My name is Kendra, but you can call me Schemer

I have a new nickname.  Schemer.  Is it still cool if I'm the one that's named myself?  Maybe it's dorky, but I don't care.  I expect everyone to call me Schemer from now on.  I like to scheme.  I think of it as spreading a little diabolical joy into the world.  At least, I feel diabolical because I'm going behind someones back to make their day a little brighter, but I'm not evil about it.  I don't even like to lie while I'm scheming.  Truthful scheming is what I do! 

Rose Blythe with her favourite Noel nephew!

Tyler looks a little evil here...but really cute!

This past month, a friend of my sister and I (we aren't really friends, just very friendly acquaintances) got together and schemed to get my sister out for a day of female bonding.  It was a little bit tough, and took some brilliant scheming.  I live in Medicine Hat.  Jaylene lives in Lethbridge.  Rose Blythe lives in Olds.  We wanted to meet her in Calgary and take her to the Olive Garden for lunch.  Without her knowing about it.  You can see how there might be a little bit of head scratching going on, right?  Well, what would you do if you needed to get something done that seemed a little bit impossible?  I know what you're thinking, because it was exactly what we did.  We rhymed.  The good thing about having a young child that wakes up in the middle of the night is there are more hours in the day to think about things.  So, at 3 AM one morning, I composed some poems.  The first one was very well written, the second one, not so much in my opinion.  It got the job done though.  Rose Blythe's husband gave me the phone number of a friend of hers that was very willing to help us out and made the clues look really pretty.  I was going to add pictures right here of these nice poems, but I haven't done it yet, so I'm just going to publish this post as is.  Maybe some day you'll see some of my work.  It is quite nice stuff...most of it!

This past Friday, I bundled up the kids and we took a road trip to Cardston.  The girls stayed with Grandma, and Tyler and I picked up Jaylene and her daughter Sally, and we headed to Calgary.  I wasn't sure we would make it on time, since Tyler was rather grumpy and I had to feed him before we even made it out of Lethbridge, but we managed to get to the Olive Garden with time to spare.  Good thing too, as there was a 40 minute wait to get in!  Jaylene and I got a table, told everyone that would listen the purpose of our visit, and I dropped off a present and clue #3 with the hostesses so Rose Blythe could get the present before they sat her at our table.  It worked PERFECTLY!  There were tears by 2/3 of the company (we must be sisters) which I predicted.  We were even close to a celebrity.  I guess some guy from Jersey Shore was having lunch at the same time as us.  Our waitress told us about him, and we all gave her a very blank look.  Pauly D, ever heard of him?

After lunch we headed to the mall and did some window shopping.  Pottery Barn is a very expensive store.  After Yogun Fruz, we drove over to Ikea.  Sally took our picture.  She's 4.  I think she did a really good job!  The first picture she took before her Mom could get back to the Dala horse.

L to R:  Rose Blythe, Me, Jaylene

My sister was surprised, so I guess the scheme worked!  I'm glad, we had a lot of fun.  Our waitress at the Olive Garden remarked that she wished she had friends like us that would surprise her.  So, if you have a friend that probably feels that way, go scheme and make their day, it just might make yours as well.

I now leave you with something to hopefully give you a chuckle.

• Sally asked me if I had a stroller at my house. I told her that I had four of them so she asked me why I had so many. I replied that it was probably because I liked to buy things. She thought about that for a second, then said excitedly, "You should buy chickens!"
• Sunday morning, Annika came into the bedroom and told me that she had missed me on Saturday. "Mommy, I waited and waited and waited and waited. Then I turned into an iceberg." I love that kid!