A weekend of 'firsts'

Location: Barriere, May Long Weekend

Daily Goal(s): Open the pool - till the garden - celebrate Lissa's birthday & Mom's Day

Trials & Tribulations:

• Delayed parties till all could be together

• Had to alter plans from dinner to lunch to accomodate "camping" plans for Becky & Paul ("By the way, could we borrow your camping equipment. . . ?")

Mid-day, had an uninvited guest at the house:

Difficult to spot at the top of the frame - so I zoomed in a little closer. . .

Successes:

• Weather cooperated - a rare treat for this long weekend
  
• Did get the pool opened, but not in time for the pics. . . big black tarp dominates most (yuck).
• Did get the garden tilled - rows and garden beds created - some babies planted even, by the time the weekend waned

Jen begins sorting through the "forest" in her greenhouse. What a difference from little seedlings in March!

• Camping only lasted one night - might have had something to do with the fact Mike gave them the old standby tent with all the holes in it
• Soooo. . . got to spend more time with long-lost daughter #1 - who put in a special request to learn how to make Chicken Paprikas with home made noodles

• Becky managed to talk her father in to a round of golf
  

First jumbo freezies - I'm speaking of Madi and her friend's toes - the pair couldn't resist with water straight from the tap topping up the pool, it was a cool 54F

Lissa joins in (with Freezies and with yard work. . . my daughter the multi-tasker).

Doesn't get better than French Breakfast radishes, fresh from Jen's garden. The perfect addition to the first potato salad of the season.

Well, perhaps the first Ceasar poolside (tarpside) in our plastic fishy cups might top that. . . naaa, the radishes win.

Failures:

• For Jess to put in an appearance - work schedules being what they are, it's a minor miracle we were only down by one.

For Melissa to realize, even the best intended birthday card envelopes can deliver paper cuts

Happy feet

Dirt caked between our toes, ground into our soles, in bad need of a pedicure, aching and tired - Jen's and my feet couldn't be any happier after spending 3 days in the garden.

Mike took one look at my feet at the end of the first day and said, "Just look at you, you're filthy."

"I know!" I replied - a stupid grin on my face, "Ain't it grand?"

State of shock

Location: Back porch, 5:30 pm, 31°C in the shade!

Daily Goal: Get off work early to whip house into shape before Becky and Paul arrive from Kelowna. Run errands - buy sunscreen, pool supplies, munchies and booze (not necessarily in that order).

Trials and Tribulations: The picture says it all - we're all in a state of shock, our bodies unaccustomed to the 20 degree leap in temperature overnight.

Everywhere I look bees, wasps, and hornets are frantically searching for nooks and crannies to build their nests. By Tuesday everyone in the Interior will be peeling, I'm sure.

It's not only rare for temps to climb this radically, it's rare for this to take place May Long Weekend, usually notorious for drenching any and all campers who brave the wild in BC.

Successes: As for me, first pot of red potatoes, destined for potato salad is just coming off the stove; pool is filling up (after YEARS of hauling off the tarp from a half-filled pool, we finally got smart enough to plunk the hose in UNDER the tarp, before we begin); house is clean; ribs are thawing for tomorrow's barbecue (here's hoping all three girls will make it); both the greenhouse and the veggie garden are calling my name, not to mention the lawn. Whose idea was it to fertilize?

Failures: For my grand, regal tulips to survive the heat wave. Only just opened, they are now singed around the edges and screaming, "Make it stop!"

The way to a man's heart

Location: Lissa's house, Kamloops, cloudy, 16°C?, Monday night

Daily Goal: Help Lissa plant a garden

Trials & Tribulations: Thought I'd break her in easy and just "plant a salad" to get her started.

"Do I get any peppers?" she asked.

"Two varieties of Hungarian peppers," her mother replied, "Szegedi and Hungarian Wax."

"Oh, goodie! Do I get any tomatoes?"

"Three kinds. Roma, Beefsteak, and Tami G - you know, the little ones that look like grapes."

"You mean the ones I just used in the salad I made for dinner? Yay!"

