Ode to Heather

It's official, she's gone.

Mike and I stopped by to see her new place Tuesday night and that made it all very official. She no longer lives a 5 minute drive from me. We've added another 40 onto that. But we had a celebratory bottle of wine, as we often do to celebrate things. Heather and I use wine to celebrate new cars, Tuesdays, Saturdays, any other day of the week not previously mentioned, Lent being over (we gave up wine last Lent...I'm not sure we'll be doing that again), good meals, life, friends, and now her moving. Her place is huge and it's a nice looking building and well-lit and I'm glad to see that she'll be safe there.

Heather's giftings in music go without mentioning. Some of the people at church are in a bit of a panic, wondering who can play the keys and sing like she can. She, on the other hand, is convinced that people will come out of the woodwork and it will all be fine. I'll especially miss seeing her leading up there every so often. It's such a great feeling, so satisfying, to see your friend in their element. I can't wait to experience her leading Vespers (the weekly worship night at CBC that she will be leading...she finally gets her own band!). Personally, I'm scared for the next time I get asked to sing at church and I don't know the harmony for a song or 2 or all of them and then what? Heather understands that I'm a spaz and she tries as best she can to go with it. And if we get a catwalk again, who will think it's just as funny as I do to take a picture on there with our senior pastor, Charlie's Angel's style. And there's nobody else who can play and sing Stabilo with me and make it sound good (p.s. Heather, let's cut our nails and jam soon, ok?). Really those reasons are all just to say that, in short, I'm missing her.

But here's to more countless bottles of wine, to jamming, to just hanging out. To more inside jokes, more 'scatting' to songs, more air time on our cells, and more kilometers on the cars. To my friend who is talented in music (she's funny too!), who could organize the entire country, is better with kids than she thinks, compassionate, beautiful, motivated, driven, hilarious, and a gorgeous soul. Here's to God walking hand-in-hand with you through this year and leading you beyond.

And just for you Heather, a toast: To new adventures, old friends, and bad girls...Cheers, darling!

The post you've all been waiting for...

I came, I saw, I survived Kids Club at church. The Grade 3's and 4's I was part of won 1st place for their age group. Many inquired about how my team had managed to score 2000+ points above the rest of their age group. I attribute this great chasm, in part, to Vienna Sausages (a.k.a. cocktail weiners) and Q-Tips.

See, this is how it all went down. I can be severely competitive at times and I've come to terms with the fact that God has maybe graced me with more "strange human tricks" than some of the people I know. For instance, I can clap and wave with one hand at the same time, I can turn my tongue into a clover shape, and I can drink things really fast. Now, there was a competition happening on the stage between the teams of the Grade 3 & 4's and they needed some leaders to get up there so I ran up to support my team.

Turns out the competition was to see who could eat 5 cocktail weiners the fastest. Our little team members were going to be feeding us the weiners and couldn't put another in until we had finished the one in our mouth. I looked at little Kyra and said,"Just keep throwing them in. I will swallow them whole." Pat was standing next to us and said,"Can you really do that?" I replied,"I'm not actually sure but I guess we'll find out." At this point we all need to take a moment and stop to realize that I'm shaking. The adrenaline has kicked in (as it does when I'm in these situations), and now I'm all shaky. According to my sorces it wasn't noticable though. Mike actually said to Heather "...and she's so calm when she does it..." and Heather informed him "No she's not!". Back to the weiners. Turns out I ate my 5 before most had finished ther first. Those pansies chewed, ha! I swear that I chewed each once or twice before I swallowed but others have debated this. What do I know? I was all hopped up on adrenaline.

Next came the Q-Tips. The game: Stuff 5. The aim: Stuff as many Q-Tips as possible in the 5 orifices of yor face (2 ears, 2 nostrils, 1 mouth). So after we've stuffed our 5 for 2 minutes, we pull them out and count. As we go down the line people are saying 60-something and 80-something and something-something. The person closest to me got 115. As they got to me, my good friend Michelle yells out "200!". I stuffed 181 Q-Tips in my face. Heather, according to her blog, was proud to be my friend that day. I'm proud that she's my friend (among other reasons) because of the amazing job she did at kids club. Way to bring it Heather. On the last day I got a certificate for my ability to stuff Q-Tips in my face. It was laminated. R says I should frame it. R says a lot of crazy things and that's why I like her so much.

