GOLDEN

They say that silence is golden. And I have to agree with them. Saturday night we participated in Earth Hour. And we thoroughly and completely enjoyed ourselves doing it. The event of course, received a great deal of negative press..."oh, they are just doing it for attention - it's nothing more than a publicity grab!" And well, to them I would just say that if headlines were the only reason for Earth Hour - that would be okay by me. I'm sure that neither organizer nor participant was under any grand illusions of changing the world forever with this schtick. I know that many large cities participated. I know that according to the CTV news, Vancouver saved enough to power 573 BC homes. I think that is pretty impressive.

But more impressive to me is what it was like for our family. We didn't just shut off our lights. We hit the main power breaker and cut off all electricity to the house. So with the click of a switch - there was complete silence. No furnace kicking in and out, no hum of the fridge or other appliance. Just complete and total silence. Even the kids noticed. We lit a fire in our fireplace, lit tons of candles (what would we do without those Ikea tea lites??), talked, told jokes and eventually pulled out a game. We left everything off for maybe 2 1/2 hours. It made for a peace filled evening. One of our girls commented that we should make this a Saturday night tradition. We are giving that some serious thought.

It was a worthy event - and not one cynic could point a finger at our family and sneer. I think it raised awareness in our family - and we weren't so naive heading in to the whole thing!

The experience bears repeating.

EARTH HOUR!

Saturday at 8 p.m. is Earth Hour. For that one measly hour you are asked to turn off your power. No, I am pretty sure that the world won't be forever altered by the choice that people are making to kill the power for one hour. BUT I am sure that we will enjoy the experience, that it will be a catalyst for more discussion in our family and that we will have fun playing games by candlelight. I bet we keep the power off for quite a while.

We decided a while ago to try to make one change every month that would be environmentally friendly. We are walking to Church every Sunday - rain or shine. We have stopped using paper towel. The water never runs in our house, lights are not left on and new this month - no showers longer than 5 minutes. Less if possible. Growing up we had 5 people, one of those a serious jock, with one very small hot water tank. I believe that any shower we took was closer to 2 minutes. Five minutes is a piece of cake! Now we are fully aware that we aren't doing anything earth shattering. I know that climate change will not reverse itself because the Nickerson family is making these insignificant changes. But you know, like anything, it all begins somewhere - with one small step. Reid & I are becoming so much more aware.

And our girls...well, now they really could change the world.

Here comes the bride....

Our niece Heather has just gone and gotten herself engaged. Wow. It's very exciting she and Darryl are going to be married on June 27th, 2008. Not much time to plan & prepare but really, why drag it out?!

So we are excited and so very happy for her. She deserves such joy.

One of my favourite books just won an award. "Quaker Summer" by Lisa Samson won the Book of the Year award from Christianity Today. It is an excellent read and I HIGHLY recommend it. I ordered mine from our public Library so I know that it is easy to get your hands on a copy!

Check it out.

He is risen!

He is risen indeed.

Today is a celebratory day - my absolute most favourite day of the year. There is nothing like Resurrection Day to get my blood flowing! My faith, for everything it looks like in day to day life, is rooted in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Hallelujah.

I have found it interesting watching the aftermath of Senator Obama's retiring pastor's sermons. I can't condone what he preached. But I think that Senator Obama's response was grace under fire. It was difficult, I'm sure, to stand up and make a response especially a response that deals with the issues raised. Nobody wants to talk about race relations. It is much easier to just pretend that the right thing was done in the '60's and everything is just fine now. Let's not bring it up again.

Isn't that just what we all do. If we don't talk about something - it isn't a problem. Or maybe it is wrong to even bring up certain subjects...those certain core beliefs that are so protected that to even bring them up for discussion is to question things that cannot be questioned.

I've had some interesting conversations with people lately. There are some questions being asked that really don't have easy answers - if they have answers at all. But does that mean that we quit asking? That we just let sleeping dogs lie and keep the status quo?

No. I say question away. Even if it means I lay awake thinking about it all night...

We are leaving for Antigua, Guatemala on August 28. It can't come to soon for me - I am ready to go. So...specifically we are going to "Centro Linguistico Internacional" in Antigua which I'm told is one of the most 'storybook' cities in Guatemala. It is old and quaint and a little slice of the not-so-real world. Can't wait. We are going to be part of their "Learn Together" program which will allow for Reid, the girls & I all to have Spanish classes. Some individual instruction but for the most part we will learn together for approx. 4 hours per day. We will be living with a Guatemalan family for these two weeks which will hopefully force us to engage in conversation! What an adventure!

Caris will be missing the first 2 weeks of Grade 9. This fact bothered her and I guess as I watched her reaction to missing those weeks, I was bothered. Reid & I had to take her misgivings seriously but to be honest, I couldn't for the life of me see the issue! In the end we all agreed that 2 weeks of Grade 9 (frankly probably most of Grade 9!) will be a small and mostly insignificant blip in her life. A 3 three week adventure in Guatemala - will register a far bigger blip. She is excited. And has quickly been able to put everything into perspective. She's a wise 13 year old.

So it's time to start making lists. Lots of lists....

This where we are heading! How amazing is that!!


I apologize (truly and from the bottom of my heart!) for not being more up to date in blog land. It's been a busy couple weeks. The kids had an Easter Musical last night. Phoebe had a speaking role and Caris was helping out with Girls Club. It was a good night - every parent there was beaming. I'm just so glad it's done!

Reid is off to Guelph this week. Yup. Guelph - the land of brrrrr and snow! Poor guy dragged his sorry self out of bed at 5 a.m. to head to the airport. Thankfully I didn't have to drive him.

We've been working in little bits on the house. I converted an upstairs closet to a pantry and we are now about to paint what used to be Caris' room and make it our office/school room. Caris had chosen dark purple and lime green for her room (it's an assortment of spots and stripes right now - and we're going to paint over it into a calm and serene hmmmm very pale blue. It should look nice.

BUT the whopping most exciting news.....which I've of course saved for last...is that we are broke! And WHY are we broke?? Because we've just booked 2 weeks of language study in Antigua Guatemala and then one week visiting in a northern village called Tactic (pronounced Tackteek). We sponsor a child in this village named Mynar. For $34 per month Mynar's cycle of poverty and illiteracy can be changed. There are many children in need of this type of sponsorship and I'll be happy to point you in the right direction if you are interested. Yes, three weeks with our whole family in Guatemala. My sister and her family are coming and even my parents will join us for part of it. We are beyond excited.