Dad and I were enjoying our traditional Scrabble game on the Friday night--it was getting later, and we were definitely doing more talking than playing, but we had a lot to catch up on. Around 10:30, the front door slammed and there in the dark entrance stood a mysterious man in black. Well, until he spoke, anyway.

Jason had surprised me by driving down to Sylvan Lake to meet us! It is no exaggeration to say I flipped out, squealing across the distance from the table to the door. It was the best surprise, ever.

We spent the weekend hanging out as a family, doing the traditional Easter Sunday Eat-N-Dash between relatives' places, and then Jason had to leave to be back at work by Monday morning. The kids and I spent the rest of the week visiting the friends we could actually get ahold of (including Chris and Tegan K., who just had their first baby!) We stopped in on Thursday night at my friend-since-childhood Kristy's home in Edmonton, dealt with a flat tire before leaving the city on Friday, stopped in St. Albert to pick up my new seeds for my new garden at Hole's Greenhouse, and were in Peace River by bedtime! Whoo-ee, did I really cover that whole week in one paragraph?!

Unfortunately, we had managed to collect a couple of nasty souvenirs on the way--one was the cold my brother had, which was first contracted by Noah, and worked through the four of us until I finally got it. It was hitting me hard on that final stretch from Edmonton on Friday the 17th. Also, that night, all three of the boys threw up. It was exciting. Whatever strange virus they had was never violent--in fact, after the initial puking, they ate almost normally, had mostly-normal energy, and no fever. But they took turns for almost two weeks (Noah being the longest-hit) throwing up in the morning, hardly eating breakfast and having the runs, but then playing hard all day and eating fine the rest of the night. It was the weirdest thing. I have no idea where they got it from--it didn't hit me, or any of the kids we have been staying with for two weeks. My friend Robin said her kids were doing the same thing at the same time, but we didn't even see them until we had been up here a week! So, you folks that we stayed with along the way--do you have any ideas?

All right, I'm gonna wrap this up here. It's frustrating being so behind on my blog--I've had stuff to blog about the last couple of weeks, but wanted to finish this first, so the whole idea got skipped. Anyhoo, we have been staying with our friends the Gregorys. We keep thinking we are going to get to move over to Magnussons' (our semi-permanent residence for the next undefined "while") in "just a few days," but the basement-finishing is taking longer than we all thought. Jacob and Erin have been SO awesome, and our kids all get along really well, so we have been enjoying it here, not feeling like we are quite wearing out our welcome yet.

Spring has been finding it's way up to Peace River. We left it in the dust somewhere around Calgary, but although it's progress may have been slow, it was at least steady. I am getting antsy to get my garden started, but have not yet got all my materials together. Since I won't be "moving" tomorrow, perhaps I will work on rounding up dirt and wood and stuff to make my raised beds, instead.

I am also getting antsy to start doing school again. I have seven weeks of teaching left, and I don't want to be having to do it during the few short summer weeks that we actually get here. Unfortunately, although I was able to find my basic teaching supplies, I do not know where in the C-Can I buried the most important thing--my planning binder. I am hoping it will turn up once we are able to start taking stuff out of there and moving it to Magnussons', so I actually have "elbow room" to dig a little deeper amongst the boxes.

Although we are supposedly living with him (Jason came to stay with us at Gregorys' until we can all officially move together), we have still hardly seen Jason. He has been working late on the basement every night, sanding what has been mudded the day before. Last night, we actually got a family night as there was not much to do over there, so we went out to dinner and went swimming. That was lots of fun--the kids were in heaven!

Soccer also starts Monday, so we will be all kinds of busy this upcoming week. And in other news, Jacob has the first two seasons of "Heroes" here--we started watching it last Sunday night, and are already half-way through Season 1. It is SO. GOOD. And addicting. We should maybe have spent more hours sleeping and less hours wondering "what will happen next?" in the past week, but did I mention that it's SO. GOOD?

So, there you have it. The briefing is over, and this blog can resume regularly scheduled programming.

How have you been keeping, friends?