Spring is here in time as well as in nature, as the lilac beside my kitchen window is pushing the buds. Early Easter, early Spring and early birds on the nests as well, as I noticed one Magpie feeding another!

Last Saturday Elisabeth and I went to the Polish Roman Catholic church for the morning egg blessing. The pews fully occupied, kids on the floor and baskets around the priest’s stand awaiting his blessing! It is always a moving ceremony to me, seeing a community celebrating like this one.

The pews fully occupied, kids on the floor and baskets around the priest’s stand awaiting his blessing!

After this celebration Elisabeth drove us to a wine sampling event at "VR Wine" near 9th Ave and 83rd street SW. She had been there the month before and recommending it and it made an appropriate post event after that egg blessing. I bought a bottle of one of the sampled wines to wit a ‘Stone Road’ red from BC.

After supper Michelle phoned and we decided to go for an after supper walk. She had just returned from a difficult family visit, as her mother ‘had passed over to the other side’ as this is called at times. After the walk and talk we went for a hot chocolate drink at a very noisy Phil’s and Sebastian’s, my treat for her birthday. Getting back home we sampled my newly acquired wine and chatted yet, for a while.

Easter Sunday I met with my friends at the Palliser, all of nine in total, but in good spirits just the same. Elisabeth drove me home and there we shared a blessed egg, cut in half and blessed each other as we ate our part. This is a Polish custom and was new to me, thought I’ve been at many a blessing before.

This year there were plenty of young ones, old enough to comprehend the literal give and take of this game.

Early in the aft John picked me up at Heritage Station to go to the family dinner, a large group this year at Jeff’s and Janet’s. This event lasts about four hours and consists of socialising, the dinner and the presents game. This year there were plenty of young ones, old enough to comprehend the literal give and take of this game.

Dan, John’s brother in law, held the last ticket (22) and all the youngsters besieged him to take the last present left of the once pile, so all could keep the present they had ‘conquered’! After some teasing pretences of going to steal some body else’s, he gracefully took the last items closing of the game. After all this and a bit more it, was time for good bye’s and John gracefully drove me home.

It is therefore an unexpected and much appreciated development that with John and Tammy marrying in 2003, I am now again a member of such a large family group.

As an after thought I want to note this. I emigrated alone as a twenty two year old and I married Ina after about six years. She came from a large family living in Southern Ontario at the time, which was important to me having no family of my own here. Over the years that family group grew more distant to us as we moved with our two sons, to Ottawa first and then to Calgary in 1973.