Family, to have or not.

Life is like a bowl of cherries, but comes along with the pits.


I just read a very sad blog written by A woman with four siblings. For one reason or another she has made a concious decision to exclude her siblings from her family life.
The author of the post has made a recent choice to exclude one of her sisters from her life because she didnt show up to the authors childs preschool graduation. She had told the children she would be at the celebration but then failed to show up. The author said her children were so upset at their aunty not being there. So to avoid having her children dissapointed again she would just not ever have her involved with the children in the future.

I know we sometimes expect the people in our lives to have certain standards and morals. We can be truley dissapointed when important people in our lives fail to live up to our expectations of how they should adequetly fulfull their roles in our families lives.

But is it right to exclude them from our lives because we feel our children should not be exposed to a less than perfect family. Isnt it a better example to our children to love our family members, in spite of their shortcomings?

I can understand that alot of negativity can come with some of these relationships. But in my mind, kids learn more from seeing a family struggle to accept eachother inspite of flaws, than to dismiss a family member if they cant be perfect.

I have people in our family that have caused grief at times and I know, I have been difficult to love at times myself. Sure, it may be easy to say "to hell with them" and walk away from that relationship for good.

I have lost love ones where I had no control over the matter. Death comes and takes them from you, painful, but beyond your control.

But to lose a loved one by choice?

Just to walk away from someone because they can be difficult to be with?

Ive been in that situation a couple of times, and when the option to walk away was considered, it was so heartbreaking that I just couldnt do it.

No matter how trying the people in our lives can be, they are our flesh and blood. The pain that is there sometimes is better than the alternative...

Loss by choice...

calm by exclusion...

a life free of conflict but empty of any sort of real resolution.

In my experience, the rewards gained by struggling though issues brings a greater love and peace than just walking away.

This is just my opinion.

The BEFORE Picture!

This is Paradise?

We are in the process of giving our pool a face lift.

Its a built in pool, with a soft concrete bottom and aluminium sides. Usually it is all covered with a pretty blue vinyl liner.

We decided to replace the liner this year, as the old one really couldn't be eeked through another summer with any guarantee of it not self destructing on the hottest day of August.

So digging way, way deep down into Keith's pockets, we drag out the several thousand buck needed for the new fitting! Then we had the rainiest spring on record which put the installation behind, as the installers needed a good stretch of reasonable weather to to it. No Problem, we were in to hurry. That was April!

Then they said probably will be good to go in by the May long weekend. We said no problem. We were going to be away that week but would call when we got back. That was three weeks ago!

They called a week later and said "OK, start draining your pool, well be there this week. So it was drained... then they didn't come by for another week.

The trick to these aluminium sides is, they are kept in place by the force of the pool water. So when they finally get here to remove the old liner, one of the side walls had partially buckled in!

So now they had to dig out some of the concrete pool deck, take out the backfill and put a huge steel brace across the pool to get the walls back in place and repair it. That was on Thursday. Haven't seen or heard from these guys since then. Last week I was told they would be filling the pool by Friday. Well its Sunday and that didn't happen. On Thursday they said, well be filling the pool on Monday. Well I'm not holding my breath.

I am looking forward to showing you the AFTER PICTURES in a few days!

Where to sit?

It's a hard life when your most difficult afternoon task is finding an optimum place to lounge!

Hard work for the queen of the neighbourhood. Its a cats life!

These pictures were all taken within a couple of hours of each other.

Our model is Tabby, our 14 year old catIn the end, it seemed she just wanted to be near me. Wherever I was working, she would find a spot nearby.

Birthday Cake

My sister Carol is so talented. She makes cakes and this is what she made me for my birthday yesterday! That lily is sculpted from icing and painted with food colouring! I thought it was real!

Not only are her cakes gorgeous, thay actually taste amazing. Often these fancy cakes are all show, but not hers. She had called earlier to wish me happy birthday and was sorry she would not be able to pop by as she had to work. The next thing I knew, she was at the door. SURPRIZE!!! She made be a beautiful card with a lovely poem that she wrote for me. I am so lucky to have her in my life.