The Blue Rocking Horse

Well, you know how I said that we had season ticket seats for the hockey game on Friday and how it would be a good thing because then we'd be away from the rowdies? Little did I know that the guy behind us would have a cow bell. Yep. Fun hey? Ah well, at least our team didn't score enough for him to really use it.
Today Matt and I went to Calgary for my Grandpa's 85th birthday dinner. We basically got there, ate, and then turned around and came home! It's kind of exhausting spending that much time in a car. Gabe certainly thought so. He was ready to be done by about half way home. And he did not hesitate to let us know that :)
It's kinda nice to be home though - as much as I would have loved to stay and hang out with everyone. It's just that home is home, you know? I'm the type that sleeps the best the first night I'm in a different bed. Not even a bed, maybe a floor or a couch. Whatever it is, the for the first night it feels like the most comfortable thing I've ever slept on. Unfortunately, Matt is the opposite. He sleeps best in his bed. Period. He even complained about the king sized bed we slept in last year before he ran a 10k in Banff. For all the complaining he does that I'm a bed hog, he couldn't sleep in a bed that big because he kept thinking I'd fallen out of bed since I wasn't on his side. Now, even though I may get a good sleep, if Matt doesn't then it's not fun. I'd much rather have him feel well rested and energetic than for me to feel so (partly because I handle lack of sleep surprisingly well) But the sleep isn't the only reason it's nice to be home. Cash, our dog, was ecstatic to see us and now he's doing everything he can to be as close to us as possible. I can get another load of laundry done tonight before bed. I get to choose what I have for breakfast tomorrow because I'll be the one making it. I can start a new Jane Austen novel (yep, finally finished Mansfield Park, again). I can choose what to wear to church tomorrow! I'm a constant changer. I used to be so bad that I'd wear three or four outfits a day. I've gotten better but I definately change what I wear depending on how I feel and whenever we stay overnight anywhere I pack at least three different outfits so I at least have choices in the morning. And more often than not I wish that I had packed something more.
Home is home. I love it. It's restful. It's comforting. It's a haven for me.
I've got to write on a more serious subject than I typically write on. Just something on my mind.
My cousin Cayley passed away nearly 4 months ago now and while things are getting better, it's still hard to think about her. Well, today I went looking for a gift bag to wrap presents for my cousins' kids and I found an adorable one with a little blue rocking horse on it that was the perfect size for one of the presents. I checked the tag to see if I needed to remove it or not and it was already written in. It said "To Gabe, from your favorite cousin Cayley." A perfect piece of her :) I couldn't part with the bag. I probably won't. To be honest it's probably going into a keepsake box now, along with all of the pictures I found of her when I dug through my thousands of old pictures last week. It reminded me of Elementary School. You know, when you kept that valentine from the boy in class that you totally had a crush on just because he wrote on it, even though he gave them to everyone? It's trying to be closer to that person by retaining some piece of them. It's silly, I know. But I don't regret it. Call it a souvenier, a keepsake, an heirloom, that stupid little gift bag with the blue rocking horse on it is sticking around even though there will probably be a hundred times in the future that I'll need one that color and that size. But it was Cayley's. A perfect piece of her, reflecting who she was and I won't let it go.

Mrs. Vander Leek