THINGS

Things I was reminded of today......

- it's almost impossible to find winter boots that easily go onto a toddler's feet

- there are MANY new parents who don't seem to know that the handle on the infant seat should be DOWN when driving around. It's right in the instructions.....there must be a reason why....I personally would rather no one found out the hard way what that reason was :)

- I don't like wind.....I KNOW, why then do I live HERE? Good question, it's a long answer, there are many other GOOD qualities. Let's just leave it at that.

- it's really hard to select the type of chocolate bars to buy for Halloween treats. So many, so little time. Oh right, they're for the kids not me......

Things I learned today.....

- DON'T buy a coke out of the fancy new machines. You know, the ones with the fancy coke bottle shaped opening that you retrieve your bottle AFTER it goes for a very bumpy ride down a shute to get there. Why you ask? You will get very wet, that's why. Oh and the carpet at Zeller's too, right by the kids rides. The ones you used to put a quater in but now it's loonies only. If only I had been on Candid Camera.... wait, no, that would have been embarassing.

- Value Village supports local charities. Yahoo! I can get rid of all the baby stuff under the stairs and in fact did drop lots off today...... Didn't know where to donate it since the local women's shelter stopped taking stuff. Until today I thought Value Village was a profit business - thanks Mom!

- Potty training will only get worse before it gets better.....Thankfully we are on the better end of things now!

I knew it!

Well, the boys are home and we are all glad to be back to normal. They had a blast at G&P's and slept in till almost 8:30 this morning. Jay and I had fun and got lots done.

What we learned is that we won't be one of those couples that leaves the kids with their grandparents for 2 weeks while we jet off to Mexico or Europe, where ever. We are 4 and we like to keep it that way. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that, it's just not for us. We like to be together.

Now, as I mentioned before, we are in the thick of potty training. I also noted I wasn't ready. I was right. Today has been a disaster. No success ON the potty. Lots OFF but then that really isn't success is it? I guess that depends whose perspective your looking at it from.

The novelty of sitting on the potty has worn off for Kamden. But there's really no going back now. I know we can get there if we stick to it. BUT the poop in pants is precisely why I was wanting to delay this. Afterall Jack was many, many months older before we even started. Guess I should have known that this would be different with Kamo just like everything else has been.

Off to the potty. The bathroom needs renovating... I am tired of the colour scheme after spending so much time in there of late.....

Missin' My Babies

I haven't seen them for 42 hours. I miss them. Who wouldn't?

We have enjoyed our time alone and gotten lots accomplished but we feel like half a whole without the boys.

They are at Grams and Pops and having the time of their lives with their cousins. Not missing us a bit. That makes me happy but I sure will be happy to see their smiling little faces this afternoon!

We can NEVER move

I don't mean that is the sense that we love where we live soooo much that we could never, ever leave.

We do like our house - we've done lots to make it our own - and we like the neighborhood that we live in. It's in a good area close to all the good stores, there are lots of parks to walk to and a great bike path for walking and biking.

But the reason we can NEVER move is because of the collection of address lables we have.

















This is only about half of the ones we have received. Some were very large and gawdy so I just recycled them.

Now I use snail mail about once a month during a good month. So this would likely be a LIFETIME supply of address labels. I do send Christmas cards via snail mail (they are just more fun to receive in my books than e-cards) but I have a whole other collection filled with Christmas labels.

The charities seem to be using the labels to guilt us into donating. The problem I have is that you only get the labels AFTER you have already donated. Then they send you the labels so you will feel like you have to donate again because of the nice gift they sent you. Seeing as I have so many, I am sure their tactics are no longer working.

We'll be here until we are old and gray and snail mail doesn't exist. We'll stick our address labels to the crosswords we'll spend all day doing. At least we'll be together AND we'll know where we live.

I'm Baaack!

My computer hard drive became corrupt last Friday. Why you ask?

Was it a virus.

Nope.

It was either the way the operating system was installed or the way Dell partitions their drives.

Either way it was Dell's fault. Meaning the hard drive is replaced since it was still under warrantly.

How long have you had your computer, you may ask....

Since the end of March.

IF is crashes every 6 months I will have A LOT more grey hair.

Thankfully I am not in the middle of a module right now. Had I been, this would have been a much BIGGER deal. Really it was a minor inconvience and meant less blogging and emailing time. AND I will now back up my pictures more often. Somehow I am really good at keeping my work files backed up but not so good with the pictures. Lesson learned.

I didn't lose anything though. My sister-in-laws brother recovered everything for me - yay!

Did ya miss me?

Why I love THIS province

A while ago I was in cyber space reading strangers' blogs and I came across a comment on one about this province I live in that was not very nice. Basically to the effect that they could never live HERE.

I have to say that I take offense to that somewhat. Whether I should or not is up for debate but I am an honest person and I do.

I was born here and have lived here most of my life. BUT I have travelled Canada extensively and the US to a smaller degree. I have enjoyed all of the places I have been. Each has it's own unique characteristics that makes it special. I do comment on occaison that I prefer living here, where it's small but not too small AND it's affordable ( a BIG plus with the housing markets as they are these days). BUT I try not to put down other places because I prefer instead to see the beauty in all places whether I would choose to live there or not.

Tell me that isn't beautiful? This is from our trip up north last week. Granted these don't grow down here but so what? Here we have a very different but EQUALLY beautiful ecosystem (see Flickr pictures from petting zoo). That's one of the things that I love about this country and province. It's ability to be so utterly different in so many ways yet we, with all our diversities both human and landscape, together, form one country. One that I am proud to call home.

So put us down if you will - feel free to do that while you commute hours a day back and forth to your job. While you do that we'll be having supper together as a family.

We will likely never live anywhere else. Visit yes, appreciate yes, but we will always come back. This is our home and we love it.

The myth of summer...

Why do I do this to myself every summer.....

I think, okay, we have no preschool, no lessons, no kindermusik etc plus I finished up a module in the middle of July and won't take another until the end of October..... SO therefore we will have all this extra time.

NOT.

That's the myth of summer for me.

So instead we have gone on two trips already with a third less than two weeks away. Not to mention the many play dates - gotta love those - adult conversation frequently interupted by kids having fun!

Not to mention that I am marking comps all weekend and doing student counselling 3 evenings next week.

So much for having all this extra time to tackle the to do list that's been accumulating all year....

Maybe in the Fall when Jack is off to school every afternoon or is that another myth too?

Tell me now, don't let me live in denial any longer......

I am never going to get that list done am I?

Okay, Okay, I'll quit blogging and get to it!

Nah.... it'll still be there tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

I see a theme here.