Mixed Emotions

Today I find myself happy, sad and excited all at once and for a variety of reasons.

Happy, because I finished my travelling piece of needlework:

The Spooks Are Out! Copyright © Waxing Moon Designs

Stitched on 32-count Natural Belfast Linen with recommended DMC threads

I started this piece back when we were camping this summer. The picture is a bit wavy because I really need to iron it! :-) I think I'll make this into a tuck-away pillow and hang it in my front entry-way to greet visitors as we approach Samhain.

I'm feeling excited because after many months of working, asking, begging, pleading, being annoying and so on, DS#2's school is finally going to get additional landscaping at the front of the school. It's taken months of work, but it looks now like it will happen. It's going to mean spending this coming weekend shoveling dirt to get the planting beds ready, but I'm willing to spend the time. Better news is that the school itself is willing to pay for the dirt, so it won't come out of the limited budget the parent volunteers have. Yipee!

The only downer to my week has been the newly invoked and equally newly revoked adoption record laws in Ontario. I'm an adoptee, so this affects me personally. Since around 1927 (but my dates could be totally wrong here, so don't quote me on that!) adoption records in Ontario have been sealed - meaning neither Adoptees nor Birth Parents could access anything but the most generic information about each other. For instance, I could find out that my birthmother was a nurse and was 23 when she had me, but little else.

Sometime in the 70s or 80s (again, I'm not sure of dates here), the government established the Adoption Disclosure Registry. Adoptees and Birth Parents could register in a passive registry, meaning that if an adoptee registers and his/her birth parent registers, then they would be matched up and could meet and find out about each other. Additionally one could request a search for birth family or adoptees. I registered for a search in 1993. At that time, searches took between 7 and 10 years (yes, that's years folks) to commence. I was contacted in 2000 to indicate that my search was about to begin. It was completed in 2001 with the location of my birthmother. This would be great, except for the fact that my birthmother passed away in 1999.

In 2005 the Ontario government finally passed a law that would open Adoption records for adoptees and birth parents. It would allow adoptees to access their original birth certificates and birth parents to access their child's amended birth certificate. Identifying information all around. This is good. The law came into affect Sept. 17. More good.

Sept. 19th a judge heard a challenge to the new law and struck it down. This challenge was brought about by 4 people - 3 adoptees and one birth parent. 4 people out of the thousands of adoptees and birth parents in Ontario. They felt the law violated their constituitional rights and freedoms.

An appeal is being launched and I imagine this will eventually end up in the Supreme Court of Canada, but I am left feeling unspeakably sad that yet again I am denied that most basic of information - my name and the name of the people who created me. I am one of the lucky few who does actually know this information already, but I would still like to have my original birth certificate. It's not fair to all those who haven't been so lucky to date.

I hope this law will come back into affect and soon. All adoptees and birth parents in Ontario have been denied this information for far too long.

If you're interested, you can read more about the judgement here.

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Surfacing.....


I finally came up for air today, looked around and realized it's been almost 2 weeks since I've posted anything. Ack!


What have I been up to? Stitching. Lots and lots of stitching. Sadly, I can't show you what I've been stitching though.... I've been frantically working to finish the one remaining model that I have kicking around - only to have the designer push back the release date, so I didn't need to work so frantically. I'm not unhappy though - I'm really far ahead now and can take a little break from the project to...................pick up another model. How do I get myself into these things???? :-) Luckily this model is quite small and it'll be finished within the next day or two.

I do have a stitching picture that I can post though! I finished one ornament I stitched earlier this year into an actual ornament:

This is the Merry Christmas Ornament from Glory Bee. I know the picture is a bit yellow, but it was late at night and I barely remembered to take a picture before it was packaged up.

You see, I had forgotten that DH's annual family golf tournament and Christmas gift exchange was coming up the weekend before last....... The gift exchange is just something small - we spend about $10 - $15 and I've gotten into the habit of putting a small Christmas ornament with my gift..... I had a real 'uh-oh' moment at around 10PM the night before the tournament when I remembered that I had stitched some ornaments, but couldn't remember actually making them into ornaments...... I dug through my stitching basket and what popped out but this ornament all made up with cording attatched and everything. Clearly the stitching guardians were watching over me!

