Nails, Knitting, and Soccer

Today I went and had a manicure. I usually don't get manicures because a day or two into having my nails painted the polish starts chipping off. Even polish that's suppose to last 14 days only lasts me 3 or 4 days. But this time I went with the shellac polish. I chose a fairly neutral colour so that if it should start to chip it won't show up as much.

It's a nice light grey colour and goes well with the red I chose for my toes. I just chose regular polish for my toes because they seem to do better than my fingers, probably because I'm not constantly washing my feet like I do my hands. :-)  Anyway, I will be documenting my shellac nails from now until my next appointment in two weeks to see how they hold up. I'm rough on my hands, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

I remembered today to take some pictures of my knitting projects. This is a cowl called Song of the Sea and I'm using my Sip-n-Stitch yarn for it. The pattern is suppose to look like waves, starting with small ones and then moving to medium and finally ending with large waves.

I'm also working on a shawl with some silk yarn that I got from Belfast Mini-Mills here on the island. The shawl is interesting because every other row you increase one stitch so you end up with a swirling curve. I tried to get a picture of this but it's tough because it's getting big. I like the lace sections that come in between the garter stitch sections. It ends with a lacy section and has a fancy edging. I'll get there eventually!

Last night S had her first summer soccer session. She and some of the other girls on our street are signed up although she ended up on a different team than her friends. But she has a classmate and a fellow rink rat on her team so she's happy. The people running soccer this year are so much more organized than last year. Last year all the kids got white shirts but this year each team has it's own colour shirts. Also, they only had six of the 12 teams come at a time so there seemed to a lot less chaos going on. They had two teams per field with a coach and a tween/teen assistant to help them. This allowed the coach was able to work with one team teaching them a skill while the assistant worked with the other team playing a fun game. Overall, I was very impressed with how the first practice went. I hope this continues through the rest of the summer.

Tomorrow I have not one, but two dentist appointments. One is a check-up to see how things are going now that my cursed tooth is out. The other is to see if the lab made my night splint correctly. I've been sticking to the plan that the hygienist gave me at my initial cleaning so I expect she will be happy with how my mouth is doing.  I'll find out tomorrow!

J is for Jump!

Surprise, surprise! This morning I received an email telling me that the trampoline was ready for pickup. I was sure that I wasn't going to ever get that email so I had planned to go over to the store today and look for one. Now I don't have to. I figured the box was going to be either too heavy and/or too large for me to move by myself so I made the wise decision to go to the grocery store before going to pick it up. I chose wisely because the silly thing is heavy! Luckily two strong guys carried it to my car and loaded it for me. C was able to slide it out onto the garage floor by himself and then 'walk' it across the floor. It will get put together this weekend.

I also received a call today from S's school. The administrators met with the parent of the boy causing trouble on the bus. They decided it was best for everyone if they moved him to a different bus for the rest of the year. I am happy with the decision and I know my neighbour, whose daughter was the main focus of his attention, is happy with the decision too. She was going to pick her daughter up from school today but when her daughter found out the boy wouldn't be on the bus today she decided to ride the bus home. I'm very pleased with how seriously the principal, vice-principal, and teachers at the school took this incident and I made sure that they knew that I was happy with the way things turned out.

S starts summer soccer tomorrow - provided it doesn't rain! She is a little disappointed she's not on a team with her friends from our street but she does have another friend (a fellow rink rat) and a current classmate on her team. Also, there is another boy on the team whose name sounds familiar so I think it might be a classmate from preschool last year. The people running soccer this year decided to split the teams up into two time slots and it is a good decision. There will only be 6 teams on the field at a time rather than the 12 teams they had last year. It should keep the chaos down to a minimum, I hope.

This evening I decided I wanted grilled chicken for supper. Last time we grilled C gave me a lesson in how to start the fire since I really hadn't done it before. Well, tonight I did most of it (with a little help from C). See, fire!

And since I forgot to post this last week, here's the fire in the fire pit.

Last night we decided it was a bit too cold out to sit by the fire pit. There was a freakin' frost warning for last night! In June. Sigh. We stayed in and watched some TV and I got a lot of knitting done. Tonight isn't suppose to be as cold, so we may have to go light up a fire after the kids go to bed. Maybe tonight we'll break out the Smores kit. :-)

It's My Birthday!

Today is my birthday, although we did most of the celebrating yesterday since the kids had school today. C and J picked out a pretty ruby and diamond necklace and earrings for me and S gave me chocolates (can't go wrong with that!). And my neighbour got me some cool graphic novels, Fables, some delicious chocolate-strawberry tea, and some black truffle almonds. It's suppose to rain tomorrow afternoon so I'm thinking I'll curl up with a cup of tea, nibble on some almonds, and read my graphic novel.

