While Richard was away in the UK for the last two weeks (during the volcano episode), it was a busy time which is great. My babysitter really should settle into our spare bedroom as she was here four nights in the first week alone!

On Monday, Clare organised for a pretty big group of us to bring together grub to produce a pot luck lunch for another friend's 40th birthday and it was lovely. All the children were at school, we all had a couple of glasses of wine and ate ourselves silly. We then walked, in a bit of a wobbly fahsion, across to school - such responsible parents!

The same evening, I had my weekly drum lesson (laugh if you must!) then 20mins following my return, some of us met for our monthly book club at mine to review our latest read, The Time Traveller's Wife, but we all agreed it would be nice to watch the film. So eveyone came over here, my sitting room was filled with about a dozen women munching grub, watching a girlie film. I'm quite certain Richard was glad he was away for that one (although those who know him well, would argue that a glass of white wine and a chick flick constitute a pretty nice night in for him!). The next few months we are reading various people's suggestions, and then during the summer, I am going to host one where we all bring a dish from Julia Childs' cook book. That's definitely more my type of reading, that is, the type where there is an edible conclusion!

A couple of days later a friend, Zoe, invited five of us over for a lovely quiet dinner for Jeanette's 40th (this girl is having the most celebrations of the same birthday I have ever known!). It was a really nice evening, super food and good chit chat.

Lizzie and I continue with our Life Drawing classes and we're both improving. We worked with watercolour that week and this week, as I write, we worked with charcoal and chalk pastels. I LOVED this week. Lots of mess, nothing wishy washy, a nice firm (aggressive, I was told - although I prefer to think of it as passionate!) drawing style. Lizzie is doing famously, it's lovely to see her coming on in leaps and bounds. I should take a couple of photos of her sketches and post them on here.....

On Saturday evening there had been organised a Progressive Supper Party. It a fairly regular event here - we have been to three or four since arriving in Canada. They are good fun - we eat the first course at one house, main at another, pud at another and then everyone involved meets for drinks and frolicks at the last place. During these courses, one never meets the same person more than once. As Richard was away, I didn't fancy traipsing around the patch by myself between the courses so Jeanette, Paul and I did the first course together here at my place. They genned up on their cocktail making and produced some pretty colourful drinks and I dealt with the starter. I did a couple of new hors d'oeuvres (normal style: always a good time to try new things out - a couple of hours before guests arrive) which went well and then for the first course, I had made a Chinese dish and served it in lovely pink and black polka dot American style card take-away boxes. No washing up! It was a good evening, although it was strange going to each course by myself, but everyone was lovely and kind. By the time we reached the last house for drinks, everyone else was there (about sixty, I guess) and the Champers was flowing for the 40th birthday of one of the chaps out here. It's obviously "the" birthday year to mark whilst in Canada! The evening finished with a game of street hockey in the road......

The following morning, on Sunday, I had decided that I would take the children to a rodeo that was going on in our nearest town, Medicine Hat. It was a really brilliant day. We all enjoyed it. Prior to going to the arena though, I stopped at the local Western Wear & Tack shop (Lammle's) and bought all the children a pair of cowboy boots. It took a fair while as there are so may styles and colours from which to choose, but the children all left the shop happy and we made our way across to the rodeo - all dressed appropriately!
The cowboys demonstrated bull riding (horrifyingly dangerous), riding bucking broncos (equally tricky, to say the least) and calf roping- when calf is let out, at speed, into the arena with two cowboys, one either side. They speed alongside the calf, one uses his lasso to rope the horns, a split second later the other cowboy ropes the hind legs and the calf is caught. Immediately, the animal is immobile, the guys release it.

Lastly, the cowboys demonstrate another way of catching a calf. He again rides along beside the madly running calf, then leaps off his horse, onto the neck of the moving calf, stops it moving with sheer brute force, lifts it, puts it down on the ground, ropes its ankles and hey presto - it's caught. Clearly, the aim of the first two of these spectacles is to stay on the animal as long as possible (sometimes it's only a matter of a few seconds) and the aim with the calves is to catch them in the quickest time possible. The whole thing is taken very seriously indeed between all the competitors and it's brilliant to watch.

