DECEMBER 3 - JR FM's Basics for Babies Concert, and A Day Spent Playing Hooky!

Monday - and the sky trains were running at least half an hour late, which would probably have really bothered me - if I had been going to work as usual. But no, I was playing hooky. There was something more important planned for the day.

It started with an early morning walk to City Central with Nikkie, after she dropped the kids off at school. She moved really quickly when she thought she saw  a mole  poke its blind little head out of a molehill, but I'm sure she was just imagining it. Actually the groundhogs I went on and on about a few weeks ago  were actually moles - another of my amazingly large number of bloopers.

 And yes indeedy, I went to the mall. You may know how I feel about malls, and may be wondering why I'd take a day off work to spend the day at one. But I had a reason - it was a JR FM's Basics for Babies fundraiser, highlighting 3 country artists over a 4 hour period. Crystal Darche, one of my favourite JR announcers, hosted her show on site, and lots of Surreyites showed up to donate to a great charity.

While we waited for the show to start, we walked through the mall to the Post Office, which was paired with - wouldn't you know it? - a Dry Cleaners.

We also found lots of things to buy-when-we-get-some-money at Bed, Bath and Beyond, and stopped for a coffee/muffin/coke combo at A&W, before we went back to the bandstand neat the SFU entrance.

We listened to 3 singer/songwriter/musicians during the morning. The concert started out with Kylee Epp,  a beautiful young gal with a great voice, then Hayley (McLean), a terrific singer and a really good guitarist - I found this on YouTube that proves it. She was touring with Chad Brownlee this summer, and she joined him with his songs, singing back up and playing guitar. Pretty amazing.

The videos I took with my phone were pretty bad - when he started singing I realized that I was standing right in front of one of the speakers, which left me with a bit of a ringing ear. (I'm still shaking my head a bit to loosen up the sound waves that I'm sure are still hovering just on this side of my eardrum.) However, he sang Love Me or Leave Me and a couple of other songs I've heard him do on JR FM. There was huge line of young girls waiting in line to get his autograph after he was done - at $5 a shot that raised a lot of money for Surrey babies!

How wonderful of these talented people to donate their time and talent for this worthy cause!

As we were leaving, Nikkie just HAD to have her picture taken with Crystal - she said Crystal was really tall, but I noted that, next to Nikkie ... etc etc.

After all was over, we headed to Pricesmart for burger stuff for supper, and then stopped in a fancy restaurant for a snack.

And then we had another mile and a half walk before we got home. On the way we found this amazing mushroom. I considered frying it up for Howard's hamburger, but Nikkie was concerned that I might get a manslaughter charge if it turned out to be poisonous.

And I decided it was too pretty to kill.

 So there you go, the reason I booked off work today. I just can't wait for the next exciting event to come along so I can put another big x next to my name on the time sheet!