Still no pictures ...

... you'll have to actually read the whole thing and tune in next week for pictures.

I had made a car rental reservation for Tuesday morning at 9:00 am. I was told that the driver to pick me up and take me to the dealership to do paperwork may be a little behind schedule. He arrived shortly after 10 am. Grr. While we were waiting, and waiting, for him, Max managed to land lip first on the stool in the bathroom. Big tears and a good deal of blood. Ach, what to do? He sucked on a washcloth for a while, had a big drink and even managed to get some ice cream out of the deal. He recovered quickly and hasn't complained about it too much since. His lip is a little puffy.

**side note - this morning he pulled the bar stool up to the fridge, opened the freezer and said "oops!" and then indicated the ice cream he wanted to eat for breakfast. "oops" nothin'!

Had a nice visit with the man who comes from a country in Africa that I've never heard of and can't remember what it's called. When we finally drove away from the dealership Max started to cry because he thought the man was supposed to come with us.

And then the fun began. I so enjoyed driving my black Pontiac G6 across the wide open and very very windy Alberta prairie. Under mostly cloudy skies, sipping steeped tea from a Tim Horton's drive-thru (no such thing where I come from!), listening to CBC Radio 2. Some of my favourite things were seeing cattle in the fields, or just the fields, Canadian Geese, even a swan and a few boughs of tumbleweed. At one point I stopped to put a blanket in the window to shade the boys from the brilliant sunshine in the cloudless blue sky. I had no clue just how windy it was until I opened my door and was nearly carried away on the wind. Max thought my hair looked pretty funny. Both boys were very content the whole way there.

My heart was happy to see Corinna and meet sweet little Sophie. Dang, that girl is cute. We had great chats and went for a long walk to a lake and park. Corinna jumped right in and played all kinds of fun games with Max. He fell in love. Thanks friend, I loved to see how you made him laugh.

Both times that I left the room Max and I were sharing to go to Marty, Max somehow snuck out of bed and was upstairs outside Scott & Cor's room crying for me. Weird! I didn't even know (and totally didn't expect) that he made his way upstairs in the middle of the night. After she brough him down the first time she closed the door so he only made it to the top of the stairs where I heard him crying. Yikes, I hope he's not going to be a sleepwalker.

Sleep. Ha! Monday night Marty and I slept, oh about 2 hours. He's been quite sick and miserable with another cold and he's very obviously teething. Tuesday in Lethbridge was rough too. I ended up taking him out for a drive to put him over the edge. He finally fell asleep but only for a few hours. Last night was quite a bit better and here's hoping tonight will be a breeze. I think he's medicated enough. :) My poor little boys - everything is so different and so unstructured right now. We're all looking forward to being home and getting into our routine once again. Paul thinks it will be another week after we get back to Rupert before we can actually move back home. I'm holding him to it!

Today brother Chris escorted me and the boys to meet Paul et al at the Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch. We then made our way to the mall. I was so looking forward to finding a few treasures to update my wardrobe. Well, no so. Chris & I wandered though the appliance section at Sears (Max tried out each and every ride-on lawnmower as well) while we waited for Paul to get to the mall. I then ditched my grumpy, overtired boys with Daddy & Uncle and set off for my one hour in the mall alone. How discouraging it was to find that pretty much every piece of clothing I found to try on was itsy bitsy, teeny tiny and itty bitty. And horizontally striped. Not flattering. I bet the things I was looking for were somewhere in the two-story (!) Jacob Connection store. It had an escalator. Didn't make it in there. By then my time was up and I had "mall legs" - tired and achy. I treated myself to an Orange Julius and met up with the boys again.

I finally got my monkeys into bed by about 9:30 tonight and Chris had left his laptop unattended. Kim and I are sitting at the kitchen table with our duelling laptops. She's working, I'm playing. Tomorrow the whole bunch of us are heading to the zoo. Weather forecast is for sunshine and 13* (55*F). Not sure how we'll all get there but that's the plan at this point.

You've read enough. I hope it was worth the effort! G'night.