When Richard left for the UK, the weather was starting to become rather agreeable - the snow had gone and we were pretty constantly above +15 which was lovely. A few days later an ovenight blizzard struck and the following morning, we all had to put on our ski gear again to get to school - it was really bizarre! It was the deepest, wettest snow we have seen. Until now, we have always had the dry, powdery stuff। Easy to clear the pathway but hopeless for making snowballs! This stuff was so wet and heavy, I couldn't dig the car out of the drive. Three days later, it was +27* and I was slapping the sun lotion on the children before school! This week has been pretty packed too, but the highlight was the return of Daddy on Wednesday evening. Henry, particularly, was beside himself with glee as Richard walked through the garden gate. With such lovely weather we have been eating supper outdoors, so half way through their grub, it was a lovely surprise for the children to see the transport pull up and Richard step out.

After school yesterday afternoon, we had a slightly frantic couple of hours. We trekked into Med Hat to get Richard some cowboy boots ready for the Ranchman's Ball later in the evening. He decided to go the whole hog, bought the boots, shirt and spurs! Clink, clink, clink, yeehaaaa........
We also managed to fit in getting me a new bicycle as my little (or not so) Lizzie has outgrown hers and nicked mine as soon as the weather turned fine.


The Ranchman's Ball was, well, a ball! Excellent fun, super food (far too much!), lots of laughs and loads of dancing to a really good country band. There was line dancing - always a bit of a giggle, and I ended up doing a two step with a cowboy - one of the ranch owners from near here. I really enjoyed it - it reminded me of dancing with my beloved grandfather at one of their wedding anniversary parties, where because he was so brilliant at dancing, I was just gently manouvred around the floor (correct footwork and all!). It was the same with the cowboy - we were gliding around the floor, I didn't have to think about the feet, just enjoyed the fab music and before I knew it the dance was over.

The prairie season is well on its way to starting now and Richard will be on his own timetable for several months. He will or won't be around at odd times of the day or night, so the children and I now just crack on with life and if Richard can join in, that will be great, but he's prety realistic about the fact that he won't really be around to do stuff. So.....we kicked off today by going five pin bowling - old fashioined skittles - with Clare (in a similar husbandless position to me!) and her two little ones.













The children had a super time, particularly as the balls were small enough for them to handle without help.




The most memorable moment of the day for me, was when Henry was waiting for his turn. He leant against the wall and said "oooooh, that feels lovely!" (it was covered in felt for some reason). He then proceeded to walk up and down that stretch of wall, arms and hands splayed, kissing it as he walked. I could barely take the photo I was laughing so much!

Today we had a brilliant end to the day. Lexi (finally!) grasped riding a bike. She's been hugely reluctant to do it for several years, but today, was clearly just inspired. It was lovely to see.

At last, I'm up to date! So.... in the last week or so:

The children broke up for the week and a half long Easter holiday. We had planned to go to Montana, as this is the last opportunity we will have for certain to spend with Richard for the next 5 months as the Prairie Season is about to commence. Due to last minute work commitments however, he had to be on duty which meant staying here. The Prairie Season is when the chaps disappear off to the prairie and live there for long stretches at a time training for going on operational tours. Visiting troops from the UK and Germany come out to Canada to train during these months and our husbands here run the exercise. All normality disappears from family life and a group of us live as single mothers for those months as we (and the guys) have no idea when they will be able to come back. I do have it slightly softer than others because, as Richard flies, he does have to come back to refuel etc., so he will most likely be home more often that the other few chaps. Do not be fooled however, just because he'll be coming back, it doesn't necessarily mean we'll see him. He'll come back at strange hours of the day or night to catch some kip and then be off again. Weekends certainly won't exist, but I guess that's why things slack off a bit during the winter period - because it is so full on from Spring to Autumn.

On the Saturday of the Easter weekend, we went to our friends Paul and Jeanette's for a Nepali dinner. It was really fantastic - they are super cooks. When we arrived they were both wearing genuiney Nepali garb; Jeanette looked lovely in her sari, Paul, well, I don't know what to say - the nappy style trousers just didn't really do it for me!



Mature as always (I blame it on my brothers). Who on earth would be childish enough to stick those two diamate bindis there? Surely a normal person would have felt complete with just the one in the middle of her forehead?! (there are bindiss there honestly, but you can only see them when the picture is enlarged!).


On Monday we went back to Jeanette and Paul's for a stonking barbeque. It was a lovely warm day (relatively speaking, of course!)and we spent from lunchtime to evening sitting in the garden enjoying the unexpected balmy weather. We were actually celebrating the birthday of their youngest, but as they said themselves, it was also brill excuse for several sets of friends to get together while the children played (and did an Easter Egg hunt). Lizzie was a star helping with the little ones - she's becoming such a huge help with Harry and his little parnters in crime.

