Girls

Sometimes, I forget how nice it is to just hang out with friends, laugh, be silly, chat and then sleep over too. I went to Hannelle's place yesterday after work and hung out with her, Lisa, Jen (Hannelle's roomie) and Bonnie. Bonnie is getting married today and just because I crash at her place when I stay here I ended up crashing there with all the wedding planning and all. It's pretty crazy there but not as crazy as Amy's wedding was. It's smaller and on a Friday night. I'm looking forward to it. It's been a good 24 hours so far already. I'm REALLY looking forward to tomorrow and having the girls all come to my place. They are so excited to see my gardent and that makes me excited.
In the realm of bad news... I think my dog got herself knocked up. It was under Dan's watch though so I'm not taking responsibility here.
Time to go make a pile deviled eggs for the wedding.

Just one pic

Mom posted this online so I stole it from her to give you all a peak at the garden. This is my mom in the garden. Her and Dad came over and rototilled the garden. Mom did a lot of weeding too.

Sorry, no pictures yet

So here's my dilema. I have a ton of pictures (especially ones of the beautiful garden) on my memory stick but there isn't a port on the computers here at the library for a memory stick. So, I could burn all the pictures on a disc with my computer at home and bring that here but isn't that a waste of cd's? Maybe I'll still manage it once in a while with a trip to Redeemer, my parents or Dan's parents.
I'm in the middle of registering for my courses at Tyndale. I was excited for starting a program at a new school that would hopefully not be as messed up as Redeemer. The whole administration and registration departments at Redeemer were so frustrating. Add the business office to that. You could spend hours running from department to department trying to solve one tiny problem because of all the B.S. Even professors were screwed around by them. I know that prof. Stephenson ended up buying her own bookshelves in the office because someone had ordered the wrong size. How retarded is that?! Well, so far, it turns out that Tyndale isn't going to be any less of a headache. Here's my first wall I've run up against: my program guide shows that I have 10 courses I have to take each year. There is a max. of 4 courses that I can take each semester so that leaves 2 more to be taken .... when? Well, there is a one week intensive called intersession when some courses are offered. This is for the first week in January (This year it starts Jan. 2 already!). Well, all the 6 courses that are offered during intersession are none of the courses that I need!!! So that leaves summer courses. Well they don't have even a draft ready or thought of for which courses they will be doing next semester. So you tell me how I'm supposed to plan out and register for 8 of the 10 courses I need in the next year when I don't know the courses I can make up in the summer!!!!!ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Soooo frustrating. I did find out that there is one distance ed. course that I can start taking right now that will count as this past summer and so I can take 4 in Sept. yet. The problem with that is in need the $990 to pay for it first before they give me the handy dandy CD that the course is on (no internet needed, cool eh?). I know things will work out though. They have through the last 5 years at Redeemer. And life is good right now. My garden is really starting to produce. I've got zuccini, yellow wax beans, broccoli and peppers that I've already started eating. Well, I haven't actually eaten the pepper yet but it's ready and picked. I've frozen 3 large bags of broccoli and it's almost done now. The cauliflower is about ready to go too.
Mom and Dad came over last Thurs. to rototill the garden and it looks amazing!! It was so wonderful to have all those people come on Friday (for the engagement party) and have something to show them. I would have been embarrassed if I had to excuse all the leftover weeds that I hadn't picked yet since mom W. came over. I got so many comments and was even doing tours of my strait rows with the lantern when it got dark. The party was great. There were tons of people there. Over 60 at least. Because there were so many people, they all ended up splitting up into groups and so the people that knew e/o of course ended up sticking together. That ended up in a pretty cliquy party but they all seemed to be having fun so that worked out. Silly me, I didn't get any pictures. We had mom and dad Z's tarp up so there was lots of shelter and shade from the crazy heat. The lights looked good all strung up and we had some candles around. Unfortunately this led to the most horrible onslaught of mosquito's. Maybe i've had worse in one evening before in my life but it's not likely. Some people (with babies) even went home because they just weren't letting up. I hope mosquito spray doesn't turn out to be cancerous because we were all swimming in it (even though it didn't really work).
I saw a flyer in our mail yesterday offering wireless internet to rural areas for $50 a month. This doesn't include installation and a whole bunch of fees, I'm sure. I thought about it for a sec and then threw out the ad. It was tempting though.
That's all for now.

