Basement Reno's Cont'd

Katie's room still pretty much looks the same except there is more junk in that space than there was before. More specifically a giant tub box, that is now a shelf for junk. It even has the bathroom sink sitting on it.

However, this means we now have a tub and a sink (and a toilet if you're worried) ready to go into the bathroom space as soon as the line fitter guy we made friends with has time to come over and do some plumbing for us.

The office now has a wall making it a real room! This is looking at the wall from what will one day be the family room.

Inside the office there is going to be the access to the storage room that is under the stairs and behind the bathroom. This is the door...all I can fit in the picture. Chris is down there right now drywalling the rest of the office.

The Bathroom!

It has a door now, but the door is not actually secured onto anything, it's just squeezed into its spot. So far we've been lucky and it has not fallen.

This is looking into the bathroom from inside Katie's room. The second picture is looking into the bathroom from where the wall behind the tub will be one day.

She can see clearly now....

I need to start off with a short letter to my sister.

Dear Amber,

I am sorry I promised more basement pictures 3 days ago and have not posted them yet. Actually I have not even taken them yet. But I will. Soon. After Christmas.

Yours Truly,

Corra

Okay, that's done and out of the way. So on to the big news at home here. We had the yearly optometrist appointments last week. Every year for the last couple of years we have been prepared to hear that Katie would need glasses. Chris got his in grade school sometime, I got mine in grade 5 or 6, so we figured it was inevitable. Each year we are slightly surprised when they say her eyes are fine. In fact a couple of years ago it was Beth they wanted to keep a close eye on because she was more farsighted than she should be at her age, which was not what we thought we would hear. Her eyes are good now though, still slightly farsighted, but within normal range for a six year old.

This year however we were 99.9% sure Katie would leave the office with a prescription. We've noticed over the last couple of months that she doesn't see as well as she should. She'll be sitting at the kitchen table and we'll ask her what time the microwave says, and she has to get up and walk to it to read it. Street signs were also bad, she couldn't read them until we were almost driving past them. Sure enough, she needed glasses! She was so excited about it, more excited than I thought she would be. We went out that evening and picked out a couple pairs of frames (2 for 1...yay) and they were ready the next day. I took her to get them fitted and all the way home in the van she read signs, and was so excited about things she could see, like the individual bricks in a brick building. I guess we sort of take our eyesight for granted, even those of us with glasses, and we forget how fuzzy the world can be when you can't see well.

She is so happy to have her new glasses, and very excited that they were ready in time to wear when we go see family over Christmas. She can't wait to show them off!

Katie's favorite are the dark frames, but I like the other one. The picture really doesn't show just how cute they are.

The Basement Renovations have started!

It's very exciting!

When we moved in the basement was unfinished except for the exterior wall framing. It was great because a lot of work had been done yet we had complete say as to how we were going to design the basement. Our plan is to build a bathroom, a bedroom, an office (with a window so it can be considered a bedroom when we sell), a family room, a storage room, and a utility/laundry room. The exact design of each room has changed over the few months we've lived here, and I am sure they will change slightly as we build, but we've actually started! I say we, when mostly I mean Chris has started, but I held some framing still while he put a few screws in and held some drywall up so he could do the same, so I have helped, a little.

I decided I needed some 'before' pictures tonight, but some of the interior framing has been started so they are not completely before pictures.

The Bathroom

First picture: To the left of Katie are the stairs.

Second picture: Looking into the bathroom from where the bedroom will be. To the right where all the boxes are will be the storage room. The bathroom will end right about where the blue drywall ends.

The Laundry/Utility Room

Excuse the huge mess of the basement.

Family Room

The Office

Hail Mary

My kids go to a Roman Catholic school. We are not Roman Catholic. They say prayers three times a day at school. In the morning it's Our Father, which my kids know. At lunch it's grace, and is different depending on the teacher. Before school lets out they say Hail Mary. There is no Hail Mary in our church. Tonight at dinner, after grace, Katie started to say Hail Mary (to see if Beth knew it) and Beth joined in. Between the two of them, this is what we heard:

Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with Thee.
Blessed art Thou among Swimmin',
and blessed is the fruit of Thy Mung, Jesus
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Beth laughed at the end and told me her teacher says Women not Swimmin', and then told me her whole class says Swimmin' and they think it's funny their teacher says it incorrectly. Katie says Mung (Beth just mumbles through the last few lines) and she has no idea what a Mung might be, but followed along anyways. Chris and I laughed so hard and when Katie discovered what the real words were she laughed pretty hard. So hard she almost spit soup out of her mouth. Beth and Anna laughed too, but I'm sure had no idea that it was funny and just wanted to join in. I'm sure Beth will continue to say Blessed art Thou among Swimmin' along with her classmates.

Makes me wonder how many Catholics die wondering what swimming has to do with Mary and what the heck a Mung is?

Wall Clmbing Pictures...as promised

I didn't take these because as usual I forgot my camera. I am going to have to start chaining it to my neck. There are none of her at the top of the wall, but she made it up there quite a few times.

On Belay!

If you know my kids and I asked you which one was the bravest, I bet you wouldn't pick Katie. Katie's my bookworm, she's quiet and can be quite shy. She's not nearly as adventurous as Beth who we have a hard time keeping indoors when it's nice out. Katie likes to be outside, but often it's to find a quiet, relaxing place to read. So it will probably surprise you just as much as it did me, that Katie is quite the little wall climber!

She went on a field trip last month and they had a chance to wall climb. When I read the permission slip for the trip I was sure that the wall climbing waiver I was signing was useless since she was never going to do it. But I was surprised when she got home to find out that not only had she given it a try, she got up quite high and really enjoyed herself.

Katie was ecstatic when she found out for the last Girl Guide meeting before Christmas that they were going wall climbing. They needed volunteer adults to belay so I stuck around to help and to watch Katie. I was a little nervous about belaying as I had never done it before, but it was actually pretty easy. Most of the girls did well, only a couple were too scared to go up more than a couple feet. Katie, however, amazed me. She climbed walls none of the other girls could do. Not all were perfectly vertical, some had parts that jutted out at angles and that stumped most of the girls since you had to hang slightly upside down to get around them. Every wall she tried, she made it all the way to the top to touch the ceiling. I'm not sure how high the walls they were climbing were, but they were pretty darn high. Even if I had the strength to do it, I couldn't get over height, so I would most likely be a terrible wall climber.

One of the Guide leaders was taking pictures and I'm pretty sure she got Katie in at least one shot, so I've emailed her asking for a copy and as soon as I get it, I'll post it on here.

Katie was still talking about it this morning. She went so far as to say wall climbing was her passion. I took a brochure from the place home last night, and the prices seem pretty reasonable, so I think Chris and I will try to take her every couple of weeks. Anything to get her out doing something physical is good I think.

Can a 4 year old keep a secret?

That's the question every Christmas season. It's not always a four year old I suppose, but kids in general. Every year they cannot stand the anticipation of finding out what it is that present under the tree with their name on it, so they ask over and over, and then when that fails they ask what their sister, or their mom, or their dad is getting. And every year I am faced with the dilemma of letting them in on the secret or keeping it all to myself.

A few years ago I bought Chris a PlayStation 3. I was so proud of myself that year. I got him something he really wanted, but also something he never thought I would actually go out and buy for him. Katie and Beth were with me when I picked it up from the store. And although I can't actually remember how old they were because I am not sure how long ago that Christmas was, I remember that Katie was old enough to keep the secret and Beth was not. She begged and begged all the way home to tell her what daddy was getting and finally I broke down and told her that I had bought him shampoo (because there was shampoo in the cart that day it was a reasonable lie). I made her promise that she would not tell daddy what we had bought him, and she thought she was so convincing that she would keep the promise. I, however, was not fooled. That's why I said shampoo in the first place.

