Morning Visitor

This morning after my shower, I thought I would check to see if it rained on the clothes I had hung out the night before...imagine my surprise when I saw our visitor. A lovely skunk was sniffing around our back yard. Quite honestly I have only ever seen them squashed on the side of the road. Graham got out of bed to take a peak. I checked to see if Mike had left yet so he wouldn't freak it out...anyway, Mike threw a rotten pear at it and it kind of looked at him like "ah, you throw like a girl..." so I yelled out and told it to go home...off he scampered into the woods...hope he's not there tomorrow...I'm not much of one for wildlife in the yard.

The kiddies headed back to school last week. It's their last year "ever" (as Elysia informed me) in the same school. I think the school gods were laughing when they assigned them the same lunch hour, so they are both in the cafeteria at the same time..."shoot me now" is how Elysia voiced her opinion of it...she seemed to have no problem sending her lunch container home with him though, so I informed her that Graham was not her mule and I discussed respecting each other's spaces...yeah, right, good in theory, I am sure I will hear more of it as the year goes on.

They both seemed happy with their new teachers and the kids in their classes.

We went to Heart Talk on the weekend. It's a conference put on by the Heart Centre at the IWK. There are programs for the kids during the day (Graham's group went on the Harbour Hopper) and then they have lectures, etc for the parents. We learned a great deal, they talked alot about transitioning from a children's facility to adult care and how alot of times, men in particular don't take proper care of their condition, so they gave us ideas of how to prepare them for that...I said that I cannot imagine the day Graham goes to the cardiologist and I am not allowed in the room and I ask him how it went and I get a simple "fine"...AGH! The Heart Talk can get to you though because I find it's a little of the "my kids was sicker than your kid"...some parents tend to dominate any discussion with what went on in their case. They had a few younger people talk to the parents, adults and one teenager to discuss what it is like from their perspective, they were really good.

On Friday night we went up to stay with Patti and Tim so we didn't have to leave so early for the Heart Talk. It was alot of fun. It gave Elysia an opportunity to visit some of her Halifax friends. Mike, Graham and I had a nice visit with Patti, Tim and the boys. Keegan and Hayden are getting big and they seemed to enjoy having Graham there. Mike and I had a good laugh when we went to bed. Patti had been so worried about us being cold sleeping downstairs, we had to tell her not to turn on the electric stove and then we realized there were polar fleece sheets on the bed (Mike cannot stand them)...I think Patti and Mike are on complete opposite ends of the hot/cold scale! Wish our visit had been longer, I think we will have to do that again.

We hustled back to get ready for the big storm on Sunday, made sure we had propane and there was water in the cooler...anyway, the storm was a bit of a dud down here, sure we had some rain and thunder but nothing near what they had predicted. I was more worried about my sunflowers getting knocked down than anything. I have grown alot of sunflowers this year, some are as high as the gutters on the house (see the picture).


Mike hates them, he thinks they are too tall for the front of the house, I love them. Maybe next year I won't grow them as high out front but I will sure plant more varieties, I think they are like a ray of sunshine.

Work is still the same...YUCK! Aw well, it makes me laugh so that's a good thing!