Successes:

• Considering we had to dig up 30-year-old turf to create a "row to hoe," by the end of the evening, it was indeed a garden - complete with lettuce, cukes, tomatoes, peppers, dill, oregano, parsley, regular chives, garlic chives, spinach, and two varieties of marigolds (to keep the bugs away) - oh, and a row of strawberries, just for good measure
• Lissa realized it's a lot like work, "I can't picture you doing this, Mom" she commented half way down the row. . . "Yes, well, I have your father - and he has a roto-tiller." "Hey, Landlord!" she called out to tall-dark-and-handsome guy who happens to not only own the duplex, but occupies the other half (one of his many attractions is his landscaping company. . .) "Where's your roto-tiller?" He didn't skip a beat. "I don't think it's gonna hurt you to master the fundamentals." (Did I mention, I like this guy?)
  
• Waited 22 years for one of my daughters to show an interest in gardening!

• Worth every minute when I was treated to one of the best barbecued salmon spring salads I'll ever eat for dinner. . . Lissa treated 'Landlord' (we'll just dub him 'Secret Crush Guy') to a plated serving - he couldn't stop raving about the dish. "I just had lunch at Milestones and this rivals ANYTHING they have on the menu!"
  

Failures:

• For me to take a picture of the plants? I could have sworn I did, but Lissa sent me the pics and not one baby, (all started from seed) in the bunch.

• For Lissa to leave "chef experience" out of her resume. She applied for the big-bucks serving position at a local restaurant and within a week, found herself in the kitchen once again. Life's all about balance - seems once you factor in tips, doing what you love doesn't pay quite as well as serving it up.
  
• Her hopes were dashed tonight when I got the email. . . "So, bad news - Landlord has a secret admirer who dropped off a huge bouquet of balloons and an excessively large card on his doorstep today and he just loved it, so I'm thinking that ship has sailed. . . too bad, our kids would have been beautiful."
• "Aha!" the Maja zapped back a reply, "but can she cook? Hearts and flowers are one thing - but the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. . ."
  

Lissa's got that covered, hands down.
Yes, those are blackberries! With baby nugget potatoes, spring greens - and numerous delectable goodies served up in a raspberry vinaigrette - with barbecued salmon in dill sauce. Can you say, "Nummy?!"

It's all fun and games. . .

Location: The new office, Kamloops, the waning hours of the evening

Daily Goal: As Linda, myself and co-worker Marg are all professional house cleaners (in our spare time. . .) it was a no-brainer we'd all pose as Carol Burnett with our mops and buckets and give our new office the "once over," prior to moving in last week.

Who better to do it than us? After all, we've yet to meet anyone who would actually clean any office space like we can. In the end, we'd have paid someone only to clean up after them anyway.

Trials & Tribulations: Too bad we under-estimated the sheer scope of the 10th floor, of which we now occupy 90%.

By 11:00 p.m., following a full day's "office" work in the old location, and having treated ourselves to a picnic in the middle of the new board room floor, we had barely finished half of what we'd set out to do and were only slightly punchy-tired.

Suffice it to say, we gave up - and walked away from the Wall Of Windows - deciding it would just have to wait.

Successes: I have to admire the great bunch I work with. There's buckling down and there's enjoying a healthy sense of humour while you're at it.

Linda has recently re-introduced a subtle game of hide-and-seek to the clerical staff in our office.

This first began years ago at another close-knit office she and I worked at, and involved one of the gaudiest black earings that had been abandoned in the Lost and Found and never claimed.

The concept is quite simple really:

Step one: Hide the earing in a co-workers 'personal space';

Step two: Don't tell anyone whom you've hid the earing on (hence everyone scours the office as no one knows whose space it's in);

Step three: Monitor the spot until the earing is located and goes missing;

Step four: Start scouring your own personal space in case co-worker has hidden it on you, again.

Announcing, "I found it!" is not permitted. The person who locates the earing must quietly (without getting caught) hide it on someone else. Only the person who hid it originally will know it's been relocated.

In our office we didn't have any ugly earings lying about, so we opted for a rubber bouncy ball, painted like a blood-shot eye. (Really, the things people dig up from their desk drawers!)

Sometimes it takes weeks for the "Evil Eye" to be located. Other times it's found the same day it's moved.