We arrived home and walked through the front door and wouldn't you know it, the first words out of Beth's mouth were "Daddy, we bought you a present and it's shampoo!!" The best part of the whole story is that it has since become a family tradition that when one of the kids asks what the other parent, or their sister got for Christmas, we tell them "Shampoo".

But the kids are getting older. Katie's been in on the secrets for a few years now, and even Beth can be trusted to not tell. Anna I'm not completely sure about. But this year I did tell them all what they were giving their daddy for Christmas, and he's told them what they are getting for me. I not only bought Chris's gift, but I bought my own, and that's the only part of the secret they do not know. I can tell Anna's been dying to tell me what I got (a beautiful stainless steel teapot) but so far she has not said anything. Well anything out loud. She very secretly whispered to the 4 yr old that I care for during the day, that they bought me a coffeepot(teapot, coffeepot, whatever, there is no difference to a four year old I'm sure). I wasn't even a foot away from her when she whispered the secret, and the whisper was more of a quiet talk than a whisper, but she she hasn't come out and said "Mom, we're getting you shampoo" or anything like that.

She has been trying to 'trick' me about what they've got me though. Today she told me it was a show, a good movie, that I would really love. Then she said it was a real horse, no she meant a bear. All I'm waiting for now is the day she tells me it's really not a teapot.

As far as I know she has not accidentally or on purpose told Chris what I bought him from the girls. I'll have to ask him when he gets home from work if she's let it slip. I didn't tell any of the girls what I got him from me though, so that secret should actually be 100% safe.

Stupid Van

It's still dead. Chris looked for the booster cables and couldn't find them. So we decided to break down and buy one of those jumper battery things. You plug them in and charge them and then boost your car off them. It charged all day yesterday, wouldn't start last night. It charged all night, and wouldn't start this morning. Ughh. I am so frustrated.

Of course Chris was gone overnight for work and won't be back until this evening sometime. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but tonight we have parent teacher interviews at the girls' school. The first one starts half an hour after my dayhome kids are picked up. We could walk, and that's probably what we'll end up having to do, but it's cold out there! It was -17C this morning and it's supposed to be -10C this evening. Katie also has Girl Guides tonight and if Chris isn't home before 7pm (not holding my breath) she won't be able to get there.

Why won't that battery booster thing work? It's making me crazy. Maybe we'll have to take it back to the store. Do most people buy these things right when they need them or do people pre-buy them in anticipation of needing them one day? And if you bought it long before you needed it, and then go to use it and it doesn't work, can you take it back? I have to go find the instruction manual and see if there is something I am doing wrong.

Good Intentions Spoiled

Chris has been away the last couple of mornings. That means my normal schedule of getting up at after 6am and heading to the gym shortly after 6:30am is thrown out of whack. I made it there Monday evening, but I just couldn't drag myself there yesterday evening. I find I am so much more tired during the day if I do not make it to the gym in the morning. Since Chris got home last night I had every intention of getting back into my schedule this morning. I drag my butt out of bed, get dressed, take the bread out of the breadmaker, check my email and head out to the garage. Once I flicked the light on in the garage I noticed one of the side doors of the van is open, and the little blinkie lights that alert other drivers that door is open is not doing it's job. Crap. I knew the van was dead. At our old place, Chris's work had a charger we could throw right on the battery and just let it charge for half an hour or so. We don't have that luxury here. Actually I think we might be lucky if we find booster cables. We're also going to have to push the van out of the garage so we can get another vehicle close enough to boost it. This sucks! I was so looking forward to getting back to the gym this morning since Chris leaves again tonight and won't be home tomorrow morning. This is not going to be a good gym week.

And I can't tell you how badly I want to throttle the child who was too lazy to press the button and close the van door behind her. That would be wrong.

November's Flying!

It doesn't seem like it was almost 2 weeks ago since I last posted something on my blog. Time flies when you're having fun or so the saying goes. From that you could assume we're having fun, but I don't think we've actually had much time to have fun! Chris has been very busy with work so we haven't seen him too much lately. He did have yesterday off in lieu of Remembrance Day, and although he is working today, the rest of the week he is taking off. Yay for us! We get to see him and hopefully our Christmas lights will make their way onto the house and garage! Well maybe not, now that I think about it. He's going with Katie on her grade field trip tomorrow and they will be gone from 6:30am-6:30pm and then on Thursday my in-laws will be here, so that only leaves Friday and the weekend. We'll have to try to squeeze the decorating in somehow.

That's what it seems like all we can do lately, try to squeeze one more thing in. And when you look at our calendar, it's not full really. So why do I feel like everything is a crunch lately? It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I babysit every day til 5:30pm and the kids have activities on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some nights we barely have time to eat before I'm driving one or the other kid to something. Then I try to get other stuff fit in there too, like the dentist, the banking, errands, grocery shopping, etc. Usually I get a break on the weekends, so I am ready to start it all over again most Mondays, but poor Chris, he ends up working most weekends as well lately. He rarely gets a chance to catch his breath. I'd say this is his week to relax, but you just read about what's planned for his days off, lol.

Sorcerers, Witches and Unicorns...Oh My!

Last night was one of the best Halloweens I can remember! The weather was amazing. There was no snow and my kids wore the costumes without a snowsuit underneath. They did pop home for some gloves, but they didn't have to wear their snowboots and trek through 2 feet of snow. We had 86 kids show up on our doorstep last night. We were told to expect about a hundred and with the weather being so nice, I thought we'd get more than a hundred for sure. Needless to say we had candy left over but I sent it to work with Chris so that I would not be eating it all day long.

I've been very good, not one piece of candy stolen from kids' bags so far!

Sleeping Baby = Pictures as promised!

The cool Halloween Wreath the girls made with my best friend a couple weeks ago. It looks so great!


Our Jack O'Lantern carved last night by Chris. He's not happy with the eyes, they were supposed to be spookier. I'm going to try a picture of it all lit up tonight.


The front yard. The hanging spooky ghost lights up. Well it did. We noticed last night he was not glowing and were not sure why. I looked at him this morning and the cord that connects his plug to the pumpkin lights is severed (how appropriate). The pumpkins still work even though there is a loose wire end, so we'll have to put some electrical tape on it or something so we don't start a fire or anything.



A fire would be scary and all, but not quite the effect we're going for. Burning down our house and the neighborhood would not be a good first Halloween impression to make on all our neighbors.

Happy Halloween to me!

I didn't think it was possible.

The morning girl at the gym was even more annoying than usual this morning. She was giddy and silly, more so than usual. It's not really the silliness that annoys me about her, it's the unending trail of questions she asks the clients. And they are inappropriate. Not in a bad way, really. She just has the social skills of a twelve year old. Rather than making pleasant conversation she grills us and it gets ridiculous.

How was your weekend?
What did you do?
Do you like doing that?
Who went with you?
Do you like them?
How many kids do they have?
All boys? Are they cute?
Do they have girlfriends?
What's their last names?
Are they virgins?

Okay, I've never actually heard her ask if someone was a virgin before, but if we let her keep talking, I'm sure she'd get to it. Luckily the trick to get to stop asking you questions is to somehow turn the conversation to get her to talk about herself.

She, like, has so much fun. Her friends are so awesome and, yeah, it was cool.

I, like a few of the other morning people, just avoid making eye contact with her. I concentrate really hard on breathing properly and look as busy as I can while on a machine or jogging on the spot, which is not an easy job. I've had my fair share of questions, but purposefully my answers make my life appear so incredibly drab (who am I kidding, it's not that hard to make it appear that way), that usually she moves on to more exciting women.

