Amelia comes to stay overnight, Easter Crafts and Bob Sieger Concert - March 18 - 28

Back to rainy days again. Flooding risks and landslides in the lower mainland. The lake has risen about 3 feet in the past few days. Looking forward to spring and some sunny days.

Lake level March 20th. This should be the height when they put the new weir in. Too bad 3 feet of this water will run out into the river before they can hold any back. All reports are showing a dry summer at this point for the south island.

My cell phone contract is expiring in April, so I either upgrade or buy my old one out for $700. As mine is a Galaxy S24 Ultra all the info told me that the S26 Ultra is much better, especially the camera.  I traded up while tthere's a sale on, so saved a bunch of money. When I received the new phone, I did a data transfer between phones and then had to enter all the passwords into my apps. The app for the security cameras would not accept the password! We've had trouble with this last year with Ray's new phone but a technician was able to get it going. 

No matter what I tried, it wasn't working. I tried to get into the security computer and could not get in as admin to change password either. Good thing I'm retired, I spent 6 plus hours on the phone with the security companies (yes plural) to find a solution. Our original install was done by Price Alarms 8 years ago, then they sold to ADT and then sold to Telus Smart Security! ADT/Telus Smart Security now collects money from us for monitoring doors etc anyways, but no one's able to help. I was given a phone number for the customer service for the HVR, Hikvision, so tried that avenue. After spending an hour on the phone with them, downloading 2 different programs on my laptop, no luck. 

It finally turned out that the unit that we bought is now "outlawed" in Canada for security purposes as of last July, as it's manufactured in China! So no password help. I even took it apart to see if there was a reset button inside the unit ... nope! Our HVR needs replacing and I was hoping that the rest of our system would be compatible (cameras, wiring etc).

Wednesday afternoon a nice guy, Josh, owner from a local security company came. He replaced the HVR and was able to use the hard drive out of the old one so savings there. Unfortunately only 1 of the 4 cameras is new enough to be compatible. Josh had one extra with him so installed that, but next week 2 more will be replaced. What a pain in the butt. Anyways, this equipment is from Europe (Ajax) and has lifetime software support for free. EcoSecurity Alarm and Camera Systems from Duncan have been great and gave me a good deal on replacement equipment. Apparently they've had quite a few old "Price/Telus" customers needing help replacing stuff.

Thursday, after my hair appointment, we headed into Duncan for some shopping as the rain stopped for awhile. I'm checking out computers at Best Buy. I dropped mine on the edge a few weeks ago and cracked the keyboard frame. Now my mouse sometimes works and sometimes does not! The cost of ram is going up substantially this year, (on the news) due to all the Ai data servers. So I decided to bite the bullet now and get a new one before mine quits altogether. I like lots of storage on my computer as I don't want to have to pay more for "cloud storage". Hard to find computers with 32gb and 1tb of memory. Of course the extended warranty I bought for my old one expired last September! Ended up ordering one from BestBuy online with the memory I wanted. Should be here the beginning of next week. Already the cost of ram has gone up ... 32gb used to be $130, it is now over $300 for the same thing.

So that is 3 big expenses of "fixes" so hopefully the rule of three applies and that is it!

While in Duncan, we ate late lunch at Dragon Yuan Cafe, by the Best Buy. We shared a dinner for one and had some left-overs for Ray's dinner later. They are very reasonable at $22 for a 3 combo dinner. I didn't have to cook :)

We actually had a nice weekend weatherwise. I planted my strawberries in the greenhouse on Saturday. Ray installed my automatic window opener. I tested it with ice water and it works lol

Ray spent the majority of his time in his wood shop, making planters. I'm in a cooking mode. lol Pork Tonakatsu for dinner.

Saturday morning I got out for a walk using my new nordic walking sticks.... they are right! You get a full body workout, I could definitely feel it when I got home. Hot tub time lol

Sunday morning we woke to cold temps and there is new snow on the hills across the lake! Beautiful out there but a very cold wind. Hope my strawberry plants didn't freeze.

Penny, my garden angel, came Sunday and Monday to clean the debris and weeds out my front gardens. It looks fabulous. Back gardens will be done next week. I leave the dead leaves over winter as that's where the bumble bees hibernate. Once they start flying, which they did a week ago, the leaves can be cleaned out.

Before: 

The new neighbours are packing in more new furniture (mattresses) while their roof is being replaced, which was part of the deal for purchase. Lots of banging going on next door for a few days.

They hired Penny to look after their gardens too, so my view will remain lovely. :)

Now the garden looks like this. Should be a mass of colour in a couple of months with all the iris's.

The lavender bed hasn't started to grow yet, so pretty dead looking.

In a couple of weeks we will get a load of topsoil to top up the gardens, once the plants have grown a bit taller. There is a lot of gravel showing from all the rain.

For some reason a bunch of daffodil bulbs we planted last fall did not grow? Penny and I must have planted over 150. Maybe too wet this year, or a bad batch of bulbs.

Ray mowed the lawn for the first time on Monday and got the lime put on. After the rain event coming this week it will be time to get the moss killer down. 3/4 of the back lawn is all moss. We are having our yard maintenance person, Agata, come and aerate and thatch it in April. (She is the one that trims our big hedge annually and does a fabulous job.)

