Thanks and Bye Quebec City

I'd like to thank my brother and his wife for a wonderful visit!  Going home, is always a little difficult amongst a whole lot of loving and smiling and I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for all my brother Richard does to be a base for us all! I don't think I've told him how much that means to me and I should have!

Despite not being in the best of shape, he took me around town, even to visit my dearly departed parents, grandparents and brother, which wasn't easy for any of us! He took me to tour the part of the Ile d'Orleans where I spent a few summers and learned to swim, and when my iPad died, he, my sis-in-law and nephew all accompanied me to the Quebec Apple Store where they set me up with a new one in no time at all!

To my nephew, I am glad that I got to spend so much time with you and your beautiful girlfriend and I do hope that you will take my offer to come and visit me seriously! To my niece, I would have loved to spend more time with you, but between your being away until the day before I got there and all the catching up you needed to do when you got back it wasn't possible, so here is hoping that we have more time, next time!

Lastly, to my friend Carole, thanks for everything, for the visits to the shops and for showing me how to color with copics!  You are a wonderful teacher and I was lucky to have you spend time showing me how! I'm pretty elated with the result, my Dressed Up Marci in grays really came out well for a first ever try using copics! I'm not sure why the picture shows her in beige, when the actual is in qhite and grays, but you still get the idea of all the shading and blending that Carole patiently showed me how to do! Carole, our friendship is just a few months old but I already know will last always!

Visiting Quebec

It''s amazing how fast time can go by when you are trying to capture so many moments of your poast while catching up with your family. That said, my time in Quebec is quickly coming to a close and I need to make the most of it, with the people that I love! Just for the record, I am missing my husband like crazy and can't wait to be back home with him, which is a bit of a conflict with the fact that I am also looking forward to seeing friends in Montreal on my way home. One thing that I know for sure is that I will not wait as long to come back.

So since my time needs to be with my family, let me just leave you with some pictures taken over the last few days of places, views and old houses that caught my attention!

First set are from L'Ile d'Orleans {the Island of Orleans) which sits in the St Laurence River just minutes away from Quebec City. We only visited the tip, called Ste Pétronille, where we spent a few summers.

Photo taken from St Pétronille, of the Laurentian Mountains.
Mont St Anne, where some of the world cup skying events are\
held is just to the right

Foreground is Levis shipbuilding on the southshore.
In the background. Québec City which is on the northshore
of the St. Laurence River

Québec City in the distance

Typical roof lines on traditional Québecois homes.

Slate and mud, not sand make up the beaches on l'Ile d'Orleans

This used to be my grandparent's House at l'Ile D'Orleans

A typical farm on the Island

Some things never change! A horse barn at the entrance to

l'Ile d'Orleans

Les Chutes Momorency

Nest are pictures taken just around the city, including a few taken yesterday, some part of which I spent with Carole, a great lady that I met via this very blog. I promised not to post her picture so you will just have to imagine her warm smile and sunny disposition! I included below, the picture of a fur coat taken in one of the cities oldest stores.  It is made of mink and costs $5000.00!

This used to be the main shopping area in the 50's and 60's.

This is a typical look for the churches in Québec

You might be pro-fur, but this is a $5000.00 Mink coat!

I had never witnessed a plane being excorted by fighters before!

On closer look, this is a refueling plane! 

They must have been training!



Finally a couple of family pictures! My niece came back from a 5 week workshop in Halifax yesterday and it was obvious that my brother had missed her a lot!

Welcome home! My niece, just back from a stage in Halifax.

Who wants mail???

Molly, my brother's 14 year old dog, grabs things when

she wants attention.

Pouring over Catherine's memorabilia!

For another chance to enter my giftaway, please use the word green in your comments!

Wonderful News

Yesterday we hung around the house for a while, which is a good thing as I received the following:

What's the best way to tell a scrapbooker a story? Take a close look at the picture!

That is probably the best news I've had in a long time!  I love my son and I love Ashley!  She is a wonderful young woman who has made Shaun's live better and fuller! As much as she is a lucky young lady to have found him, he is a very fortunate young man to have found her! Needless to say, I am very happy for both of them and I wish them love, luck and laughter as well as understanding and long life!

Far more than that happened yesterday, but nothing is even close to being worthy of sharing in this very special post!

Love you Ashley and Shaun!

Charity Crop - Cutting Out Alzheimers - April 17th 2010

I am so grateful to have met Tina and to have been able to support this crop.  Many, many years ago, the path of the Pescadore family and of mine crossed. I had a little girl crush, that's what you have when you are 5-6 years old, on the daddy, who in my mind will always be, Monsieur Pescadore. His wife, who for some reason was always Carmen, I found to be loving and wonderful too. They had a little girl, Elisa born on the same day and in the same hospital as the eldest of my younger brothers, Richard.

