Family

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

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Hubby and I reached a new milestone on Friday. For the first time ever, we became the grandparents of an adult when our grandson, Drew, celebrated his 18th birthday! I have no idea how the time went so fast, but this sweet babe is now a fine young man!

Drew and his siblings are Métis. He, in particular, has taken a keen interest in their Indigenous heritage, so yesterday we took them to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a remarkable site that teaches about the Plains native culture.

Located about two hours south of Calgary, Alberta, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is the most outstanding and best preserved example of a unique communal hunting technique employed by the Plains people for thousands of years. At sites like this one across the North American Plains, Indigenous tribes used natural barriers such as coulees, depressions and hills to funnel bison herds into prepared drive lanes ending at a precipice over which the bison were stampeded to their deaths. The carcasses were then butchered in camps set up below the cliffs to provide food and materials for clothing, tools and dwellings.

The seven-levelled Interpretive Centre at Head-Smashed-In was built into the hillside just south of the jump site in such a way that the fragile archaeological deposits were left undisturbed. As recommended, we started our tour at the top where we walked the 200 metre upper trail to the viewpoint overlooking the precipice.

Working our way down through the seven levels of exhibits, we stopped at the theatre on the third level to view an excellent 15 minute film re-enactment of a buffalo jump.

We had planned on walking the 1.2 km interpretive trail below the cliff after finishing inside, but a storm had blown in and it was raining, so we missed that part of the experience. It was still an excellent day and well worth the trip.

What’s in your little red wagon?

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This is the last of a four part series based on the talks that I gave at a ladies retreat last weekend. You can find the other three here, here, and here. Although I was speaking to women, the contents of this post apply equally well to men.

In her book entitled Present Over Perfect, author Shauna Niequist describes what she calls “Leaving behind frantic for a simpler, more soulful way of living.” I especially loved this quote. “It’s like I was pulling a little red wagon, and as I pulled it along, I filled it so full that I could hardly keep pulling. That red wagon was my life, and the weight of pulling it was destroying me. I was aware that I was missing the very things I so badly longed for: connection, meaning, peace. But there was something that kept driving me forward – a set of beliefs and instincts that kept me pushing, pushing, pushing even as I was longing to rest.”

Do you ever feel that way? If so, are there some things in your little red wagon that maybe need to be taken out and put aside? Things that are taking up too much space in your life? Too much time or too much energy?

Take a moment to visualize Jesus in the flesh visiting your home, looking at your calendar, and watching how you spend your time. What would He say? He told Martha that she was worried and upset about many things, but that only one thing was needed. (Luke 10:38-42) What would he point to in your life? Where would he say, “That doesn’t need to consume so much of your time. You don’t need to devote so much energy to that.” I’m pretty sure He would tell me that I shouldn’t spend so much time scrolling on social media. Would he say to you, “You’re trying too hard. You expect too much of yourself. Come sit at my feet and listen to me.”

Choosing presence over perfection is a matter of establishing priorities and setting boundaries. Like a cross, a Christian’s priorities should focus on a vertical relationship with God first, followed by horizontal relationships with family and community.

While the amount of time we spend on certain activities is often an indicator of what our priorities are, that isn’t always the case. Our number 1 priority should always be our relationship with God, but it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever spend more time praying and reading the Bible than we do working, keeping house, or caring for our families. God knows if you are home with little children and barely get any quiet time to spend with Him. He knows if you work long hours to help provide for your family, but He also knows when we put busyness or selfish pleasures above time with Him. If we want to have a productive, balanced, and purposeful life, we need to put Him first. So, the very first thing that we need to put into our little red wagons is our relationship with God. 

