Glorious Day...even with sandy eyes!

Catchy title isn't it?

The summary is that I have been on high alert for 2 days waiting for the arrival of my 2 new grandbaby boys, as far as I know who will be named Anthony Roger and Micah Gabriel.

My sleep is not whelming over me as I would desire at a time such as this...this being the post arrival time.

The boys entered this wild and crazy world that we live in sometime after midnight. My poor gurlio Julia was so exhausted when I talked to her at 3 something dark a.m. that I only got the essential details. Imagine that! (smirking!)

My g'bb's both weigh 5 lbs 8 oz! How is that for fantastic? I am so excited, huh! Wonder if that is what is keeping my weary bleary sandy eyes from slumber?

At some point in the decent hours of the day Julia and Thomas will send me pictures of the newest in our DNA line. I look forward to that more than I can put into mere words. I have talked to 2 of my closest people, one of whom did not mind me waking him up and the other whom is across the globe and was sort of maybe thinking about preparing for a nights slumber herself.

Thank you Lord Jesus for the safe arrival of my g'bb's. Thank you also for being able to connect with someone at oh dark thirty . Thank you for sleep, and the speedy healing of my beautiful daughter's amazing body whom you enabled to nurture and deliver 2 beautiful little people. You are the most incredible phenomenon this world will ever know. Hallelujah.... Amen.

Okay Beloved, I will once more (3rd time!) try to encourage slumber before my trusty alarm goes off in less than 2 hrs. I will take all I can get!

Blessings and rest assured....there will be more... and photos :)

G'ma Rebes xo

Glory turns crazy and Hilarious!

Tuesday morning found me delighted to be outside in the glorious freshness of a new day. I had risen early, eaten a delicious breakfast and 2 cups of my exquisite organic fair trade dark roast French pressed coffee. It had poured rain overnight, thus the freshness of the day. Sunshine was peaking through between the left over clouds in the magnificent sky.

Hallelujah Lord, Thank you for your glory and beauty. Even as I deeply inhaled the air had a level of beauty all of it’s own.

Part of what I love about this time of year is that I get to wear my bright red goretex jacket. I love red. I love that jacket, it always makes me feel spry! ( wink, good word hey?! LOL!)

Usually I have my camera handy, there is a little word called ‘addiction’ that you could readily apply to my photo snapping, but I am okay with that. Snap, Snap, got a few great shots, now off to work.

Have you ever heard me mention how much I love to go to work? I LOVE to go to work! It doesn’t really feel like work (shhhhh, don’t tell anyone that I said that!) it feels more like, oh, social coordination, or visiting, or organizing ‘stuff’ – I love to organize ‘stuff’, or creating, there is a lot of creative stuff that happens at the L’Arche Outreach centre (which always needs volunteers by the way….250-334-8320…just sayin’!).

I arrived just in time to answer the phone, Christine called to ask me to turn on the heat in the boardroom. Sure, no problem , I can do that!

Upon arriving at the boardroom, I noticed that the lights would not go on, then as I turned the knob on the heaters there was no defining “click”. Hmmmm.

As I flicked the light switch inside my office upon arriving back inside the ORC, (outreach centre) there was NO light. All of a sudden I realized how flippen’ cold it was inside. Brrrrrrrrr! What is going on…..I always leave the heat on low?

Well, Christine got there and we started to investigate. For crying out loud, what is going on, no power in the L’Arche office or the ORC. Called Hydro, they have no clue why but will send someone over. The breakers are all fine and there is nothing obviously wrong.

Hydro arrived about an hour later, they sort of chuckled and said, “well, it’s no wonder you don’t have any power, someone stole your meter outside.” WHAT! We went out to look for ourselves. Can you believe it? Somebody snapped the little band that was securing the meter to the wall, and removed the meter! How mean! The Hydro fellows informed us that we were not the only ones who had our meters stolen that night. The Salvation Army and the Alano club also had the same thing happen. 3 non profit agencies that help people with needs. How disgusting. God please bless them because I am a little ticked right about now is what was going through my mind....actually I think my outside voice was activated at that point.

