Christmas Letter of 2014

Welcome to the Christmas season, when we catch up with each other on the events of the year.  After 2 graduations, 1 wedding, and a broken leg in 2013, you are probably wondering what events could happen to the Bouchard family in 2014.

I successfully survived a second surgery on my femur (they call it a "re-nailing") 6 days before last Christmas, which also got me out of most preparations  for Christmas dinner.  I enjoyed shopping from catalogues and on-line for Christmas presents.

Katrina and Tyler were home for Christmas, at Easter, for Katrina's birthday in May, for Tyler's birthday in August, and at Thanksgiving.  They are both busy with school (K-SFU, T-PLBC) and working part-time (K-tutoring and T at Virgin Mobile).  We wish we could see more of them, but it is good to connect on Facebook and Skype from time to time.  We will be going to the coast to spend Christmas with them this year, as Tyler can only count on having Christmas Day off from work.

Anthony has been all over BC ... he completed most of his Aircraft Mechanic Engineer course in Vernon, then went to Dawson Creek for the final 3 months of the program at Northern Lights College.  He touched down in Vernon for a weekend then was off to Oliver for 3 weeks in July, working for TransWest helicopters on a short term contract.  He was home for the rest of the summer, and in September, he got another contract with Hawk Air in Terrace, doing maintenance on airplanes.  While he was there, he lined up another job, and is now working for Lakelse Air, working on helicopters.  He boarded with a retired couple for the first month's contract and is now renting a half-duplex.  He had another quick touch-down in Vernon in mid October, when he finished the first contract and came back for his car and other possessions with long-term in mind.  It has been really exciting for me, as well as my mom, since we spent a decade in Terrace and now Anthony is meeting our friends and going to places where we know.

Bronson is continuing his education at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna, studying computer science.  He did very well in first year and was in the top 5% of the students in his science classes.  He continues to work on weekends at Tolko, usually Saturdays.  He also filled in for our church custodian on his summer holidays.  Bronson keeps us from feeling completely alone, filling our "nest" with himself and a new cat, Snowball.  After Muffin disappeared last year, Marcel swore there would be no more cats ... but someone gave Bronson this cute little white male cat, and he seems to have squirmed into all of our hearts and laps.

Marcel continues his weekend shift at Tolko as a millwright.  He enjoyed a couple of fishing/camping trips this summer.  He is now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with retirement years approaching, but is still comfortable with the job for the time being.

I finished up my recovery and physiotherapy just around the same time that I started back to work in May at O'Keefe Ranch.  I was still using a cane a bit in the first month, but was soon able to get around without it.  Since I was working at the ranch, I missed out on all the drama of the BC teachers' strike/lockout.  The ranch missed the income of 6 weeks worth of student visits, however.  It was good to be back giving tours, helping out with the general store and the gala fundraiser, and even cleaning bathrooms and incessantly dusting furniture.  I did use my home time well, resuming knitting and crocheting, and eventually getting back to quilting.  I even sold a couple of items in the ranch gift shop.  In recent days (late November) the phone began to ring for substitute teaching, so I have been busy in the schools.

Which brings us to December and the usual mayhem of shopping, wrapping, and going to events.  I'll be involved in our church's Bethlehem Star event, bringing the first Christmas to life for our community.  Then we have a potluck dinner at New Hope the following week and O'Keefe Ranch has a Victorian Christmas the next weekend.  I am looking forward to visiting with Katrina and Tyler and spending time with Anthony as he is coming down from Terrace for a few days.

Have a warm, safe, and happy Christmas season.

Love Karen, Marcel, and Bronson (with a purr from Snowball the cat)

Summer's end

Here I am again ... back from an exciting summer at my favourite summer job at the Historic O'Keefe Ranch.  I started back to work in May and was still going to physiotherapy and walking with a cane.  I have been so blessed with understanding co-workers and managers who don't mind that I have some physical limitations.