For those of us who are married, our marriage relationship should be our second priority. That goes into our wagon next. A strong marriage is the foundation of the family unit and provides stability and emotional security for both partners as well as their children. It’s very easy for us to get so caught up in all the other aspects of our busy lives that we end up neglecting our marriages and the results can be disastrous. For those of you who are still young, intentionally spending time with your spouse and nurturing your marriage relationship is also an important investment in your future. Children grow up and leave home, but marriage is intended to last a lifetime. Failing to prioritize the marriage while the kids are young often makes it difficult to reconnect later in life.

After our relationships with God and spouse comes family. When we have children at home, they require a great deal of our time, energy, and attention, so family goes into our wagon next. When our children grow up and leave home, although they’re still in our hearts, they no longer need to ride in our little red wagons. It’s time for them to start pulling their own wagons. Around that time though, we sometimes need to prioritize elderly parents who’re no longer able to pull their own wagons without help. 

Following God, marriage, and family come things like home, career, service in the church and the community, as well as self-care which I plan to write a separate post about sometime soon. As the seasons of our lives change, what we carry in our wagons continues to change. For many people, retirement removes a very heavy load and sometimes leaves them wondering what to fill their wagon with next. This is a time when service in the church or the community as well as other personal interests can begin to take up more space and we can pursue passions that we might not have had time and energy for when we were working and raising families. At any time, however, it’s very easy for our little wagons to become dangerously overloaded, so we also need to learn to establish boundaries.

Healthy boundaries are the limits we set to protect our time, energy, and emotional well-being. They’re not walls that shut people out. Instead, they’re more like property lines that say this is who I am, this is what I need, and this is what I can do. They protect your capacity to love and serve well and are necessary for creating a flourishing, purposeful life that honours God. 

As Christians, striving to honour God in all we do, it can be very difficult to set boundaries on our time and our energy because we know that we’re supposed to be loving and sacrificial, and we might fear being seen as selfish and unloving. In reality though, boundaries aren’t selfish. They are wise acts of stewardship that allow us to avoid burnout and enable us to give from a place of abundance. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of giving too much and losing sight of what we need in order to thrive.

When we establish healthy boundaries, we protect our mental, emotional, and spiritual health; we prioritize what truly matters and what aligns with our God-given purpose; and we also model self-respect, teaching others how to treat us. We keep our little red wagons from becoming so full that we can no longer push or pull them.

Setting appropriate boundaries means accepting the fact that we all have limits; that we aren’t perfect, that we can’t be and do everything for everybody all the time. It involves identifying what drains you and what fills you up and deciding what, if anything, you need to release in order to create space for the things that matter most. It means communicating limits clearly and being consistent about enforcing them. It means accepting the fact that just because you’re able to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it or that you should.

Setting boundaries involves learning to say no. When you never say no, you become the person that everyone comes to for everything and your little red wagon quickly becomes overloaded. Sometimes we even need to say no to good things because trying to do too many good things soon becomes a bad thing as it leads to stress and burnout. There’s no prize for being perfect, but there is a price to pay for trying.

Declining an invitation or saying no to a request can be surprisingly difficult, especially if you’re afraid of disappointing someone or worry that they’ll hold it against you, but sometimes it’s essential and it does get easier with practice. Learning how to say no without feeling guilty is one of the most important and most freeing lessons that I’ve learned in life, one that I wish I had learned much sooner.

One of the most important things to learn about saying no is that you don’t owe anyone an explanation or an apology. You can simply say no without giving a reason. It’s important to be polite, but firm, saying something like “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to do that.” or “I’m flattered to be asked, but I’ll have to say no.”

One of the best strategies that I’ve adopted is not giving an immediate response to most requests. There are rare occasions when I will give an answer on the spot, but that doesn’t happen very often. I usually ask for time to check my calendar and think about an opportunity or a request before giving a definite answer. 

Of course, we don’t want to become the person who always says no. There are times when yes is the right answer. Sometimes God is opening a new door or calling us to a new challenge. It might even be one that involves stepping outside our comfort zone, but taking time to give an answer that we’ve thought about keeps us from becoming over committed. It could be that our wagon is already full and in order to say yes and add something new, we have to look at what we can take out, what we can say no to.

