Wordless Wednesday - Glorious Fall

Weekend Wrap up

Another blur of a weekend without much downtime.......what is that anyway?

Single parenting Friday went relatively well.....got some of the gear we want for South Africa - security back pack, folding water bottles, quick dry shirts and some thermal undies for Europe on the way home!

We had dinner at our favourite pizza place on Main St (Trilussa) and David went to Chapel while Lindsay and I did some more shopping for the trip and some Christmas gift shopping.

That is a lot of shopping for me in one day.

Turns out I enjoy shopping using gift cards that have accumulated in my wallet since my birthday....in February..... MEC, Lulu, Crate and Barrel..... It's like free money!!

Saturday I dragged my tired butt out of bed to Jazzercise and was surprised to find Allan home when I got home! Yay for an early return from his conference.

I ran some errands for work including delivering a filing cabinet to the creepy storage unit.  Lindsay and I freak each other out as we each make faces at one another as though someone is behind us in the dimly lit, eerily quiet hallways.....EEEEK!

Lindsay did a little cart surfing on the way out......

 I got stuck into the jungle that was our veggie garden.....I am not sure what is worse - buying food and letting spoil or growing food and letting it spoil.  This I can tell you......we can grow mammoth Celery - like crazy long and crazy thick......and I learned that when it is that overgrown it is hollow in the middle and full of water...so if you should find yourself outrunning the zombies in a post apocalyptic world and needing water - find some massively overgrown celery and Voila..... you're welcome!

I managed to salvage quite a bit of celery and many, many leeks..... enough to make vegetable word art.....and then some.....5 freezer bags full actually.....and today I made leek and potato soup with our own potatoes too!  A small harvest of potatoes due to lack of attention....sigh.....we need to do better with the veggie garden next year......this was not our best year.

Saturday night David had a late soccer game downtown and we all went.  Its been a long time, well over a year, since I last saw Mr D play and WOW was I impressed.....he has quite the boot and is a tenacious defender!  And a good burst of speed when he needs it too!

It was a crisp but gorgeous Fall evening downtown and I was practicing using the BIG camera and I really enjoyed myself....... I had hoped to upgrade my beloved Canon point and shoot before the trip but its not to be so I am hoping to get better at wielding the Nikon DSLR...... low light / dark is still a challenge for me.....and action shots.....but I got some fun ones last night.

After soccer the whole team and parents went out for dinner  - a great way to celebrate a cup game win! Such a great little team with great coaches.

Although I had believed the fishing season was over I was apparently mistaken and Allan was up at the crack of Sunday for one last (?) cast of the rod with the fisherguys.  The kids and I managed to get through the logistics of Soup Sunday at church and had a quiet afternoon at home while the leek and potato soup bubbled away.

I sent various emails confirming things in South Africa as we approach the 30 days to go mark.....EEEEK and started to make firm plans for visiting the many many friends we have there.

And so as I wearily survey the week ahead it looks manageable and the lists are getting check off as we go.

Have a good week friends!

Freeze frame

If there had been a camera pointed at this door for the last 20 years it would have captured:

A young, lost, confused 20-something me trying to figure out how to live halfway across the world.

A delighted and pregnant me with Baby # 1

An exhausted and anxious me with tiny girl.

A tired me running after toddler girl

A tired me running running after toddler girl and growing baby # 2

A pregnant me figuring out how to do this a second time

A delighted me with a tiny boy in a car seat

A dazed me with tiny boy and "helpful" big sister

A me - from time to time through the preschool years trying to keep them from playing with the toys, or slumped on my chest sick

A me with fractured bones

A me with school-age children getting check-ups or flushed with fevers

And today a me with 2 teenagers getting check ups

I am SO grateful for one Doctor through all of the last 20 years who has helped me through all of these transitions.....who runs ridiculously late but always has enough time for me.... who errs on the side of caution... who seeks specialist help if she needs it.... who only ever yelled at me once!

She has celebrated the high moments with me, held my hand through some tough times, always been a sympathetic and intelligent physician.

 She cares about the whole of me and my family and we are so lucky to have her.

Are you my home?

I have been thinking a lot, mainly in the dark, awake hours, about the notion of "home".

I keep saying we are "going home" when I talk about our trip to SA and then as the words come out they feel discordant....wrong....my gut flips.  Then I get all wordy and complicated trying to retract without seeming like a crazy person.

This is home...... Canada..... right?  It's been 20 years....almost half my life....and yet...yet..... I cannot say it with utter conviction.

I feel split.

My Dad call himself Afro Canadian which brings puzzled looks and some hilarity from a very white dude with a mixed accent.

I don't know what to call myself.

I really want to be firmly "at home" somewhere...I want to belong to some place....I was not born to the gypsy life....I need roots.

I feel I have lost the right to be South African through time and distance.....I go back there with much mixed emotion.  I have never been back and I find as that day approaches I am increasingly full of emotion.

Emotion I am having trouble processing.

I have heard it said of immigrants that you have to go back to your homeland and return to your new land to feel "at home" in your new place.  I have heard many people testify to this truth and I see now I missed that step in my immigration process.  Now faced, by my own choice, with the reality of stepping back on African soil I feel a huge wash of emotion over me, tears at the ready... but why?

For what?

Certainly not regret.

I love the choice we made to come to Canada.  I love our life here.  I feel abundantly blessed to be living here and raising our children in this place.  I appreciate the liberty and peace and relative wealth and ease of life here.

I am curious how it will feel to be back in South Africa....to smell and hear and feel South Africa as it is today.  To return to places that hold tremendous significance in my personal history, places that will forever be part of my story wherever I live. To be with people who "get me" is a different way than friends here, who share deep history.  To reconnect to family, to have our children connect with their family they have lived so far from.  To see DNA trump distance....I hope.

Will it be healing?  Will it reawaken my African genes?

How will it feel to come back to Canada?

I don't know......about any of it..... and it scares me a little bit.

Ok... maybe more than a little bit.

Wordless Wednesday - Fogged IN

We have been fogged in for well over a week now - it is harder to photograph than you might expect....here are some iPhone pics......