Good news for me though, today was her last day! Probably the reason for her being so much more giddy today I'm sure. She talked about her new job where she does nothing. She answered the phone twice yesterday and once it was her mom and once it was daddy (who got her the job). Then she went online and was on facebook for a couple hours, then she read 2 magazines. Seriously. And she was so excited that she gets paid sooo much to do nothing (of course she told us her wage as well, she doesn't keep anything private). It's not wage to brag about that's for sure. Granted it's more than I make babysitting, but still.

I've spent too much time on her now complaining about the poor girl, and my kids' school lunches are going to suffer, so I gotta run.

A little catch up

It's been a few days, so here's what's been going on.

Our backyard is all done. It's seeded and ready for the grass to grow in the spring. All the bikes are put away in anticipation of snow that lasts, and the lawn chairs and things are put away with them.

The Girl Guide cookies have arrived and all the pre-ordered ones have been delivered. I asked for an extra case and there are 8 left in it, so I sent them to work with Chris today so I don't accidentally buy myself a box. Those mint cookies are sooooo good!

Halloween candy has been bought (finally) and the girls have their costumes all sorted out. They are so excited for tomorrow. I have to somehow come up with some willpower by then so that I don't steal all the little chocolate bars.

Chris has discovered his love for Halloween baking. He's always loved Christmas baking. Before you get too excited and think he's some weird guy who loves to bake, remember that the only way he gets baking is if he bakes it himself, so it's pretty much do or die at our house. That and he is a weird guy who bakes, but I love him anyways. I am NOT a baker. I can bake, I just don't really like to do it. I have enough fun cleaning up after Chris ;) This year he made witches fingers, which he's done before, and he attempted popcorn balls with gummy worms in them. Are they ever sticky! I tried to eat one a few minutes ago (it's snack time...cheerios, raisins and popcorn balls) and they are just too chewy for my teeth. So my back up plan if the willpower doesn't come through is to try to eat a popcorn ball while the kids are sorting their Halloween candy and glue my mouth shut semi-permanently.

I still have no pictures of our yard and I have not downloaded the wreath picture yet. It will happen....by Christmas for sure.

Maybe.

It snowed today

I took some pictures but they are still on my camera, along with the picture of the Halloween wreath I promised. Maybe I'll get around to posting them tomorrow. Maybe not, depends how lazy I am. I want to sleep in til noon, but I'll settle for 9:30am. Last Saturday I couldn't sleep in because we all had dentists appointments (which went amazingly well). This is MY Saturday.

Anna and Jesus...good buddies.

Anna and "J", the 4 year old girl I babysit, were just arguing over growing. Anna's decided that J is not going to grow anymore and she's decided only she will grow taller.

They argue over silly stuff like this all the time. As usual I tell Anna not to say things to hurt other people's feelings and for them both not to fight about silly things.

Anna then asks me if I know who knows everything. I ask her who and she tells me it's Jesus. She then proceeds to tell me that Jesus told her that she was going to keep growing taller than J, and he knows everything, so she knows it.

Yesterday we decorated for Halloween. It's Chris's favorite holiday to decorate. On our new street though we have some competition. In our old town hardly anyone put out decorations, but now the decorations we have look pitiful compared to others. Chris went out to buy some more pumpkin lights this morning, and he plans on buying a few more items each year to add to our collection. A staple of decorating used to be various kinds of leaf bags, but there are hardly any trees here since the neighborhood is pretty new. We couldn't fill a Ziploc baggie much less a giant pumpkin leaf bag!

My friend was here over the weekend as well. She is so creative and crafty and together with the girls she made a Halloween wreath for our door. I'll have to take a picture and post it later so you can see how cute it is! The girls had a blast doing crafts. They also made some pumpkin and ghost candles. I don't my friend could believe how painty a 4 year old can get in less than 20 minutes, lol.

Help!

Three kids.
One mom.
One dental hygienist.

I think it might equal disaster.

Beth and Anna say they are going to be good and open their mouths for the lady, but Beth said that last time too and she most definitely did NOT open her mouth. This time I bribed them, said I would buy them a treat if they cooperated. What does Anna want as a treat for being at the dentist? Smarties, well actually she said she wanted Farties, but I know what she means. I wonder if they'll brag to the hygienist that mum is going to buy them sugar in a box when we leave?

Cheerios and Raisins

Maybe that should be the name of my blog now since it's during snack time that I get to sit and type while seated between two babies, a bowl of cheerios and a box of raisins. However looking at these babies I should probably call it Cheerios, Raisins and a box of Kleenex, as we've had some pretty drippy noses around my house this week and snack time is no exception. They are happy when I had them a cheerio and ticked off when I wipe the noses....but luckily a cheerio comes right after the tissue.

In other news...

Our backyard is done for the fall. Yesterday Chris finished spreading topsoil and rototilling. He bought a bag of grass seed and started spreading it out by hand (I know, I was thinking there has to be a more even way to distribute grass seed to make for an even lawn) and then ran out of seed after only a third of the yard. So I guess the yard is not completely done, we still need a couple of bags of grass seed. Our winter project will be finishing the basement, that I will say right now, scares the heck out of me. I want it to look really nice, like it was done by a professional, yet most of the work Chris will do himself. It just worries me. I don't know where we will start. We have the rough plan of where the walls will go all drawn out so I guess the inside framing should be started first. It's going to be a long project that we're both excited, yet anxious to start. I'll keep the blog updated as work gets completed. I'll have to remember to take some before pictures.

Wednesday

Just middle of the week boring stuff going on today.

I've got all the kids at the table eating a snack. The big girls are pretty independent and the babies are strapped into their seats. Luckily between handing out cheerios and raisins I can sneak in some computer time.

Half our girl guide cookies were delivered yesterday and luckily I was able to snag a case of regular cookies in place of one mint chocolate case. Originally I was told we had to sell 4 cases of mint cookies, 48 boxes, and we presold some but I had a bunch that still needed to be sold. However my brother in law loves the regular cookies so when we phoned him to tell him we had a case of regular he changed his order and bought the whole case! He wasn't kidding when said how much he loved them Hopefully when the other boxes are delivered I can get some more regular ones as a few people prefer those to the mint. Personally I LOVE the mint ones and we devoured a box last night within minutes of the drop off! Currently we have only one box left to sell....pretty darn good I think!

I might have to auction the last box off and see how much money we can make!

Which is funny because when Chris picked up Beth from Sparks the other day the leader said something about selling the cookies to relatives and friends and Chris being the witty fellow he is said "Not me, I'm going to sell them all on eBay for $10 a box!" She sorta laughed and then got all serious and told him he couldn't do that, it definitely wasn't allowed. Like he was really going to list girl guide cookies on eBay. Simmer down lady.

And this one's for Barb...

Can you imagine never having ever eaten bologna? Or how about never having tried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Wow, some people lead very sheltered lives I tell ya.

The little girl I am babysitting LOVES bologna. The first day I offered it to her she said she had never had it before now that's all she asks for at lunch time. She does call it pepperoni though, which is kinda funny. Poor kid's going to grow up and cringe at the thought of a pepperoni pizza.

As for bologna and hot dogs and all those random meat products, I think the Arrogant Worms say it best in their music.


