Last Half 2022 – December

Good Morning ALL! How are you this cold Monday morning? I am doing well. Up and dressed and all of that. Today is an office today. Although I am not looking forward to going outside and would rather be tucked under the warm blankets still in bed, it is okay. I am always grateful for the days that I work from home. With a 5 second commute from upstairs to downstairs, more in bed under the covers keeping toasty warm time, lunch break in my own home, drinking my own perked coffee, after work turn off the computer at the end of my work day and I am home. More time at home doing the things I love especially in the evenings. The work/life balance is perfection. We spend so much time over our lifetimes working and away from home. I get it, I understand, we need to work to earn a living to live our lives. Money does not grow on trees, well it kind of does, or at least paper comes from trees although perhaps our money is not made totally from paper anymore. Anyway you get the picture. So I am grateful, grateful that when Mr. Alvin comes home, I will be home. Thankfully I am on Christmas break until January 3, 2023. Perhaps the New Year will have me working from home more, I love being at home. Home is my happy place with the lime green painted office walls to the plants in the kitchen window, I love my house, my home.

Countdown to Christmas: today is Monday, December 19th, 2022 and that brings us to “5” more sleeps till Christmas Eve. 5 more sleeps until I have my family under the same roof for a time. 5 more sleeps until Alvin comes home. 5 more sleeps until we open our gifts. 5 more sleeps until we continue to eat lots more goodies. 5 more sleeps!

Oh, we are almost at the shortest day of the year which is Wednesday, December 21st. We will go to work and come home in darkness. Then the days will start to get longer once again. I hope that the sun will start to shine more. We all need that brightness to fill our daytime.

Well it looks like I have to finish this post and head downstairs to finish getting ready for work. Throw my snack/breakfast/lunch into my backpack.

I hope that you have a wonderful day. Yesterday was a nice day. I did a bit of work and I almost forgot that I had a little furry visitor. Cookie’s Dad reached out to see if she could stay with me while they went to a movie as they were celebrating their son’s birthday. Of course, I said “absolutely.” Miss Cookie came to stay with me. She was looking for Alvin and for her family as she kept jumping up on the chair and looking out of the window. We had some play time, she ate a bit of Alvin’s food and we just hung out. Cookie is an energetic little dog. Her Mom picked her up about 8:15 and we had a little visit. My friend has been working at her new job a lot as of late. An unexpected delight! I had a great Sunday. Bit of work, company and some downtime. Perfection!

Continuing to live this life with kindness, respect, compassion, patience, love, laughter, understanding, gratitude, focus, possibilities and coffee.

Always, Carol & Alvin

P.S. Definitely need coffee at the office this morning. Something HOT.

Christmas Morning 2020

Good Morning ALL. Happy Christmas one and all. The air is warm outside. The house is quiet as my fingers clack away on the keyboard. Alvin is stretched out on the carpet in the hallway just outside the office door. My daughter, son-in-law and pups are snoozing in “the master suite” (okay perhaps not what you would consider to be a master suite but for me a bedroom with an adjoining bathroom, is pretty master, lol). What a glorious Christmas we are having. The family arrived in the later part of the afternoon on Christmas Eve, that would have been yesterday. We make some snacks, ate some snacks and ate more snacks and more snacks and then decided to open gifts. We always have enough food to feed about 20 people and there are three of us. Likely we should have gone for a walk but it is Christmas and who thinks of exercise when there are presents under the tree and food all over the place. Even before we sat down to open gifts, actually not long after the kids and grandpups arrived – we heard some rustling in the living room. We were busy snacking in the kitchen. Amanda went into the living room and there was the Alvin getting a headstart opening his gifts. He had found one of his gifts that was way back under the tree, without causing disarray to the other gifts or knocking over the tree – he pulled the gift back out onto the middle of the living room and was beginning to tear apart the tissue paper that covered his gift. How he knew that was his gift we will never know. My son-in-law joked that perhaps he knew how to read. What a guy. After we had some goodies, we settled in to watch the Christmas movie “ELF” which is another little story. Steven wanted to watch the movie which I happen to have on DVD in my massive Christmas movie collection. When the kids gave me the new television just before Christmas – we decided to disconnect the DVD player and put it in the basement. We would have had to hook it up which is not a big deal when the light bulb came on and I checked my PVR recordings and voile, I had recorded it. So no need to bring up the DVD player. We chatted and watched the movie. Drank coffee and eggnog. Throughout the movie, someone was whining so much. Not loud but clearly not happy. When the movie was over and we started preparing to open gifts, guess who was the first one to the tree? Three guesses and the first two don’t count. Mr. Alvin. He was so excited. I think with all of the gift opening that we have been doing and the parcels from our friend Val, he is beginning to put two and two together. He definitely understood about the gifts. I will note that he has been going to tree over the past few weeks once I wrapped gifts and we remember when he pulled my son-in-law’s stocking from under the tree and started to open his gifts. Note to self for next year. I made sure that I safely tucked all gifts with food related items and the stockings in a basket in the basement landing until time to open. We certainly were entertained by Alvin. He was frustrated with me at times. What can you do? He, me, we were all super spoiled. The perfect year to be spoiled. I received clothes, books, special pens, several items from my favourite store “Bath & Bodyworks”, chocolates and more chocolates and more chocolates, a hand held blender with more gadgets than I know what to do with and more. Definitely crazy spoiled. My son-in-law received from my daughter one of those projectors for indoors so we did some star gazing for part of the evening. A great night. Merry Christmas.

