I should have posted these a long time ago. Gord and Peggy McKay came for visit this summer. Gord is Alice's husband, Clarance's brother. They were our neighbour and friends from Barrington Passage. This is their grand-daughter. She is the same age her mother was when we left Barrington. How time passes.

OMG!!!!!!
I can't believe that it has been over a month since I blogged anything, but I have gotten better at facebook. I have been busy with holloween costumes and such so I am very sorry for not noticing my lack of communication earlier.
Everything is good, I go to the Doctor's tommorrow and if this last set of blood test come out clear than that the end of my liver issues. I am keeping my fingers crossed. I have been feeling better since my colonoscopy though, so that's good. At this point I think it's just menopause and old age finally cathing up to me. So to beat it at it's own game, I colored by grey. Yes, I know I said I wasnt going to anymore, but YTH, it took ten years off me. Better , and cheaper than Botox.
I am looking forward to Jeremy comming for a visit this week, I have a few fun things planned. I will let him tell everyone about it afterwards. I don't want to ruin any of the surprises.
Candice is loving her PR course at Loyalist. They did a United Way fundraised last week and made $2000.00 from the class playing Deal or No Deal with the students. She was happy with their results. She has to start planning for another one in May. This one is going to be an Art Show featuring local female artist, so there will be alot of work involved so she proberly have to quite her job at Wal-mart and put all her efforts into this. It looks like she already has her internship with Girl Guides of Canada, at their main office in Toronto and it is looking very good for her to actually get a job with them out of this. But then she can alway change her mind before the spring.
I will try to do better with the blogging, but it is hard with the weather being so nice and the amount of time I already spend indoors sewing, something has to be aside until the cold weather gets here so I hope everyone understand. Until next time.

Hi folks, it's been awhile. Nothing too new at this end. Candice is working once again for Walmart the shoe dept. This time its at my walmart. She got her car and once again I am free.
Weather is getting colder, so not so much pool time, hence the time to blog. Soon as it gets really cold out I will be visiting the bloggers more often. I don't want to waste any nice days inside if I don't have to. So one day soon, I will return.

Hello everyone out there in Blogger land. Here's the latest.
As predicted, nothing was found during my colonoscopy. The Dr says proberly just some gasteral intestnal thing, watch what I eat. That the problem, I do, I watch everything that I eat. It still doesn't mean it's good for me. No salt and cut back on the fatty foods. Oh boy, looks like the over eaters anynomas club is getting a new member.

Candice has her G2 and will be the proud owner of a 1996, hundai elantra wagon as of this time tomorrow. Insurance is only $132 a month for her, which I think is good for being a first time car owner and having it all under her own name. It only has 94,000 k's on it and it was a one owner vehicle. It is in really good shape and the boys at Orville's where we bought it gave it a really good going over, new breaks, tune up, oil change, safety, and e tested all for $2850.
They even took care of the registration and everything the insurance company wanted as well.
We just have to show up with a cheque and it's all hers.

She will now be able to get herself back and forth to school and not have to come in with me at 6.30am when two of her classes don't even start until 10am and there's two nights she is there until 6pm. That would have been too long of a day for her.

It's has been too cold to swim since Thursday and I am having withdrawls. I actually ahve tan and I want to keep it for as long as I can. Hopefully the weather will get better soon. I would like to get at least one or two more weeks out of it before we have to winterize it.

So as you can see it's finally finished. Yeah and all I have to do on my vacation this week is sit back and enjoy. Candice is going for her G2 licence on Monday, next Monday and then her and Garry will be looking for a car. Her school schedule does not match mine at all so she will need her own car. She put all her money away from working. She took August off but will be going back to work in September, hopfully she will be able to get something at the College but if not there are plenty of other jobs. She just needs to make enough to pay for her insurance and gas. Living at home has its advantages, doesn't it.

Sorry I S*** at facebook. Candice is trying to educate me and I am getting better. It's just I don't seem to have time to even log on the computer, let alone try to blog, facebook and read all my emails. I am sure when the cold weather hits and I can't spend all day in the pool, you will see me online alot more, until them I aplogize for the delays.

Hey: My deck is almost finished finally. Just a few finishing touches and only two weeks later.
I will post pictures soon. In the meantime at least I have been able to use the pool. The deck guy made sure there was enough of a walkway to get in and out of the pool and connected the pool ladder for the time being last week. Well as of Friday, Yesterday, The deck is almost completed by the important parts are done and yes the pool is very refreshing on hots days like today.

The Pat Benatar concert was incredable. I was so glad I went and so was Candice, She did all the classics and some from her obscure Jazz album and a few new ones. My ears rang all the next day, but it was worth it.