The Hot Dog Song

Everybody loves hot dogs
Even pasty Hippies
'Cause its hard to beat a tube of meat
But now a question hits me

What the hell's in
A hotdog
I shouldn't ask maybe
'Cause i don't know any animals that grow cylindrically

So have a hotdog on me my friends
It's made out of animal odds and ends
Have a hotdog on me my friends
It's the particle board of meat

Its good to reuse and recycle
The unpopular pieces of meat
That are quite gross
Yet after they're processed
Are such a Delicious treat

That the children eat them 'til they're queasy
Because they love the taste
Of sodium phosphate
And iridorbate
Soy protein
And Sodium nitrate

So have a hotdog on me my friends
It's made out of animal odds and ends
Have a hotdog on me my friends
Its the particle board of meat

May or may not contain
Chicken and, or
Pork and, or
Meat

So have a hotdog on me my friends
Don't think 'bout the parts from the pigs rear end
Have a hotdog on me my friends
Its the particle board
The particle board
The board particle
Off mmmmmeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaat

This one's for you Steph!

We went to church today. For a few weeks we've been church shopping and the last church we went to was 'the one'. As soon as we walked in the door it felt like home. We were then busy for a couple weeks and couldn't get back, but today we went again, and it was an even better feeling than last time. Maybe because we had made the decision that it would be our church? Many people remembered us and they seemed genuinely happy that we had come back. It was nice.

After church we headed out for lunch. We thought that would be a nice tradition for Sundays. We need to find somewhere good, yet still cheap though. We may have found our church, but we're still shopping around for our restaurant, lol.

The restaurant brings me to a gripe though. Why the heck can people not flush toilets in public washrooms? It's just gross and unnecessary, don't you think? I can understand if it didn't flush all the way or something, but most of the surprises I've found in that one empty stall are definitely not cases of 'oops, it didn't all go down". Come on people, you sat your butt on the seat, flip the handle and go wash your hands. Ewwwwww.

Three Things

Three things I hate today:
1. Crappy, crappy Bell ExpressVu Customer service
2. Slimy, sneaky, conniving ExpressVu Business Habits
3. Bell ExpressVu in general.

Three things I love today:
1. Cell phones
2. Sasktel Customer Service
3. Sugar Snap Peas

Rainy Day

Of course it's raining today. It would have to be raining since we just had a load of gravel delivered into our driveway. That's our luck of course. When we ordered it they gave us a delivery time of between 7am and 6pm. You'd think they could have narrowed it down to a smaller time range than 11 hrs. It's like waiting for the cable guy. We honestly thought they would arrive around 10am, but sure enough we never heard from them all day. Finally at about 5pm they called to say they were on their way, just as I was leaving to go register the girls for Girl Guides and Sparks. When I got home we had company over for my birthday supper and they stayed to visit until just about the kids' bedtimes so our evening could not be used to shovel gravel. And today, it's raining.

So now we have a pile of wet, muddy gravel on our driveway. Maybe we'll be really lucky and it will snow on the pile before we can shovel it.

I shouldn't have even said that.

I deserve a cookie

Not only did I get up and go work out at 6:30am when I really felt like staying in bed, I got up at 6:30am and went to work out on MY BIRTHDAY! That surely deserves a cookie right?

So it's September 11th. It used to just be my birthday, but since 6 years ago it's been so much more than that. It's kind of weird actually, when people ask when your birthday is and you say September 11th, they get a surprised, sad look on their face, like they feel sorry for me. Yes, a terrible thing happened on this day in 2001, but it's still my birthday, it's still a happy day for me. And I think that's what we have to remember for not only September 11th, but all those days that something bad happened. It's just a day. Bad things happen but so do good things. Beth started crawling on this day in 2001, I was born on this day 32 years ago. We will never forget the bad things, but we should try to remember all the good things as well.

Reality TV

Why am I so much smarter than the people on reality tv? It couldn't possibly be because I get to see everyone's secret thoughts and secret plans could it?

Chillin out, maxin', relaxin' all cool

Sundays are meant for exactly this. The kids and I are just laying around. Katie and I are still in our jammies and Beth and Anna are in the clothes they wore yesterday and fell asleep in. I've puttered around the kitchen, cleaning up a bit, things that should have been done yesterday. The girls are watching a movie and playing with the kitties.

We really should have gone to church, but we haven't found the one that fits us yet and I didn't really want to go churching without Chris, who unfortunately doesn't get to join in the laziness as he had to work today. Ironically he is at church today. His job takes him everywhere, lol.

I really should go get dressed for the day though. We already had one neighbor stop by to talk to Chris and I think he was surprised to find us in our jammies. That must not be how they do Sunday mornings in this neighborhood. They don't know what they're missing!

I'm in a Jam

Berries and Jars and Certo, Oh My!

Actually I am in a kitchen that smells like jam and is full of jam making 'stuff'. Now before you get all proud of me and my domestic jam making skills, I have to admit that my mom has been here for two days making the jam. I'm just an innocent bystander really. A bystander who gets to help her sister cut the tops off 6 flats of strawberries. A bystander who gets to wash dishes and try to keep things semi clean. A bystander who points out the jam splatters on the pretty new walls to her mother and who thinks her mother might actually prefer using the bystander's kitchen all alone. So not really a bystander at all, more like a sarcastic pain in the ass helper. Whatever. I have 70 jars of jam to choose from now, and more will be coming tomorrow on day 3 of the jam marathon.

It's kind of a give and take venture. I give my kitchen and storage space for the jam and I take whatever amount of jam I can use in a year. It's a win-win situation I think. My kids LOVE my mom's Nanking cherry jelly! They probably go through a jar every week or two. Beth helped pick the cherries this year. Of course by help I mean she picked about 7 and then went and played with the dogs and the kitties while grandma and grandpa picked enough to make, hopefully, a years worth of jelly. Katie picked a bucket at her other grandma's house this year as well and these were delivered to my mom for freezing for future jam use.

A fun, hot, sticky, tiring time was had by all.

That's my mom on the end. The rest of the ladies just came with the Certo.

Well, not really.

Community Association

We're new to the community. Tonight was my first registration for fall programming. They schedule registration immediately following the annual general meeting. The meeting where they elect new board members. The meeting where they beg and beg and then beg some more for people to volunteer for vacant board positions. I've never lived in a city before with young children so this community association thing is new to me. This group plans children and adult programs for the year. For a very small registration fee ($10) your family can join, and then you can enroll your children or yourselves for different activities, mostly sports. The fees for the sports and activities are very minimal. For example 6 weeks of jazz class is $25. However in order for the programs to run, they have to have a board. And to have a board they have to have volunteers.

I had no idea it would be so crazy at the registration. I arrived early to get my registration form and then waited for the meeting to start. There were hundreds of people there and half of them sat at the back of the gym and couldn't even keep their mouths shut for more than 5 minutes while the meeting was going on and they visited with their neighbors. Come on people.

So it's 'election' time. Do you think 10 positions could be filled in less than 45 minutes? It was like pulling teeth for the poor board president to get anyone to volunteer. Sure, I wasn't a volunteer, but I've lived here for all of 2 weeks, I'm not quite ready for that. We saw the financial report for last year, this association has a lot, I mean A LOT of money. Most of the vacant positions were simply people needed to take charge of an area and get contracts on the work that needed to be done. The money is there, there is no fundraising needed. In fact each year the association has to decide what to do with their excess funds as they are a non-profit. This year they bought defibrillators for the schools and bought some community signs for the schools at the cost of over $10,000 each! The money is there.

I admittedly live in quite a wealthy area of the city. Our kids already have many more opportunities than the kids in some of the other areas of the city. Our community association does not have the trouble with funds that some of the other associations do (hmmmm....maybe somewhere to spend the money next year?), so why can't the parents be grateful for what is being offered at very realistic prices? Volunteer for a position, if you can't do it alone, get a friend and volunteer together. It shouldn't be so hard for them to fill the positions. Again, I know I didn't volunteer, and I do feel some guilt for that, but many of these people have been enjoying these activities for years, and not only couldn't bring themselves to volunteer they couldn't even shut up long enough for the interested people to hear the meeting.

