The Brady Bunch

Last night I had a "friend" over for dinner for the first time.  I write "friend" because we don't really know each other well but we keep running into one another.  We were in the same sewing class together, I ran into her twice at the rink and one Sunday morning she was at church!  She is a very shy girl and always seemed either embarrassed or something whenever I would invite her over for a playdate.  She has 3 girls pretty much the exact same age as my boys.  The only difference is that our middle children are 6 months apart and her daughter will be starting kindergarten one year earlier than Nathan.  Even though she's so shy, she could not refuse my invitation to come over for dinner.  So there we were with all the kids, all 6 of them, 3 boys and 3 girls and it was fun.  At first it was the girls on one side of the room with the boys ignoring them on the other, but by the end of the night they were all vigorously playing together in the bouncy castle (actually the babies played together outside the mayhem).  The girls kept up with the boys and the boys toned down the bathroom talk and rude "humour" (It's soooo not funny to me! I am having issues with my boys' fascination with body parts and bodily functions!) which was so nice!  I really enjoyed getting to know the mom a little.  At some point during the dinner she said "this is my first time having dinner with white people" and my response was "I hope we didn't disappoint!" to which she just quietly smiled.  Ha!  I'm not sure what she was thinking but smiling quietly is something she does often.  She has brothers here in town but says she rarely get together with their families.  This surprised me since I thought most Inuit families were very tightly knit.  She said something that gave me the impression that she either doesn't get together with friends very much or simply doesn't really have many (this would explain her reservations when I asked her to come over.  I've noticed here that the women don't really get together for playdates, it seems that it's just not something they are used to.  I think she really enjoyed coming over.  She gave me her phone number and asked me to call her.  She also asked if she could come with me when I go out for a walk (I was explaining that I was looking forward to warmer weather to be able to take the boys out for a walk to the many parts of town that I haven't seen yet.  Essentially I've seen Coral Harbour's downtown core walking to the school, the stores and the arena at the farthest.).  I think that the chatty, seemingly outgoing and eager girl is growing on her...  

Where Oh Where Can She Be?

Since it's been so long since I've posted on my blog, I've decided to write about the most recent happenings and go backwards.  But first let me explain.  You may be wondering what has kept me from my beloved writtings.  Well, there were a few things actually.  In the last few weeks of my class (which ended on March 30th) I had to prepare, not one (as was the understanding) but two classes per week.  The ladies that had started coming wanted to make up for lost time (all those times nobody showed up!) and wanted to come Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons.  Then Brian hurt his back trying to prevent a snowmobile from tipping over (Benjamin and Nathan were on it).  It did not tip and the boys were fine but it set Brian back (ha ha pun intended).  However, I didn't think it's was so funny having to do all the dishes (the chore that Brian usually helps with) all the time along with all the other things that he could not longer do.  THEN came our last foodmail order and our 20 lbs of meat came mostly thawed.  So I went on a cooking bonanza and made all kinds of meals as not to let the meat spoil (not to mention doing all the dishes accompanying all the cooking).  And as you can imagine after spending 4 days in the kitchen, it took me over a week to catch up on life (laundry, other cleaning, preparing for Benjamin's birthday coming up etc), not to mention that I've started teaching Sunday school for the kids in our church (that's for another blog post...), I'm planning our "vacation" in May including my sister's bridal shower, we are still having the young girls over once a week and I try to exercise daily.  So I would like to shoot all those people who said to me that I was going to have "all this time" before I moved to Coral Harbour.  Let me tell you there is NEVER a dull moment in my life.  I love it here but I don't have "all this time".  :o)