There have been a lot of changes over the summer.  One change was that son #1, who had gone to Dawson Creek for school from the end of February to the end of June, came back home in July, was gone again to Oliver for 3 weeks, home for the rest of the summer, and departed to Terrace for a one-month contract in mid-September.  There are many reasons why this is exciting ... first, that he has finished his Aircraft Mechanic Engineering course (before he was 19); second, that he has had 2 jobs in his field since finishing his course; third, that he is now working in the town I called home for ten years; and fourth, that he has another job in Terrace lined up when this one ends, and it is for a helicopter company, which is where he wanted to focus. Another excitement which could be titled "God works things out" was that he worked his last weekend shift for Tolko  (weekend clean-up) a week before he left for Terrace.  His clean-up job was meant to be for students (high school, college, or university), so once the summer was over and he wasn't going back to school, it was the end of that position for him, so the contract came at just the right time.

Son #2 was presented with a white kitten for his 19th birthday. Not by his family, by the way.  Snowball is entertaining me this evening by stealing scrap wool from my knitting basket, playing with plastic bags, and apparently trying to eat a stack of phone books on which he is sitting. Oh, add to the list of dangers, he was also playing with a thumb tack and is hanging around underneath the rolling office chair where I am sitting.  Needless to say, this little kitten has provided us with a lot of excitement, especially when he is under our feet. In the kitchen.  I'm sure he is working on losing all of his 9 lives in his first year on earth.

I completed a lot of knitting and crocheting projects this summer ... some were done while I was minding the general store at work.  It certainly fit the atmosphere of the place to have me in costume working on handcrafts that would have been done back in those days.  I also finished the binding on a quilt.  My little cowboy quilt sold in the ranch gift shop, as did one of the cowboy table runners that I made last winter.  Does that make me a professional quilter?

I was thrilled to be back at the Ranch again, telling stories of the O'Keefe family from long ago days. I always enjoy having children on my tours, and go into "kid mode" with stories about things that the kids would do, or how they got in trouble, or just describing things in ways that kids understand.  My theory about kid tours is two-fold:  1)  if the kids are happy, everyone on the tour is happy; and 2) I am teaching future historians, and if they come away with a love of history, I am doing my job right.

By the end of September, I was ready to go back to my "other" life, which some might call "real life". This life includes teaching Sunday School or helping in the church library on Sundays, quilting Mondays, working for New Hope for Widow/ers on Tuesdays, church library workbees on Wednesdays, house cleaning (my own) Fridays ... and Saturdays are my days for fun.

Today was a Saturday, so I was off on an adventure with my mother and a bunch of people from our church. We embarked on the church's orange bus and motored off to Sunnybrae Bible Camp for lunch, then went to see the sockeye salmon run at the Adams River near Scotch Creek.  The salmon were just beginning to fill up the river, so the river wasn't "running red" yet, but it was exciting to be watching a reddish shadow beneath the clear rushing water and have a fin break the surface and a red body suddenly wriggle about before plunging underwater again.

Celebrating 30 + 5 + 13 years in school

Last night I got an award.  I was very excited, even though it is a reminder that I must be aging (just a little).

School District 22 gave me a gold watch recognizing my 30 years of service to the district as a teacher teaching-on-call (TTOC).

It's a pretty cool watch, despite having no numbers. But it's engraved on the back of the watch with 30 years of service/ SD 22.  Can't take that away from me!

So after kindergarten to grade 12, 4 years of university, 10 months of teacher training, and 30 years "on the job" and on call ... I'm still going to school.

Yeah ... not going to retire yet.  That would take the fun out of it.

April May Be Marching On

The odd thing about having a late Easter is that the end of April begins to rush at you.

Highlight of the Easter weekend was the visit home by my daughter and son-in-law.  We missed our northern son but had a good time together. A few family members were attacked by bacteria and/or viruses ... we tried to include them as much as they were able.  And more of my spring flowers came out.

Someone please remind me next fall that my yard needs something besides yellow tulips and yellow daffodils.

Because I love colours!!
I finished the quilt top that I was doing in the bright rainbows last month.

Finishing quilt tops and finishing quilts are two different things, of course.

Sew ... what else is new?

 Found some cute little animal squares that my aunt had begun appliqueing onto white fabric.  Not all the white fabric was the same weight, so I decided to add scrap fabric around the animal ABC squares.