As for the golf tournament, we had a good time as always. The younger kids (and their moms) usually play mini-golf while the older kids and all of DH's uncles go play a round of golf. This has been going on for over 20 years now and there are even trophies for mini-golf and regular golf. The trophy has 3 categories - Low Gross Score, Low Net Score and Most Honest Golfer. I'm pleased to say Cameron won Low Gross Score for mini-golf this year. It's his second year in a row to win Low Gross.... He was quite pleased with himself:

Cameron receiving the trophy for Low Gross Score in Mini-Putt from his Great Uncle Terry

Beyond that we're mostly settling into our new fall schedule with school, Scouts, Cubs and so on. It's always a bit crazy the first couple of weeks as we adjust to the new routine. Cameron is now attending middle school and has to ride the bus every day. School is good, apparently, but the bus thing has had some hiccups - late pick-ups, strange driving behaviour, extra early pick-ups, etc. I think it's sorted out now though as the driver has been coming mostly on-time last week. Today is a day off school for the kids as the school re-organizes, meaning they re-adjust classes and kids.

I'm off to make some lunch - the boys are hungry and I need to put the kitchen back together as I had it apart to wash the floor this morning!

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Back to reality.........


It's been almost a month since I've posted here - and what a month it's been! I feel like I've run from one end of the province to another, but then again, to a point, I did.


We spent the first week of our vacation camping at a place called the Pinery - it's about a 3 hour drive from our house. We camped with DH's family - his parents, sister & brother and their respective families. It made for a total of 16 of us. The kids ranged in age from 11 down to 1 (there's 8 of them). It was busy. It was noisy. It was soooo much fun! I didn't realize it but I failed to get a picture of everyone. Although with that many of us, I doubt there would be a good one anyway!


We returned home to do laundry, unpack some things, buy groceries and then drive up to my parent's cottage for another week. Unfortunately the weather didn't co-operate with us much as it poured rain for the first 4 days we were there. So the boys watched movies (when the power wasn't out) and played together. The last few days were lovely though and we were off to the beach to build sand castles and play in the water.


Returning home we found we had a lot of laundry, a lot of mail and a lot of cleaning up and putting away to do. Then the spectre of back-to-school shopping hit and we were off to buy new shoes, lunch bags and other sundries so necessary for a new school year.


This year does mark a big change for our family as DS#1 heads off to middle school for the first time. It involves riding a bus every day but we're really lucky that the bus picks him up and drops him off directly in front of our house. We're also lucky that he's the last one on the bus and the first one off, so he shouldn't be on the bus for more than a half-hour per day. I can't wait until he gets home to hear all about his first day at his new school!


DS#2 happily returned to our primary school for Grade 3. I really like his teacher (I've known her for a few years now) and I think he'll have a really great school year. Most of the renovations to our primary school are finished - they put on a 2 storey addition that has (at least temporarily) left us without portables. I imagine that as class sizes go down again (as legislated by our government), our need for portables will re-appear as there aren't enough classrooms for all the kids. But for now, we're portable free!


I did manage to stitch while on holiday, although not much. Many times the light was too bad or we had no electricity to power my OTT-lite. I did get some work done on one of my models and have since picked up another model (am I nuts?).....


Here's the non-model stitching I did:

These are two of the tooth-fairy pillows that I'm working on for DS#2 and two of my nephews. I couldn't find some DMC819 to finish the space-man, so I need to run to Michaels to pick that up. I don't know how I have 2 full sets of DMC, yet can never find one colour for any given project. Just how does that happen, anyway???

I also started a freebie from Waxing Moon called 'The Spooks Are Out':

I doubt I'll get much done on either of the above pieces for a while yet now as the models are just going to keep me too busy. One is so close to being done that I can almost taste it! :-)

Time to go enjoy a cup of tea and then go pick up DS#2 at school.....

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