Sappy yet sweet

Well, last week was March Break.  That is what they call it here...not spring break but March break. Probably because it isn't always spring in March?  LOL.  I don't know but I like it because it kind of takes that raunchy US sound out of a week off school.  It was a pretty quiet week.  Tiana had a friend over for a couple of nights and they walked into town one of the days which is quite a trek.  Then Tiana and Tabitha went into town and hung out on Thursday.  Wil took Friday off and we all headed into New York for some US shopping.  It was a lovely spring day and we had a nice time.  What was interesting is that with the weakness of the US dollar...we didn't find the deals that we normally do.  It is a nice drive and I am excited to start seeing the trees bloom and spring to arrive.

Saturday, Wil went and picked up the trailer.  For you who don't know, we bought the camper brand new and within a year found out that we had a faulty, leaky roof.  Since it is under warranty, we put in a claim and we have been waiting for a new roof for almost 2 years.  Well, we found out about a month ago that Coleman/Fleetwood has shut its doors so no warranty work, no roof.  Well the trailer place has been very nice and they have sealed the roof and checked it for leaks and they replaced the canvas on 2 of the slide outs.  So we brought it home.  We have some clean up to do inside.  We pulled the curtains out and washed them and pulled some of the fixtures out to clean them up.  This weekend, we are hoping that we can open it up and finish the clean up and then at least it will be usable again.  There is a lot of camping here but with all the mosquitoes, I don't know that it sounds like alot of fun...we'll see.  At least we have the option now.

On Sunday, we went to visit a sugar bush.  What is a sugar bush?  Well, it is Maple syrup time in Ontario, the sap is flowing and the production has begun.  There are numerous sugar bushes, sugar camps, sugar shacks in the area and right now is the time to go visit.  So we picked Wheelers Sugar bush.  Here is the link to their website if you want to learn more about them.  http://www.wheelersmaple.com/  It was lovely.  Now, I must say, I am not a maple syrup fan.  Wil and Tabitha love it but I have found the maple syrup that people have brought us from Canada (when we were in the US) and the stuff people buy here way to sweet and to mapley.  I don't know, I just never understood what the big deal is.  Well, as I read up on the various shacks I found that there are many grades of syrup and that the commercial stuff is one of the heavier grades.  So I was interested to find out what the lighter grades tasted like.  Well, we left and went for brunch.  The pancakes were wonderful, large and fluffy and the french toast was yummy but the maple sausages were the best.  I'll get back to those.  So the syrup that they served us with breakfast was the light grade and it was fabulous.  Now I still think that I will like the extra light better because by the end of the meal, it was still very sweet for me but I can say that I really liked it.  Now to the sausages.  I don't like sweet mixed with my salty in most cases so maple sausages have never been my favorite.  I love a good breakfast sausage but I don't dip it in my breakfast syrup and I don't like to bite into it and taste syrup.  Yuck!  Well , these were great.  I can't describe it but they were the perfect mix of breakfast sausage with just a tinge of light maple flavor.  It was great! 

Ok, enough about the food.  We went on a horse drawn sleigh ride through the sugar maples and were in awe of the whole process.  Literally thousands of sugar maples tapped and linked together by the tubing that takes the sap to the main pump room where they boil it into maple syrup.  It really was fascinating.  I would like to have taken a stroll through the trees but I think I will wait and go back this fall when the sugar maples are at the height of their color change and do it then.  It will be fabulous!  There was a chainsaw museum, a maple syrup making museum and maple taffy on snow, of course.  It was a lovely morning.  We will have to check out a different one every spring until we find a favorite.  What a fun thing!

Well, today is the 30 day mark until Wil leaves.  We have one month to get everything done that we need to before he leaves.  He was busy this weekend doing little things, including moving one of our out buildings to a better place and such.  He also unplugged the snowblower in preparation for us to turn it back into a lawn tractor.  On Saturday he said, " I think we are done with snow".  I said, "great now it will snow and it is your fault". He laughed.  Well guess what, we are supposed to get 5-10 centimeters today.  We shall see..but, yes, I will blame him if we do!  :)

This weekend, I got the guest room all cleaned up and turned from a cat room back into a guest room.  We have moved Simbas litter box downstairs and he now can roam free all day.   It feels good to have that room back in order and ready for guests.  It was nice enough on Saturday to open the windows and it felt great to get the rooms aired out but I was disturbed by how much cat hair comes off of one long hair cat.  ALOT!  Oh well, it is easier to sweep it up then to vacuum it.