After all that, I slept very well last night.

Weddings: Closed for the season

First, there was Sean and Elina's wedding on July 15th. I was super excited for my friends and I had the honour of singing with a couple of friends during the ceremony. During the reception, at The Bedford House, Mike was interrogated by a couple of old friends of mine. It actually stressed me out something fierce but I knew they were only doing it because they care. But that didn't stop me from making a bathroom trip only at the last possible moment. We also got to go on a wine tour at Domain du Chaberton so now we are educated in the ways of properly drinking and examining wine. They have some good stuff there kids.

We followed that wedding up the very next weekend, July 22nd, with Shannon (Mike's cousin) and J.P.'s wedding. A lot of people came up to me with the opening line of "You must be Lindsey! Hi, I'm Aunty (insert various names here). Good to meet you!" Ok, so there were only 3 aunts but there were other cousins and family friends and spare relatives. It was a fun wedding and everything was beautiful. The receiving line was an adventure. Mike was the first one through and, without really realizing it, he had power-walked his way down the line which had left me running behind him in heals, trying to keep up. I shook hands and offered congratulations to the bride and groom and the bride's mom (an Aunt moment). And then I literally waved and said 'hi' to the rest of the bridal party, all on account of trying to catch up to Mike. The MC at their reception(at the Croation Cultural Center) was quite a guy. Mike and named him Gary, rotund Gary with the Coke-bottle glasses who said inappropriate things but never realized it. His most famous line was as he was going to start the night up (fyi: this wedding was open bar) he said "Now that we've had the chance to lubricate for this special event..." and then I checked out and tried not to laugh too loud. Oh Gary.

Then, wrapping wedding season up, we had Amanda and Jason's wedding this past weekend, August 12th. They had asked Mike and I to set up their reception at Cenntenial Lodge in Queen's Park, seeing as how sometimes I like to pretend I'm Martha and Mike is a hard-worker. So after we stopped by the bride's head-quarters to pick up supplies we made it to the lodge around 10:20am. Then the man who opened the lodge for us talked our ear off for a good 15-25 minutes, playing 20 questions. Then we unloaded everything and set up for an hour and a half. Then we stopped for a quick lunch because, although I don't remember chewing, driving stick and eating is never a good idea. Dropped Mike off at 1, got to my house at 1:10, threw on clothes and left, picked Mike up at 1:25, got to the church at 1:32 (the ceremony was scheduled for 1:30), and breathed a small sigh of relief as it started late. It was a fantastic ceremony. Very them and very awesome. After the ceremony was over we cut in the receiving line to say congrats to the new couple and then drove to the bride's HQ to load up again. Managed to stop at Starbucks as I was in great need of a coffee. Got to the lodge again to work like a couple of rabid marmots and set things up and it was all done in time. We even had a few spare moments to cool off on the deck while people arrived and before I tracked down my own personal corkscrew and uncorked 22 bottles of wine in under 5 minutes, while someone lit candles and someone else haded out bubbles. Whew! The reception was a blast and later Mike impressed everyone with his dancing skills. Amanda impressed everyone with her hot hot hot skills. Heather was a bridesmaid and impressed everone with her singing skills (of course) and her own hot skills. All in all, so much fun and I'm so happy for them both.

I'm also so happy that Wedding Season has come to a close. It was great while it lasted but I'm ready for a nap.

Summer of Mayhem

Well, I've been a horrible blogger lately...my apologies. This Summer of Mayhem just keeps rolling on and I'm just trying to keep up. But for right now I'll leave you with a little story.

Yesterday I took a little friend of mine (under 10 years old) to Golden Ears to hike the Lower Falls. We stopped and swam in the river, we checked out the falls, I had to convince my little friend that-contrary to popular belief- it would not actually be fun to ride down the waterfall, tubes or otherwise. As many of you know, the outdoor-types are generally pretty friendly...you walk by, throw out a 'hello' or a smile. Some ladies asked me if they were halfway there yet and I told them "4 short wooden bridges and a hill and you're there". Right after that I said hello to some other friendly-looking folks. About 20 seconds later my young friend said "Excuse me, Lindsey", "Yeah bud?", "Could you stop talking to strangers please?", "You bet". "You bet" was just easier than differentiating between strangers. And I'll leave you all with that for now.