I found uncle Dave

Just got a call from Steven 6:15pm, Sunday, July 22. He will be here in about an hour. Not sure how long he can stay, but at least now we know where he is.

No news from Dave yet. I don't know if anyone else has been able to track him down. It will be a very long adventure for him by the end of it. It would be nice if shows up some time next week when I actually have a pool. Candice and I went to the beach today, the weather was great. Of course, it couldn't be like this last week when we really needed it.
Funny story about the beach. It was starting to get crowded so Candice and I thought it best to start packing up our stuff before it became overcrowded, and next to us came these two guys,
set up their giant size umbrella, and we looked at each other and said, oh my god, look at the size of their PICNIC BASKET. Yeah, that's what we noticed. We started laughing and I'm sure they had no ideal why. As we were leaving, wife and kids showed up to eat all that lovely food.

Where's My Pool

Day one. Nothing happened. The deck guy could not get the machine to remove the sod, so he will have to come back tomorrow morning. So that puts the pool guy a day behind as well. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Where's my pool, or at least my back yard.

Day two. The deck guy finally shows late this afternoon, but now the pool guys can't come in until tommorrow. Already two days delay.

Day three and everythings looking up. I'm told that the water guy will be arriving at 4pm to fill my pool. That gives it two days to warm up before the last day of my vacation.

Day 3 continue, well one of the guys did not show up today, so it looks like another days delay.

Day 4, it's raining, it's winding, so no work today.

Day five, looks nice doesn't it, but it was raining this morning and now that the sun is up, it's too winding to finish the job.

Day 6 and hey look, there's my pool, or at least parts of it, as you can see, no rain today, but then again it is saturday, so I am not expecting anyone to show up today to try to complete this mission.

Look at this, friends sitting on my front steps.

I think I will do the neighbours next. One a week that should get me through the summer.

This is Jennifer from work and her boyfriend Paul.

Hello Everyone left in Blogland
Well I no longer have to worry about my dilema of landscaping for the back yard. Garry took care of it for me. We are getting a 27' above ground pool and a wrap around deck which will add another 3-5 feet depending on the front or sides. So there's no room left in the back yard for anything else.
It is going to be great. It gets really humid and sometimes unbearably hot in the summer, so this will take care of that. The guy was suppose to be here this morning to remove the sod and lay the gravel, I haven't seen him yet. I had to leave for about half and hour and when I came back there was a dolly and a wheel barrel in the back yard, but no guy. Hopefully he shows up some time today. Anyway, go other things to do. Got to go. Later

Remeber that cement slab that's suppose to be a shed, well as you can see , no shed.

Candice and I put together a little trellis with the bench and some vines. it turned out really nice.

and of course, theres a nice little garden. some lettuce, chives, pepers, onions. basil. and of course the spinach. you cant see it the bunnies ate it.

and then theres my swing and gazebo.

so the yard is starting to fill up nicely.

as you can see I redid my front flower bed again.

I'm really happy with it this time, it has more sematry and lots of green and not so much dry bushes so it will not look dead over the winter'

My roses are 3 years old now and doing great. see the not so dead hosta next to it. it was suppose to be dead, i didnt have the heart to throw it out so i replanted it here and look what happend. a miracle.

my front step. notice how i dont have anyone sitting on them. they are getting lonely

My relay team, at 5am the next morning

This is the only picture I can get on right now

I am experiencing technical dificulties again!!!

hey look what finally figured out. Hope everyone likes the pics.

Hello there, I'm back\
I know it's been a while but I have been very busy. Now that all my external obligations are completed, I can spend some time cathcing up on blogging and perhaps even figuring out how to use facebook. As for the pic's of Candice's grad, I still don't know why they won't post. Candice was suppose to try for me, but I have kept her pretty busy helping me with all my stuff.
Girls Guides are done, My Cancer relay for life is done, inventory is over with, now I only have one more project on the go. I am finishing a quilt for a girl at work. Her mother in law started it and got too sick to finish. I only have to quilt the top to the bottom and its done. Her mother in law died and it would be a nice reminder for the granddaughter she started it for. As it turned out the Mother in law tried a little bit of everyting and her house was quite the challenge. Mom and I took a trip out on Sunday and left with a car full of material, batting, books and she wants to know when we will be back to get some more. While we were there, we found another quilt for another granddaughter the sister of the other quilt , that did not get quite completed so mom and I are going to finish that one as well.

