Secret Sweet Pea

The long weekend finally arrived, but it forgot to bring the warm weather! We were able to visit Kurt's cousin and fiance in Parry Sound but boy was it cold...brrr....Finally, on monday afternoon it was warm enough to do some gardening. I split my perennials and made a brand new garden beside the lovely tulips and daffodils that have been blooming. It was so wonderful to stick my hands right in the dirt and try my hand at making things grow. When winter lasts so long (6 months!) it seems like such a miracle to watch all the plants come back to life.



Speaking of seeds and growing, I have also been so excited to finally share the news of the little sweet pea growing inside me. Today I told my staff and students that I am expecting in November, it was so wonderful to share the happy secret that I have been carrying around with me for the past few months. Ever since I heard that little heart beat a few weeks ago and it all became "real" I have just been bursting to tell the world. My students are super excited, they all cheered and clapped, and quickly offered name suggestions (their own names mainly), followed by their gender predictions (a boy), and finally sly glances at my belly to see if they could see the baby growing there. Anyways, now my secret sweet pea is no longer secret!

It Came, Spring Finally Came!

I have been eagerly racing home every day after work to check on my garden. Last fall I planted bulbs for the first time, and a magnolia tree. Then I had to patiently wait and wait and wait. Then today, my delciously fragrant magnolia bloomed! Spring is really here! Hooray, hooray, hooray!




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Catching Up

It's been a while since my last post, and a lot has been happening. March break found me busy painting our upstairs bathroom. I had to get very flexible and bendy as the bathroom is very tiny. I managed not to pass out from paint fumes and now I love the way it looks.

Then Kurt and I went to Montreal for the weekend. Ooh la la! It was so much fun. We had a hotel right in the middle of everything. We checked out the Museum of Contemporary Art, they had an exhibition of Claude Tousignant. His work looks something like this:

Needless to say, it left me dizzy and mesmerized. Kurt couldn't stop staring at them. He also had those huge canvases of one or two main colours. They were pretty cool.


We also got some smoked meat sandwiches from the famous Schwartz's and took them up to Mont Royal to check out the wicked view.



At night we listened to live music at a variety of pubs. Luckily, they same band we heard last time was playing at one of the places we went. They played a lot of Niel Young and Bob Dylan covers. Apparently St. Patrick's day is huge in Montreal so the place (an Irish pub) was packed with people all singing along, very fun! We also watched the Toronto - Habs game (on the tv, way to expensive to get tickets). Amazingly, Toronto won! We had to hide our joy though as we were surrounded by angry Montreal fans pouring out of the Bell Centre down the street.

We also went to the Biodome - a kind of museum/indoor zoo at the old olympic site. We saw lots of cool animals, the St. Lawrence Seaway part was really cool. I had no idea there were rays in there! Here is a picture of the lynx we saw, look carefully, there are two of them.


Then, it was back to work. Not only back to work, but many busy practices for our church's easter cantata. Every day for the past two weeks I had either cantata rehearsal, meetings, parent teacher interviews or some other evening commitment. This weekend we did our three performances - they were a great success. Kurt was Peter, I was Mary and neither of us forgot our lines! It was pretty fun, and the choir sounded amazing. But boy and I glad to have my evenings back!

Finally, an amazing thing happened this morning that allowed me to write this blog. There have been many signs of spring including:

Robins,
Gorgeous sunshine and
Tulips and Daffodils peeking through the earth


But, despite the signs of spring though, today I got that 6:30a.m. phone call announcing a snow day! Yipee! I guess I can put up with a delayed spring if it means a day to recouperate from the craziness. Although, it does make me seriously question my geographical location.

A Sunny Song To Say Goodbye To Grey February

This song really makes me want to learn to play the banjo. It would of course require a porch, a summer day, and a tall glass of lemonade. March was ushered in to day with bright sunny skies, and so it needed what is in my opinion a sunny song. I know that spring will not arrive until May here, but at least it can be spring in my ears!

Outside My Window

The past few months have been a whirlwind of lessons, marking, and then collapsing at home. Our school just finished the science fair, which I believe was invented to torture students, parents and teachers alike. Since December I have been waking up drenched with worry about my student's science fair projects. Anyways, today we have the day off to work on our report cards. I just finished - yipee! I love my job and the whirlwind of kids and how crazy every day can be. But, twice a year we get to work from home and I love it for a variety of reasons:

1. 1.Spreading out everything on my kitchen table, hearkening back to the days of my youth.
   
   
   
   2. Draining pot after pot of coffee. ( I can do this at work too, but then I have to share)
   
   
   
   3. Blasting my favourite tunes - hooray for CBC radio
   
   
   
   4. Wearing my jammies
   
   
   
   5. Finally getting those loads of laundry in
   
   
   
   6. Limitless snacks - I found an uneaten chocolate letter from Christmas yet.
   
   
   
   7. Uninterrupted work - ahhh so peaceful and relaxing
   
   
   
   8. The view outside my window
   
   
   
   

This last one was particularly amazing today. Normally the view isn't that amazing. We have a small backyard with a big maple and one of my favs, a lilac. While the trees are gorgeous (I love trees) in the winter they are not that spectacular. Yes, there is a soft and thick blanket of snow on everything, but that is not very exciting as a view. At work my view is a parking lot, so even sleeping trees is an improvement over that. But, in the winter the best thing about the backyard is the birds. Usually in the winter all we see are fat chickadees and the occasional goldfinch to brighten things up. But today was awesome because I had a huge visitor to my small suburban backyard:

He looks small in this picture, but I am pretty sure he could eat those fat chickadees for a snack. His spectacular presence makes the view outside my window the best thing about working at home today.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...o.k. it can stop any time now!

If you look real close in the picture below you can see the tip of my magnolia tree and baby maple struggling to get a breath of air out of the giant snow banks. I hope they survive the winter!

I don't think we will be doing any grilling this winter, unless we can get a snowblower to uncover our deck and barbeque.

There is my poor lilac tree bent under the weight of the snow, I hope she springs back to life when it all melts, pardon my pun.

The view from my deck this morning, like I said, it can stop any time now!

Today was the joy Sunday of advent. Last week our school had our concert which featured the candles of advent. In spite of the hectic rehearsal schedules, wrapping a million boxes to decorate the set, and listening to the same incredibly catchy yet annoying songs a thousand times, there was a lot of joyful moments. I was getting so grumpy and tired, but I tried to focus on the joyful times. Here is a list of a few:

1. the giddy smiles on the faces of the girls covered in dust trying to get heavy risers out from under the stage

2. the giggling girls dressed as giant candles making up dances back stage as they waited their turn to perform

3. the ancy and innocent questions of the young children with "glitter gloves" anxious for the curtains to open so they could dance while I tried to get them to stay quiet

4. the beautiful snowflakes created by my class while they sat through many rehearsals that are now plastered all over my class room

5. as I was trying to get costumes organized back stage the small jk child who turned to me with a halo of tinsel on his head and said "we're angels you know".

6. the sweet voices of the same jk kids singing at the top of their lungs "PETIT JESU....DANS LE CIEL"

and so many more

I hope that as I enter this week I have the patience to remember moments like those ones and smile my way through crazy last days as the kids and teachers alike count down the days to the holidays!