Look, I can do this

It hasn't even been a week and look... I'm blogging again. It is definately harder to blog at the Library. The ladies are whispering, giggling and gossiping in front of me, a mother with a few kids walked by stinking of diapers and one of them just started screaming. Those of you who have the internet at home, count your blessings!
Dan and I are having a big engagement party at our place on Friday and I'm getting excited about it. I think Mom W. is more nervous than excited but I think it'll be a blast. I'm probably more excited about having people over and showing our place to them. The garden looks 50x better this week then it did last week. Mom W. came over for a visit but dragged me to the garden to pull out the giant weeds that had taken over. I still have lots of weeding to do between the rows but I don't think that will ever end. I weeded between the wax beens, leeks and tomatoes today. They really needed it. The onions that I planted didn't really come up (unless you count the four that are struggling on different sides of the garden). I've already cut two broccoli heads and have two more even bigger ones just about ready. One of my cauliflower's is almost totally eaten :( but the ones beside it don't look so bad. The wax beens look great! While weeding I saw a few small ones that look like tiny green beens still but their coming. The leeks don't look like much but mom warned me that they don't really look great until Aug. sometime. The tomatoes definately need staking really good now. I think I have more roma tomatoes than I wanted but I don't know yet. They just look like roma's now but they are still small and green. Mom gave me a few extra plants that I planted just for the the heck of it but don't really eat. Both the zuchinni and eggplant look great. They are growing great and i'm already trying to get rid of zuccini... and I don't like either vegetable. I think the first planting of corn is ready because i can see the hairy looking stuff and some of it is even growing brown already. The second planting looks good but the third planting, which i did at an unbelievably late date (July 1) is growing like crazy. It's only been 10 days and I can easily see them all growing inches by the day. (If I were at home writing this, I would pause to get a glass of water or a cup of tea, but, alas, I will continue with a dry mouth)
At one point yesterday, Dan went outside and called Chloe to him. She was running over and then went back to pick something up and then ran to Dan. She dropped something at his feet as if so proud of what she found... what was it? A potato!!! That's right! She was digging in the garden and dug up one of my potatoes. :( I freaked! Luckily she was only digging at the edge of the garden and only slightly uncovered one other small potato. I think they are ready though. Mom and Dad are going to come over with the tarp for the party on Thurs. or Friday so mom said she will give me some more tips then. I left my memory stick at Hannelle's otherwise I would be taking some good pictures of the garden.
Dan came home from work an hour early today. I guess he had something in his eye last night already (not that I knew of) but by the time he came home his eye was all red and watery. He tried all sorts of things to get rid of it but nothing worked. He thinks it's embedded. The speck is on the colour part of his eye. So... we went to the hospital in town here and I left him in the emerg. to see what they can do about it. He's slightly worried because his co-worker just had this and they had to put a needle in his eye to freeze it before they could get it out. eeahahahghha I'm so disgusted. I don't think I'm being much of a support right now. I'll have to take him out for icecream after for my Oma Moeke's birthday (a tradition of having icecream on my great-grandmothers birthday). So that's my news for the week.
I just finished reading a book called "Fall on your knees" and I just picked up new novel. I forget what this one is called though. I have "The Kite Runner" waiting on my dresser for when I'm done this one. I'll have a report for you all soon with news of how the party went soon.

I'm at home so I'm drinking wine...

This time I'm not going to have too much. We're heading to the folk festival soon (as soon as Cass gets here) and it's too expensive there so I'm sure I'll quit then. Mom is setting up her own kind of blog and I've been trying to help her out but between the wine and my distance from the internet for so long it has been a hard time. We finally got a picture up and a new template so we're on our way for today.
Last week Hannelle and I went to get her hair cut. I was so excited that she asked if I could be there with her. The thing is, it wasn't just any hair cut. For the last 4-5 years she has been growing her hair, not colouring it and just putting up with the long hair so that she could donate it to be made into wigs for people with cancer. It was awesome. I was so cool to see her do what she's been threatening to do for so long. We have an amazing hair dresser from David Church Associates, Alisha, who is AMAZING. Hannelle has wonderful hair but doesn't really like it when it's short. She had all sorts of complaints about her hair when it was short but Alisha worked her magic and cut a gorgeous, hot, chic haircut. I LOVE it. We took all sorts of pictures but she has the memory stick so I can't post them... I will sometime though.
It's 4:00 and we have to go to the folk festival yet for the night. We still haven't had lunch yet and Sammy Souvlaki's is waiting for us so..... Time to go. More to come.....

Happy Birthday, Mom!!!!

Today is Mom Wikkerinks birthday. And what a day. Thanks to Larissa or we would have accidentally forgetten (sorry mom!!, it was a crazy weekend). It was good that she reminded us because here we are (using their internet... oh for wireless internet access... again). There's lots of us here enjoying mom's cake and goodies. mmm.
I had such an adventure yesterday and today. You know, one of those experiences that I can't wait to tell the future children about. My Oma and Opa slept over last night. They haven't even slept over at their own children's place before. It started on Monday night. Oom Andy and Tante Anneke (my Oma's sister and brother-in-law) went on a road trip with my grand-parents. I have so many relatives and friends of my grandparents out this way. I had no idea. So they used the long weekend to go visiting. At around 5:00 their van broke down about a 5 min. walk from our new house. For some reason they didn't think of calling us first. They called Tante Anneke's son who lived 45 min. away to come and pick them up but... oops, they forgot to mention that Oma and Opa were with them. So their son came with a tiny car with room for 2 extras. Tante Anneke had to go home (2 hours away) to get some her meds. but Oma, for some reason, had an extra days supply of Opa's meds. Oma called mom, and in the end got my phone number... and ta-da.... we got an out-of-the blue sleep over with my grandparents. I was super relieved to know that I actually have a spare bedroom with a really great mattress and even a bathroom in the bedroom on the main floor. I didn't have to make them sleep on the pull-out bed that is embarrassing to even sit on. I had just gotten a (free and great) couch that week so at least I had good furniture to sleep on. Isn't that so neat? I had my grand-parents crash at my place. I was a little embarrassed though. Dan said I was over reacting but I just felt that we weren't hospitable enough. My Opa has pretty advanced Parkinson's disease and had a hard time getting through the house here and there. We have a few steps and I've never actually noticed how low my couch is. There was a big kershmozel with the van actually getting fixed and to make a long story short, I saved the day, got the van to the right garage where it got fixed nice and quickly and ended up driving the 1.5 hours to drop Oma and Opa off at home (and then the same trip back home). What a day. But also what an experience. I'm glad I got time with them. They were able to see our new place, my gigantic garden (with a few suggestions to try weeding the garden more often... oops) and they got to have eggs for breakfast the next day!!
So, happy birthday mom!! We love you. Thanks for all the support and prayers.