The following day, Tuesday, Richard decided he'd go back to work as we were no longer going on holiday, so the children and I did holiday type stuff - a special treat movie afternoon, bowling, meeting with friends et cetera.

On Tuesday evening, Richard took the girls to see the Medicine Hat Tigers play a hockey game and the following evening Richard and I went with a group of friends. We both really enjoy going to the games - they have a super atmosphere and the young teenage energy the players display is quite something. They skate after the puck with such reckless abandon, it's quite thrilling to watch (although I wouldn't like to be one of their mothers watching - they do get pretty battered).







Lizzie was terribly delighted as the mascot came to sit next to her.

The following night when Richard and I went to the Game, we treated ourselves to a terribly romantic, fine dining experince. I had a Canadian delicacy I hadn't sampled before; Taco-in-a-bag.

It's a bag of taco crisps opened, the vendor then adds lettuce, salsa, cheese, soured cream and ground beef to the bag, hands it over with a fork and that's it! It was actually pretty nice - a welcome change to the norm of burgers and chips everywhere here. We finished our treat with ice cream in a cone. The whole evening was lovely actually. A bit of grown up time watching the game and eating rubbish!




The latter part of the week I spent preparing for Jeanette's surprise 40th birthday party. Her husband had organised food and a slide show but had asked Clare and I to kinda pull it together so that she wouldn't suspect anything. You will be surprised to learn that I found myself incapable of letting him buy a couple of foil "It's your birthday!" banners from the dollar store, so I asked if he would like me to come up with an idea to decorate the Jubilee Arms (our most charming orange-varnished-wood,-chips-with-everything-pseudo-pub here in Ralston). Black, pink and zebra print were the obvious choices for the birthday girl and I spent the next few days going to the fabric shop, drawing chandeliers on black card and sticking on jewels. The end result looked pretty nice (only in the evening light!) and my main objective was accomplished: as much orange wood covered as possible!



Noo, Jeanette and Clare (three people who have great difficulty finding anything to say about everything!).







The balloon tree (you may well recognise this, Ma!).

It looked really super in real life - I think several balloons had disappeared by the time this was taken. Clare did the hard work with the axe aquiring this huge branch, I finished it off with my wonderful talent for weight gain, flinging a belt over the overhang, and then with feet well off terra firma, using my dead weight (and letting out a Tarzan whoop) the branch came crashing to the ground (school girl error: it was rather bigger on the ground than it looked when still attached to the tree). As you can imagine, the whole episode was accompanied with so much giggling and snorting laughter that I for one, felt quite feeble and debilitated by the time we'd pulled ourselves together and the branch was in the pub. Most of the laughter was of course as a result of imagining the looks on our husbands' faces if they could see what we were going to my garden! Clearly, it was imperative for the success of the operation for us to work speedily as it was a Friday afternoon and no-one knows how early the chaps will come home for the weekend....



The children were really great that day. I had been wondering how on earth we would get the place done in time for the party with the sprogs on school holidays, but Clare's daughter and Lexi blew up all the balloons for us and Lizzie, did the most wonderful job looking after Claire's little boy and Harry, who are more or less the same age. She was great - she soley entertained them from 2pm until 5ish. Took them to the park, played games with them, gave them food, the works (we weren't far away we live almost opposite the pub!). Just as we finished and I was walking home, I saw what I thought was a new wife on the patch walking along with her two children. A few paces closer and I realised it was Lizzie with the two boys wrapped up tight and warm coming to see us! She has grown up so much recently.

See what I mean?! My sunhat is part of a long line of things that have migrated from my wardobe to Lizzie's as we are both the same size now. How long is this going to last?.....

End of March - beginning of April.

The final week of March brought a couple of unusual little events. Firstly, several of us sold daffoldils in aid of Cancer Research. A friend and I sold ours at the school and around Ralston village (the children had been warned to bring in money) and all the bunches went like hot cakes - they were really popular. Other wives went to the Base to sell theirs (again, rather a captive audience!) and we raised a good amount for the charity.

