Happy 39th Julie

Today is the 39th birthday of my beautiful wife, Julie. She keeps joking about how old she is getting. I hope she's just joking anyway, because that would make me really old! 

However, if Julie were able to retire today, I'm sure she would have no trouble finding things to do. She loves to create and would have no problem doing that full time. Colouring, painting, sewing, crocheting, making stained glass projects.  I'm sure if she had more time, the list would be longer. She sees the beauty in something old or plain and brings it out.  She has chalk-painted an old desk and turned it into something beautiful. She redid an old church door and made it into a headboard. Every year she sews the kids (and me!) pj pants. She has made a wonderfully snuggly blanket for curling up on the couch. And she has created many gorgeous stained glass pieces.  Here are her hands at work, doing some of the things she loves:

Some day she will have more time for these things, but in the meantime, her hands are busy helping people.  She is great at her job, and has helped countless people during her time as a sonographer.  But even though her hands are great at taking pictures, it's her heart that is her real gift.  Much like crafting, she sees the beauty in everyone.  She truly believes in the 'care' part of health care and people know it when they see her.  She is compassionate and empathetic and a great listener.  So I hope she carries on doing what she's doing for a long time yet.

Perhaps her kind heart is because she has a heart for Jesus.  As a parent, the greatest thing you can pass onto your kids is your love of Jesus and Julie is doing that.  All three of our girls see how their Mom lives and are following in her footsteps.  

So if you see Julie today, wish her happy birthday and let her know 39 isn't old.  She has a lot left to give this world.  She's just getting going.  Later.

Shaming, feeling old, and power ballads

Hello.  Is it me you're looking for?
Sorry about that.  But now that you're humming Lionel Ritchie, let me say welcome back.  It has once again been forever since I've written anything.  Summer has come and gone.  Even fall has come and gone.  But in my defence, fall only lasted 4 hours this year.  A few nights ago Julie asked me if I was ever going to blog again and I said that the longer I went, the harder it got to get back into the swing of things.  So much has happened that I don't know where to start.  She told me to just start.  So here I am, just starting.

One of the children came home with an art assignment the other day.  She was supposed to make four curvy lines down a piece of paper and then connect those lines with curves (essentially looking like some segmented worms).  She was then supposed to colour all her segments with shading to make it look like these four worms were three dimensional.  She was busy going about it, when I noticed the instructions and what she was doing.  She was colouring with markers and there wasn't a whole lot of shading.  I attempted to show her what the assignment was supposed to show and she didn't like it.  Oh well, I tried.

Everyone in our house is into colouring, so I thought I would join in too.  One day in Michael's, I spotted an adult colouring book called the 'Hipster Colouring Book.'  It looked like something I could get behind, so I picked it up.  A few nights later, Julie and I were colouring after the kids went to bed.  I know what you're thing - we are pretty wild and crazy.  Anyway, this is what I created:

The next morning, I was eager to show off my handy work to the children.  They all oohed and aahhed appropriately.  One commented on the hat and how it looked curved and how I did that.  I said it was by the way I shaded it.  The one with the art assignment said it looked really cool.  Then she paused, cocked her head to the side a bit and looked at me.  'Wait a minute!  Are you trying to shame me?!' Not me.  I would never do such a thing.

I guess I've been alive long enough now that some of what the kids take in school as 'history' was stuff I lived through.  One came home talking about the Quebec ice storm.  Oh yeah, I said, I remember that.  We then talked about it a bit and I asked if she knew what year it happened in.  I honestly didn't think it was that long ago.  She said, 'I'm not sure.  I think it was in the 1900's.'  Boom.   Talk about feeling old.   She said it 'nineteen hundreds' the way we talk about the 1800's or 1500's.  Turns out she was right.  1998.  The good old 1900's.

Speaking of the 1900's, I've been educating the kids on some power ballads from the '80's.  I'm not quite ready for them to hear all of Warrant's or Poison's songs, but some are okay.  Middlest has taken a liking to Heaven, by Warrant.  Littlest likes Poison's 'Something to Believe In.'  The other day after listening to it, she asked to see what the singer looked like.  Not wanting to shock her too much, I pulled up a fairly recent picture of Bret Michaels.  'Hmm,' she said, 'pretty handsome.  But not as handsome as you Dad.'  Take that Bret.  I guess every rose does have its thorn.  Later.