It was a zoo.

And then the meeting was over and the actual registration began. It was worse than a zoo. Luckily I had arrived early and they called people in to register in the order they got their registration forms. My number was called within 20 minutes and I was able to get in and out quite quickly as I only registered one child for one activity. And the best part...I get to do it all again in a couple months, well sans the meeting and volunteer extraction.

I'm tired

I'm trying to get into a new schedule. One where I am out of bed before any sane person I know. 6:30am. If that sounds like sleeping in to you, I guess you know where you fall on my sanity scale. So my alarm goes off at 6:25am and I hit snooze and then try to beat my snooze alarm to the bathroom. I lost today. I did get up when the snooze alarm went off though, so I wasn't late or anything.

I wake up and the house is still. A few minutes after my alarm goes off the first thing I hear is the bread machine beeping. Everything else is quiet. The kids are all asleep and so is Chris. Usually Anna has already snuck into our bed and is sound asleep in between Chris and I. Even the cats who have been banished to the garage are not scratching at the door to come in. So I drag self out of bed and into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. Why is it that even though I brushed my teeth less than 8 hrs earlier and all I did was sleep, that my mouth can feel way yuckier than it did after a whole day of being awake? Must be all the drooling I do in my sleep, lol.

After getting dressed into some sweats and a t-shirt I take the bread out of the breadmaker and gather my stuff. Car keys, house keys (yes I have them on separate key chains), water bottle, apple, shoes, cell phone. Lately I have to go back into the bedroom and search through Chris's pants to find my car keys as he's misplaced his, and seems in no hurry to find them as mine are so easy to steal. Then off to the gym I go. Yep, I said gym. And it's still only 6:45am!

I joined Curves (again) last week. I know I have to get myself there as early as possible and with kids to get ready for school, one still at home, and babysitting, my only options are before the world wakes up and the evening. I know that by the time the evening rolls around I'll have thrown around every excuse as to why I can skip a day, or I'll be too tired to go, or I'll forget and then it will too late, so really the evening workout is really a no go for me. Pre-dawn is my only option.

When I get home from the gym it's just in time to wake the kids up, make breakfasts and lunches and get them off to the bus and even get some housework done. I actually feel really great in the morning, but boy am I starting to drag by late afternoon! I have to work on the getting to bed earlier thing, or 6:30am may just kill me. Today though, I am tired in the morning, which can't be a great sign of things to come.

Time to get back to blogging business!

It's been forever, but it's time for me to get back into my blog. We're moved and generally settled, so I have no more excuses. I need the outlet too, a place to write down the crazy, silly, funny, boring, whatever, parts of my day. I guess I find it relaxing to sit down at the end of the day and write out my thoughts.

So what's been keeping me busy?

We moved a couple weeks ago. We were pretty much unpacked right away since out move covered everything from packing to unpacking. However getting things organized the way you want them always takes time. You think you want it one way only to discover that you don't really like it and have to organize it all over again. In between the organizing you still have to keep the house clean and the laundry done, because that just never ends. I will say that this house is much less dusty than either house I lived in in our old town. I guess I was right that the gravel roads there added to the dust in my house and it wasn't simply poor housekeeping. I did give up dusting there eventually so in part it was poor housekeeping, but when it's dusty 5 minutes after you wipe, you realize how futile your attempts are, lol.

This weekend was great. Chris was home from work and we had no real plans. That's rare lately. We spent Saturday tuning up our bikes and the girls bikes and then we spent quite a few hours just out walking and biking the neighborhood. We have some parks nearby with great trails that we are getting to know. The girls put at least 10km on their bikes on Saturday. I was so impressed that they did so well, especially Anna. She did get tired and have to stop for a few breaks but she pushed her own bike when she was on a break. She was a real little trooper. Beth's bike seized up on us though, so we have to get the bearings in her pedals fixed. I'd like to get her bike into the shop this week to get that taken care of so we can do some more biking in the evenings or next weekend.

Sunday we tried out a new church. I don't think it's quite the right fit for us, but I did really enjoy the service and the people. We'll find the right church for us though, it just may take a few weeks and some church shopping.

Today was spent on the house. I did housework and Chris worked in the yard. He built a sandbox for the girls and I shovelled the sand from the centre of the yard into the wheelbarrow and then dumped it into the sandbox. It was three wheelbarrow loads, and I'm impressed I didn't give up on the shovelling, lol. The sandbox is great, although I don't know how much the kids will actually use it. Then Chris measured out the area we are going to keep the trampoline. We priced out the cost of enough pea gravel to cover the ground under the trampoline and we plan to have some delivered this week sometime. It will be dumped into our driveway and we'll have to shovel it into the wheelbarrow which I think might take forever since it'll be way more gravel than we had sand. Chris edged the trampoline area tonight with some landscaping stuff left behind by the old owner, but he couldn't finish since the mosquitos started eating him alive. If we plug away at it day after day, we're hoping the backyard will be ready for grass seed before the snow falls and that we'll have good luck with the grass growing in the spring.

Of course as soon as the yard is done I think the basement renovations will start, so it really is never ending, lol.

I also started working out at Curves last week. My goal is to make it there mon-fri before the kids are up for school and get my workout in. I should be home in time to get them up, fed, dressed and off to school. Hopefully I can keep up the early rising. I know the key will be getting to bed at a decent hour, something I haven't been great at in the past. I timed out how long it takes me to ride my bike to Curves tonight. Twelve minutes. That's not bad, but at the moment I am not in good enough shape to get there in twelve minutes and have the energy to work out for half an hour. And I'm very sure I would not have the energy to bike myself back home! I have to be able to get there and back in decent time though in order to make sure the kids are awake in time to get to school, so for now I'll have to drive every morning. Maybe once the snow has come and gone I'll be fit enough to bike there every morning.

House Hunting

I'm sure I've mentioned that Chris was transferred on here somewhere before. We sold our house and decided to move to the city where his new office will be.

The housing market in the city is crazy! Any market where you have to offer $50,000 MORE than the listed mls price for a house is crazy right? We had been looking at a house that was for sale privately. They had a price in mind and then had an assessment and that price went up a lot more than we had expected. The house was perfect for us, had a huge yard, in a nice neighborhood. Unfortunately their low and our high numbers didn't match.

Then the real search was on. We spent hours on the internet trying to keep on top of what was available. We met with an agent, drove around the city for hours and picked a house to put an offer on. In the market here, if you put the condition of an inspection on your offer, it automatically gets rejected. Crazy yes, but there are always 10 other offers with no inspection condition for the owners to choose from. We had to find a house that worked for us AND seemed relatively sound enough to forget about an inspection.

We put an offer on a house last Friday (not yesterday). We offered $50,000 more than asking (my house here didn't even cost as much as we over offered on that house....crazy). Then on the weekend we saw another house that was for sale privately. No one else was looking at it. It was almost a secret that we knew it might be for sale. It was great! Smaller than the other house, but much newer with a basement all ready for our own development ideas. Way smaller yard, but a much newer house in a very good neighborhood. We thought about it for about, um, a nano second and decided if the owner was willing to sell it for around the price he had originally mentioned we would be very, very, very happy to be the buyers. So we withdrew our offer on the other house. One, and possibly the only, nice thing about this market is you usually have some time to withdraw your offer. The house goes on the market, you give the buyers about 3 days to look and then all offers are presented at the same time on a certain day. We had until Monday at 10am to withdraw and we called our realtor at 9am to pull the plug on our offer. I'd love to know what that house ended up selling for, if we even would have had a chance with the offer we had put in.

