Joy

  So last night we had one of our impromptu gatherings. We have a lot of those here in the summer. It varies where we go to have them. Last year it was at my house. This year it seems to be at our friend Lori's home as it is more centrally located, next year? who knows?

 So we gathered on Lori's deck, and sat down to chat. Mother nature has been putting us through our paces, blistering hot one day, then days of rain. Yesterday was the same as everyday this week, pouring rain through the night and morning then blistering hot weather in the afternoon followed by fog and wind in the early evening.

Yesterdays "hot" session had been a little too much and was sufficient to drive us all out doors. So we are sitting there chatting watching the fog roll in, for some reason we did not sit on the deck chairs on the deck. we just sat on the huge sprawling stair case that lead up to the deck. If we had sat on the deck chairs we never would have thought to do what we did next.

It started because Lori was walking back in forth in front of the stairs, on the grass in her sock feet, You could tell by the look in her eyes, and the way she looked down at the grass that she really just wanted to take those socks off and feel the grass between her toes. But at that particular second, she was too firmly stuck in her adult self.  After a few seconds of listening to the rest of us coaxing, she did take them off and you could see right away that part of the adult was suppressed and by the twinkle in her eye, some of her inner kid was out. 

 In a few minuets, Lori and Suzanne were doing cart wheels on the front lawn and laughing their heads off  as the rest of us sat and watched and laughed. Lori's home is built on top of a hill, the next thing both girls had run down the hill and were running around in circles with their arms out airplane style shouting "WEEEEEE!!!"

When they came back up, they were out of breath and all smiles, But they weren't done. As I said Lori's house was built at the top of the hill so most of her front lawn is hill, with the top of the hill being made up of a second smaller steeper hill. There are stone steps that go up the steeper part and the the wooden steps which are attached to the house that we were sitting on .

This is actually a picture part of Lori's front yard, so you get the idea. Lori wanted to roll down the steeper part, but then froze, "I cant do that" she said,  Yep looks like she is slowly coming back to full adult. 

 " I will!!" Craig our fire chief, who is very adventurous and loves to have fun ran down the steps , He laid down on his back and then rolled down the hill. When he got to the bottom, for a second he didn't move then we noticed he was laughing, the kind of laugh that starts all the way down in your toes, and just bubbles up that you cant stop. He was dizzy and once he was able to stand up he said " That was FUN! everyone should do that!!" 

 Two seconds later Lori and Suzanne had done the same with the same result. Lori came running up , " Come on Angie, " She said " I will do it again if you will!"

That was really all I needed. I was off those steps in two seconds flat.  

As I laid down on the grass and looked up at the sky a funny thing occurred, I realized I had not laid on the grass and looked at the sky from that perspective since I was ten years old. Why do we stop doing things like that when we grow up?

The next thing I knew I was rolling down the hill. Now I am a big girl, so I picked up some speed, I had to stop myself before I got hurt so I put my elbows out and managed to stop. But while I was spinning down the hill, everything just spun away, there was no work. no responsibility, no bills , no paperwork, no stress, there was just pure unencumbered joy.

 I am not sure why nature takes away the inclination to do silly things like that when we grow up. But let me tell you, Craig is right . Everyone should do that! Children know something we as adults do not. They know how to let everything go and just be joyful.  Most of the time we are so busy getting through life we forget simple pleasures like rolling down a hill.

Once I stopped laughing and the world stopped moving ( I was very dizzy) We went back to our normal grown up selves.  For just a few moments though, we had recaptured our childhood selves and just had fun.  In the end only two of us didn't take the plunge down the hill. But that's OK, maybe they will next time.

If you get a chance to roll down a grassy hill, please go for it. I am pretty sure you haven't done that since you were little. It really is  very fun. Everyone should try it!

What is in a name?

Have you ever just wanted to fix what was a small mistake, only to have it go horribly wrong??

First let me say I am so sorry,  If you are trying to view my previous posts and are getting the message that the blog has been taken down let me tell you it is all my fault. The blog is still here, I attempted to "fix" a spelling mistake I made...

I choose the name Making lemonade when life gives you lemons, because life is like that a lot. You do the best you can with what you have. For the blog address I wanted it to mean something to me, so It was SUPPOSED to read lemons AND butterfly's and then followed by the .blogspot address.  It is symbolic, lemons for the challenges and butterflys for the reward...

Instead what I had inadvertently created was lemons nad butterflys... Nad is not even a word, I know this because my spell check is telling me so.

I just noticed this yesterday.. Its classic Angie, I do these things all the time. When I noticed it, I groaned and realized that people probably were not going to be finding me with that error in there.  I also noticed that there is a little edit button right beside the blog address, So I fixed the mistake and clicked save. For 1.2 seconds I was so proud of myself. Then I went to my facebook to click on the post to see if it had changed.

Then I saw it:

WHAT!!!???!!! (insert Homer Simpson like scream here) (also insert several colorful words too nasty for the general public)
For several minuets all I could do was stare at the screen. In my head all I could hear was NONONONONONONONONONO!!!! my blog was gone... or so I thought.

It seems when I corrected the spelling mistake, blogger went to each of my former posts and applied the new address , so they are still there, and if you look over to the right of your screen, you can access them there, But, if you have bookmarked them before today you will not be able to access them. So you will have to bookmark the new address which is lemonsandbutterflys.blogspot.com  This link will take you to my very first post and you can choose from there which posts (or all of them ) you would like to read.

