Blog? What Blog?

Tra la la!

Welcome to the north coast!

It's just a little bit snowy.

Just blethering along here in my lovely life, just happy happy happy.  I keep thinking, "Holy guacamole, twelve short months ago we were in the middle of this, and this:

Inconsolable grief

And now we're in the middle of this:

Cutest Grinch ever.

We've come a long way, baby!

Things are ticking along nicely.  Let me see... point form is in order:

1. I have abandoned the guitar and taken up piano again.  I feel that I should be disappointed about this, but in fact I am happy as a clam.  The guitar is undeniably cooler.  But I gave up my claims to cool back in 1986 when I fixed my hair in a side ponytail and donned a baby blue shirt with orange pants (rolled up) and lime green sport socks (carefully slouched) with my white K-Mart shoes.  So the piano should be a good fit for me.
2. Eyoel has suddenly realized that he can easily read a few words.  He finds "the" everywhere.  It's giving him tremendous confidence.  He has stopped saying "I don't know how to read" and started saying "I will know how to read by grade two."  So that's a huge step forward -- one year ago he could not recognize a single letter in any language.  
3. Eyoel is also beginning to grasp the concept of adding numbers together.  Again, one year ago he could not recognize any written numbers at all, and could not grasp basic number concepts.  (eg/ could not look at two oranges and count, "One, two.  There are two oranges.")  What wonderful progress!  I'm finding that DHA is making a huge, huge difference in his cognitive function.  If I forget to give him his Mighty Smart "candy" in the morning, he doesn't do as well during the school day and comes home discouraged.  I'm tremendously impressed with these Mighty Smarts!
4. I am so excited about starting to garden this spring.  SO EXCITED.  I have never been a gardener.  I generally start out with great intentions.  That is, every June I go through this cycle:
• Suddenly think, "Everybody else has such lovely gardens.  I think I'll have a lovely garden too."
• Grab my flip-flops and head directly to the garden centre, without any idea about what I'm going to buy or where I'm going to plant it when I get it home
• Realize that everybody else in town started their gardens several months ago
• Feel like a failure when I see that my only choices are a couple of ragged, leggy hanging baskets
• Return home with nothing
• Bake cookies.
5. But this year I truly am going to make my plan, start early, and stick to my plan.  I see major success ahead.  Yeah!
6. Mr Gwen is too busy at work to start the kitchen renovations.  The silver lining is that he has not started any demolition, so I am not stepping over hammers and drills as I cook, chopping vegetables on a slab of plywood, or reaching into a Rubbermaid tote to find a can of corn.  That's a positive thing, right? 
7. I'm SO ready for spring.  

Ooh, I can't wait to see some of these.

Yeah, I'm Still Here

Will post soon(ish).

In the meantime, here's a photo from exactly one year ago today:

Here we go!  Driving away from the Transition House.