Anyways, Chris met with the owner again this week, we settled on a price (we're getting an amazing deal....for this market), and we have a possession date. Now we just need to see the lawyer to draw up the contract and see the bank to finalize the financing and we have a house!!

Tomorrow we get to go back again, have another look, take some more pictures, do any measuring we might need to do, and get a good look at the backyard which we couldn't get a great look at last time because it was pouring with rain. Yay!

Pics are along the side of my blog if I haven't already made you look at them. There should be more added tomorrow.

Mmmmm...lunch!

Let's take a look at today's lunch. This is Anna's plate...

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Yummy...PB&J is the best lunch of all time right? Nothing could be better for my kids. But take a closer look, Anna's added something a little healthier.

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Peanut butter, jelly AND cucumber! She says it's good. I'm not going to be trying it myself, but let me know if you try it and like it. And yes, that's a hamburger bun, we're out of bread at the moment.

Track and Field Day

Today was the K-6 track and field day in the next town over from ours. For the last couple of years I remember it raining on this day each June. They lucked out today and had beautiful weather! It looked like it might rain for a little while this morning, but it stayed away, the clouds cleared and it became a really hot day.

This was Beth's first track day and although she was excited she was a little nervous about what types of events she would have to participate in. For the littler kids they don't do high jump or some of the longer races, but they do have a little race, and a rubber chicken throw which the kids think is funny. This year they had rubber pigs and frogs as well. I haven't attended for the last couple of years, but the last time I went to watch Katie participate it was definitely a rubber chicken that got thrown. Gotta be fair to all animals though, and being that schools are all very inclusive now, you can't stop the rubber pigs and frogs from their chance to whipped around a school yard by a bunch of 6 yr olds, lol.

I went with a friend of mine and we took out 3 yr olds along with us. They had a blast since there was playground equipment to play on and Mr. Freezies to eat, what more could you ask for. You'd think since my friend and I just had one child each to keep track of compared to the normal three each, that it would have been an easy job, but with a hundred other children running around, we did manage to lose our kiddos a few times. Once we even lost them together. We were turned around talking to another mom and when we look back for the girls they were no where to be found. It was no longer than a minute that we weren't watching them, and POOF, they were gone. At least we were pretty sure they were together. It took a good 5 minutes of looking everywhere before they appeared from around the front of the school. A little friend of theirs was kindly showing them some flowers, lol.

Katie was not too keen on me taking her picture during any events, but I did manage to catch one of her doing the running long jump. Check out the side of my blog for more pictures (or on facebook there should be a slideshow).

New Do

A few weeks ago I was finally able to convince Anna to get her hair cut. Remember when she did it herself? It was finally long enough in the back that I could get a bob cut for her and it would look half way decent. Anna however only wanted to get her hair cut after we moved. I think she figured that would never happen, lol. So on Monday I made appointments for her and Beth and yesterday we walked down to the hairdresser's for the cuts. I still had to bribe Anna to sit in the chair, but that only cost me a pack of gum. I think her new do is a vast improvement from the one she gave herself don't you?

Beth wanted a haircut as well, something short. She decided chin length would be good, and I think it looks adorable.

We're moved!

So much has been happening since I last blogged. Most importantly, we moved over the weekend. It's been such a crazy ride, this last couple of months. When we signed the Offer to Purchase for our house a few months ago and agreed to a May 28th possession date, we had expected to have confirmation of Chris's transfer, and a new house bought in our new town by that date. Never count your ducks, isn't that what they say?

Well my poor little ducks were counted and then unfortunatley mutilated between then and now. Not only did the transfer not come through on time to arrange a mover and buy a new house, but when it came through we ended up with a new location completely. We're very pleased with the new location, don't get me wrong, but it took so bloodly long that it's just been an incredible hassle.

So we moved out of our house which we sold and back into the place we were renting after the last time we moved out of that house. We're crazy and must like to move I guess, but just back and forth between the same 2 houses it seems. I'm glad my house sold finally, but now I am wishing I had waited a couple months to sell since the market just sky rocketed here in our little town. House prices have been steadily going through the roof over the last 6 weeks and had we waited to sell we probably would have walked away with a heck of a lot more money than we did. How are you to know though? Oh well, the people who bought our house are very nice and I think they will love living in this little town.

So now that we have moved, we're basically just playing the waiting game until we can move again. Chris will be commuting to the city for work and we are hoping to buy in the city. Once we have a house lined up, we'll move again, BUT this time Chris's job will be paying for the move so we can hire actual movers, not just depend on great friends and family to help us out again. Our friends and family have moved us enough times that even they know what goes where by now.

Today was the first day I was actually able to get online, or even use the phone. Our phone was supposed to be reconnected Monday, but it took until today for the phone company to figure out which way was up and fix the problem. I've really felt disconnected from the world without a phone. Not that a lot of people called me or anything, I only had 4 messages and one was from Chris who knew the phone wasn't working. Another was from our appliance repair guy to let me know how much to replace the stove burner knob that was accidently broken during the move. You'll never guess, it's an insane amount and I can only imagine it's plated in gold to cost as much as we were quoted. Even the repair guy seemed stunned when he left the message. Maybe he'll feel bad about the cost of the part and go easy on us for the labor?

Oh, I have to tell you about my cats. When we got them as kittens this is the house we lived in, so it was their home for a long time before we moved back to the other house. Once we were over there (last October) they could not figure out where we lived even though we kept coming back here, picking them up, and taking them to the other house. For weeks the black one travelled back to this house daily. They still would wander back to an old abandoned building near here a couple of times a week, but almost always came home to eat each night. So once they had that house figured out, we go and move back to this one. I was sure the poor kitties would be confused and be annoying the new owners scratching at the doors to be let in. Our first night here I went over to the other house and found the orange cat and brough him here. The black cat was at the abandoned building and would not come out so I could catch him. Later that night though, he arrived here asking to be let in! I let both cats out before I went to bed, sure I would have to go get them from the other house in the morning and to my complete surprise they were at the back door waiting to be let in in the morning! It's like moving to that other house was just a bad dream to them and as far as I know they have not been back over there, lol. Stupid cats. Wait til we move again, HA!

Finally!

After what seems like an eternity, we finally know where Chris is being transferred! We still have to move back to our old house for a couple months while we find a house to buy in the new place, but at least now we know!

It's such a relief. It seemed like it took forever to get this transfer official, and now it seems like it's going so quickly, lol. Just can't make me happy I guess.

Cross your fingers we find a nice house to buy. The real estate market where we are moving is hot, and it's tough to get an offer accepted since you have to offer $30,000 to $60,000 more than the asking price. You just never know if someone will outbid you.

Domestic Diva!

That's me today. I feel so domestic, lol. I got up this morning with the kids, got dressed before they did, threw on a load of laundry and even made coffee. The laundry has been going non stop since the first load. It's a beautiful day out today, my thermometer say 24C and there is a slight breeze so it's PERFECT clothesline weather. And what better than to hang on a clothesline than sheets and blankets. Yep, I stripped all the bedding and have been washing and hanging it all morning.

So now the kids have been fed and are watching some tv in the basement, the little one I babysit is down for her nap, the last of the bedding is on the clothesline, the kitchen is clean and the floor is swept, and the house is relatively quiet. I kicked off my shoes, turned on the computer, found my soap on tv, and the only thing that could make this part of the afternoon more perfect, and domestic, would be a box of bon bons.

Dropshots

Be sure to check out my Dropshots pics on the right. It should always be showing the newest ones I've uploaded, or just go straight to the site: http://www.dropshots.com/elicatsmum.

