and so this is Christmas and what have you done?

Another Christmas has flashed by... without a Christian faith I find that the day is strictly a celebration of family and love for family and friends. I am struck by the need to express love on a daily basis rather than only once a year.

Yesterday was a very momentous occasion, Joshua asked Lindley to marry him, and she said yes. :)

Our family is soon to be expanding again.

We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie yesterday afternoon. We were surprised at how full the movie theatre was! Guess we weren't the only ones looking for a family activity for the afternoon. :)

We have family coming over for lunch today which I will serve in a buffet fashion; turkey, potatoes, veg, meatballs, tourtiere, and yule log/cookies for dessert. It will be a great way of clearing out the fridge from a lot of the surplus food!

I hope everyone is having a good time relaxing over this holiday period.

Christmas comes but once a year... thank heavens!

Well the eve of Christmas is upon us... Mum and I did some baking in preparation for visitors and feasting yesterday. Today I will cook the Turkey and we will have our Christmas dinner this evening as Lindley is going to her boyfriend, Joshua's, home for Christmas Day dinner tomorrow. This is a different celebration this year as it is full of adult children and the need for compromise within a family. Emilie's boyfriend, Derrick, will be over for Christmas Day afternoon and evening with his two year old, Nathaniel. He is such a lovely little boy and it will be fun to hear a child react to Christmas again. :)

The need to compromise on celebration times has prompted Mike and I to think that we will make Yule our large celebration in future years (once we are empty nesters) to allow our children to have their own traditions and celebrations for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, if necessary. Time changes things and the biggest thing as a mother is to embrace the change and realize that it symbols growth and renewed vigour rather than stagnation.

I hope all of you have a restful and loving holiday celebration!

keeping the faith

What a wonderful weekend! We celebrated Yule four times!

Once with Thornhaven Grove, once with our Red Maple Grove, once with our family, and once as a couple. What wonderful times were spent with friends and family. Closer bonds were forged with both Gods, friends and kin.

Now to soldier on with the Xmas preparations... shopping is basically finished, turkey is starting to defrost, now baking must begin. :)

Yuletide Preparations are ongoing...

Morning all! Well last night we managed to get a lot of the yuletide shopping done along with some Xmas purchases also. Tonight we are headed out to Inkerman, Ontario for an overnight Yule party. We will be returning home after the sunrise and a celebratory breakfast. We will then crash for a few hours before we head out the door again. It is going to be a busy and sleepless weekend.

On Sunday afternoon we pick up my Mum from the bus station to spend Xmas with us. It will be fun to all be together to celebrate again.

As you can imagine, I have tons to do before we leave tonight and not much time to get it all done! I am not sure how much time I will have for posting this weekend but will try to touch base early next week and catch you up on what transpired over the weekend of festivities. :)

Countdown to Yuletide is on!

This morning I am starting to feel the effects of a cold. I do not have time to be sick! I am starting on a regime of ColdFX and Vitamin C to see if I can stave off the worst of it.

First thing today I am going to make a realistic "Things I must do" list and work on getting duties finalized and checked off the list. The floor renovation is definitely going ahead full steam. Andre, Mike's brother, came over last night and they got the rest of the subfloor up and the majority of the laminate down in the hallway. There are only a few pieces and doorway dividers to go in now. I think the kitchen will have to wait as the laminate is not water proof. I am not going to put it in the kitchen as that will be asking for trouble! I think we will buy some of the new laminate ceramic tiles that look like high end tiles but are stick on and then you grout them with special grout mixture. It is a much more durable and cheaper solution than going with more tiles!

Without putting the kitchen in the "wood" laminate we should have enough to do the music room and our smaller bedroom... Our bungalow is being brought into this century again! :)

Now on to taking the meds and making a list!....

Take time to Rest and Ponder

Update on Renovation:

Last night we managed to clear another 10 feet of the subfloor and made it to our bathroom doorway in the hallway. Tonight my brother-in-law, Andre, is coming over to help us in our efforts. Hopefully we will be able to get the rest of the old subfloor up and start, if not finish, laying the laminate in the hallway. Wish us luck! :)

On the less "mundane" side of things I have come to a momentous decision for the new calendar year. Starting January 5th until next Yule season I am eliminating television and movies from my life. I have decided that I need more time to meditate, read, listen to music and ponder things. Eliminating this time consumer from my options will free up a lot of time in my calendar! When next yuletide rolls around I will decide how much of my free time I will allot to this activity again.

Mike and I have also decided to implement a Sabbath again for our lives. From sundown Saturday until sundown Sunday we will not do any "work". No commercial work, unless we are traveling for business, or renovation work will be done during this time. We will spend this time in rest and leisure to recharge our batteries for the week to come.

I will keep you all posted on how I am handling these two "resolutions" throughout the coming year.

Life is good

Well today has been a good day so far... laundry continues. :) Making ribs for supper, yum!

We had a good time at my Mom-in-law's last night and I won the game of cards. Yay! Tonight we will soldier on with the flooring, hopefully getting up the last of the subfloor and possibly some of the laminate. Andre, my husband's brother, is coming over tomorrow night for supper and to help him with the flooring.

LIFE IS GOOD! :)

If at first you don't succeed, try and try again...

Well we discovered that the hallway floor was much worse than we anticipated! We had to remove all of the old tiles and then try to find the multitude of screws that was used to fix down the thin underlay plywood that was used on top of the old floor. The issue is that the screws were then covered with thin set that was not applied thinly! We discovered that they screwed and nailed down this plywood at least every four inches! The best method is to put a commercial ice scraper underneath the plywood and pop the floor up in pieces, vacuum all of the thin set "sludge" and then find the screws and take them out of the floor. It is a slow and torturous process for sure! Well tonight we are at the mom-in-law's for supper so will be taking a break from the floor. YAY! We will get back to it tomorrow night and hopefully clear the last bit and be ready to put the floor down on Wednesday evening.

Today is laundry and household chores before heading out for supper.

Continuing on...

Well I haven't posted for a few days but life has been busy! We had our first major snowfall which left us with a foot of snow within 12 hours. Winter is now here. LOL!

The floor is down in the living room and we now have just the baseboards to finish and then move onto the hallway floor. The floor in the hallway is much more involved as we have to take out the old cracked tile, plywood with a layer of thinset in order to be able to lay down the underlay to put the floor on. This we will work on this weekend.

We did manage to get the xmas tree up :)

Another day of Chaos!

Yesterday saw the majority of the "stuff" being put down in the family room that was left around the house. I have a chili in the slow cooker for supper and have one more load of laundry to do. I then will work on getting the furniture that is left in the living room over to the far side of the room so that we can start installing the floor on that half tonight, after supper.

Life is always busy with us and thankfully never boring!

Cleaning while in Chaos

So we have decided not to use the nice shiny flooring in the basement but replace the much needed flooring on the main floor level of our 1960's bungalow. We will need to replace the baseboards, etc. as well but this can be done at a minimal cost while we are installing it. We have moved our tv down into the basement family room so that the living room will be for reading, listening to music and visiting. Once more a hospitable sanctuary with not a goggle box in site. :)

Now I have to figure out how to survive my house being in total disarray while we are installing the floor. The living room must be finished by Sunday evening as we are putting up the tree! Wish us luck and I will keep you posted on the progress.