Good grief, two months have passed since our last blog. Maybe it's time to tune in again.

Lew finished his radiation on January 15, and has been recovering very nicely. His sunburn peeled and healed, and he has regained most of his energy. He will see the oncologist at the end of April for a follow-up. We expect there will be a call for an MRI prior to that.

Phyl spent all of January preparing for her role as Delia in "Bedroom Farce", one of five plays presented annually by the Gateway Theatre--a non-professional volunteer theatre here in Saskatoon. At first, the play seemed like it would be less than exciting, a typical English farce without much real humor and including a lot of anachronisms that only the British might understand. But as it came together it became more and more enjoyable. The local newspaper reporter gave it rave reviews. Phyl was pleased to read ".....Blake Cumming (Ernest) and Phyllis Johnston (Delia) were perfectly cast as the oldest couple". In reality, Blake is 30 years old! That also means, that in reality he is exactly half as old as Phyl. Later in the review, "Johnston was even more believable when she provided motherly advice to her daughter-in-law". Given that I will never have a daughter-in-law, I guess it worked!

While Phyl was away in the evenings, Lew spent his time keeping tabs on golf, NCIS, Business News Network, and West Wing. He had his sidekick, Melissa the cat, to keep him company. On January 17, Phyl's Mom came to stay for two weeks as she had just had a knee replacement. So she and Lew could watch TV together. Lew was in his element looking after her while Phyl was off to work or to rehearsal. Ella stayed until the first of February when she went back to her condo. But both Lew and Phyl have been on the reserve list for grocery shopping, medical appointments, etc. The plan is for Ella to be completely well so that she can babysit Melissa and water the garden while we are away for six weeks this summer.

The first weekend of February we flew to Winnipeg to help celebrate Aunt Merle's 100th birthday. Even though her body was weak, she was amazingly keen-minded and could keep track of everyone as they came and went. It is unfortunate that she wasn't able to be up out of bed to have her party, but everyone had good visits with her. And we all had wonderful visits with each other. Betty and her clan did a wonderful job of feeding and entertaining all of us.

Phyl's last official day of work will be May 20. We hope to be on the road by May 22 with our cargo trailer behind the Sorrento. With any luck we'll have the piano, a big sewing desk, the kitchen table, several boxes of books, tools and hardware, an office chair, and perhaps the tea wagon tucked carefully into the trailer. These are all items destined for Leslie and Trevor (Phyl's eldest daughter and hubby) in Hudson, PQ. We hope to arrive there by the 27th of May, unload, get our work clothes on and help them rip the stucco and brick off the exterior of their house.

For some relaxation, we will fly from Montreal on June 2 and be in Finland with Lindsay and Jukka (Phyl's youngest and her hubby) for a week. Back to Montreal/Hudson on June 11 to recover from jet lag. Then another week helping replace windows, add styrofoam insulation, and install vinyl siding. End date for the travels depends a lot on how things are going here at home. We'll hire someone to mow grass, and hopefully the weeds won't get any higher than the back fence in the garden. We can hardly expect Ella (at age 83) to take complete responsibility. Perhaps she could bring Florence (92) over to help her!

The past week we have torn the house apart in order to lay laminate flooring throughout the dining room, kitchen, and hallways. Every door casing had to be removed of course. There never were any respectable baseboards, but there was linoleum glued, screwed and tatooed onto the walls. So there was a lot of dismantling done before we could mantle.......hmmm I wonder if that the correct use of "mantle"?

Effective yesterday we laid the last piece of laminate. Today has been a day of scraping off old paint around the door frames and building new casings. It's slow work. As we go, Phyl is doing some patching and painting. That expanded into painting an entire wall, and it appears that entire hallway into the bedrooms will need the same treatment. No rest for the wicked.

Lew is anxious to get this job put to bed, as we are supposed to get some warmer weather (they've been wrong for the last two months on that forecast!). Regardless, he has plans to head to the cabin for some snowmobiling. Given the doctors' prognosis last year, it's pretty exciting that he has full use of his arm and can wrestle the snow machine and quad around. We've been discussing going golfing this summer--something that was out of the question for the past two summers for Lew.

That's the news from 55 O'Neil in Saskatoon. We'd love to see some information come forth from Mike and Charlene, and David and Tina and crew. Did manage to catch up on Lynn and Noni's lives and kids while in Winnipeg. Take care everyone.

Lew and Phyl