the long week end

Wow! I am away for just 4 days and you have all been blogging up a storm. I have so much to read and catch up on. I did read some thoroughly but I will have to finish the rest tomorrow. (all my blogs are in alphabetical order so that means that I read all of Amy's and most of Beth's).

As for the brother thing, I am not that disappointed as it turned out to be really inconvenient for me to be gone for so long the first week of school. They are going from Tuesday to Sunday. Kaetlyn starts grade nine on Wednesday and Dean is taking some University tranfer courses at (the new) Okanagan College that start this week and our homeschooling starts this week with this new system that I signed up with. I had an idea of an overnight thing with Jordan. But (as Katie predicted would happen to our trip) it morphed into something else altogether. We'll see how smoothly 'the brother's' trip goes, eh? I wonder if they have spare tubes? And Esther and Tracy are driving along with all their gear - pretty cushy if you ask me! So it will be better for me to have Doug's kids for a visit instead. And I really am very excited about that. It just kind of all got changed without anyone asking me but I am okay with the arrangement. It just wasn't a good time for me to be away from home for 5 days. But Drew gets to go and I really appreciate that. He will have such a good time with his uncles and Douglas.

I just got back from Calgary. I managed to sneak away for the long week end to visit my best friend, Ronni. Is it silly to be 40 and have a best friend? I don't care. We left Thursday afternoon and got home this evening. We had so much fun. We went to Calaway Park there for one day. We love Calaway Park. It is similar to Playland only I like it better. I am not much of a rides person, myself. I even tried a couple just to remind myself how much I hate them. I just hate being scared. Hate it. I only like the ferris wheel. So I was quite happy to go with Rhiannon on the kiddie rides. We did a lot of shopping there. Ronni lives right across the street from a Value Village which we spent 3 hours in. Kaetlyn got a tonne of stuff, I got some jackets and sweaters - a gorgeous leather jacket and Andrew managed to find some shirts and pants. He grew so much this summer he was in desperate need of pants now that shorts weather is coming to an end. We also made it over to the Cotton Ginny Outlet place where Kaetlyn and I made some good finds. I love shopping when you get so much for so very little. Then we brought home Rhiannon's wardrobe for the next 2 years courtesy of Meg. And Ronni and I visited and talked and talked and talked. It was exactly what I needed.

So that is the Chick update for now!