Hello!

Hi there!  Welcome to my blog.  I am new at this, so bear with me as I experiment with this whole blogosphere thing.

I should introduce myself.  I'm quickly approaching middle age, and I seem to spend a lot of my time these days thinking about life while I do mundane things like ironing, driving or washing dishes. I don't know if I have anything to say that's worth sharing, but you never know.   At the very least, this experiment will give my family plenty of fodder for mockery at inopportune moments. 

The first real thing you should know about me is that I love my family, deeply and passionately, and I am (so far) immensely proud of them.  I have a husband and we have been married since 1985.  We have two kids; a son who is almost 24 and a daughter who will be 20 this year.  They're both pretty awesome kids, and I am quite sure they will figure prominently in some of my posts.  Being a mum is by far the best and most rewarding thing I will ever do in my life.  I'm sure there will be more on them later.  I also have a Mom, who is one of my heroes in life, a Dad who died a couple of years ago and who I miss terribly, a brother who has a wife and two small boys, and some in-laws who I actually really like.  Yes, I sincerely like my in-laws.  I also have a fairly large extended family who all live on the other coast.

Second, I am proud to be a Canadian, and I love Canadian history.  My husband, who studied British history in a previous life, says that "Canadian" and "history" do not belong in the same sentence; I, however, am continually amazed at how interesting our history as a nation is.  I have lived on the East Coast for the past 20 years, but I grew up in the West, and it astounds me to consider that when the Prairies were being settled, Atlantic Canada already had generations of settlement under its belt.  I'm also pretty sure that some of my posts will be historical in nature.  Or maybe that should be "hysterical..."  I feel that I know a lot about Canada, because I have lived in every province from New Brunswick to British Columbia at least once.  I've spent a lot of time in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, which is almost as good as living there.  I am longing to visit Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Northern territories, which I have never done.  I consider myself to be a prairie person, although I haven't lived there for many years, but it is where I did a lot of my growing up, and when I'm homesick, it's usually for the prairies.  I’ve moved so much, though, that sometimes when I wake up in the morning, it takes me a minute to remember where I am living.  I'm proud of my heritage (Mennonite on my father's side, British via Jamaica on my mother's side with a long line of Baptist ministers in there), and I have done a fair bit of research on my family's history, particularly on my dad's side.

Third, I am a huge football fan.  Let me be clear: I mean Canadian football.  The Canadian Football League, the one with the bigger field, bigger ball, and 3 downs.  I don't enjoy NFL football, or European football particularly, although I do enjoy cheering on our local university soccer teams on occasion.  I am a fan of my local university football team, and have attended almost every one of their games with my son since he was 7 or so.  Those of you who knew me when I was growing up will be a bit puzzled, and might even have had to re-read the first sentence of this paragraph a few times, because until I was an adult, I was an avid (some might say rabid) hockey fan.  Hockey Night in Canada was sacred time in our house, almost as sacred as church time (my dad was a Baptist minister), and at one point, I ate, drank, breathed and dreamed about hockey.  I never played, but I loved the game.  Until I married my husband and moved to southern Ontario, where the only game in town was the Toronto Maple Leafs.  And they were pretty bad, especially compared to the Gretzky era of the Edmonton Oilers that I spent my teenage years watching.  So I stopped watching hockey and started watching football.  Since we moved away from southern Ontario and the Leafs, I have started watching NHL hockey again, and I even won the annual family hockey pool in 2011.  I also have become a big fan of women’s hockey, and I enjoy watching all the university sports that our local university offers.  I like watching many sports, but I am not very athletic myself.

Fourth, I am interested in social justice issues, like poverty, equality, education, and health care, both on local and global levels. These issues occupy my thoughts frequently, and there are certain issues within the larger ones that particularly absorb me, such as the reality of Canada’s First Nations. I have done some reading and researching about things like the Millennium Development Goals, and I admire groups such as the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, the Mennonite Central Committee, and Free the Children who try to make the world a more level playing field.

Fifth, I like a lot of other things, like reading, snowshoeing, knitting and other kinds of crafts, cooking, baking, snuggling babies and small children, and listening to music.  I'm not particularly technologically inclined, but I have an iPod, and on my iPod, there is a fairly eclectic range of music, including Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Springsteen, Kate Rusby, classical music, Steve Bell, Hedley, Avicii, Ella Fitzgerald, Eva Cassidy, and many others.  The only music I generally don't like is country music and technocrap.  My idea of a perfect day when the kids were little was a snow day vacation from school, all of us curled up on the sofa watching a movie together, or gathered around the kitchen table creating something. 

Last, but definitely not least, I think it is important to say that I am a Christian.  Sometimes I don't act like a Christian, and a lot of times I don't think Christian thoughts, but at the root of it, my faith is part of who I am, what I'm passionate about, and most of the time, how I act (or at least, how I want to act).  That doesn't mean that my posts will be religious or spiritual or even particularly deep, but I hope that what I believe will be reflected in what and how I write.  Having said that, I am just a little bit opinionated, so I am sure there will be times when what I write will be at odds with what I actually believe.  I hope I don't offend anyone too terribly. 

A friend posted a quotation on Facebook the other day that pretty much sums up where I am in my life at the moment:

 My to-do list for today:
- Count my blessings
- Practice kindness
- Let go of what I can't control
- Listen to my heart
- Be productive yet calm
- Just breathe

Till next time! Thanks for visiting!