I did a little redecorating today. The shower curtain in the kids' bathroom was 10 years old and I decided it was time to replace it. I chose one that looks like a sail from a sailboat. I bought some new bathmats and a new toothbrush holder for the kids. It's a simple makeover but the new shower curtain seems to brighten up the room. The kids were a little sad I took down the old shower curtain - it had puppies and kitties on it. But since that bathroom is also used by visitors I decided it was time to make it a little more grown-up. I'll look through C's maritime-themed photos and see if there's if I can find something to frame and hang up in there - like a crab or a lobster, something fun like that.

S was recovered enough from her cold to go to school today. She was happy because it was her special helper day - she missed her helper day in February and March because she was sick both times. She took two books that she knows how to read for her show-n-tell and got to read one to the class. Our neighbour didn't go to school today because S managed to pass pinkeye to her. Her mom sent me a message this morning asking for symptoms of pinkeye and then a photo of her daughter's eye. I felt so bad that S managed to pass pinkeye to her friend. I checked in with her mom this evening and she said that M is already getting better and will be back to school tomorrow. I'm glad she's getting over it quickly!

S had soccer this evening and she had fun, as always. This spring session has a lot of kids in it so the coach was smart and got three other guys to help him run the drills. That way there's only 5-7 kids in each group and they get more attention from the coaches. She is getting good at dribbling the ball although she is still hesitant to get in there and kick the ball during their little scrimmages. I'm hoping that the more she plays the less hesitant she'll be.

I received a new clue for my Outlander MKAL over the weekend and the newest clue for the Solar Flare MKAL today, so I have lots of knitting to do. I'll try to post some update pictures tomorrow!

Spring is Slowly Coming

Spring is slowly coming and that is good. It is still light out at almost 7:30 at night. I like the extra light now but as it stays lighter later, it does make it harder to convince the kids they have to go to bed on time. Once school is done in a few months they can stay up late, but for now they need to keep to school hours.

I saw other signs of spring today when we were out for a drive. The geese have started to come back to the island. I'm sure they are thinking WTF is all this snow still doing here, why did we come back already. Don't worry geese, soon the snow will be gone. At least that is my hope! We also saw places where streams and rivers that had been frozen over are thawing out and the water is running again. The ice in the harbour is definitely thinning out too. I'm just waiting for the day the cormorants come back. That's how we'll really know it's spring because they leave in late fall and don't come back until spring is here.

The temperatures are slowly creeping up, although today seemed chillier than the past few days. The temperature is suppose to go up and down this week, which I expect in spring. And with the increase in temperatures, there is more snow melting. And with snow melt we get mud. Lots of mud. The kids snow clothes (yeah, they still have to wear them) are going to start coming home muddy as the snow on the playground melts into puddles of mud. Joy! Spring here on the island can be quite messy. Last year we were introduced to 'splash pants', which are lighter weight than snow pants but still add warmth while keeping their pants clean. I have a feeling they are going to need them a lot this year.

With spring, we get a new round of sports. S began her spring session of soccer tonight. She had a great time and was happy to see the coach she's had all year was back for the last session. She wants to do summer soccer which we'll go ahead and do. It is once a week on a weekday, so it shouldn't interfere with weekend plans. We'd like to do things like visit other provinces and go camping this summer. Last year J's baseball schedule made it difficult for us to do that. We're trying to get J to skip baseball this year and spend the summer having fun.

J starts spring hockey this week. Looking at his schedule, it's going to be busy. There are some nights where they have practice for close to two hours and go as late as 8:30. He is going to be tired but hopefully he will get a lot out of it. He is trying a new spring program this year, so we have no experience with them but everyone has good things to say about it. I guess we'll see.

Spring is slowly creeping in. Last year at this time it was snowing. I know this because when I opened up Facebook this morning, it showed me a picture from exactly a year ago. It was snowing and there was snow on the ground. My caption was 'Spring is broken'. The picture made me laugh because there was maybe a foot of snow on the ground, if that. Compared to now, when we still have around 5 feet of snow on the ground, last year seems like nothing. Of course, on April 1 of last year we got hit with a blizzard and 2 feet of snow, but still, that is nothing compared to this year. Last year, everyone told us it was the worst winter they had seen in 40 years. They told us the same thing this year. If they tell us that again next year, I'm going to start think they are messing with the Americans. :-)