Well our relay went really well. Our teams combined raised $5500. Not too bad. If we had remainded as one team and not split into two, this would have been the third highter coporate donation made. The second hightest was $7500 and one member of that team raised $6800 of that herself. She was the second hightest individual donation. the hightest was $14000. Yes thats 3 zero's at the end. Can you imagine raised that must alone. That's almost triple what our whole team did. It was good night and I will definately do it again next year. Planning will begin in January.

I will be without a computer for the rest of this week as I am taking this one in to get dumped.
I had Candice transfer all her stuff to an external modem so I can clean it out and start from scratch and put all my stuff in so I won't have to wait for Garry to get off the computer anymore to do pictures or printing. It will all on this one. So then I will have no more excuses. Looking forward to being back permanently this time.

Trying to post pictures but having a hard time. I will try again tomorrow. If I can't I will get Candice to put them on facebook. I cant quite get the hang of it yet, but then, I haven't really spent much time on it. sorry

Photo's of Candice's graduation

For those of you still blogging, sorry I have not been on for awhile. It's been a busy time for me.
We are heading into inventory and I had to go do inventory prep to 3 of our stores. Napanee took 3 days because they have been open for 18 month and this is their first inventory and they did not get a new store review so I had to go through every report for the past 18 months. Trenton and Peterborough only took 1 day each.
My colonoscopy has been delayed, the hospital had ventalation problems in the OR so they cancelled all surgeries. I have to wait to reschedule. I have been feeling alot better though, so maybe by the time they get around to doing it whatever was there is gone and this will be the end of it. YEAH.

For those wanting to pledge me on the Relay for life but does not want to do it online, let me know how much, I will cover it and then I will call and give you my banking information so you can just deposit it directly. I have however reached my goal and Candice's as well. Yes, since I volunteered Candice to participate, I told her I would get her pledges. Both Candice and I got $50.00 each in pledges and walmart will match that, plus we raised an additonal $1000.00 as a team. We have two teams and each will donate $2000.00. So between the 20 of us we raised $2000. and walmart will match that giving us $4000. for our walk. Not bad. We are still collecting pledges so we will pass that number by our walk night in June.

I have updated pictures of the backyard and the front yard. We did a little re-working. I exchanged my swing. The one I got last year, the plastic screws that hold the top on melted and I could not get replacements, so I exchanged it for a new swing. I had the receipt and it wasn't even a year old. I like this one much better and I only have to pay $20.00 more. The screws for the top are metal on this one and this one turns into a hammock if you want.

Candice planted a small garden, I took pictures of that too. I should be able to get them downloaded soon.

I am going to attempt to go onto facebook and do something, anything.

So Alberta is right, I no longet get lost in the blog, but now I have to start all over again with facebook.

Well, it would seem, I am famous. One of the parents at the school where we made the lunch bags for, works for the community press and they publicly thanked me, my daughter and my mom for our generous gift to the kids for Earth Day. It had a picture of the kids holding the lunch bags. I was unable to attend the Earth Day thing, because we had already promised a BBQ for one of our Associates. Tom has Fetal Alcohol Sysdrom and every year Tom walks to raise money for the awareness of this uncurable but 100% preventalbe diesease. Oh no I sound like a commercial now. Anyway, the BBQ made $505. and it was fun to do something other than sit in the office all day, and it was a beautiful day. I have a picture of me BBQing so I will get it downloaded on the computer and post it
I do not want anyone to feel obligated to pledge me for my relay for life. Our team goal was to get $100. from online, $100 in person and walmart is giving $100 to each of our 20 team members. I have already accomplished my $100 online and I have $30.in person and with all the fundraisers we have done lately I got my $100 from walmart, so I doing good, dont feel bad if you cant.
I get at least 4 call a week for donations and I have to say no. Last summer I ended up with a credit card bill of over $100. because I couldn;t say no. I say it now.
I know we all do what we can, we just good people us MacAulay's.
As some as you have experienced, I think I can post on facebook, I think I did it right, if no one has heard from me let me know, because, obviously, I'm wrong and didn't get it.

Hello there:
I am missing the boat or are we all going to facebook instead of blogging, or are we doing both.
By now everyone should have got my Relay for life e-mail. I updated my personal homepage twice and I am still not sure if it took.
I joined facebook, but I am still not quite sure what to do, so I will be practicing, so if you dont see any updates soon, I am trying, I promise.

