoothie ended up all over the kitchen. janelle ended up in tears. breakfast was nixed, and poor dan had to go to his exam with just a piece of toast to tide him over.
-dan wrote his six hour exam alllllll day long. katie met him for lunch, then came home with the great news that she saw a bubble tea shop while she was out!
-katie was wearing an awesome sundress that told the weather, "you're not the boss of me!"
-nursing a burned finger (for reasons that shall remain undisclosed) janelle kissed patrick goodbye, and went out with rebekah and katie in quest of the bubble tea shop.
-poor patrick worked all day, fighting his nasty cold that seems determined to win. he was vastly cheered up, thought, beccause ...
-WE FOUND BUBBLE TEA IN HALIFAX! it's not quite as good as C'est Bon, our toronto favorite, but it's quite passable and will definitely be our date-night location of choice.
-after slurping up our tea, we felt a yen for asian food and went to the asian grocery market on quinpool. we bought chicken wontons, soup base (yuck), and dumplings. we also got some yummy taro cookies and dried fruit candy. three cheers for a fun outing!
-we picked up dan (exhausted from his exam) and came home and made chinese food for supper. (wonton soup base tastes like fish - we threw it out and made a chicken version). when i say "we" cooked, i should really say rebekah cooked - or slaved over the stove - ps mad cooking skills, bek! - and finally, we polished off the last of the cake and said our sad goodbyes.
c'est tout!

Gatty's Tale

i just finished reading Gatty's Tale, by Kevin Crossley-Holland, recommended to me by joeythepoey. what an amazing read - a really great story, and it's really well-written. i especially love how little explaining the author does. he drops characters' conversations in without explaining how they are speaking (angrily, sarcastically, happily, etc). you get to infer by the other characters' comments and actions, yet it's all done so obliquely that you hardly notice you are doing it, and all of a sudden you just "get" the characters - they're so well-formed and true to themselves.
i love that in a writer.

the story is set in the 13th century, and Gatty - a field girl, an orphan, from Wales - is taken on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
this is a little tiny snippet from the first page:

"Gatty stood up, crossed herself, reached for her russet woollen tunic lying on a bale of hay, and pulled it on over her undershirt and baggy drawers. Loudly she yawned. She opened her mouth so wide she could hear all her little headbones cricking and cracking. Then she stepped round to the next stall.
'Greetings in God!' she said politely to her cow. She gave Hopeless a handful of grain, pulled up her three-legged stool, and began to milk her."

and i'm not going to tell you anything else, because i think you should read it for yourself! :)

The Attributes of God, by Arthur W. Pink

At first glance the book seems a little out dated. Written between 1922 and 1952 and originally published as a series of articles in the magazine Studies in the Scriptures, we have to admit the book is a little old and the language does sometimes seem a little archaic. But I have to argue that the content is timeless.

In this book, Pink discusses sixteen attributes of God: the solitariness of God, the decrees (purpose or determination) of God, the knowledge of God, the foreknowledge of God, the supremacy of God, the sovereignty of God, the immutability (unchangingness) of God, the holiness of God, the power of God, the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, the patience of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, the love of God, and the wrath of God. Obviously, the book is intended for Christian readers, nevertheless, I believe that, despite the sometimes archaic writing and the rampant "christianese" language used in the book, many unbelievers will find here a thorough and beneficial explanation of one of the most fundamental concepts of Christianity, and that is the concept of God.

To understand Christianity, one must first know what its God is like and in this book, Pink does a fantastic job of describing, quite thoroughly, the Christian's God as He shows Himself in the Bible.

I have a few disagreements with Pink, some of them I've outlined in my other blog but I don't believe Pink's errors to be fatal. Also, I find that towards the middle of the book, the writing becomes a little formulaic and boring and a little difficult to follow, but overall the book is well written and well argued and does what it does well. So read it, especially if you're curious about what Christianity is all about.