First Day of Spring 2019

Hey everyone!

In case you didn't know, today is the first day of Spring in 2019. I can absolutely say that I'm super happy for Spring to finally be here with all the warming up and melting that comes with it. I have great hopes of getting out more this year with the family; especially the dogs who didn't get out too much over the Winter. Really the whole family deserves to be able to get outside more and enjoy the nice weather. I'm hoping for much more trips to the park, the beach, and perhaps we'll be able to find some time to get out on some adventures to other places as well.

Don't get me wrong, Winter is great, and the coming warmer weather wouldn't be as awesome without the long drawn-out cold to really make you miss how nice it is to be able to go outside in shorts and a t-shirt. Without this warming and cooling cycle throughout the year, I absolutely wouldn't appreciate the changes in weather as much as I do now. I do enjoy going out for walks in the cold weather when the snow is out, but now that the temperatures are rising... though I'm not looking forward to all the mud that comes with it, I'm super excited to be able to get outside with a dog or two in the evening for a walk or a run 

For me, Spring is the real beginning of the year with new growth and warm weather. I'm thinking now is a great time to start a new thing of updating my goals with each season and I'll try to give a summary of how I feel I did at the end of the season.

SPRING GOALS

Family - I want to spend more time with my family doing engaging things together. I'm getting rather tired of TV and movies, so I'm wanting to play more games together whether that's board games, video games, or outside activities.

Health - Enough is enough! Time to get into shape and be more healthy than I have been in the past. My chosen type of work often has me sitting anywhere from 4 - 12 hours on a work day, so I definitely need to be doing some sort of extra type of activities to keep myself in good health. What a great excuse to get one or both of the dogs out for a walk as often as possible. Perhaps I should also mention that I have a brand new bicycle to get a ton of use out of this year; maybe I can even work on building some muscle this year as well, wouldn't that be great?

Work - I hate to say it, but money is an important factor this season. My goal will be a little bit mixed I think. Right now I'm quite happy with my job and it definitely has a lot of potential room for making extra money and even advancing through the system, but now that I'm done with my Office Administration Certificate, I may want to start looking for a higher-grade job.

Hobbies - Other goals while I'm considering what exactly I want to do on the work front include other options such as continuing to work on this here blog and my other content production avenues which may provide a secondary stream of income in the future. Definitely a bit of a dream there, but I wouldn't mind hitting something big one day and making the best of it... though I'm not BANKING on that happening. I'll definitely continue streaming and try to get on top of taking and posting pictures more regularly whenever we do fun things. I also may use some of my time to get back into playing my violin and try to do some writing and drawing as well... I have more than enough materials to work with on all of that. Most of all, I would actually really like to start reading more books again. I have a lot of books I would love to read again and a bunch of new books I would like to start reading as well... I'll work on that.

Projects - My other goals for the season are quite simple: clean up the house, and get some things done. This sort of covers everything because I have a really bad habit of procrastinating on things, but the most important part of this area is that I finally get the house back in order not only upstairs, but also in the porch, out in the backyard, and down in the basement. Things are a mess and there are also many house projects that we've talked about that I would like to finally get done.

So there we go, there's a lot to work on. I think it may be because I'm feeling behind on many things, but that's definitely something that I know I can catch up on... as soon as I stop procrastinating on, like... everything. So with that, wish me luck and let me know about your goals for the Spring season. As always, I'm always accepting of any ideas you guys may have and love hearing from you.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Camping For Nerds ===

     This is the story of camping for nerds. Last weekend we went on our first trip of the year out to our favourite spot at Lake Diefenbaker where we did a trial night of camping. Surprisingly, this went very well and I would like to go out again for a longer period of time.

     We could have gone for longer, but we had no idea what Autumn was going to be like as this was the first time she's been out on that type of trip with us. Furgle had a wonderful time which I think was even better than last time because he had someone of his own energy level to run around with instead of just following us the entire time. We also weren't really sure how Isabelle was going to handle sleeping over at my parents' house considering she hadn't stayed there for the night before (though I wasn't terribly concerned about that because she HAS stayed for the night away from us before).

     So what is this craziness all about? I know, I know... I'm a NERD! What is someone like me doing OUTSIDE in the FRESH AIR??? As it turns out, even though I really like being inside in a dark hole playing games and doing whatever with technology, I also really enjoy being outside in the calm fresh air. Do I like walking down the street with a bunch of cars racing past? It's alright, but not my favourite. What I REALLY like... is going outside somewhere nice and quiet and enjoying the peace. There's something about the lack of man-made sound that really gets to me for some reason; really makes me feel at peace to have that every once in a while. I would gladly spend an entire day wandering around in a place like that. This is why we need to go back again (even if the water still isn't warm enough to swim in) for a longer period of time. Like... maybe four days next time would be perfect.

     Sometimes I forget that there's always things going on at home. Unless I'm relaxing and reading a book while everybody else is sleeping, there's probably something going on. I almost always have music or a show playing in the background or off to the side of whatever I'm doing. So sometimes I find myself driving down the street without the radio on and the window down just because it's nice to have some kind of getaway from the constant noise. Maybe that's why I like hiking so much, because there's just the peace and quiet of wandering around in the nice weather... unless I feel like listening to music.

     We had a fantastic time out at the beach; our special beach. The first thing we did was set up a 10-man tent which was a little bit confusing at first, but once we realized what was going on, it was a pretty easy system to figure out. We had time to wander up and down the beach looking for interesting things and to gather "firewood". Everything was rather damp, but that didn't stop us from getting a fire started anyways. It wasn't any sort of large blazing conflagration, but we did get something self-sustaining and it felt like a nice accomplishment... and the marshmallows tasted great.

     I'm already looking forward to the next time we get to go out, though that unfortunately probably won't be until late July. I guess we'll just have to get out for some nearby hiking and picnics to hold us over until then.

~ Kyle Welykholowa