lucas June 25th, 2009
Whatever you want to call it, we did it. We’ve been wanting to visit the maritimes for awhile now, and gave ourselves a sneak preview by spending this past weekend in Nova Scotia. We didn’t have enough time to do everything we wanted to, but there’s no question that we will be back!
lesley June 5th, 2009
As most are wrapping up (or already have wrapped up) the last few days/weeks of school, I’m gearing up to take an online course that starts next week. Exciting! I need a few more credits this summer to renew my Indiana State Teaching License in time for the next/upcoming school year, and so I’ve signed up with the University of Phoenix Online. The main course I’m taking is on Classroom Management. We’ll be studying and discussing various classroom management models and examining them for pros and cons. By the end of the class (3 weeks long) we’ll put together a short paper on our ideal classroom management model, hopefully containing bits and pieces from the various models we examined along the way. That’s the idea anyway. It sounds really interesting and will be a great refresher course for me before I head back to teaching in Indiana. It also means I have to study and write a formal paper that includes a title page, table of contents, and bibliography. Scary! It’s been 4 years since I’ve had to do anything that formal for school, when I took some courses back in 2005 (also) towards license renewal. Wish me luck!
lesley May 19th, 2009
lesley May 6th, 2009
Normally I’m not a fan of Canadian geese. I know you’re wondering how this is possible, right? I live in Canada. How could I not adore the Canadian goose? I guess I can’t forget the evil ones that made a nest at the doorway of the old apartment I lived in back in Indiana when Oliver was a puppy. The things trapped me in my car and repeatedly went after baby Oliver at every opportunity, hissing up a storm. You don’t realize just how big Canadian geese are until they’re out of the water and chasing you on land with their wings spread. *shudder* However, I realize they were just protecting their nest. Especially after I witnessed the baby geese that were born in a window box at my work, around 20 floors up this week. I’d want to ferociously protect such adorable little yellow balls of fuzz, too.
A mama goose built a nest in one of the most unlikely places (though common downtown so I’m told) on a ledge of a tower of the office building I’m working at for the summer. Lucas comes over and we meet up for our lunch hour each day, and today we checked out the fuss over the baby geese that hatched from the nest on the ledge. The area near the window had some caution tape to keep us pesky humans at bay, but you are able to be close enough to see the little miracles. It’s like a little mini zoo off the side of my building. First there were just eggs. Now there are four little ones. They’re growing rather quickly, considering they were just hatched this week and it’s only Wednesday. Mom and dad are always with them, keeping a watchful eye out. If you don’t see them sitting on the ledge with the babies, don’t get too comfortable… they’re definitely not far away. Today mom was down below, coaxing her little ones to go over the ledge. What seems like a deadly fall to me is apparently no big deal to birds… however, these guys aren’t quite big enough to get over the lip of the ledge to attempt flying (read: falling) yet. I took several (non-flash) photos today because while this has been really neat to witness, people came today in attempts to relocate the geese and I’m not sure if they’ll still be there tomorrow.
Want to see more photos? Of course you do. Be warned: they will make your heart melt. Especially the one where cute little yellow fuzzball has his tiny little eyes squeezed shut. Totally adorable. To see the full gallery of fuzzy cuteness, click HERE. OH! And I made a little video of the window ledge action for you, too. Don’t mind the round hole/opening on the ledge that one of the babies falls into in the beginning — it’s a shallow (but stable) drain thing (like my technical terminology?) and the other two little ones are down in there. They’re just not quite tall enough to hop back out once they fall in, lol. But I promise they’re safe and sound in there. Enjoy!
lesley May 2nd, 2009
Lucas and the boys manning the barbecue
Calgary finally got some gorgeous weather. We did have a taste of what beautiful spring weather is supposed to be like (and what it’s been like for the rest of the world) a few weeks ago, but I jinxed it over on my craft blog and we ended up with some snow and very cold temps this past week. Sorry about that, Calgary.
Today was our neighborhood parade of garage sales; a lot of the houses in the neighborhood registered together and set up their yards and driveways with wares from 8am to 3pm. We’ve been excited about it for awhile, because lately Lucas and I have made rollerblading our pastime. Any evening we get the chance and the weather is playing nice, we’re out doing a good 40 minute circuit through the neighborhood on wheels. I’m getting a lot more confident! Today was the perfect excuse to pull the rollerblades on and explore every inch of the neighborhood in search of good deals. And boy did we ever score some fun stuff!
my new rollerblades!
First of related importance was a new set of rollerblades. While tooling through the back streets we ran into someone selling a nearly-new pair that had been worn once… by the seller’s wife, who took a nasty spill the first time she used them and from that point on swore off rollerblades. Too bad for her, but great for me! They were being sold ridiculously cheap ($15!) and even though it was a bit more expensive than the $6 we spent on the current pair of rollerblades I had been using, these new ones were in better shape and didn’t have a broken clasp on the right boot like my old ones. Score!
mmmm crepes!
Another great score was a crepe maker; we actually had purchased some ingredients needed to make crepes this past week in preparation to make them this weekend. Crazy coincidence, eh? I think it was fate. It was $1, and in perfect shape. And even better… the seller had a 7 week old bichon/shih-tzu puppy hanging out with her. SO cute! I cooed over him while Lucas made the purchase. We also got a new DVD player to replace our crappy $20 Wal-Mart DVD player that stops working if you look at it funny. Somewhere in there we also got some great martini shot glasses. We really lucked out with our finds.
pineapple smoothies
Nearly 3 hours later we returned home exhausted and starving. Good thing we picked up some amazing steaks fresh last night on the way home for just such an occasion. We fired up the barbecue for the first time this season and threw the steaks on. They were HUGE! The boys manned the barbecue while I whipped up some pineapple smoothies in the kitchen; a little fat free vanilla frozen yogurt, milk, and crushed pineapple blended together. Delish! Hopefully the weather will continue to stay this way so we can continue to enjoy it! Maybe tomorrow we can tote our rollerblades to McKenzie Towne and do a little tour of the area and stop for gelato. Mmmm… gelato. Hope you had a great weekend and enjoy the pleasant weather :)