Celebration of Lights

Celebration of Lights,
originally uploaded by With A Twist.

Merry Christmas and Happy Chanuka.

Ice

Ice,
originally uploaded by With A Twist.

Our first taste of winter arrived yesterday with an icy blast and a 4 hour power outage. It is strange to wander around the house lighting candles and trying to determine how you are going to entertain yourself until the power is restored. We chose Candlight Scrabble.

Erin, Lisa, Craig

Erin, Lisa, Craig,
originally uploaded by With A Twist.

If you have read one of my posts on the topic of adoption disclosure, here is my reason why. Lisa was born December 20, 1969. I never saw her. I turned her over to the Children's Aid Society immediately. She was adopted by strangers when she was one month old. I spent the next 22 years of my life thinking of her every day. The cirle is closed now. I found her on her birthday in 1991. I am truly blessed.

Engaging

My older son and his girlfriend are now engaged. I am so happy and excited about the future for them. It is interesting because I feared that as my marriage fell apart 10 years ago, that the boys would not value or respect the institution of marriage. Instead it seems to have strengthened his values. He has done everything in such a romantic and traditional way, including asking her parents for their permission, and surprising her with a gorgeous engagement ring.

I am thrilled to bits.

Road Warrior

Road Warrior, originally uploaded by With A Twist.

I would rather be in my home office with my dogs lying at my feet but this is the life of the business road warrior.

empty nest

As we are still in the first week of 2006 I thought it might be appropriate to update on our current nesting situation. Well, surprise! It is empty, leaving just us love birds for now. Certainly my side of the nest is empty with Craig having moved out in November. Erin has been gone since last spring if I recall. It is a strange sensation and not at all traumatic as most people seem to think. I had several friends and relatives call me up and ask in very hushed tones, "how are you handling it?". What is to handle? Peace and quiet when we want it. Noisy when WE want it to be. D is particularly thrilled that he can grind coffee in the morning with alacrity! Whereas previously he was always concerned about waking Craig too early or on his day off. So now there are no restrictions. We have our privacy and don't have to worry about making anyone blush!

The only exception to our current empty nest is that D's girls come to visit every second weekend or so. It works out to be a welcome reminder so that we don't start taking our solitude for granted.

And with the solitude comes a little more time to reflect on life and I intend to attempt to do a better job with this journal. I have a new digital slr so my hope is to do a lot more in the way of photography, as soon as I figure out how to work all the settings of course.

And so the year begins.

Toronto vs. Ottawa

There is a very funny story here. Well, funny to me at least. The week before Christmas my sister and her husband, who are avid fans of the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team came to visit. Coincidentally, our team, The Ottawa Senators, were scheduled to play against Toronto that night. In the afternoon when we realized that the game was on T.V. I suggested that we should all just take a deep breath and agree to be good sports no matter what happened during the game.

As dinner ended I told everyone to go get ready to watch the game while we cleared the table. After a few minutes there was great commotion down the hall. When I turned to look, here were my two dogs dressed in maple leaf scarves, and my sister and brother-in-law decked out with maple leaf flags. We laughed long and hard over that.

A couple of weeks later when I cleaned up I put two of the flags/towels in my office on a shelf in my bookcase while I tried to decide how I could get revenge. It seems that Max and Whitney had other things in mind. When I wasn't looking Max stole these from my office and then ran around the house daring me to take them back. I'm not sure if that means he has dropped his loyalty to the Sens or what!

Whitney helping to guard, originally uploaded by With A Twist.