Well, I better get moving, Tiana just convinced me to take her to school and as I look out my window, it is snowing like mad.  THANKS WIL!  :)

Love you all,

Brenda





A fight between spring and Winter

This week, there has been an obvious fight between spring and winter. We have seen alot of snow and even more rain in the last seven days...here is a short view of the week in weather.

We started out this week with getting a bunch of snow last Sunday. I woke up and was surprised to find it snowing like crazy. We were looking forward to church because it was a commissioning service for some or our youth that were going to the Dominican Republic for a week on a mission trip. When Wil got up we looked at how deep the snow was and the fact that the plows hadn't been out and the fact that it had changed to freezing rain and decided we had better not go. Not 5 minutes later we got a call from the church saying the service had been cancelled. So we decided on having a pajama day. But mid way through Wil and I went out to clear some snow. It was very heavy with rain and Wil fought with the snow blower while I shoveled. The nice thing was that it was fairly warm. Thursday, we woke up to more snow and the buses were cancelled due to icy conditions so the girls stayed home from school. By the time I left for work it was switching to rain but we had enough snow that I was preparing to use the snow blower for the first time when I got home but by the time I got home to do it...the snow was so soaked with rain that I knew the snow blower wouldn't move it so I just worked on shoveling.

During my shoveling I saw this little black thing on the snow and went to investigate and found a woolly worm trying to wiggle its way across the snow.

We have a steel roof so the snow tends to build and then slide off all at once. So by the time I got home from work...the snow had slid off the roof and I had 2-3 foot drifts of snow all around the house and oh, my gosh, it was heavy snow. But I got an area for the dogs cleared and both porches and a path for the girls to walk to the bus and I was done. It was still raining and it was really warm. I was out with no coat and was just fine. I think that is the first time that I shoveled snow in the rain. Then it just continued to rain through Thursday and most of Friday.  Again, very warm which is super refreshing.  It is nice not to be shivering and to go out without a coat is awesome!  How do I know it was an enormous about of rain?  Ummmm, well we have a new lake near our backyard, well some of it is in our backyard. 

Now who won?  Spring or winter?  Well as of right now...winter because it is snowing again.  But it is good to see the war begin and I look forward to Spring conquering winter soon.

In preparation for spring, I went to a Victorian Basket class at our local garden center.  I had heard about this class when I went to the holiday urn class and couldn't wait to check it out.  Basically, we went and got a full class on how to build and take care of hanging baskets and just great plant advice.  Then you build your own basket.  Then you leave it at the greenhouse for the next several months while they babysit, tend, and care for it.  Around the end of April I will go back and pick up my baskets and they will be lush, beautiful, blooming baskets.  How fun is that.  We can visit our baskets to watch how they grow so I am going to try to take pics occasionally to show how they develop and what the final product is.  It was fun and I learned so much.

Well, we survived the first week at work with the new computer system.  Dr. Turner and Joan (the other nurse that works the other days) asked if I would come in and work on Monday to assist with the first day.  Luckily the office next to us were in training on Monday and Tuesday so we took over their computer and I say and entered in all of our appointments and did computer trouble shooting all day.  Luckily we had booked light in anticipation of the chaos and I am so thankful we did because we had all sorts of issues.  Printers not set up correctly, passwords not working, settings not right.  But over all it wasn't as bad as it could have been and it didn't take long for everyone to realize that if they had a question to come as me because if I didn't know..I could figure it out or troubleshoot it.  Then I turned into tech support for the rest of the week.  I could go into detail but it was such a tiring week that I don't want to relive it.  I am glad it is behind us and we can go on.  The system is a nice system and is very user friendly and the possibilities of the program are huge.  I had alot of fun playing around and seeing what it could do.  I worked all 4 days..and with working 4 days last week, I was so far behind.  So Friday was all about catching up and paperwork.

Wil was gone all week.  He had a trip to BC scheduled for his current job.  He left Monday morning early and had 4 days of meetings and was pretty tired by Thursday evening but on Friday morning he went to the ship that he is going to be sailing on and talked to some people about his upcoming posting.  The rumours he is hearing right now is that he will either be going to Libya or Japan.  That was before the earthquake so alot can change in the next month.  We will keep you posted.  He got in around 2:30 am Saturday morning so he is a bit jet lagged and tired.  The next 41 days will go by very quickly as we try to get everything in order before he leaves.

This next week will go by quickly.  The girls are on March break so we will see what fun we can get into.  I think we will head into New York on Friday for a bit of US shopping.  We'll see what else we can come up with to occupy their time.  I work on Tuesday and Wednesday as usual. 

That's all for now!  Until next time, I leave you with a funny bumper sticker.  OK, well it is funny to me!  Thanks Jean!