Well time to head back downstairs and have some coffee. I am going to call my sister and chat. It is beginning to get light outside. Hopefully the sun will shine. We definitely need a walk or two, today.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas. I hope that Santa was good to you. Not sure that me and Alvin deserved all the lovely gifts that we received but we are grateful to all those folks who showered us with them this year. We are grateful to have all of you in our lives. Truly, we are blessed.

Have an awesome day. Be safe, go for a walk. We will continue to live our lives with kindness, respect and compassion for all.

Merry Christmas 2020.

Love, Always from Carol & Alvin

It is a NEW YEAR

Wow, February 2nd, 2020 already …..

The sun is shining and the inside temperature is set at 71 degrees fahrenheit but with the heat of the sun it is 75 degrees.

Warm, warm, warm.

The house is now quiet as the pups went home yesterday with Auntie J.

Alvin was a little lost last night ….. looking around wondering?

But was happy to sleep in our bed as for the past week we slept on the sofa.

Me, Alvin and Teddy on the sofa and baby Kobi on her little bed close to the sofa.

Yesterday was busy the pups were here in the morning, then went to pick up food and groceries with Aunt J.

Aunt J came for a visit before taking the pups home to their house early afternoon.

Then it was still.

No Kobi tearing around like she had eaten a bunch of sugary treats.

No more determined little one escaping from main floor upstairs to where I am.

I have never seen a pup with the confidence and determination as Kobi.

When she wants something she does not give up until she has it.

She is not afraid.

No Teddy just being his own self which is calm, cool and collected.

The only time I have seen him get miffed is when Kobi has overdone the play time.

No watching for Kobi underfoot.

So yesterday after the pups and Aunt J went home, I started to clean.

Taking down the metal enclosure/gate.

Picking up the remaining pee pads that were unused.

Putting the toys away (on Al’s big doggie bed).

Then moving everything to find two of Kobi’s toys that were missed.

Vacuumed and washed the floor and cleaned as I was hosting our friend S’s birthday party this morning.

The house looked totally different without toys scattered and pee pads what seemed like everywhere.

Before bed I had cleaned the main floor, did several loads of laundry, deiced and removed all of the places where for the last week the pups had peed.

Now do not get too grossed out as there was several inches of snow packed on the deck …. so it was easily removed and then I scraped and shovelled it to the grass area.

I also shovelled a portion of it a few days before for them.

The deck was cleaned off and then I began the ice chipping and cleaning out front.

I had to leave snow on the walk to the street as it was so icy and with facing north, no sunshine.

Shovelled the front public sidewalk removed the water.

But by this morning it was a massive area of ice.

It drains there and is difficult to keep ice free.

That spot anyway.

 

This morning Alvin and I hosted our friend S’s birthday party.