Monday I decided to play in my kitchen, using up old stuff soon to expire. I had a small butternut squash on the counter that had lived there for a month or so ... I also had an open package of wonton wrappers. So for lunch I made roasted butternut ravioli in brown butter and prawns. (the prawns were part of a package that had a bunch of ice in it)

There was a container of ricotta unopened and also expiring and I also had sheet pasta that was starting to get freezer burnt, an italian sausage package also getting ice, so I decided to make a couple of lasagna's. Using my frozen tomato sauce I made last August, made a great meat sauce. I hate throwing out food, so I do try to utilize stuff when I can. Ray doesn't complain. lol

By 12:30, we had ravioli for lunch and I had 2 small lasagna's, one for the freezer and one for Tuesday night dinner as we would be out all afternoon with Amelia.

On Tuesday we are having Amelia stay overnight for a couple of nights during her Spring Break. We woke to a very showery morning. We met up with Jason at the Highway 18 intersection at 11am and picked up Amelia.

First up  a little shopping at Walmart and giving my old computer to Seaside Computers to transfer data onto my new computer. We went to McDonald's for lunch as they have a play area.

The weather is cold and wet outside so an hour of climbing helped wear her out lol

Back home by 2 for lots of indoor playtime with Grandpa and me. I play too, but I'm also the one taking pictures lol

I had bought some travel magnatiles and blocks for Amelia, so we have them when taking her to restaurants and our summer trip to Pinantan Lake. Always nice to have new toys. :)

Happy girl at our house.

She is finally big enough to play "Hands Down", a game I saved from when Kristi and Garrett were kids.

I popped the lasagna into the oven for dinner. At bedtime we had our cuddle time and stories. She went right to sleep and slept through all night. Yay for me. :)

Up at 5:45 am. Quiet time with her tablet. She is wearing her unicorn mask. lol

Another busy day today. Started out with blueberry pancakes that Amelia helped me make. Her and I have made pancakes almost everytime she has been here since she was big enough to help mix. Now that she is 5, she does most of it herself.

Papa and Amelia doing her train puzzle.

I had to go to Country Grocer for a couple of things and so after that we went to Tim Horton's for donuts.

Back home for lunch, she made her own sandwich. 

Later in the afternoon, at 2 pm, it's time to go to Pat's, next door for Easter Crafts. We're not very "crafty" and neither is Jason or Kristi, so it's great for Pat to offer. She's done tons of crafts over the years with her grandchildren and she continues to do her own crafts.

Amelia kept on task for 2 hours! Pat is amazed at her focus. Pat and I had a glass of wine after so Amelia played with some magnets that she had for her grandchildren. Always fun times at Pat's!

Tonight's dinner is homemade pizza. Amelia got to make her own.

Eating the left over pineapple lol

Tonight it took a little longer for her to fall asleep and she had me up once at 1:30 am with a few tears, "I miss my mommy". Fortunately that is the only time and she slept through until 6:15 am.

Breakfast is a decorated pancake with sausages, her favourite.

We had a great time with her. Jason came at 10 am to take her home. So we did a lot of sitting at the table or couch playing. I don't sleep particularly well as I always have "an ear" on her sleeping upstairs.

Thursday afternoon, we had Josh from EcoSecurity come to finish installing our new cameras. The system now works great and the app on our phones work as well. While I'm keeping track of Josh, Ray finished another puzzle. In January, from FaceBook Marketplace, he bought a huge stack of them from a lady clearing out a shed in Nanaimo. A lot of the puzzles have not even been open. He has lots to choose from. He works on projects in the morning and then in the afternoon he does his puzzles.

Friday we enjoyed a quiet morning before heading out to Nanaimo at 3 pm. We're going to the Bob Sieger (revival) Concert at the Port Theatre. Ray had a bit of shopping to do for his woodshop beforehand. We parked in the underghround parking nextto the theatre and then we walked over to the Old City Station Pub for dinner.

It 's a busy night at the pub. We were lucky we were there early, or we wouldn't have had a seat. It's the Blue Jay's opener as well as a large reserved portion for a birthday party. They have Richards Red on tap, which I haven't had for years and Ray also has Iota 0 alcohol Pale Ale on tap. For dinner, I ordered loaded potato skins and Ray the smoked meat sandwich. Delicious. We saw plates of fish and chips go by us and the fish is HUGE. Something to try next time. Only downside is that they have coated fries which is not our favourite.

After dinner and a couple of brew to waste time, we walked back to Port Theatre. We were about 15 minutes too early before they opened the doors, so we sat on a bench across the street on the waterfront. Good thing we were early as there are only a few chairs to sit on inside the vestibule. I had a wine while we waited. All the benches were full before they allowed people into the theatre at 7 pm.

The show was pretty good. The first half was better where the band did the tribute to John Fogarty with recognizable songs. Our seats were K30 and K31. Unfortunately when I picked them for the legroom, I didn't realize people would be sitting in front of us in the aisle. I will choose seats at the end of the row next time, K24 and K 25 instead which would move us to the left and we would have an unobscured view of the stage.

Rock and Roll Girls.

After intermission the band, changed outfits to portray Bob Sieger and band. This half of the concert, the music was great, but they chose more obscure songs that we didn't know. They did play some we did though. 

Bad Moon Rising.

That was the past 10 days. Time is "a flying by"! Hopefully now that it is spring .... the spring weather starts and no more really cold temperatures. It's time to plant!