I want to end this series by sharing something that popped up on my Facebook feed while I was preparing this talk. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a major shake-up to jar us into rearranging our priorities and realizing what’s most important in life. This was posted by a fellow cancer patient, but I don’t know who originally wrote it.

Before cancer, I cared more about the little things…
The things that don’t really matter.
The messy house.
The to-do list.
What people thought of me.
I thought those things were important.

After cancer… everything shifted.
Now I care more about the moments.
The quiet mornings.
The people I love.
The time I get to be here.

The little things I used to stress over…
don’t feel so big anymore.
Because when your life is shaken,
you realize what actually matters.
And it’s not perfection.
It’s not control.
It’s presence.
It’s faith.
It’s gratitude for one more day.

Family, fashion, and waiting for spring

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I can’t believe it’s been almost three weeks since I last published a blog post! That’s not because I haven’t been writing though. I’m going to be speaking at a ladies retreat at our church a couple of weeks from now and although I know what I want to say, I’m not a confident enough speaker to do that off the cuff, so yes, I’ve been busy writing! I’ve been asked to speak for about half an hour in the morning and another half hour in the afternoon.

Did you know that an hour of public speaking involves about 8000 words? Considering the fact that my blog posts average about 1000 words each, that’s equal to about 8 of them. I’m actually thinking that what I’m preparing for the retreat might provide material for a few posts once it’s over, but we’ll see how it goes first. 

As usual, life has been busy with other things as well. Shortly before Easter, we spent several days with our daughter’s family visiting and then helping out while she had surgery. (She’s recovering well and back to work now.) On the morning of her operation, after getting up early to see the kids off to school, I managed to slip over to the nearby mall to do a bit of shopping. I had just one thing in mind. New jeans. My old favourites, the two pairs that I wear more than anything else in my wardrobe, are definitely showing their age. It was time to find some new ones before they wore out completely. 

I knew that finding the right jeans might take awhile as I often have a hard time buying pants that fit because of my boyish figure. I’m definitely not a curvy girl and a lot of pants bag at the hips. I tried on several styles in the first store I visited, but none of them were what I was looking for. Just down the mall I found a Mark’s, a Canadian retailer that specializes in casual clothing, footwear, and industrial workwear. They carry a vast array of jeans. I had no idea where to begin, but I received the best service that I’ve experienced in any store in a very long time. The salesgirl was unhurried and totally attentive. After asking a few questions about my preferences, she directed me to shelves full of Levis and suggested that I try the 314 Straight and 315 Bootcut styles. She also wisely advised that I try one waist size smaller than usual as these shape-enhancing jeans have a lot of stretch. Although both styles fit perfectly and the super-soft denim was very comfortable, the bootcut style won out. Even if they hadn’t been on a buy one, get the second pair 50% off sale, I would have bought two pairs. 

Levi’s 315 Shaping Mid-rise Bootcut Jeans

Thankfully, the search for new jeans didn’t take as long as I thought it might. Shortly after I paid for them, my phone rang and I had to leave the mall in a hurry to pick up a grandson who wasn’t feeling well. When I arrived at the school, he looked sickly pale, but apparently it was only anxiety over Mom being in surgery. Once we got the news that she was out and all had gone well, he was fine again! 

The following day, once Mom was home and settled in, we left and headed three hours north to our youngest son’s home. His kids were on their spring break that week, so we enjoyed a few days with them as well. 

Speaking of spring, it’s been very slow coming this year. Earlier this week, there was a flock of robins in our backyard one morning, but a couple of hours later a mini blizzard dropped a couple of inches of fresh snow. Today the sun was shining and the temperature finally crept above 10ºC (50ºF). We watched thousands of snow geese fly high overhead on the way to their Arctic breeding grounds, but now I see that there’s more wet snow in the forecast! I fear that it will be a while yet before we’re out on the golf course and before I’m ready to do my seasonal wardrobe switch. 