Lesson learned proof read EVERYTHING, and when all else fails use spell check.. hope you are still able to find me, and again sorry for the confusion

Sizzle and Fry

Remember I told you all about the rain and how everyone was fed up and wanted it to stop?
Well mother nature did indeed hear us and turned off the water works, She then promptly turned the sun on high so that we were set at sizzle and fry.

Now instead of rain we are getting temps that are over 35 each day, and when you add the humidity, the temperature soars into the 40's. If you don't have the metric system, that would be in the high 90's and 100's... lets just say its HOT!

All this heat has two consequences for me, The first as I have mentioned before is I work from home. So because of this, I have a home office. My job requires that my office be a quiet place away from the hustle and bustle of normal family life in a room all to its self. It also requires for privacy reasons, we have the door shut when we are working.

 My office is located at the front of our house in what was originally a sun room, key word there..Sun Room.....  My office has six very large windows, they are very old and have the original storm windows screwed right over them. They do not open. I have a fantastic view, but in this heat I don't get to enjoy it. I have large dark curtains over the windows to try and keep out some of the heat. Lets just say its an epic fail, The temperature in my office during this heat wave was 47 degrees at one point.... that's 116 Fahrenheit.
 Now a year ago I had asked my husband to unscrew one of the storm windows and make it so one of my windows opened. He bought the screen but but that's as far as it went, This year I had to take drastic measures.
 First, I just whined a lot, that didn't work. I decided to try guilt (Guilt is a wife's best tool when she has a husband who doesn't respond to whining)

 First I made a post on face book mentioning how hot it was in here and that I felt like a puppy trapped in a car on a hot day (which is absolutely true.. I really did feel that way) Why facebook you ask? Well because my husband's friends would see it and so would mine, they would offer to help the situation and build me a window, which would prompt my husband to keep his promise and build one before any one else stepped in to do his job.
 Evil, I know but I was desperate.
 The second measure I took was to invite my husband to watch a short video with me in my office on my lunch break, as we don't get to spend much time together during my 8 hour shift, I knew he would agree.
 Mission accomplished. With in seconds he was sweating and complaining of how hot it was and saying " I think we should watch this another day hun" my response was  "Imagine what it is like in here all day???"

 Some of John boys friends began giving him tips on how to build a window, which of course embarrassed him into action, And on Sunday he actually built me one!!
Now if only I could guilt mother nature into whipping up some wind, life would be perfect.

The second problem everyone is having with the heat wave is sleep, By the time night time rolls around everyone's entire home is hot and it leads to tossing and turning all night. Unless you are John boy.... He has an internal off switch , every night at 11 o'clock it shuts off and he is out. Not me, I am still awake flipping the pillow over trying desperately to find the cool side and rearranging the fan hoping it will hit me enough to cool me down. If only I wasn't so tired with all these extra hours in my day as a result of not sleeping I could get so much done, but I am too exhausted.

 I know I am not alone,everyone is complaining of being sleep deprived. Two weeks ago we were all grumbling about the rain, now we are praying for a good old fashioned thunderstorm to break up the heat. There really is no pleasing us!

 Here are some pictures of the window build :)



This is one of the cursed storm windows that was screwed over the inside window

John Boy fitting the screen frame over the window

John and Brent Double checking to make sure it will fit

Adding the screen

Feeling a bit Soggy

  If there is one thing people are talking and complaining about around here, it's the weather. The reason is because it's raining. It has been raining for days and days and days..We are all starting to get a bit soggy.

 Yesterday though, is when it became obvious that most people had reached the point where enough was enough. They were sick of the rain. Yesterday was a holiday here in Canada. Its called Canada day. It is the day when we celebrate our country's birthday , birthday 146 in fact.

 In our community here in Riverport it means a lazy day enjoying friends, drinks, and good food , followed up by a fantastic fireworks show put on by the fire dept. Because of the rain, most communities cancelled their fire work display. However in Riverport we very rarely let a little dampness , dampen our plans although it was up in the air for a while. By six o'clock the sun made a feeble attempt to break through the clouds and the rain stopped. That was all the prompting we needed.
By seven o'clock we we already stopping traffic and starting to set up the fire works on our bridge.

 If you are coming to Riverport, there are only three ways in the bridge which connects us to the outside world , or you can come in through Rose Bay from Lunenburg  or you can come through the north side.
By far the most popular way is the bridge. this resulted in a traffic congestion to rival any city but in the end a fabulous show was enjoyed by all.

If you like you can watch the last few minutes of our fireworks here . Mother nature gave us a break, she kept us dry until the fireworks were over, as soon as the last light faded from the sky she was back to the business of making us very wet.. perfect timing.

Of course all of us who were still outside at this point were a wee bit unhappy, we were trying to unclog the madness of traffic that being the only community in 50 miles with a firework show on the go brings. But it was all worked out.

  How ever today it is still raining, I am feeling a bit soggy, it could be worse, ask Alberta, where it has also been raining and flooding. Tomorrow it will be sunny, if it is raining instead we will make the best of it. For today I think I will just curl up with a book and pretend it is sunny.