I had to cancel our afternoon painting class as it was SOOOOOOOO cold inside and it takes a very long time to heat up. I was not impressed, Christine had meetings scheduled all day and needed to print things off, I hadn’t been able to access the computer or use any of the phones as the power had been off for so long that the charge had died in the base. Oh so frustrating!

Fast forward 3 hours…. I still had no phone and no internet, there is some heat finally but I was hovering over the little oil core radiant heater that I have under my desk. Brrrr!

Christine said she had no heat and the lights weren’t working….someone else showed up and the two of them looked around the outside of the other office building. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? There is a separate meter on the her office building across the parking lot, they stole THAT one TOO!

Oh Come On!

The day was definitely disrupted, we were not thrilled, or very warm, so much to do this week to get ready for the Fiesta and we were still regrouping after our Big L’Arche Dinner Dance last Saturday.

Oh well, putting life in perspective, realizing that many things happen around the world every day that made our discomfort on Wednesday pale by comparison.

One little example…So, remember I started off by telling you how amazing the morning was and that I loved wearing my read jacket? Well! What I didn’t share earlier was that as I was walking briskly to my car from my front door, while very aware of the brilliant red colour of my jacket, I noticed a hint of purple out of the corner of my left eye. Preoccupied with the lovely day, I didn’t really give it much thought, until AFTER I snapped the photos and reached into my pocket for my keys. “What the heck is that? OH MY GOSH!!! Nooooooooooooooooooo! Please let it not be so….!” My jacket was hanging on my closet doorknob, right above my folded laundry in the basket….the Velcro on my jacket snagged the lovely delicate lace edge of my PURPLE UNDERWEAR!

Oh Man…. What a crazy day!

Thank you Lord for a terrific sense of humour! I am blessed richly! And now everyone else gets a great belly laugh! Happy reading Beloved!

Procrastination must DIE!

Okay, so that might sound a little dramatic... I was hoping to catch my own attention with that lead in!

Are you a procrastinator about anything? OR are you one of those people who just do each thing as it comes along and TA DAAA, it is all done and you never need to make a list?( this is a photo of me and my buddy Danny at the Faith and Sharing Retreat this summer, we did a spoof on AXE Body Spray!)

Pfffft! If you never need to make a list I need your cheat sheet! I find that sleeping comes easiest when I have a pen and paper near to my bed, so if I wake in the night with 'things' in my head, I can write them down, then I can sleep...for real.(this one is a photo of a small portion of the people who came to our housewarming a few weeks ago,we all wore crazy hats...I have a few! The party hosted about 70 ppl for which myself and Wayne did all of the food for, and I organized and we decorated, but Sue helped to decorate too!)

One of the things I have noticed in my post 30's portion of life, (yeah some of you can quit snickering now... you don't have a lot of room to snicker about!) that the only reason I ever feel BORED, is when I am procrastinating about doing something I don't really want to do.( Me and Manu getting some things organized for the party in the parking lot, many hands make light work, it is true...time for procrastination? NOT!)

Example #1:

There is a 5' x 5' storage unit up town that really needs my attention.... you will note that it is ONLY 5 little tiny feet by 5 more tiny little feet, sigh. May as well be 25 x 25 for the volume of brainspace it consumes. I have known more than one compulsive task master in my time ( you know who you are!) but as much as I wished for a tiny bit of it to rub off onto me...it never did. What the heck is that all about anyway?

Once those 'little' things are done that I don't really want to do, I am on easy street. Did I just say that? in my outside voice? Easy street?! Oy, where did that come from?

(this photo is of me making a MILLION tuxedo strawberries for a bbq in McLeary Washington last week... such a lazy bum!)

A few months ago, I was feeling a little ripped off by the circumstances in my life. I told a dear and wise friend about it, she chuckled and said, "Where in the world did you ever get the idea that your feet were supposed to land squarely on the ground and stay there for any amount of time!?" Okay, so she caused me to stop and think a little bit. It was good.

