LineaLanoie's Weblog

The picture uploads seem to have a glitch.  Have to go to work but I will reload them later.

Update – loaded the pictures by ftping them.  Some glitch in the prairie fusion uploader?  Likely I am doing some little thing wrong but I don’t know what it is.  Anyway – see below for the pictures.

I have never been to a wedding before where in order to entice the bride and groom to display their kissing skills, one had to swallow a goldfish live.  But Hey – it was their wedding and they are kind of crazy! 

The mother of the groom did it.  But the mother of the bride(my sister) would not meet her challenge.  I think she said something to the effect of – “We can see them kiss some other time.  There is no way I’m doing that!”

So it was a fairly unique wedding in some ways! 

We had fun.  Lots of relatives and visiting and cousins having fun. 

And this one is especially for her dad. 

Today felt like spring.  It was warm and the sun was shining.  The trees are budding out although it is still too early for leaves.  And the days are getting so long.  Almost 9 now and the sky is light still.  Golfing has begun so in the house the TV is silent.  This is my favorite time of year.  The mosquitos are just beginning to show themselves so it is nice to sit outside almost bug free. 

I went for a walk along the river tonight and then just sat for awhile on the riverbank.  Just watching the water; listening to the geese; watching the sunset and the three brilliant white jet streams streaking across the pink orange of the sky.

I’m glad nature is so beautiful.  It helps me hold on to the fact that there is more order and normalcy in my world than I think some days.  Maybe not in the little world of me but out in God’s big universe.  Some days life seems pretty confusing for me and my own reactions seem off kilter.  I react in ways I least want to.  There seem to be too many days when it seems like God has so much work to do on changing me to any sort of likeness of himself.  

It’s a good thing this relationship with him doesn’t depend on my efforts.

I have a niece getting married this weekend in Regina.  Her mother, my sister and her husband are working in Egypt for a sabbatical year so are taking a one week leave to get her married off.  They are packing a lot of things into this one week.  Today they all came up to visit my dad who will not be able to travel to Regina to attend the wedding.

We were able to bring supper in and spend a couple of hours with dad.  It was good seeing my little sister again too.

This is going to be a fun wedding.  They have to wait till Bingo is done on Friday night to decorate the hall – I suspect the place is “reasonably priced.  We were told the ceremony would be very reverant and the party after would be very fun.  I think it will be. 

Well, today was pretty much it for pushing the deadline for paying the old taxes.  Penalties start to accumulate as of tomorrow.  So that is how part of our afternoon was spent – signing papers and signing cheques.

We also are amazed at how these things seem to work out.  And so we talked about that a bit.  We are still not achieving our goal of a 10% tithe – at least not in our receipted giving.  It is hard to judge these things as we don’t really know our income until things have been tallied up at the end of the year.  So we mentioned to our accountant that we are still not giving as much as we would like to.  I think Leo put it “still robbing God a bit”.  She assured us that we do a whole lot more than some.  But I guess that is not the point – just to do better than some.  So that is one of our challenges for the coming year. 

Between taxes, tithing and RRSP contributions, it seems that there is little left to live on some months.  We live in an “opulent state of poverty” as my hubby would say.  I think we have just been abundantly blessed.  We have never once not been able to pay those darn taxes.  Sometimes the ways the money shows up at the last minute are so obviously God providing that it is fairly humbling.

This morning I got to help serve breakfast to about 24 Junior High kids at the church.  They had been up all night – Twelve Hours of Madness – in preparation for Junior High Jam in Alberta.  It helps them get to know each other a bit.  Saskatchewan is a big place and Covenant Churches are a long ways apart so these kids don’t get together very often.  They were a very quiet bunch this morning.  Being up all night quiets even the best. 

One thing I noted – some of the kids thanked us for the food.  Not all of them.  It was nice to hear the “thank you’s”.  They were not expected from the kids – at least by myself.  Just a simple thing but it felt good.

Then I went over to the Mayors Prayer Breakfast.  It was better than I expected.  Well, the food was nothing to write home about, just pretty ordinary hotel breakfast fare, but the words spoken were unexpectedly good.  I have always been pretty critical of the mayor but his story impressed me more than I thought it would.  Maybe this kind of public exposure of his faith will provoke him to exercise his faith more visibly in his role as mayor.  Not in a falsely pious sort of way but on some issues his stance has not come across as “christian” at all, in fact sometimes he seems on the opposite side of what is generally considered the public good.  But no matter what, I will be less harsh in judging him.

Today a milestone was passed.  My household has no more student drivers!!  She passed.  Her only restriction is to wear her glasses.  Only lost 8 points.  She did the wrong sequence of signal, shoulder check, then change lanes a couple of times and did not end up parallel to the curb at the end of her park.  Not bad for someone who can’t back out of our driveway yet.

Our driveway is the litmus test for reverse driving.  First of all, my little CRV has to be backed out of the garage.  This requires a  slight turn in order to get past the porch steps and around the corner of the house.  Then the driveway is a fairly narrow one to negotiate.  While passing the house, another slight adjustment has to be made, keeping the vehicle parallel to the house till past the little part sticking out, turning towards the house again to avoid ending up in the neighbors yard.  If another car is parked in the extra parking space by the front step you must avoid running into that as well. 

She can now do this but it takes several retries and about ten minutes.

But she can now try it on her own and I do not have to endure the ten minutes patiently sitting in the passenger seat trying to give good advice.

She is so glad she got her license now.  September brings in a new graduated license with a bunch of restrictions on new drivers for the first couple of years.