Funny that Alberta was posting about grocery bags, April 20th is Earth Day and our store manager is Wal-marts Earth Day Champion, so we had to come up with ideals for our Adopt-a-school. One of which will be to go to the school and plant some flowers and shrubs. Another was to donate re-usable lunch bags, as this is a very poor community school we support and supposely alot of the kids bring their lunch to school is old shopping bags or paper bags creating more garbage. So for the past two weeks, me, Candice and mom have been doing a little asembly line of clothe lunch bags. I do the outside square, Candice sews the tops, and mom puts through the string. We have about 175 done and should have the rest of the 251 done by the end of the weekend. We had alot of material that we were not using and so much of it was really nice floral patterns, fitting right into our Earth Day theme, I did however, have to get Walmart to purchase some plain grey fabric for the grade 5 and 6 boys, I dont think they would want to carry around a flower covered lunch bag. I dont care how poor you are, you still dont want to get beat up and called a sissy. So this has kept us very busy and so I have been neglecting the blogging thing. But we are almost done, so I will be back into the swing of things soon.
I got Heather's invitation to facebook and Candice is going to get me set up with an account, so thank you Heather.
Keep posting pictures, It's a great way for me to keep in touch.
COMMING SOON, CANDICE'S UNIVERSITY GRADUATION PICTURES. She has all her credits and will be attending the graudation ceremonies at the end of May. She got her acceptance from Loyalist for September, so she is just working at the Sear's call center until them to make some money. Until next time.
Henry have a good trip

ok, so I'm back and here's the latest, well my medication is finally doing what it is suppose to be doing and no more nausea. Yeah. But now of course, I am hungy all the time and I think I gained 10 lbs this week. Time to start working out again. I have been very lazy in that area for about a year and I knew it would catch up to me.

I am offically Team Captain for our Relay for Life Team, this is where you stay up night and walk around a track for 12 hours, not by yourself, you have a team of at least 10 people and you each take turns walking around the track. This takes place from 7 at night until 7 in the morning, the reason, because cancer lever sleeps, so I guess we won't.
So expect an email soon inviting you to my Relay for Life web page, yes , I will be asking for money, so don't pretend you didn't know what it was and send it to junk mail.

I managed to recruit 18 people to join me in my walk so no one will have to be on the track by themselves at any given time. They have theme laps where you dress up, last year they had nursery rhymes and someone came as little bo peep and even had real sheep, then there was the Hawaiian lap, PJ lap, my favorite, Gender Bender lap, the usual stuff. I think it will be a blast, it's my first year as a participant and of course, I volunteer to be Team Captain. Go Big or Stay Home. I convinced my boss to match any pledges we get, I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into. Well, it wont actually be his money, it will be Wal-mart's but it's a great way to double our money raised.

Still working on the party. I haven't come right out and said anything to Garry yet, but he has dropped alot of hints about party's and birthday's, other poeples of course, so I am even more convienced he know, so I think, I will not have it on his birthday, but the following weekend. He will be away the Monday and Tuesday so I will be able to do all the planning without him even knowing. I told him the beer was for Easter, when his father comes over, we never have any , so I made sure we wouldn't run out this time. Not sure he bought it yet. Maybe once his birthday comes and goes, and no party, that will teach him not to be so nosy

Hello to everyone in blog land. I finally read some blogs I have been neglecting for some time. I will do better I promise, now that Candice's desktop is up and running and I don't have to fight Garry for the computer. And no he doesn't read the blogs, but I think one of the neighbours ratted us out, all of sudden Garry thinks we should invited the neighbours over Friday, to which I explained that Friday's are not good for me. I work all day and don't want to get home at 4 to clean and get ready for company so I suggested Saturday but that didn't work for him, and I also reminded him that this is Candices two week of nights and I won't be home because I will be picking her up, then we fall into Easter, and so it will be at least three weeks before it's convienient and oh my guess what, it's his birthday, so I think he was fishing , because Grame , two doors down said something . So I think I will just let him in on the Birthday plans, it's alot less work if you don't have to hide anything, it will also explain why all of sudden, when Im not suppose to drink, I'm buying beer, that I dont like.

A BIG GENERIC HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO EVERYONE I MISSED ALREADY THIS MONTH AND FOR THOSE I WILL PROBERLY FORGET THIS MONTH.

I am really horrible at remembering dates, I have a birthday book to put names and dates is, so if you could send them along for each of you in your family I can add them to the book so I don't forget until I see it on the blogs days later.

If I am lucky enough to have the next one born on my birthday as promised Monica then that one I would never forget.

Till later.