I put out three kinds of crackers, boursin cheese and grapes and little oranges.

Followed by birthday cupcakes.

We had a great visit and always great catching up with my friends G and S.

I love them and they are such wonderful young ladies.

Both in their 40’s.

They are just a tad older than my daughter.

See this is what keeps me young.

I have found over the years that if your friends are a vast range of ages; it keeps you in the loop and young.

I can identify if folks my own age, older and much younger.

Life is good.

I want to post some photos but they are still loading.

Guess I should have done the software update sooner.

Well, as it is still loading I will post some photos at a later time.

I apologize for missing the odd day here and there but sometimes it is possible to get a post done.

We are grateful to have some downtime before I head back to work tomorrow.

 

Wishing you a great day.

Life is always better filled with kindness and respect.

 

Thank you for reading my posts, I really appreciate you taking the time.

I do know how precious our time is these days.

 

Always, Carol & Alvin

 

 

Living … One day at a time.

Merry Christmas ….

The sun is already up ….

We were up late last night and slept in this morning.

I managed to keep Mr. Alvin in bed until about 7:00 a.m.

The pups were up shortly after that ….

My daughter went back to bed and my son-in-law is still sleeping after an extra long day (he had to work).

We had a great Christmas ….

Had some late night snacks just after they arrived from an earlier Christmas feast with my son-in-law’s family.

Opening the gifts after that …

Mr. Alvin was the unintentional star of the night.

He absolutely loves opening gifts.

First he opened his gifts, Aspen and Milo’s gifts and then mine.

He does so great …..

There were toys and more toys and treats for the pups and a bandana each.

The boy got his duster with extender that he wanted and more.

The girl got some jewelry as what girls do not love some bling and more.

The Mama got spoiled.

I needed kitchen towels and a stir fry pan and those were two items that I received.

Along with scratch tickets, crystal ornament, HONEY, more kitchen towels, single serving Tupperware food chopper, Magnolia & Vine bracelet and extra charm and more.

I was so spoiled this Christmas.

Thank you to my family and friends.

Here are some photos and then I better go clean up some more and make some COFFEE.

Merry Christmas.

Oh and make some phone calls.

 

Bit of action shot so blurry

Some of my gifts.

Alvin enjoyed opening his gifts and mine.

Aspen and Milo just enjoyed their gifts.

We had a great Christmas Eve and now it is Christmas Day.

I went and spent over one hour with Humphrey and Cynder.

Giving them fresh food and water.

Cleaning the litter box.

Everyone wants a clean one of those ….

Time to go downstairs and make me some coffee.

Then call some family before I start to make brunch which I am thinking will be kind of like “lunch.”

There are no rules on this day.

We just go with it.

Whatever happens, happens.

 

I hope that you are having an awesome Christmas.

Merry Merry Christmas To You and Your Family.

Always, Carol & Alvin

I guess I should upload our newest photo.

 

Thought for the day ….

Good Morning and Welcome to Thursday the 9th day of November, 2017.

We had an “interesting” staff meeting.

The lunch and snacks provided were great.

Back to the office today.

Ended up home a bit early so was able to get outside while it was still light.

We found this roll of paper towel close to our friend’s car so we ran it to their house.

Had a quick visit to see how everyone is doing.

Just after we hit the public sidewalk – I heard someone calling my name.

I turned to see Alvin’s girl friend “Miss Abi” and her Momma coming up the sidewalk.

Alvin ran to Abi, just like in the movies.

Abi gave me a kiss …. she loves me.

They got all tangled together …..

We visited, caught up and continues walking together until the pups started to raise up their paws from the cold sidewalk, which did not take too long.

It really was not terribly cold.

I am always aware of the temperature.

But we enjoyed our time together.

Always great to run into old friends and of course, nice for Alvin to see his girl friend.

They are so cute together.

Sometimes madly in love other times a quick sniff and they each go the other way.

Just like people, I suppose.

 

Well time again to leave for work.

I hope that you all have an awesome day.

Happy Thursday.

 

Special Hello to:  if you have plants, do not forget to water them ( I moved my plants to my office because of the Christmas decorations and almost forgot to water them, I see them every morning).

Always, Carol & Alvin