In the meantime, I must get back to preparing for the ladies retreat.  

How far would you go for a party?

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This weekend I did something I never imagined that I would do. I flew all the way to Vancouver for a party! I left Friday morning and was back home again by supper time on Sunday! It was a whirlwind trip, but I’m so glad I went.

It was over ten years ago that I wrote this post about my older brother. More than a decade before the measles vaccine became available, Donald, an infant at the time, suffered irreversible brain damage due to encephalitis, a severe, often fatal, complication of measles. Although my parents were told that they should put him in an institution, they refused and we grew up together. He has, however, been in care all of his adult life. Since 1981, before the Community Living Society that now provides residential and personalized community-based support to individuals throughout Vancouver and the Lower Mainland of BC, came into existence, Trudy M has been one of Donald’s primary caregivers. After 43 years with CLS and even longer with Donald, Saturday’s party was a well-earned celebration of Trudy’s retirement. How could I not be there?

Over the years, Trudy has become family. Mom and Dad adored her and as I said when asked to say a few words on behalf of our family at the party, four of us became siblings by birth, she became our sibling through hard work and dedication.

The only reason that I had considered not going to the party and the reason that my stay in Vancouver was so short was the fact that this is the beginning of what we in my community theatre group call “hell week”. This Friday is opening night of our latest play and it’s all hands on deck to ensure that we’re ready to entertain our audiences. Thankfully, our director is also a close personal friend who knew how important it was to me to be able to slip away for Trudy’s party.

Although I was in Vancouver for less than 48 hours and in spite of the fact that it was a damp, drizzly weekend, I arrived in the city on Friday in time to watch one of my grandsons play a game of rugby. That was particularly meaningful to me because he attends and was playing for the same high school that I attended 60 years ago!

My sister and I also fit in a long walk on Saturday morning. Coming from Alberta where we still have sub zero temperatures and lots of snow, we enjoyed the humidity and the signs of spring that we won’t see here for awhile yet.

Navigating family life during a teacher strike

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I was working on a fashion post for today, but then life got in the way. You may or may not be aware of the fact that teachers in this province have been on strike since October 6th. After almost three weeks out of his normal routine, our 11-year-old neurodiverse grandson was bored out of his mind. Mom and Dad were working and he was driving his teenage siblings crazy, so Gram and Grandpa decided to come to the rescue. Yesterday we drove three hours to their place, stayed the night, and then brought him home with us today.

Grandpa had a dentist appointment in Camrose on the way home, so we stopped there for lunch, a bit of shopping and a walk around beautiful Mirror Lake.

We have no idea how long our young guest will be with us. There could be movement on the teacher strike as early as Monday or it could drag on for awhile longer. In the meantime, between playing substitute parent to a very busy boy and trying to figure out how to feed him (he has celiac disease and food avoidance issues), I hope to find time to finish that fashion post for next week!

A life transformed

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Back in August when I wrote this post about several 50 year milestones in my life in 2025, I mentioned that In October it would be 50 years since I made the life-changing decision to follow Christ. A couple of readers mentioned that they would be interested in hearing more about how I reached that decision. I had already been thinking about sharing that story on the blog, so I decided I would do it today, the 50th anniversary of the day that my life was transformed.

As far back as I can remember, my family went to church every Sunday morning. I attended Sunday School and youth group and for several years, church camp was the highlight of my summers. In my early teens, I attended confirmation classes to learn more about the church and the Christian faith. The purpose of these classes was to prepare us for church membership, but when the classes ended and the minister asked me if I was ready to join the church, I said no. I felt that something was missing, but I didn’t know what it was. I knew that Jesus loved me and that He had died for me, but I felt that there must be more to it than that. When I discovered that all the other students in the class were going to join, however, I didn’t want to be the only one who was left out, so I changed my mind. After all, I was a good kid, a quiet kid who didn’t like to stand out from the crowd.