Things have been crazy around here. Those of you who know us IRL know that we have been going through a really crazy time with Chris's upcoming (maybe) transfer.

Basically we have to move. We sold our house because we were supposed to be moved, but it's been over a month since we thought we would get the official transfer notice. We thought we had lots of time when we sold our house, and now the possession date it getting closer and closer (23 days from now I will be homeless, but who's counting?).

We would like to look at buying a house but we don't know where it's going to be now. The original place they told us, is not going to happen, so they are working on something else. Meanwhile we wait, and wait and wait some more.

So we pack, and we whine, and pack some more. Then we whine a bit about packing. At least we have a place we can move into in the meantime, but we still have to drag all our crap over there. We won't have time to buy a house, and get moved in now even if they gave us the official notice tomorrow, so I just need to suck it up and move.

And now I have to track down all our friends and convince them to help us move 'just one more time' (that's what we told them the last 2 times, lol). It's crazy.

Hopefully next week I'll actually know where we are going to officially be moving to and can let everyone in on the secret.

Finally, a new camera!

Yesterday I bought a new camera. It's one I've been looking at and reading about for a while. Chris has talked to someone who has one, and they loved it. Then while I was in Victoria we ran into someone my parents knew who I saw also had the same one. I asked the gentleman about it, and he said it was great and he really liked it. It's the Fuji FinePix S5200. All the digital cameras we've owned have been Fuji's and we've always been very happy with them. We upgraded from our first one to one with more mega pixels and a better zoom. That was the one Chris accidentally closed in an arena seat and cracked the LCD screen. My new one has 5.1 mp (the broken one had 5.2 mp), but this one has a 10x optical zoom, which is wonderful! It's a little more involved then just a plain point and shoot but more user friendly than an SLR. I can't wait to play with it some more and learn how to become a better photographer. I uploaded a few pictures I've taken in the last 24 hrs to Dropshots which you can see on the right there.

Long time no blog

I know, it's been forever.

Our family flew to Victoria, BC for Easter Break. We left on Wed. April 4th and the girls and I got home yesterday, so that's my main excuse for not blogging. I was online while we were away, but we had very jam packed days and by the time we'd get in each night, I was exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do was type and try to be witty, lol.

We had a great flight. It was Beth and Katie's first times on a plane. Anna had flown with me before she was two and she made sure to remind her sisters that she had been on a plane before. Taking off and landing shook Katie up a bit, but overall she did much better than I expected. Both she and Beth got bad earaches when we would descend which did not go away until we actually landed, so for 25 minutes of each flight Chris and I had almost crying girls to deal with. They were even chewing gum and it still bothered them. That was really the only negative to the trip there.

When we landed in Calgary, one of the WestJet flight attendants sang us a song.
"I love you, you love me
(some line I cannot for the life of me remember)
We've got class and personality,
Marry one of us, and you'll fly for free!"

We thought it was cute, but didn't really think of it again until yesterday when Anna brought it up. She was in the truck with Katie and Beth while my parents were unhooking the 5th wheel trailer, and somehow the kids got on the subject of marriage. Anna decided she was going to marry Katie, and Katie told her she couldn't. Anna insisted she could because then "I fly for free". She has been yapping about flying for free on and off since then, lol.

I asked her today if she could fly for free and she flapped her arms and said "No....I don't think fly for free song is real".

I'll upload some pictures from the trip when I get a chance and post the link to the album. And I'm sure I'll have some more stories from our trip to blog about over the next week or so.

Bike Season!

The kids rode their bikes to school this morning. You know what that means right? There is hardly any snow left and very few waterlogged sidewalks! They were so excited that I said yes when they asked, they didn't know what to do with themselves, lol. It was a mad rush to find their helmets and get them adjusted but they managed to get off to school in lots of time, only to arrive back home 5 minutes later because Beth's head was cold and she wanted a toque. A toque and a bike helmet...had to re-adjust the straps of course.

Chris happened to be at the school this morning and saw the girls arrive. He has been wanting to get the girls new bikes, and me being as cheap as I am, have been making him hold off. So what if Beth's bike used to be pink but is now so old it's pale white? Who cares that she has a banana seat older than me? She loves her bike. And Katie's bike, well who wouldn't love a bike that was made out of old parts from the dump? Seriously, we call it the dump bike. When our last renters left, one of the random pieces of junk they left behind was a bmx bike frame. I wanted dh to take it to the dump with the other junk, but he thought he could salvage it. While he was at the dump with the other junk, he found a rim that would fit the bike so he brought it home. It fit perfectly and the tire was even good, so he went back to the dump to search for more treasure. He found another rim and tire which also fit and the tire was also still good. A little WD40 on the old chain and the dump bike was good to go.

Apparently when they arrived in style on their old banana seat and dump bikes this morning (sporting the only helmets this town has ever seen, and jeans tucked into their rubber boots, never mind the toque under the helmet) dh was quite embarrassed, lol. He phoned me from the school to tell me the girls arrived on time and that they needed new bikes. We're moving this summer, to a town that is notorious for bikes being stolen. Can't we hang onto the banana and dump bikes for a while longer since they will most likely just have new bike stolen if we buy them?

Just wait til everyone sees Anna on her Super Bike (she named it herself). It's an old plastic one, with the handle you can push to help them along. And it only has one pedal, and that's a piece of wood that the last owners had put on. The one pedal thing doesn't seem to slow her down.

Old Videos

While going through my picture files I found some short video clips I had taken a while back when I had my nephews over for a couple nights. Enjoy!

Generation gap

Anna has just proven to me that she is growing up in a completely different world than I did. I'm sure we've all noticed that kids today have things very differently than we did as kids, for instance the first thing my kids do when they see a stuffed animal in the store is press its stomach or hand or foot to see if it talks. Or when you take a picture of a child they immediately run to see what the picture looks like on the other side of the camera, even if you are using a 35mm, and they don't understand why you would have such a weird camera without a screen to get your instant photo gratification.

So today's proof of a generation gap was the following:

Anna and Beth have been playing together very nicely this morning (both were home sick from school and preschool). They were imagining they were friends and were having a sleep over at each other's houses. They even asked the imaginary moms for permission. They were playing in their room with the door closed, but we can still hear the game. Well, Chris called Beth to tell her he is ready to glue gun this craft she brought home from school, and we hear Anna say to Beth "I'll pause the game". The door opens, out they come and Anna stops, looks into the room, and says "Pause!" Because the game might have gone on without them had it not been 'paused', lol.

Test the Nation

Apparently there was a show on CBC last night called Test the Nation. I didn't watch (I was busy painting once the kids were in bed) but I did the online test today. It's just an IQ test, not country specific or anything so try it out and post your results in my comments section...if you dare, lol.

Take the Test!