And the countdowns begin....

Well, I realized this week that 2011 will be full of countdowns...some have started and some we know are coming but haven't started yet!  Here are some of the countdowns in progress.

????days....until spring.  We can feel winter backing away but it hasn't given up yet.  Yesterday, it rained and rained and rained.  All day....lots of rain.  It was nice because it washed all the dirt and salt and gunk off my car and started washing the snow away.  Then today, snow...lots of snow...blowing snow.  I came here in the high heat of summer, really enjoyed the beautiful colours of fall and have been braving the chill of winter.  I am ready to see the regeneration of spring.  Staying above 0 for a bit would be great also.

48 days....Well, it is official, Wil is posted to the HMSC Vancouver and will leave to drive across the country in 48 days.  The Vancouver is based out of Esquimalt, British Columbia.  He does not know exactly where he will be sailing to first.  He had heard maybe Somalia for pirate duty but now it is looking like maybe Japan.  This is his HOD (head of department) tour and will probably be his last tour at sea so he is very excited.  Although I am sad to see him go, I thank God that he has been here for the last 9 months to get us settled in.  I am in a much better place than I would have been last year.  When will he come home?  We don't know yet.  His posting does not have an end date so we don't know when he will come home permanently.  As far as coming home on holiday...it will depend on the ships sailing schedule but we are hoping to see him around Christmas time.

76 days.....Mom arrives.  We look forward to my mom/Grandma Miller coming to visit us at the end of May.  It will have been almost a year since we left and it will be nice to show her our new home, town and country.  The decision will be what to do while she is here.  Parliament buildings, cheese factory, quaint small towns and some poutine to start.  Lots of talking and just hanging out too.  Can't wait.

117 days...Family reunion.  We are having a Miller family reunion in July in Ohio.  So the girls and I will take a road trip.  We are going to make a mini holiday out of it with stops at Niagara Falls and Cedar Point on the way down.  Our family reunion is going to focus on family history.  We are going to take a trip down memory lane in Cincinnati where my dad and his family grew up and of course we will take in a Reds game.  I look forward to seeing all my extended family again.  It is always a fun adventure when we get together. 

120 days....Tiana goes to Colorado Springs.  After the family reunion, Tiana will fly back to Colorado Springs with my mom.  She is very excited to reunite with friends and family.  I am currently working on contacting everyone to see if she can stay with them.  We aren't sure how long she will be there, probably 3-4 weeks.

140-150 days....I fly to Colorado Springs.  Once we figure out how long Tiana is going to be there, then I will book my tickets to fly home.  I will fly home for a quick stay and then I will help Tiana fly back and get her one more trip with an adult before she tries it on her own next year.  I am looking forward to seeing friends and family again, along with that beautiful mountain known as Pikes Peak.

Those are the main ones that we are focused on right now.  The other highlights of this year include: Tabitha traveling to visit her mom, several concerts and a daughter who will be old enough to start driving in December and those are only the ones we know about right now.

Right now however, I am totally focused on work.  Our office has decided to upgrade to a new electronic medical record/billing computer system.  I was at training for it on Thursday and Friday and went home laughing hysterically each night.  The system is actually a good system, very user friendly and efficient.  However, the installation process is being done so backwards, it is amusing.  This is an office where the average age of doctor and staff is probably 55 or 60.  Now, don't get all upset, I am not saying that that is old, but what I am saying is that these are not young, computer savvy people.  These are people that use computers because they have to, not because they like computers.  Anyways, they are putting this new system in place as of tomorrow with prep work done at all.  No templates are set up ahead of time, no customized info will be created ahead of time.  Our appointment book won't even be transferred over.  In fact the only thing that we will have to work with tomorrow is patient demographics, the patient medical record won't be available for about a month.  That would never fly in most offices in the States, but here they are just gonna "go with it".  It is very likely going to be a huge mess tomorrow since no one will have logged in until tomorrow morning and yes, we are seeing patients this week.  I don't normally work Mondays but they have asked me to come in to help my coworker, Joan, who is so stressed about this switch.  They even nicknamed me Ctrl-B at the training because it was coming so easy to me.  I am very thankful for a father that got me into computers early and a husband that helps me continue learning in this field.

We did finally get to downtown Otawa for the winter festival called Winterlude.  We didn't skate the canal this time, we walked next to it.  We had maple taffy made on snow and of course a beavertail at the end.  We looked at lots of ice carvings although we went after a heat wave so many of them were broken or melting but still beautiful so I will end with a couple pics of Winterlude.

sitting on an ice couch

The girls riding an ice motorcycle

Lots of peep skating on the canal

Love you all!