The summer before my final year of high school, my father took a job in the Northwest Territories and we moved from Vancouver to Yellowknife; from the third largest city in Canada to a small, isolated  community in the middle of nowhere. I had to leave my home, my friends, my school, my church, and everything else that mattered to a teenage girl. I wouldn’t get to graduate with my class. I was angry and I made a very conscious decision to rebel. I decided that I was going to find out how the other half lived. I quit going to church and started drinking and partying. I abandoned the morals that I had been taught and less than two years after leaving Vancouver, I entered into a teenage marriage that never should have happened.

We had only been married for a year and a half when my husband, a very charismatic narcissist, told me that he had fallen in love with someone else. He didn’t want our marriage to end though. Instead, he wanted to invite her to move in with us! I absolutely refused to allow that to happen and tried for another year to make our relationship work, but midway through my third year of university, it was over and we went our separate ways. I was broken. My dreams were shattered and I felt like unwanted, unloved garbage. That led to more unhealthy relationships.

In spite of all that was going on in my personal life, I managed to graduate from university with my teaching degree and I accepted a job in the very small town where we still live today. I realized that as a teacher in such a small community, my life would be on display for everyone to see. It was the mid 1970s and I was sure that if I continued to live the way I had been, parents wouldn’t want me teaching their kids.

Once again, I made a conscious decision to turn my life around. I thought I could do it on my own, but God had a much better plan. Richard was also a new teacher at the school that year. One evening early in the fall, he shared with me what it meant to be a Christian in a way that I had never heard before. He told me that if I acknowledged my sins, asked for God’s forgiveness, and surrendered my life to Christ, I could have a personal relationship with Him and my life would be transformed. I quickly realized that this was the missing piece that I hadn’t heard about growing up. I didn’t know that I had to make an actual decision to follow Christ or that I could have a personal relationship with Him.

At the same time, I also realized that making that decision would mean giving up control of my own life. Considering what a mess I’d been making of it up to that point, you would think that this would be an easy or obvious decision, but I wrestled with it. Eventually though, I couldn’t deny that God was calling me and I finally surrendered my stubborn will to His. When that happened my life changed completely. There were no flashes of lightning or tongues of fire, just an incredible peace that I had not known before. I felt like a brand new person, free of any guilt or shame over my past. I no longer had any desire to live the way I had been.

I quickly learned that God didn’t want to be a distant deity who cared about me, but who wasn’t personally involved in my life. Like a Japanese kintsugi artist, He began to fill the broken places in my life with gold and turn me into a vessel that He could use for His good purposes.

I wish that I could tell you that life was always easy after that, but of course, it wasn’t. In John 16:33, Jesus tells us, “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Over the past 50 years, I have suffered great loss and betrayal. I have spent the last 12 of those years fighting cancer, but I have never been alone in any of these dark times. One of my favourite Bible verses is Isaiah 41:10 which says, “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” I can testify to the truth of that!

Whatever you take away from this post, please note that this is not about church or even about religion, it’s about an intimate, personal relationship with the Creator of the universe; a relationship that is available to everyone regardless of who you are and what you’ve done. If you have any questions or would like to chat about this, please feel free to comment below or send me an email at debock2@gmail.com.

Image: ChatGPT

What’s for lunch?

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I started making bag lunches for my brother and I when I was in junior high. For three of my four university years, I lived off campus and carried a bag lunch almost every day. Then, throughout our teaching career, I made bag lunches for my husband, our children, and I. That’s over 40 years and thousands of sandwiches!

When we retired, I was excited that I’d never have to make bag lunches again, but then came the dilemma that I still live with 18 years later. What should I make for lunch today? In retrospect, making sandwiches every day was easier than having to decide what to feed us for lunch every single day for the rest of our lives!

