April Showers

Unbelievable!!

Okay, I know that the danger of frost hasn't passed until the third weekend in May, but this is ridiculous!

April showers bring May flowers?! I don't think so. How about April showers bring out the snowblower?!?

Look at the bottom centre of the pic just out from the wall of the house ... see that? We still have piles of snow where it was deep and on the north side of buildings and hills.













Hrrumph!
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My Wack Job Family

So one of my nieces, Meg, is having a baby and we had a surprise shower for her today. It was a three hour drive for her and her sisters and Mushing Mum to get here. They got her here by telling her today was the big experiment that Cyclin' Granny had blogged about way back when (Click here to read it) . This was the day CG, MM, Devon (the negligent blogger) and Gryper were going to put their tongues on frozen metal. Sound nuts? It was.

As it was right in the vicinity of freezing it wasn't cold enough to do it outside, but determined Gryper was not to be put off. He spent last evening washing nails, putting them in plastic tubs and then into the freezer. By the time all the guests arrived, they were ready.

Gryper pulled out the first tub from the freezer, and they each in turn stuck their tongues into the tub, picking up as many nails as possible. Then they tried seeing if they could steal them from each others tongues. The whole thing simply put, wasn't pretty, but I'll let you be the judge.

Music Festival

Yesterday was the big day. I played my violin at the Haliburton Music Festival. Thanks goodness that the adjudacator wasn't like Simon Cowell!

There were several of us playing and they had us play from youngest to eldest. First, a six year old boy named Eric, was sooo cute. At the start of every line, he went up on his toes. Then Mieke, 10, who was pretty much terrified and refused to crack a smile no matter what I said to her, but she did well. Matthew who is about 13 played two really tough, advanced classical pieces, then Emily, 15, played two fiddle tunes she was great ... "gnarly", as Leo put it when she was done. Leo, about 16, played a classical piece on a big ol' double base. He was great. Then me.

I played two pieces. First, St Anne's Reel, a Canadian fiddle tune, with Ken as my accompanist on guitar. It went really well, no mistakes despite my nerves. I would have like to have had more "pulse" in it, but it was good. The adjudicator, Stella, gave me great comments on it.

The second piece was a classical one, Bourée in G Major by Handel. I made a couple of mistakes, but was able to recover so it was hardly noticable, then I made a third one that I actually had to pause for a moment and get my fingers out of the braided mess they were in. However, I got good compliments on that too.

One thing I had been working on all week was keeping from scrunching up my face when I made a mistake, so only those who knew the music would catch the small goofs. I think I did fairly well on that .. well mostly. Apparently when I briefly paused to sort my fingers out I mouthed the word "shoot". The only ones who caught it were Stella and my teacher, Bethany, who was accompanying me on the cello. Afterwards, when the doors were opened and people were leaving, Stella came up to me laughing and asked "Did I hear you use a "colourful" word when you made that mistake?". Smiling, Bethany said, "It was 'shoot'.". Fortunately, I'm fairly sure it was shoot, but I told her, laughing "It wouldn't have been unlike me".

All in all, I had fun, played pretty well and got great comments from the adjudicator.

Yesssss!

Uncontrollable Fit of the Giggles

I had this happen once while I was dispatching for the police depratment. I can relate to this so much.

Take a look at this BBC article

Then click on the link below her picture and listen to the recording. It's hysterical. Every time I listen to it I am helpless with laughter.

Spring

Note: Thanks for the picture advice Susan. Ken taught Gryper and me me how to do it.

How do you know it's springtime in Haliburton?

First of all, this was taken 4 weeks ago.

You finally start seeing some daylight coming in the windows of the house.















The snow melts off the backhouse roof .... finally. There was about 2 1/2 feet of snow on this tiny roof.












The road starts washing out with all the water from the melting snow. At least the road is a bit drier. When we went for our walks, Muggins' tummy was soaked and covered in sand.











The really ugly boat that has been completely buried in snow from the snow plough starts to emerge. I couldn't even see this boat when I was walking past it three weeks ago!












There are a few ruts in the driveway.












Gryper starts thinking of ways of fixing or improving the evaporator while he's making maple syrup.














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What is it with blogger??

Why is it that every time I try to load picutres onto blogger, it's a big hassle?? It sits there for ages and then times out. I almost never have the pictures go without a problems. I NEVER have a problem on Facebook.

A raspberry to google on this one.

I had a great one planned and have tried for over half an hour to load my pix. I'm giving up in frustration. I think I'll go and read Gryper's blog to cheer myself up.

My Sister Spoils Me

I know, I know, I haven't been very active with my posts. I've just been doing a bunch of other stuff.

I have to share something cool though. My sister spoils me. Thank you CG.

First of all after having posted about my teapots, we had a few posts from others about their teapots. That segued to a post about aprons. Since that time, both my teapot collection and my apron collection have each grown by one.

First of all when we went to their cottage for a visit last week she gave me this apron she made for me. It's got funny cartoons on it. Notice the nice pink border around the outside. I look very June Cleaver-ish when I'm wearing it.








Then, as if that weren't enough, we arrived at Mum & Dad's yesterday and she was waiting for me with this beauty.

After our teapot blogs, she sought out Mrs Potts for me.

Isn't it great?! Thanks CG.





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