The following day I had been looking forward to for quite some time. SAAFA had organised for some of its members to be taken across the prairie to be shown what it is the chaps do out there - how they train and so on. It was really a most interesting and informative day. I had absolutely no idea at all just how large the prairie is. The guys when they are taken out there to train are driven for hours and hours to get where they need to be. We travelled 45 minutes until we saw the first building, where we were given a briefing, shown some of the techy stuff they use and viewed a VT showing how the prairie is used to train the guys.

We were then driven further in (another 45 mins) to the nearest of the mock villages on the outskirts of the training area. We were all astonished at the amount of detail employed to make the experience of training as life like as possible for the men. Some of the stuff we were told and saw was of a sensitive nature, but it was fine to take photographs:



Like my super-camoflauged coat?!




At the fruit market.....



Mmmmmm, lovely Army packed lunch! (Actually they were pretty good - fresh fruit and everything!).




Noo and Clare taking things very seriously!



The long and (not so winding) road home. This land mark is named, most inventively, "Lone Tree". What can I say?!

Marching On....

March had the same running theme as Feb - lots of cooking for various people coming over for grub. Jolly nice having them over too - lots of late nights and laughter. We went out quite a bit too (in Ralston!).

Half way through March, a lovely friend and I organised a Swishing Party. Despite that sounding slightly dodgey, it's an evening where a load of women swap clothes (no, NOT the ones they're wearing, Benj, OK?) they had supper here too. It was a highly organised affair (not my forte - that was definitely Jeanette's part to play) and I hosted it. Everybody gave us their items a few days before hand, I then made a load of pretty sizing labels (no plain functional white sticky labels here, thank you very much!), which were tied onto the clothes. I turned my dining room into a shopette and dressing room, borrowing some spiral clothes rails from the theatre and partitioning off my open plan dining room from the sitting room with some perfect curtains I found in a charity shop here - white voile covered with applique party dresses! The evening began with supper and then the fun began. There were so many of us that the easiers way to moniter the whole thing was to have each person's name pulled out of the hat one at a time and they then had the opportunity to go into the dressing room, look through everything, try it on, chose something and then the next person had a go. It went on quite late and I think it was a great success - I might well do another one in the summer.... ( I came away with two lovely new handbags and a bunch of other stuff, I highly recommend this form of no cost shopping!).

The girls had their report cards through in March too. I am pleased to say they both did well - Lexi's couldn't have been better. It was lovely to see that the penny had dropped for her. Actually working = good results!

Richard's hockey has been occupying a fair amount of his time and the season is coming to a close at the end of March. The final fixture is a tournament between all the teams here. His team, The Flyers did get to the final (I think!) so there was a good week or so of spending evenings on the bleachers in the ice rink supporting Daddy, eating fast food and developing a hoarse throat from our loyal support of our team! Actually, I really enjoy watching Richard play, the chidlren do too.

Busy busy busy......

For a large portion of February I spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen - cooking. We had quite a few dinner parties and various friends over for lunch and two big lunch parties. It was a nice sociable time (and a lot of hard work!). There was also a SSAFA Big Brew (taking cakes and tea up to the Winter Repair chaps on the prairie) which involved more cake making (obligatory for an Army wife!). More cake making and refreshment selling for an ice hockey tournament and even more cake making for a preschool fundraiser. I now just buy massive sacks of flour from Costco, no point in the normal bags any more!

Lizzie and I both decided to start Life Drawing classes which we both have enjoyed immensely. I haven't drawn since school and Lizzie spends much of her spare time drawing, but the class suited us both. There are just 6 adults and Lizzie which is really nice. One of the wives here is a super artist and decided to put on these classes for those who are enthusiastic. Other wives and one husband volunteer to be our life models, which is really good of them. The the latter caused much schoolgirl giggling amongst us oh so mature students as he had to strip off (Lizzie was quite oblivious!). A few became quite overcome to the point where it became hard to concentrate on the pencil to paper rather than shaking with giggles, guffaws and snorts! (for those of you considering contacting Social Services due to Lizzie's attendance at this session, our model did keep his boxers on by the way!).

The first weekend in March, Richard and I went to a Hoe Down up at the Base. It was SUCH a good fun night. It was excellent - probably the best night out I've had in years! The grub was super, the band was fab which made the line dancing great fun (honestly!) and as usual we were on the last bus home. There's a good plan here; when we go to a "do", because Ralston village is a couple of miles away from the Base where the chaps work and where the Mess is, transport is always put on when there is a function and it just runs continuously throughout the night into the small hours so no one has to drive home. Gleaming!

We did take the camera but the battery died after only one photo: