Notice how the mother always hovers nearby in case help is required to blow out the candles? It was, too.
Emil turned 16 on Monday. Sixteen! Whoa.

We are busy preparing to leave tomorrow morning. I am sitting down here to take a break before the night's big push to do supper dishes and the last things on my To-Do list. Ran to the town library for talking books to make the long drive seem shorter, but aside from that have been putzing around the house all day.

Scott's got strep throat but that hasn't stopped him from spending half the day in the field or anything else. He's a working machine. Well, a working something. Maybe being a machine would be better for his health sometimes. Crazy bugger. Not that I'm complaining. I'll take an ambitious man over a lazy one, any day. I just wish he wouldn't run himself ragged.

I am not pushing myself much, as usual. If things don't get done, we leave later in the day, that's all.
Scott's got some cattle out taking care of the long grass around our house and driveway.
 

~ lawnmOOers, Everett called them ~

I have been getting the laundry done so we could pack, and figuring out what to do with food in the fridge, and what to make for supper, and cleaning the kitchen (with help from the kids), and falling short of my long list of things to do before we lock up in the morning. Got some work done, but not as much as I would have liked. Oh well. I don't dare worry about that stuff, for fear of imploding. All in good time, my dear, I say to myself. It will all get done eventually.

Mom has had pain in her chest and shoulders and yesterday after Tylenol 3 with codeine didn't help, Dad took her to the cancer clinic and asked to see a doctor. They were told they'd have to go to an Emergency room at the hospital. Dad refused and demanded to see a doctor then and there. Mom got a prescription for morphine and stronger anti-inflammatories, and is doing better.

Way to go, Dad! You're our hero.

It looks like there is probably cancer in Mom's breastbone and she will have to have it irradiated, which the nurse told them will "take care of it."

Anyway, I'll be seeing them both on Monday night in Salmon Arm after a day of driving through those ponderous damn mountains over curvy dangerous roads next to sheer rock cliffs overlooking deep lakes that your vehicle tumbles straight into when it goes off the road, if it isn't flattened by a snowy avalanche or a rockslide first.

Lord, give me our flat Saskatchewan roads any day, that you don't even have to be awake to drive on.

Here is what our town looks like as you approach it from the east.

See you sometime in July.