In Bloom

We had a very good time in Alberta last weekend with a whirlwind of visiting family and friends.  We managed to see approximately 40 relatives between the kids and hubby's Aunt's 80th Birthday party and we are very glad we went.  His Aunt was over the moon that we came.  She is one of 3 Aunts he has left and the only one who has her wits about her as the others are suffering from different stages of dementia.  She looked amazing and is unbelievably fit - she is retaking her driving test at 80 (requirement here), continues to volunteer, garden and is very active in her church.  I am pretty sure we might be going to her 90th birthday party one day. 


We also managed to visit with 3 of our 4 kids which was nice.  The two boys who are travelling to Europe with us are super excited as we went over details of the trip.  We visited my stepdaughter who moved into a new apartment with her boyfriend, a huge step up from her last place.  Everyone is doing well and fingers and toes crossed they all will continue to do so.

Alberta still had a lot of snow, particularly out in the fields.  I wasn't sorry to be coming home to a nice green paradise back on the island though full of tulips and daffodils.  The odd tree is in bloom here, the picture above was taken on my street as it is just getting ready to bloom. 

We had some unnecessary excitement yesterday when hubby left our utility sink in the laundry room running with water then got interrupted by a neighbor.  I walked into the kitchen and realized there was 2 inches of water covering the entire floor of the utility room.  We used every towel in the house including all the dog bath ones to mop it up.  Moved every appliance (washer, dryer, upright freezer and minifridge) in there to get the water underneath.  Then we had to go into the crawl space and mop up water down there and set up fans to dry it all out.  Hopefully nothing got wrecked.  As far as we can see it didn't, a few empty boxes we had stored in the crawl were destroyed but almost everything else down there is in rubbermaid containers.  Our furnace is under the house but far enough away that it wasn't touched (super expensive error had it been).

I had intended to clean the house from top to bottom yesterday and had gotten half done by the time we had the flood.  The rest will happen today.  At least now all the dust bunnies underneath the appliances have been washed out.  Most fortunate was the fact that our laminate flooring next to the utility room did not get wrecked as when they installed it they put a lip between the two types of flooring which managed to keep the water off the kitchen floor.  Seriously, after flooring 3 times in this house if this laminate gets wrecked we will install rubber flooring.  I don't care what it looks like, I am not flooring again.  Who knows,  a few months down the road we may find something got wrecked in the storage space, if that happens we will just deal with it as I have no urge to haul it up right now. I am really glad we left lino in that room which is completely fine after the mess was cleaned up.  We have to make sure everything dries out completely to prevent any mold from forming.  We will monitor it closely the next few days.

Hubby was mortified but as the saying goes....*hit happens. For those who say there insurance for that - you are right - but it comes with a $2000 deductible for water damage of any kind.  We couldn't claim on our roof leak as the claim total came to less than $1500 and we wouldn't have been able to claim on this unless the furnace got wrecked.   We didn't chose that deductible, our main deductible is $1000 but the insurance company assigned water damage deductible of $2000 to most houses in BC.

Anyway, after that we went over to our friends house last night and had a fabulous vegetarian Indian dish of paneer(an Indian cheese that you can fry and has the consistency of chicken in this dish) in curry, naan bread and salad and homemade German lemon cake for desert.  It was just what the Dr ordered along with some wine and cards. 

Today I am off to do some thrifting and have a peek at a couple of garage sales with Mom.  It is still super early here for the good garage sales, those tend to be in late April and May but you never know what you will find. 

Tomorrow we are having BBQ ribs, potato salad, corn on the cob and homemade lemon meringue pie (if it turns out).  Happy Easter/Passover/Long Weekend Everyone no matter your faith!