Marg's been the most recent victim - having spent weeks searching, she finally located it inconspicuously tucked in her computer monitor stand (staring at her the whole time).

Exhausted, and a little giddy from the fumes of the cleaning chemicals, she announced in a moment of weakness, "I have a confession to make."

Linda and I immediately stopped scrubbing. "Oh, do confess!"

Marg pouted, "The last time, after I found the eye, I took too long to hide it and you guys hid it on me twice! So this time, I dropped it in my purse and took it home so I could hide it in the morning. . ." she paused for effect, "Well, I've done something with it, and now I can't find it!"

"Sure," I blurted out, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye!"

Failures:

• For someone to come along and pick us up off the floor when we fell over laughing.
• For the game to come to an end. Wouldn't you know it? We've got a spare bouncy 'Evil Eye' - and now we've got a whole new office full of personal spaces to hide it in.
  

Didn't make the cut - Part V

Here they are, the last of the batch that didn't make the final cut -

Gyuri promised us one day in the kitchen, cooking any Hungarian dish we could think up - we tried to narrow down the list to one appy, one main dish, one soup, etc. . . only to discover he ADDED dishes. I swear 12 meals came out of that kitchen in 12 hours! By the end of it we had madly scrambled to write down recipes, guessing at proportions (like a true Hungarian cook, he "never measures") and ingredients - and it looked like a bomb had gone off in the kitchen. "No, no," Gyuri declared, "Cleaning up the kitchen is only a woman's domain."

Another highlight: a guided tour through the Herend factory. Here an artist hand-paints a large platter. We saw production from a lump of wet porcelain, right through to the finished pieces in the showroom. Fascinating.

Agi blows a kiss.

Melissa fires the 'mad goose' hiss at me for taking yet ANOTHER picture.

The girls were treated to a horse back ride through the country.

Jess saddles up.

Back in Budapest, I went shopping for a few mementos, treating myself to some hand-embroidered linens. "Do you know how much your wife is spending?" the shop steward kept asking Mike as my credit card burned a hole in my pocket.

The only thing missing from this photo is Jess, sobbing when she realized her bag did not arrive before this "LAST BAG" did. All my warnings to pack an emergency set of clothing and toiletries in your carry-on were met with that "Oh, mother!" look.

We saved thousands by taking the "long" route there and back - the chances of us getting on and off so many flights and not losing one of 10 bags was so small, I felt this was bound to happen.

All my warnings failed to make an impression. Jess was not braced to deal with it when it did happen to us. Exhausted, and on our final leg home, it was Mike who picked up the baton and ran with it, as each airline pointed the finger at the other one. HE was not leaving England without that bag - and he was right, sweet-talking someone to physically locate the thing, we were once again on our way.

As for the pics that did make the final cut - well, you'll just have to stop in for a visit and see the winners for yourself. . .

What really happened. . .

Enough of the gushy-we're-so-proud-of-you stuff. . . no gathering involving this clan is ever that "ordinary":

Celebration just wouldn't be complete without the card that makes a daughter cry.

Did I mention juice was served with the cake?

It's only fair, when plastering up ugly-crying pics, that an equally flattering shot of this blogger is posted as well.
(I have no clue what I was thinking at the time.)

Cake was not the only thing snarfed down.

Jess demonstrates the "TRU" meaning of higher education.

I'm amazed Mike is caught walking with us anywhere. . . impromptu beat-you-with-my-bags commenced on our walk to find the TRU sign for the photo op.

Getting on the sign proved a little easier than getting off. Jessica's $80 shirt (you paid $80 for THAT shirt???) has a new hole in it now. Really. . . the things they do for their mother.

Vanity prevails: must ensure the Webb butt is clean following the dismount.

- - -

Got a phone call from Jess on Monday. "Hi, Mom I'm calling you from work! I'm on my break. . . showed up for an interview today, and they said, 'Can you start your first shift at 3?'"

Life should always work that way; graduate on Friday, start work on Monday (doing exactly what you went to school for in the first place).

A hop, skip, and a bus ride from where she lives. Next attainable goal for Jess: Make enough money over the summer to get her own wheels.