In an ironic twist of fate, Elisa went to Europe and decided to go and visit with my mom and brothers, who were then living in the south of France. Elisa and Richard fell in love and, as they say, the rest is history.  Elisa moved to Europe, and eventually, she and Richard returned to Quebec City, where they were married and had two beautiful children, my niece and nephew.

Like all of the baby boomer families, our two families eventually got into the position of losing our parents. While losing our dad to colon cancer was not an easy thing, Elisa and her sisters, went through a much more difficult time when their mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers. They lost their mother, one memory at a time, one ability at a time, until they had no choice but to find new living arrangements that would protect her, and those around her. It has not been easy on Elisa or her sisters and I hope that now that their mom is finally at peace, they will remember all the good times they shared! 

All that to say that I attended and gave to this charity crop in honor of a wonderful woman and mother, Carmen Pescadore.

May she rest in peace and may she help to rekindle the profound love that united her daughters.

Getting Crafty - Scrapbook Buddies rise again

Many of you reading this are/were part of my Scrapbook Buddies in Florida and some I hope are new members of the group here in the tri-state area (Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio). As people say, life goes on and it is time for me to get my life rolling again. I have been scrapbooking over the last few months, but I haven't gotten my Buddies together!

I intend to do just that starting with a meetup at my house on January 6th. I hope that I can get quite a few new friends to come out here and enjoy!

Meanwhile, I did make a couple of LO's about Christmas 2007 and 2008, but I can't show them to you as they are part of my Christmas presents. I must admit that I am a year late giving the 2007 layout, but I'm sure they will be glad to add it to the Christmas albums I gave them a few years back!

As for my heritage book, I unfortunately did not manage to get it completed in time to send to be printed in time for them to get to people for Christmas, so I've given myself a break on that until the new year! I did get more pictures from my other cousin Irene who lives just outside Quebec City, thanks Irene, which will allow me to make sure that both she and her sister, who I grew up with are included. I discovered, as I was putting everything in final form, that I was still missing information without which it made no sense to go to press. For example, the picture above is of my great-grandparents 25th wedding anniversary. I got this picture from my cousin in Belgium, Marie-Jeanne. I've identified just about everyone, my grandmother is the one playing the violin in the middle of the picture, but the two mandolin players on either end of the picture. I know that one is M-J's grandmother Rosalie, but which one (I'm guessing the one in the lighter dress on the right) but who is the other lady? I also seem to be missing the name of one of my grandmother's nine siblings. So is that the mystery lady? I have learned other interesting things woking on this book and even things that were right in front of me for years, but that only clicked after the 20th time looking at them! That is one of the things that makes working on heritage books totally facinating! There are layers and layers of things you get to learn about your family. Suddenly stories that you were told click with something else that you uncover. It is amazing some of the things I've learned about that are different from what I'd always believed! There may even be some discoveries that you wonder if you should share or not!

So if, like me and my blog winner for November, Sharon you are working on a heritage album, be prepared to learn new and wonderful things about your family!

In Memory of My Son's Dad

I've debated whether this was the right thing to do, the right place to share an event so difficult for my son and I. But I decided to listen to my heart, asked my son if it was OK with him, since this blog entry is also very personal to him. Since this is a blog about life etc, I can hardly avoid speaking about an event of this magnitude. A couple of days ago, after rejoicing that we had finally been able to get in touch with my ex-sister-in-law and my niece Malanie through Facebook, we found out that my son's dad had passed away. He didn't pass away a few days ago, in fact he passed away more than a year ago. You see he didn't stay in touch with us and after a few years, we stopped pushing to stay in touch with him. We did try to reconnect shortly after that with his sister, but our efforts failed, as did hers to get in touch with us. I guess it wasn't meant to be. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, that doesn't mean that we stopped caring what happened to Shaun's dad or that we are not feeling bereaved by his passing at far too young an age.

Joseph Wayne Lewis Whalen was born in 1953 and never quite made it to his 55th birthday. He was always a bit of a rebel, which made his choice of joining the military rather unusual and his service not always smooth. I spent more than 20 years of my life loving him from up close. Then I spent over a year mourning our life together, followed by 13 years of loving him from afar. That love was not the same as the one I felt when we were married, and it was certainly tinged with regret. Regret for what we had at one time and what we could have had, but mostly a excruciating gut wrenching regret that he and my son did not have the relationship I always prayed they would have. If only the picture above had been a truism of their relationship, rather than a rare moment on a very rare occasion.

The life that Wayne chose to live, was not one that I could follow him in, nor one that was right for a 15 year old child to be exposed to. However, I wished Wayne well, hoped and prayed for his happiness and wondered if he had given my son a half brother or sister. Needless to say, it was a shock to find out that he had passed, and as a believer in the after life, I can only hope that he is now in a better place, free of pain and worry. I am sure that his family misses him. I just want them to know that we have missed him too, despite going on to have happy and productive lives in another country, surrounded by another family who was kind enough to take us in and love us both.

My son and I look forward to being in touch with the Whalens again. They were part of our lives for many years and we hope they will be part of our lives for many years to come.