HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEFF!

Today marks my eldest son Jeff''s 27th birthday. I'm not able to spend any time with him since he lives in Quebec about 3 1/2 hrs from here but I did speak with him tonight when I got home from work. He's just having a quiet celebration - a spaghetti supper and cake with his family. I can't believe how quickly time has passed when I think back on his childhood. It seems that in the blink of an eye he has gone from what he looks like in the photo above to this one below. All you ladies with young ones, enjoy them now because it passes far too quickly!

Now Jeff''s a parent himself and a very good one at that. Jeff I am so proud of the Dad that you've become! Happy birthday honey, we love you very much!

This was a week of many remembrances. I meant to post about this earlier but this past week marked the tenth anniversary of the ice storm of 1998. For those of you who are not familiar with this, starting on Jan.5 - Jan. 10th 1998, freezing rain coated Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick with ice. Our area in Ottawa alone received 85 mm of rain during that period. Trees and hydro wires fell and utility poles and transmission towers came down. This in turn caused massive power outages some of which lasted a month! Over 4 million people lost power and 600,000 had to leave their homes. It's hard to believe but about 130 hydro transmission towers were destroyed. The military was brought in to help clear debris and evacuate people. They set up here in our local high school.

As well, most of the sugar bush in Quebec for maple syrup production was permanently destroyed. It turned out to be the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history.

In my village we lost power for only 3-4 days but it was darned cold! Fortunately I had a wood stove which we used to heat the house and I actually cooked on it. Barbeques all over the neighbourhood were started up for cooking too. My good friends, the Renauds, were without heat and moved in with us. At night we lit candles and hung some battery operated coleman lamps from the dining room fixture and played Rumoli. One of the adults would have to get up during the night to feed the fire in the stove. The kids just treated it like another camping expedition, but for many others it was devastating. One of my coworkers operates a dairy farm with her husband and they had no power for 3 wks. They had to share a generator with about 3 other farms for milking and ended up losing some cattle due to mastitis. I remember doing their laundry until their power was restored. I've included a few photos I took around the neighbourhood during the storm as well as one from the newspaper of a fallen transmission tower. The thing I will remember the most was how eerie it was driving to work early in the morning in total darkness with the sound of tree branches falling. As the branches fell it sounded like glass shattering and you don't realize just how black it is when there is absolutely no light out there. Not even light from the windows of homes or street lamps.

Creepy!

Now back to the present. I'm a little bit closer to having a craft room of my own! I've decided to take over the bedroom which belonged to my youngest son for this purpose. When Chris returns home he prefers to sleep downstairs on the sofa bed in front of the stove where he can stay up late and watch TV. So last year we repainted his room and up until now have been using it for storage and sort of a laundry room ( ironing, etc.)

I've been looking for some sort of storage system for all my floss, beads, patterns, etc. and this week I found what I'd been looking for!

Michael's had some craft storage drawers which can be stacked one upon the other to form as big a storage area as you need. Some are 4 drawer chests, some have divided drawers and still others have storage shelves which can be turned on the side to use as slots for storing patterns. I used the money my MIL gave me at Christmas to get started with 6 of these drawers. Bob threw in another for me as well. So we'll take it from there and see how many others we'll need. I'm anxious to get started setting them up but we've decided to wait until after we have the carpets cleaned . After all the room did belong to a teenage boy!

Finnigan had his appointment today with the vet where they drew blood and did a stool analysis. Besides the hairballs, she feels he may in fact have a food allergy so we're going to try him on a special diet for a bit. The stool analysis showed no parasites and the bloodwork is being checked for anemia and kidney function. She said she'd call me in a couple of days to discuss the results.

Finnigan was not particularily impressed with the whole thing and is currently doing his best to ignore me right now.

No stitching pics today. I should have one in the next day or so of Wishes. It's coming along nicely. Then tomorrow it's my CdC night. I can hardly wait!