 Above is the general idea of how the thing began to shape up. And below is the work in progress with the appropriate size side triangles and corner triangles to work with the "on point" squares.  Oh yes, more random children's fabric between the rainbow pastel squares (apparently, my rainbow is now pink, peach, yellow, green, blue, purple and tan ... and I just now realized that I have switched the letters G and F in the alphabet!).

Next assignment, teach myself the alphabet, rearrange any squares out of alphabetical order, and sew this together.  Stay tuned for the next vintage quilt.

However, just to prove that I do occasionally finish a project, this is the cowboy baby quilt which I finished (pinwheels, mitred corners, and all) for sale in the O'Keefe Ranch gift shop. Side one is bordered with some red "barn" wood fabric ...

 ... and side two has white, brown, and black horses ... with a little brown at the top and bottom because it was shorter than it was wide. Flannelette on the back makes it cozy, and it's tied with brown wool.

April Fools

One could debate the whole philosophy of April Fools Day.  One could explore the history of the day of pranks.  Or one could skip this whole third person introduction and get on to the fun stuff.

Sometimes it's fun ... sometimes it's not.  Sometimes it's deliberate ... and sometimes -- keep reading.

I remember this used to be quite an event in elementary school ... and tricks were only allowed until noon. (The same rule held for pinches on St. Patrick's Day for not wearing green).  The worst one I remember was one cold and snowy April 1st in Prince George, BC, back in the late 1960s when girls had to wear dresses at school, but could wear snow-pants or pants on the playground and to and from school.  I had arrived at school and wanted to change out of my snow-pants, but the custodian had decided to trick us by exchanging the signs on the Boys and Girls washrooms.  The girls washroom was full of boys, the boys washroom had girls in it, and boys popping in and out.  I was almost late because I couldn't figure out where to take off my outdoor pants.  And being late was some kind of cardinal sin in those days.

Now a person can go on the Internet and get thousands of ideas to prank family and friends on April 1st ... you barely have to have a devious imagination anymore.  Of course, my daughter changed her husband's birthday this year on Facebook to April 1st and posted a "selfie" pretending to be pregnant.  I had intended to put goggle eyes on all the containers in the refrigerator, but forgot.  However, the best prank was totally unintentional.

I had been warming up alfredo sauce in the microwave the other day, and it overflowed.  I wiped up what I could, then put a mug of water in the microwave to heat up, condense, and loosen the baked on sauce.  Naturally, I forgot to go back to the microwave after supper, so the mug of water stayed inside.

Hours later, my son had forgotten to drink his tea while it was hot, so he popped it in the microwave to warm for about 20 seconds.  When he re-opened the microwave, his blue mug of tea had miraculously changed to a clear mug of water.  The rotating base had gone around once or twice and a half turn more, and his mug was actually at the back.  But at first glance, he was very puzzled and I could hear the "what the --?" expressions clearly.

The best April Fools jokes are definitely the ones that you didn't even plan.  And especially when they happen a few days after April 1st!

Promises

Last blog I promised pictures of the quilt I was making, and today when I sought out Google Images, there was the original image that had so impressed my mind.

My personal addiction to rainbows causes me to do things like this:

 First, cutting up the fabric and sewing it together with the white squares:

Then laying it out on the living room floor.  I will probably rearrange things a little bit, so there is more red and pink up in the top left corner.  There will also be another column down the side, making it 5 columns wide, and I still have to make a few more coloured rectangle + white square units, but once I get them arranged the way I want to at the top, I will know which colours I need to use.

Yes, Spellcheck, I do mean to put the letter U in coloured.  I am Canadian.  Get used to it.

Two sunny days in a row?

Normally, I would complain about the time change and what it does to my system.  Lack of sleep, general grumpiness, inability to see straight, inability to cook or eat at the correct times ... you get the idea.  But, for some unknown reason, the time change has mysteriously awakened the SPRING season in our area. Two whole days in a row with sunshine.  Not the winter "blind you and make you wish for a cloudy day" sunshine, but the lovely "I think I will warm you up and make you take your coat off" kind of sunshine.  Of course, this also results in forgetting my keys in my winter jacket, but still ... sunshine.  Like meditating on chocolate. MMM!