Hello out there in blog land, I'm back. I am happy to be hearing that Candice's picture's have finally arrived to their destinations and that she posted the rest on her blog.
Well the continueing story in my liver problem. So I had the blockage remvoed and that should have been the end of it, but of course it wasn't, so now I get the pleasure of a colonoscopy, yep, there going up there. The doctor gave me anti nausea pills to help with the vomiting, so I am reading the side effects, of course, headaches, cramps, diarrea and oh did I mention VOMITING, wait my anit vomiting pill might make me vomit. "WTF". It would seem that perhaps all my liver troubles is not my liver at all but my stomach, and this mild acid reflux is the culprit. So we will take the pills, do the test, and hope for the best. I am so glad I have good health insurance and lots of sick time from work.
Other than that, everythings good here, Garry turns the big 50 in April, I am trying to throw him a surprise BD party. The neighbours think we should have a theme party but I am just not in the mood. I am hoping the weather allows for a BBQ and so I can just throw everyone in the garage with lots of beer and that would be that. My orginal ideal was just a small formal dinner party for 10, but by the time I got around to telling the last neighbour it grew into a monster. There's still a month to plan so we'll see what turns up.
Candice start working at the Sear's call center tommorrow, part time $10 an hour. The first two weeks of training are Mon-Fri 2.30-9.30 so that will be a little hectic, but after that it's just three or four days a week and she will work the same hours as me so we will travel together. It will keep her busy until she goes back to school in Sept.
That all for now, I will try to do better with the blogging.

Please don't hate me, I know it's been forever, but in all fairness, nothing new or exciting has happened since my last post. I have however finally put Candice's albums in the mail and got her to post a link to all her pictures on her blog.
Garry's uncle Ron died today, Garry is at Aunt Jean Ann's now. There's not much we can do, he had cancer and was sick for some time, so now it's just a matter of waiting for the wake and the funeral which will proberly be Monday or Tuesday of this week.
Mom got home last week, just in time for all this nice weather we are having. My car was completely covered in ice this morning and it took Garry an hour to get it cleaned up and the driveway done. Yes, Garry, you don't think I would be getting up at 5am to do it, did you. Why else have a husband. I will try not to let so much time go by before my next post.

I guess I wasn't specific enough. I have no plans for this summer, Garry on the other hand , still gets no time off from May to September. He can always take a couple of days here and there, but nothing substancial, so if anyone wants to visit, I will have all kinds of time off, but Garry will only be able to manage a couple of days.
I don't really like leaving him alone so I can galavant around the country, it's not really fair, but one of these day's he will retire I'm sure and then we can get one of those mobil home on wheel things and travel the country. Until then, I just have to rely on you guys comming here.
And of cource with Candice doing reserch for the musium, and looking for a job, she won't be going anywheres either.
Sorry to get your hopes up guys.

Hi there. I keep nagging Candice to get her pictures posted. I do this as I sit with serveral photo albums on the dining room table waiting to be mailed out. Do as I say, not as I do.
I am feeling much better, I believe the doctor found a cure. If things keep up, I should be all healed before my next appointment.
For those who never throw anything out, they get that from MOM. The only time I can throw anything out is when she is away. Thanks Henry, all cleaned out this time around. And I don't actualy throw anything away, I give it away, to charity, or someone at work I know will use it or needs it.
So does anyone need a tickle me elmo, I won one the Friday before chirstmas and of course, I don't have any kids to give it to. And no chance of grandkids any time soon, if ever.
My bright ideal for the charity committee was to raffel an elmo but do the draw just before chirstmas so whoever wins it would not have time to sell it on ebay and make a fortune on it.
That way we could be sure whoever buys tickets really want one for their kids or grandkids. Well being on the committee, it's not like I couldn't contribute my $1.00 or the tickets, how would that look. And the person who did the draw did not buy any tickets to make sure no one could pull their own name, and out of 360 tickets they pulled mine.
I thought about taking it out of the box and playing with it, but haven't yet.

I have 4 weeks vacation coming to me and no plans, no Candice to move into dorms, or out of dorms and into a house, or out of a house and back home, or Japan, or passports, or visa's, so I am totaly flexable this year starting Jan 31, 2007 to Jan 31, 2008. So bring it on.

Hello there, now that all is said and done, here is the update on my liver. I had a pocket obstructing the natural flow of things. The doctor cut it to open it and cut the opening valve from the liver to the bowl so everything should run smoothly now. I had it done on Wednesday and was still pretty druged on Thursday, but this morning with all the drugs out of my system I can fell where he cut. It's not too painful and the swelling should go down in a couple more days.
If in three month the pouch develops again, they will go in and install a stint to make the passage large enough so nothing can get clogged up in there. But what they already did usually does the trick . So I will back to work on Monday and business as usual.
Candice is starting to look for a job, she is getting bored already. She can take her time and find something she will enjoy since she will be living at home and doesnt have to start paying back any loans yet, so wish her luck. And I will get on her to post those pictures of hers. I have made up some albums, so I need to light a fire under myself to get them mailed out. Check in with everyone soon.