Another time I was asking God if I could just have a boring life for a day. Ya wanna guess what happened? Sheesh! Yup...it all cranked up... suppose the life I had been living up to that point HAD been the boring life... at least the one I was being allotted? Heaven forbid the people whose boring lives are more up in the air and wild than mine... who could stand it?(in this one I was at my dear, dear sistah-frenn's house and she had a hankering for cinnamon buns, so I whipped up a couple dozen...slackah!)

My thought life alone would do many people in! I have mentioned before that you do not even want to know how my mind twists and weaves and whirls and soars. NOT KIDDING!

It is all I know, so I am comfortable with it....

Interesting sidebar: Today, a friend/co-worker witnessed one of my very quick ( and funny I might add!) comebacks to a potentially less than wonderful moment in the office. She told me that she is always impressed with my speed of quick and usually quite uplifting remarks, she wishes she could be so quick thinking. My comment, and comfort, to her was, "But along with that 'gift' comes a whole pile of other things that you do NOT even want to know about! It is a package deal...sort of like when you get the family mansion but have to take the crazy old aunt and her 47 cats with it."

There is a reason why there is a saying something like, "Be careful what you wish for, you might actually get it."

On that note, I think I have successfully procrastinated my way to the "too late for tonight" portion of the list I am avoiding.

Whew, I was almost tempted to do something I don't want to in order to prevent another procrastination self-flagelation session. Got out of that just in time....think I will go watch a movie now.

NOTE: you must realize, if you have read any of my other stuff, that I can be a total hambone? I do struggle with procrastination in some areas, but I also have picked up a trick or two from the amazing "DOERS" in my life.

(Me finishing the decoration of the converted little boys room to HOCKEY ROOM>>>>just for love!)

Thanks friends, I am always able to learn valuable lessons from you and through you when I am willing. I love all of the opportunities I have to participate with you.... guess what... that storage unit? It doesn't have an expiry date! Whew!

Life as it happens, sometimes good, sometimes not so good.

Well, it has been quite a week.

I wasn't able to go to a old friends' brothers memorial this past Saturday as I already had an obligation out of town for the weekend. He was young, a father, a son, a brother, a friend, an uncle and a husband. Thursday evening I got a call that a lovely man, the father/father in law of very close friends had passed away unexpectedly. His memorial is this Saturday. Today I rec'd an email letting me know that a very dear lady who volunteers at my work has passed away and her memorial is on Thursday. Her passing is not completely unexpected, but sad for those left behind none the less.

What is it about getting a few years under our belts that seems to increase the ration of memorial invitations? Is it that we know so many more people or is it that time passes and it is just an inevitable part of life? I have pondered this for years.

Figuring it out isn't the goal, but understanding why has always been part of my thinking. DNA I suppose.
I have a strange affinity for death, dying, memorials, and funerals. There is no way to explain how this has come to be a part of my life. Even I do not understand it. My desire to support those in times of loss is huge. In 1986, when my aunt passed away in her 30's, I was 20 years old. It became apparent to me at that time that no matter how much people genuinely cared, there was nothing that they could say that was going to change the way I felt or bring a loved one back. It's true isn't it? Yet we strive, as humans (in general) to offer the very best of condolences, almost as if it will brighten someones day.
Hmmmmm, while I appreciate the gesture of compassion, it usually seems to fall a little flat of what the intention behind it was. While we are grieving, in the early stages, when it is still raw and ragged, really all most of us want to do is just hunker down and hide out, or snuggle under big duvets and sleep, or tune out via television or movies... or maybe sort through our loved ones personal effects, languishing in the memories and heart stirrings that are prompted by a smell or a photo, or the feel of something left behind.Not for a moment am I suggesting that we should not reach out, no matter how awkwardly, with a hand of compassion, a tender look, a loving word, or even food. I am merely trying to acknowledge the reality of what these situations create.
Stirrings of emotion, or even whelms of emotion, insane laughter sometimes, desperate tears and anguish other times. One may follow closely upon the heals of another with out warning. We may feel foolish, or angry, relieved or sad. Although we may laugh, I do not have a personal experience of being happy in these times. Deep seated joy may reside within us upon reflection of special times, when the one we loved was well and we shared something together that caused us to reflect upon that joy.
It is an exhausting week for many in our Valley, 3 families that I know of in particular are suffering the aftermath of loss even as I type this.