My quilting friends are off to retreat and I haven't made anything new at home.  So many ideas though!  I started a quilt today that I have been thinking about since I first googled Jelly Roll quilts.  Now that I am looking for it, I can't find it on Google Images, but I have looked at it enough times that I can describe it.   It uses white squares and colourful rectangles.  In the first row, there will be a white square and coloured rectangle, repeated 5 times across.  In the second row, there will be a coloured rectangle and a white square, again repeated 5 times.  These two rows repeat until there are 20 rows altogether.  I'm planning to do it in rainbow colours and received a wonderful gift of a bright pink fabric lately.  So the quilt will begin with pink, then go red, orange, yellow, green (1 or 2), blue (turquoise and a royal blue) and purple ... I went digging around my stash and my daughter's leftovers today and (re)discovered purples, blues, and my lovely yellow honeybee fabric.  Time to raid my mother's stash for the orange and to check on the greens and turquoise and royal blue.  In all, there will be 100 units of white squares/coloured rectangles (5 units across and 20 rows down).  The only thing that I couldn't figure out from the photo on the Internet was what size to make the rectangle ... then I decided it was up to me.  I liked a 1:3 ratio ... so I am working with a 3 inch square (which becomes 2.5 inches when sewn up) and my 3 x 2.5 inch long rectangle is cut at 8 inches.

So far I have 8 units of white with pink cut and sewn.  I started with a 3 inch wide strip of white and attached it to an 8 inch strip of the pink, then cut 3 inch strips across.  I would go do more sewing, but I am sure someone would wake up and complain (it's 11 pm).  For that matter, I should probably think about bed, but it is hard to do that when quilts are dancing in one's head.

I have another quilt on the go, involving the alphabet.  My aunt had begun appliqueing alphabet animals (A for Alligator, B for Bear, C for Cat ... something like that) on white squares.  Unfortunately, she passed away four and a half years ago, and many projects were left undone, usually without a pattern or instructions.  I had a little brainstorm one day, and decided to cover the exposed white fabric with a pastel in a rainbow colour.  (You may notice that I am a little bit hooked on rainbows lately ... probably trying to dispel the winter blahs.) Since the animals are "on point" in the squares, I've basically been taking triangles of scrap pastel fabric and applying them around the animals.  I'll take photos soon ... in daylight.

On the health front, after getting the okay from my surgeon in mid-February, I've been going to physiotherapy.  It was exciting to see the X-ray with the image of the newly re-growing bone between the two broken edges.  Physio is exhausting.  Exhilarating but exhausting.  I can't believe how a few stretching exercises, standing on my toes, balancing on a ball, and riding a recumbent exercise bike (for only 10 minutes) can wipe me out for the rest of the afternoon.  So much for this sedentary lifestyle ... the muscles on my right leg have definitely been wasting away while the left, formerly the weaker leg, has become stronger.  I'm also getting around with a cane instead of crutches or walker, and I've been cleared to drive again.

Quilting and physiotherapy may not seem to have much in common, but they contribute a great deal to my mental well-being.  Add two sunny days to the package, and there's nothing one can do but SMILE!

Except that I just realized that the clock I looked at when I said it is 11 pm has not been changed to Daylight Savings Time yet ... I may be turning into a pumpkin soon.

What I do all winter ... besides hibernate

Well, hello Winter.  Thank you for curbing any desire I have to go outside.  There were the mild grey days of January and now we have entered the bright and devastatingly cold days of February.  So I pursue indoor activities.

There's quilting:

a Jelly roll quilt top ... not finished

And sewing:

 Personalized pillows for bridal shower gifts

And knitting and quilting:

 knitted outfit and patchwork baby quilt

More knitting and quilting:

 Another knitted outfit on the back of the quilt

and then below is the front side of the quilt.

 And crocheting, times 3 ... Okay I should have turned the photos before I uploaded them ... turn your head.

And I have more quilting and knitting projects to finish.  So this is just an "eyeful" of how I have spent my winter ... so far.