Come Visit Anytime
Well, we are now in a new place, and with it, a new blog. Come visit anytime! The Fairy Mum is up and running, and we'd love to hear from you there. Cheers!
Well, we are now in a new place, and with it, a new blog. Come visit anytime! The Fairy Mum is up and running, and we'd love to hear from you there. Cheers!
Ah, it's been quite a week, leading up to today. Lots of "final" moments, many goodbyes. Last day of art class at school. Last walk up and down the hill from school. The School Board had a really sweet goodbye dinner for us at Tuscany, which included some lovely parting prizes for both Chris and I, including several photos from local photographer Claudia Schaeffer. The next evening Chris and I had the most wonderful dinner with dear friends at Blue Eyed Mary's, my personal favorite on Bowen. Incredible food, incredible friends. A blessing. Sunday saw us at church and a fabulous church potluck (these people can cook!). After a hard day of packing (while our kids were blissfully at a friends for a final playdate), we had dinner with friends on Bowen. Monday we spent the day packing like mad, Siena in school all day (to her great delight), Sterling quite sick at home in bed (really, Sterling, I'll let you go to school if you want, even though you are sick. No, Mom, I want to sleep). It was a crazy day, early to bed, so exhausted, so overwhelmed by what is left and what today means. And then here we are, on the day we will leave. It is almost more than can be borne.
Even in the midst of all our packing and frantic preparing to leave busyness, we made time for one last "first" on Bowen. The kids and I went to the library and got them their own library cards. Sure, we could have gotten these first cards anywhere we live, but it was somehow very important to me that they have this special moment on Bowen. It was nothing earth shaking - the lovely library volunteer had me fill out the forms, the kids waited with minimal pushing and excitement, they received their cards and each signed them (oh, the signatures, the sweet, sweet signatures). We weren't able to take any cards out with them - too close to leaving - but those precious cards are already packed away in their wallet (Sterling) and special box (Siena).
I was humbled. Moving this time is more than I can handle alone. So I sent out a "help me with childcare" email to my dear girl friends and my equally dear church. And the response...the blessing of a place like this. A friend from church - a business man turned poet, with kids past high school, offered to come to my house to help watch the kids this week. Another - again a lovely woman from church - emailed to say she had glitter pens and play doh dots (I don't even know what they are!) for Siena to enjoy. Siena doesn't know her well, but when I mentioned glitter, her eyes lit up and she said, I want to go there. Another morning freed up for me to focus on packing and moving. And my friends, all busy themselves, ready to take any and all the kids at a moments notice. Blessing is too mild a word for the gift they are all being to me.
Went to the mainland for the last time yesterday. It was a kind of spontaneous trip - for us there has never been much spontaneity in going onto the mainland, as it takes a fair bit of coordination with the kids and the ferry. Chris left for a week long screenwriting expo, and I needed to pick up boxes and packing tape for a weekend packing frenzy. So off I went...
Ah, the holiday season is beginning! We celebrated Thanksgiving Canadian style this past weekend. It is still a novelty to me, to be thinking about Thanksgiving before Halloween, and while the sun is still shining and the days warm and bright. Makes more sense in the harvest scheme of things, but not in the deeply ingrained cultural, Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November kind of way.