When my parents were in their later years, they ate the same simple lunch almost every day. It consisted of Laughing Cow cheese and fresh buns from the bakery down the street from their apartment. How boring, I thought, but now I understand! While I don’t think hubby would go for that, he’d probably be happy with mac and cheese or eggs and toast every day. Me, not so much!

I decided to ask ChatGPT for ideas. If you’re not familiar with ChatGPT, it’s a free and easy to use artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, a tool that can do everything from recommending a book for you to read to helping you plan a trip. In a matter of seconds, it gave me several possibilities. Some include ingredients that I won’t find in my small town grocery store, but others are very doable. I had to laugh though when I saw that the final item on the list was peanut butter and banana sandwiches, something that often appeared in those bag lunches!

The photo was also generated by ChatGPT.

Now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear some simple, nutritious lunch ideas! What are your favourite things to make for lunch?

Traveling again: family time

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Prior to yesterday’s post, the blog had been silent for three weeks. That’s because I was traveling again! For much of that time, I didn’t have internet access and when I did, I was too busy to write about what I was doing. Now that I’m home again, I’m looking forward to reliving some of those experiences as I share them with you.

Our most recent trip was really three in one and, as such, was definitely the most difficult one I’ve ever had to pack for. It started with a family reunion at the beginning of August. Over 70 of hubby’s relatives gathered at his youngest brother’s farm for a fun-filled long weekend.

It was a time of visiting, catching up, food, games, campfires, and even some shenanigans!

When one of the brothers went a little overboard teasing his younger sister about the bright caftans and wide brimmed hat that she wore to protect herself from the sun, a bunch of us gals decided to join her! In spite of our wacky outfits, I love this selfie of my daughter and I.

It was especially fun to watch the children. Second and third cousins, many who’d never met before, quickly became fast friends. Within minutes of arriving, our 11-year-old autistic grandson was part of a “cult” with creative code names like “Walmart Shopping Bag” and “Ikea Dining Table”! On a hot afternoon, a rousing game of Human Battleship with water balloons morphed into a giant water fight. A visit to the nearby cemetery to place refurbished headstones on old family graves was a more sombre moment and I was very moved by the response to a silent auction to raise funds for neuroendocrine cancer and Parkinson’s disease research. Half the proceeds put me within $100 of my Hoofing It fundraiser goal.

Like most of the crowd, we stayed in our trailer during the reunion, but then we left it at the farm and picked it up again after the second and third parts of our vacation which included a road trip to Vancouver and an Alaskan cruise. That’s why packing was such a conundrum! I could easily pack for any one of the three, but making the transition from trailer to road trip to cruise was a challenge even for someone with as much packing experience as I have!

The trip to Vancouver was also about family. It was the first time since our father passed away at the beginning of March 2020, less than a week before the Covid pandemic shut the world down, that all three of my siblings and I were able to be in Vancouver at the same time. In his younger years, Dad was an avid mountaineer and mountains were his passion, so it only seemed fitting that his final resting place be on one of the mountains overlooking the city where he was born and spent much of his life. On the morning of August 9, nine family members hiked the short, but fairly steep trail to beautiful Mystery Lake and selected a secluded spot nearby to finally lay his ashes to rest. 

The following day we celebrated my beloved older brother’s 75th birthday. Surrounded by family, friends, and caregivers, Donald was the man of the hour! 

To read Donald’s story, visit this post that I wrote more than a decade ago. It was later published in the Community Living Society’s quarterly publication, The Communicator. 

Part three of our trip was the Alaska cruise. In order to keep this post from becoming too long and because I’m still sorting through the 300+ photos that I took on that portion of the trip, I’ll share it in a separate post (or maybe even more than one) within the next few days. 

18 years of retirement!

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With the school year coming to an end this week, hubby and I have been retired for 18 years. 18 years! How is that even possible? That’s the same length of time that I taught at Lougheed School, a small prairie school that closed a couple of years later due to declining enrolment. Perhaps it says something about our chosen career that 18 years of teaching seemed like a very long time while the past 18 have flown by!

