2014!! Goals, Resolutions & Jobs!!

Wow! It's been awhile since I've been here! Where has the time gone. It seems like Christmas flew by so quickly and now January has too. It has been soooo cold here in Winnipeg and also all across Canada since November with little let up on the cold and wind chills. Since November, it's been in the -30 - -35, with wind chills up to -51 in early January with very few breaks of warmer weather. Well now that it's February, things should start warming up around Festival Du Voyager, it never fails, it always seems to melt around then, ruining all the ice sculptures. Sad for them but so happy to have a break in the weather, we'll see what happens this year.

Well since the start of 2014, I've been working on some goals/resolutions/or outright JOBS, and have been doing quite well on them.  Now that it's February, it's safe to say, I've kept some of them up for at least a month and happy with how far I've come.

Something that I've wanted to do since I retired and is an excellent winter project, has been to sort out two large bins of photographs that have accumulated for the last, lets say 12 years at least!! Oh my gosh!!! What a job!!! I'm almost finished labelling them with who's in each of the pictures and the date  of when and where it's taken. Then I put them in order of when each event happened, (which by the way, feels like these things just happened yesterday, where has time gone), then I bundle them with an elastic and put them in chronological order. This will make putting them into albums much easier since they are in order. Then there is also a pile of pics that were in photo albums, pulled for different events, that need to go back into their albums. I'm really annul about keeping them in the correct order of when the events happened. I also have to start an album of our cottage building project, which feels like it's never going to end. Hopefully this year??? Well let me just say this, I'M NEVER GOING TO LET MY PICTURES ACCUMULATE LIKE THIS AGAIN!!! I've been working on it since the beginning of January, at least 4-5 evenings a week and am probably only half way through the job. I'll be so happy when this is finished, so will Shawn, he's tired of looking a bins and piles of pics around the rec room.

Another one of my resolutions was to start quilting, I've started but not very far, but it's a start. I've washed, ironed and cut out all the fabric, now just have to start sewing. It's just a basic quilt, made of triangles, making it for the lake.  I'm nervous but anxious to start, don't want to make any mistakes, EVEN though this will be my first one and I am making this as a trial??? What can I say, I like everything to be perfect, no beginners mistakes. I have to lighten up on that!!!

A few of the other things I've been doing are reading a lot more. I'm trying to make the time to sit down and read which isn't always easy for me, if there are other things to do around the house, that is the thing that I'll always push aside. I have to give up on having everything else done and just make time for picking up a book and relaxing. I've also been keeping a gratitude journal daily and have been journaling much more this year. I've been exercising on a more consistent bases, at least 5 days out of the week, I walk and run on the treadmill. When it was so cold all of December, I decided that I had to do this cause I wasn't going out at all to walk, so I forced myself to go down to the basement to walk and now I'm LOVING it, I've got myself in the groove. I've joined Yoga with my girlfriend and we go once a week, but in the Spring I'm hoping to go two times a week. In the summer, Grand Beach has yoga on the beach in the morning, I'd like to take part in it this summer.

NO Tara Lopinski!!!

Inside the warming hut on the Assiniboine River, it was nice and warm in here.

Inside the warming hut, looking up.

The warming hut 

The red sheets are warming blankets, you stood in them and wrapped them around you to cut the wind.
They were made of thick fleece, the type used for boot liners.

"I'm going back to take my skates off Mommy & Grandma, with or without you!!"

Olivia & Kennedy were done!!

This past weekend was the best though!! Amanda called me to ask if I'd like to go skating with her and Olivia and Kennedy on the river at the Forks. We went and I decided that I was going to rent skates from the skate shop and give it a go. I thought I'd probably be able to do it, I haven't skated since about grade 8 or 9 when we used to go all the time to Crocus Park, but I figure I'd be able to do it. It was so funny, we were probably on the ice at the most an hour, the distance we went we would have been able to walk there and back in no more that 10 minutes. It was pitiful, but I only fell once. I couldn't wait to get them off, my ankles were killing me and I ended up getting a blister on the arch of my foot the size of a quarter. I had such a fun time though with the girls, and it's so pretty on the river,  I may even try once more this year but with thicker socks for cushioning. We had lunch, the girls went tobogganing, walked around for a bit and had a great day in the cold but fresh air.

Our dear Callie

Ruby & Callie share the "cat tree" but Ruby thinks it's HERS!!

Last Tuesday, January 28th, we had to put our cat Callie down. She was 15 years old and had quit eating the previous week and was quite thin. She loved her family (Shawn, Kody and I, she would even snarl at Leigh-Ann and Amanda) and ONLY her family and would snarl or growl at anyone else who tried to give her a nice pet. She was Ruby's Momma/Sister, always grooming Ruby and they would have fun chasing each other, but Callie always made it seem like she didn't want to play, but was doing it just for Ruby, they had a love/hate relationship. Even though she was so quiet, it seems so different to not see her walking around, or trying to love us up when it was time for her supper. You were a good cat Callie and we're going to miss you!! <3

Talk to you soon!!