My heart goes out, sincerely, to the families of Chris, Bob, and Lorraine. May God cover them all with His peace that passes all understanding. Oh let them have moments of reflection of that deep seated joy I was referring to, enough to allow them to come through to the other side of the pain. In the mighty name of Jesus, I cry out for them. Beloved, let us love one another. We all have our gifts, let's use them to bless those that are hurting right now. Even if it feels unnatural....stretch out your hands. You may be surprised to realize a blessing of your own when you do.

Bless you my friends.

Love in a Bucket

Have I ever shared my Bucket Theory with you? some of you will have heard it for sure. I have about 5 mins before I need to carry on with the rest of my wildly crazy busy weekend.

So the Bucket Theory has been in my life for many years, at least ten I think. Oh wait, more, 13? Long enough for me to think of it familiarly...and fondly.



We have only one life on this earth. If you look at it like a Bucket, it is easy to see that only so much can fit into the Bucket. We choose what we put into it. We can fill it with all kinds of so-so stuff .....leaving no room for the incredible, amazing and awesome things that are just waiting to fill our Buckets... or we can leave room. Wait. Don't just fill.
Recently my Bucket tipped over, everything that was in there got sloshed around and some of it spilled out.

Guess what? God has put some pretty crazy fantastic breath taking stuff in there since then.
One of the things is my Beloved, all of you. I recognize that I, at 45 years of age, have been blessed with the priceless gift of LOVE. All of the people in my life who love me, show me love, speak love to me, write me love on my FB wall, in emails, via text, hug me, share with me, are real with me, you are all my priceless Gift.
Hallelujah for revelation of the priceless gifts available to me , I believe as a result of trusting and obeying the leading of my Great Big God, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thank you Beloved for being in my Bucket, it is full and doth runneth over at times, wow.


P.S.
These exquisite roses were a love gift from my beautiful friend Claire in June.....tears well in my eyes at the beauty behind such gifts.

In Light of New Friends

Life has been happening steadily since my last post. There have been a few inquiries as to when I would resurface. Well... here I am! As far as new material goes, there has been no shortage. Many of your heads would spin just in the retelling of my daily adventures, let alone the living the really wild stuff. I am here to be your buffer. Oh don't I make the mundane of life sound wonderful? Ha ha ha!

I have made a new friend and that relationship is what prompted me to write a more current blog story. Fathers day was great and all but really- June? More than a few days ago for sure! (I Love you Dad!)

Since my last post many big things have happened in my daily life. The biggest and most exciting of which is my twin grand-boys! Seriously! Julia is having twins and we know they are boys. I am so excited. I was sharing with my friend today that as I watch her, and feel the babies move from inside of her beautiful burgeoning tummy, my heart wells up and comes right out of my eyes. True story!

My other children are all very excited. This is a big event for all of us. First grandbabies, first nephews, first Great grand babies. Wow. God is so good, we are blessed. Okay so maybe we are still reeling a little, but we know we are blessed none the less.

I have been spending quite a bit of time with friends lately who have 3 boys, all under the age of 10. They are beautiful, lively, and ALL boy. While I was over there this morning I mentioned to their mom that I could just see the time when the twins are about 5 yrs old and they are looking to her boys as the heroes and role models... how amazing that is going to be. As a parent, I have seen so many layers of this process. So now I am looking forward already to the next layer.

In my office I have 2 pairs of Crocs, size 6 months, they are hanging beside the art cards that we have for sale. Many a conversation has begun with , "whose are these?" Oh, let GiGi (double gramma) tell you about these cute little crocs! and on my desk are 2 pairs of the cutest little socks with little bear faces on them, they are formed with cardboard support shaped like little feet, on the top of each of them is a little tiny hat. Can you say CUTE!? I am hooked. Before they even arrive I am in love with them. Praise God for His perfect timing... I certainly hadn't entered this on my calendar yet! I actually blogged sometime ago that I might be ready in 10 years... okay, so I have adjusted my calendar! Bring 'em on.... I am ready.