When I reflect on all that we’ve experienced in the past 18 years, I realize how full and how rewarding they have been. Retirement has included fulfilling long held dreams like teaching English in Japan and later, China. One might argue that that wasn’t really retirement. After all, we were employed and we earned a paycheque, but it wasn’t really about the work or the money. Those were simply what allowed us to be there. It was all about adventure; about living shoulder to shoulder with the people of another land and learning about their culture. It was about traveling to other locations in Asia during our holiday breaks. We also spent one summer on the Pacific island of Saipan serving as short term missionaries.

Living with cancer for the past 12 years has curtailed our ability to spend extended periods of time outside the country and the pandemic kept us home for a couple of years, but tourist travel has also been a big part of our retirement years. We’ve visited Mexico six times, ziplined over the rainforest in Costa Rica, toured Israel, and visited several European countries as well as nine Canadian provinces, one territory, and numerous US states.

Speaking of retirement, my father always said that there were no end of things that one could do as long as they didn’t need to be paid to do them and we have certainly found that to be true. Volunteering in various capacities in our church, our community, online, and most recently in a far and distant land, has helped give meaning to our retirement years.

Retirement has brought some unexpected surprises. Learning to operate a tractor and a combine definitely wasn’t part of this city bred girl’s retirement plan, but several years of helping a friend at seeding time and harvest gave me more joy than I could ever have imagined.

Since we retired, our family has grown to include eight grandchildren who have made our lives so much richer. In fact, that’s why this post is a day later than I’d originally planned. We visited three of them earlier this week and now another three are visiting us. As much as I love to write, going on adventures and playing games with the grandkids and late night cuddles and chats with one who has trouble sleeping are far more important than anything I could ever post on here.

To say that our retirement years have been rich would be an understatement. I’m incredibly thankful that, in spite of our health challenges, we have been able to experience so much. As time flies by I sense an urgency to continue seeing and doing as much as we can while we’re still able, but I don’t see us slowing down anytime soon, so here’s to a few more years of purposeful and productive retirement!

A post-holiday update

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Christmas has come and gone and the decorations are all put away. Christmas itself was a quiet one for hubby and I this year. It was just the two of us on Christmas morning, but we were joined by another couple later in the day for turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Then, two days later, the house was full with two of our grown children, their spouses, and six of our eight grandchildren here for the weekend! Every bed was taken as well as a couple of air mattresses and we managed to squeeze all twelve of us around the table at mealtime. Board games and trips to the tobogganing hill were enjoyed and it was a delight to see the cousins having so much fun together. But…

As grandchildren often do, one or two of them came with coughs and runny noses and Gram managed to catch one heck of a cold! Thankfully, the symptoms didn’t appear until after everyone left, but I was under the weather for several days. I’m finally on the mend, no longer depending on decongestants to breathe and although the cough still lingers, I don’t feel like I’m hacking up a lung. I’d normally say that I don’t feel my age, but this cold drained me of energy and definitely left me feeling old. Hopefully that’s just temporary! 

Speaking of age, we’re celebrating this guy today.

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It’s hubby’s 75th birthday today, definitely a milestone! It will be another quiet celebration though. At one point, I had thought about inviting friends in to celebrate with us, but between sickness and a house that’s gradually being stripped bare in preparation for upcoming renovations, that’s not happening.  

We’re in the process of emptying closets, clearing off shelves and countertops, and moving everything except our large pieces of furniture into the basement. Walls will be painted, ancient carpets replaced with wood flooring, baseboards and trim replaced, interior doors repainted, and the front door replaced. While the work is being done, we plan to be out of the way, but more about that later. 

I will be blogging from time to time over the next few weeks, but I’m not sure if there will be any fashion posts. I do have a couple of ideas rattling around in my brain, but right now my clothes are all over the place and I’m not sure what I’ll be able to pull together. Do stay tuned though!