The people who already know me are not surprised at my enthusiasm...but for those who don't know me, you may wonder how I can be so excited when not all of the details in this "fairy tale" are perfect.

Hmmmmm, could it be that I recognize that we are only in control of so much in our wordly lives? and the rest is given to us for us to choose how to embrace it or not? I choose embrace. I choose Love no matter what. I love these babies. Thank you Jesus! Oh I wish I could describe my emotions effectively in words. You would squirm!!

I have 4 children, and to be quite honest, having any children was not at the top of my "wanna do" list. Over the years I have commended God for saving my life by giving me these 4 incredible miracles. They have saved me time and time again. Just by being. Hallelujah! by Loving those little beings that came from within my broken and battered physical body, I have realized a capacity to love that I could never have known.

The end of my sharing today is followed with a photo of me and my "little" brother Kelly. The funny part is that Kelly is 2 yrs, 2 mos & 11 days younger than I am... but at this point he is about 10 inches taller! This photo was taken in about 1969, we lived in Victoria, B.C. My amazing and loving mumma woke us from a nap to shine for the photographer. This is the DNA line that precedes my grandboys. It makes me happy and it makes me smile as I recapture the memories. Family...isn't it just the most incredible gift? Not always what we think we want, not always easy or what we would choose....but oh, how unforgettable. I am thanking my Great Big God. A gift I may not have chosen. Priceless. Thank you Jesus. I love my family. Unconditionally. Forever.

Happy Fathers Day Dad!

Can you believe it is Fathers Day tomorrow? Blink....time just flies..is it my age? or is this phenomenon happening to every other person around the globe also?

I will dig back into my memory for my very favourite time with my dad.

The age I was during the time of this memory is very vague to me at the moment.... maybe 7 yrs old? We were camping in our truck and camper, with our good friends the McKinney's. Jim and Linda were really good friends of my mum and dad, hunting/fishing buddies actually. They had 2 boys, Grant and Paul. G was my age and P was my brother Kelly's age, or very close anyway. My geographical memory is void of any particular point on the map, but the event is VERY clear.

We were trout fishing at a lake somewhere on Vancouver Island. Trout fishing had already become one of my favourite pastimes by the age of 7. It remains so to this day...close to 38 years later...oops, telling on myself again!

For some reason my brother was not out in the boat with us, the only people I really remember out their were Jim, my dad, and me. This may not be accurate, bear with me...the cobwebs also serve as clear memory blockers!

We had been out in the boat for quite some time, I remember this as I had had utilize "the coffee can"...yeah, boat lingo for "biffy"! A distinct recollection is being aware of how unfair it was that the males in the boat could so easily express themselves (smirk) by just standing at the front of the boat and letting loose! Today there is a phrase that resembles "***** envy" ...LOL...I think you get the idea.

As far as my memory serves, and on this I am POSITIVE...I was the only one in the boat to catch any fish. Darkness was falling, rain was falling, and I was slaying trout! WOO HOO! Good times.

Eventually we found our way back to ground zero, I felt victorious. What a great experience. In that moment, a stone was laid solidly in the foundation of my life.

Through out the years we spent a lot of time out in the bush, or at black powder rendezvous, climbing down the side of many a dirt road or highway to get to a potential fishing spot.

Those are the memories I cherish. That is the gold I store up.

My daughter is expecting my first grandchildren, yes that was plural. Twins, we know that one is a boy for sure, the other one was a little more discreet... so for now...baby A and baby B. I look forward with great anticipation to sharing that story and others with them. It is part of the legacy I hope will carry on. There is a very good chance of that happening since their mum's dad is also a great outdoorsman.
(this photo is a couple of years old...my daughter Julia (mum to be), Me, my daughter Chelsea, and my dad)
Gratitude for those priceless moments, that have paved the way for other priceless moments to come~that is what I am thinking about today.

Thanks Dad, I love you.