It asks you to guess your IQ before taking the test, and I know I am a well-rounded, above average intelligent person (and so humble too I might add), so I guessed 130. I've taken online IQ tests before and generally scored around there. I think I should have gotten a couple extra points for guessing so close to what my actual score was, lol. Anyways here are my results:

And some interesting facts from the Test the Nation site:

• The average IQ is between 90 and 109. If you score 132 or more, you can call yourself a genius. (Ohhhh, I was so close. Can you imagine how difficult I would be to live with if I had actually scored 132? I'd be making my kids call me Mommy Genius, or Mommy G for short!)
• Researchers have shown that each year of schooling is good for about 3.5 IQ points.
• Conversely, dropouts lose IQ points. Swedish researchers found a 1.8-point IQ loss for each year of high school missed after dropping out.
• People with high IQ tend to live longer and suffer less from certain diseases like depression, dementia and schizophrenia, but they also tend to suffer more from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• Women with a higher IQ are 40% less likely to marry.
• Caffeine can improve your IQ score (doesn't make you smarter but makes you more alert and increases short-term memory).
• Wine drinkers on average have a higher IQ than beer drinkers. Studies show a slight advantage to wine drinkers — but do wine drinkers have higher IQs because they drink wine or vice-versa ? It may be that some people with high IQ reach a high social status and then choose to drink wine to fit in. (see table below for alcohol consumption data of high IQ countries).
• IQ is not influenced by family size or birth order.
• Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows.
• A chemical found in strawberries and other coloured fruit and vegetables has been found to boost the memory. Fisetin, a naturally occurring flavonoid, stimulates the signalling pathways that enhance long-term memory, according to the Californian and Japanese researchers. The catch - lead researcher Pamela Maher said it would take 4.5kg a day to achieve a beneficial effect.
• A recent study has shown that it is possible to increase one’s IQ by regularly playing puzzle games.
• A drop in IQ has been found to be an early predictor of Alzheimer’s disease—up to a decade before the onset of the health problem.

The kitchen cupboards are coming along.

I've painted all the trim and most of the doors. I had a problem with the doors turning out slightly yellow, which didn't really matter UNTIL I put them up next to the trim and then it just looked wrong. We think it was because we stripped the doors down to the wood, but did not strip the trim, and somehow after 1 coat of primer and 5 coats of paint, the wood color was still seeping through. I ran out of paint anyways so we got a new brand, and repainted one coat on the yellowed doors and then they looked fine. Since we had a bunch more doors stripped already, I just used about 3 coats of primer on them and then painted them. They are still drying so I don't know if they will be white white or yellow white yet, lol. The bottom sets of doors and drawers we decided not to strip, just to sand the edges to give them a cleaner look. The doors have all been painted now, and just the drawers are left to sand and paint. Hopefully tomorrow will be the end of kitchen painting.

We'd like to get the house listed soon, so once the kitchen is done we can paint the ceilings in the front and back porches. Before we moved in they must have had some water leakage problems. I remember when we bought the house the shingles were only a year or so old, so that was probably when they fixed the leaks. We never had any leakage at all, thank goodness, but we do have the water stains from the leaks. The real estate agent we had over a couple weeks ago thought we should paint the ceilings so it doesn't look like there is a leakage problem. I wonder if we can just paint the water stains or if that will look funny, or if people looking would even notice even if it did look funny? Hmmmm.

My new kitchen table!

It looks big. I hope it's not too big and makes my kitchen too much smaller than it is already. I really like it though. You can see the doorless cupboards in the background.

Six years ago today!

At about this time I was already in the hospital being induced. I wouldn't go into labor for another 6 hrs or so from now, and Beth was not born until just before 1am on the morning of the 15th, but she was on her way!

It's hard to believe my little girl is turning 6 tomorrow!

Mother Nature is a big ol' B%&#!

It was beautiful a few days ago, everything was melting. Of course I complained a little bit about all the water and mud, and the extra 3 laundry loads of jackets, splash pants and the like, but come on already. It was melting a few days ago and today it's -15 C with a windchill making it feel like -26 C, and it's getting colder as the day goes on. What the?

On the plus side, since it got colder yesterday, our wayward cat came back home. He went out a few nights ago, and wouldn't come in when I went to bed so I left him out. We didn't see him again until last night. We even checked his hiding spot (an abandoned old building near our old house) a couple of times with no luck. I guess the cold got the better of him. The girls were sure happy he came back home!

And in more exciting (to me only I'm sure) news, Chris should be home with out new table in a few hours. We had bought the floor model (big price drop for the floor model), and today the store called to say they had a new one boxed in the back and would prefer we took that one if it was okay with us, since then they wouldn't have to unpack it and put it out as a floor model. Fine with me, I'll take a brand new table over a floor model for the same price as a floor model any day, lol. It had better be easy to put together though, my kitchen is already a mess with no cupboard doors and I don't need to add a half assembled table to the mix.

Your eyes are NOT deceiving you!

This really is a new blog entry. I know it's been almost a month, but I blame it all on my camera. I hate not being able to take pictures of what's going on in our lives and without the pictures I don't feel like blogging about it I guess. And I am really just being a big baby about my camera because it does work, it's just the lcd screen that is broken, it's like using my old 35mm again, lol.

So what's been going on at our lives?

We're pretty positive about where our transfer will be taking us the summer. It should be official by April 1st. Since we haven't heard we're NOT going we're pretty sure we are. So since we got the unofficial word a few weeks ago we contacted a realtor about selling our house. There had been a few houses for sale in town, but they have all sold which is great for us. Nothing to compare our house too for one thing, and obviously people are looking to move to this town. We have not signed any papers with the agent yet so we're not on the market and we already have one person who is wanting to see it before it's listed to buy for his company, and our agent has called back to let us know she's had a few calls asking her if anything was coming up in town so the sooner we get it listed the better. That's all great for us. We've been very worried about selling since this house was already on the market for almost 2 yrs about a year ago. No one was moving to town, but I guess now with things booming in the city people are looking for affordable small town living. Our fingers are crossed that this will be a much quicker sale, lol.

So with the house being almost listed we've been doing more home reno's. Last I blogged we had put the laminate floor in the porch and the bathroom was done except for one piece of baseboard (which is still not in, lol). Since then we have put some wallboard up in the basement to make it look more 'finished'. We've also started taking down all the kitchen cupboard doors to strip the layers of paint off and then give them a fresh coat. I've primed a few white and it's hard to believe how non-white they were before. They were a very yellowed white, so this should really brighten up the kitchen. Once they are done, we'll call the real estate agent to come back and take a look and sign some documents. Then I'll be asking you all to cross your fingers for me.

So on the selling end we're pretty much good to go, but the buying end is scary. There is not a lot available in the town we will be moving to so we've been keeping an eye on the mls listings every day and we have local spies keeping their eyes open for the Sale by Owner signs. We also have our eye on 10acres south of town that has been for sale privately. It used to have a trailer on it, so all the hookups are there which reduces the cost of putting a home there by a bit. Right now the owner has someone from Alberta interested in it, and he has first dibs, but he will know in the next couple of weeks if it's still available or not. We had been looking at an old (but nice) double wide trailer to put on the land, but the trailer has since sold and we've since talked to every mobile home moving company and none will move a double wide, so it's not like we would have had any way to get it to the land anyways. At the moment we are looking at the cost of RTM's (Ready to Move) and the cost of digging a basement. It's all so up in the air right now, and it makes me nervous. There are so many unknowns with moving a house to an acreage and digging a basement and connecting the house to power, water, gas etc. What are utility rates like on an acreage, what are taxes? We've asked around and we get different answers from everyone we speak to it seems. Sure it would be exciting to get a new house and live on an acreage but a small part of me just hopes the guy from Alberta buys the land so we don't have to ask the questions anymore. One thing all the people we ask have in common is the belief that now is the time to build an acreage because realty in the area we are moving to is taking off right now and we would stand to make a few dollars when we sold. Arghhhh!!!!

So other than eating, sleeping and breathing moving options not much is going on. We bought a new kitchen table today and Chris is going to pick it up tomorrow which is exciting. We've needed a new one for a while, a long while. I'll take a picture with my crappy camera tomorrow once it's in my kitchen, and maybe in the background you'll be able to see into my kitchen cupboards because half of them have no doors at all, lol.

It's also Beth's 6th birthday on Thursday which is also exciting. We're trying to plan a birthday party for Saturday. Of the 6 classmates she invited 2 have already told us they cannot make it, and the other 4 parents have not bothered to let us know one way or the other. Katie tells me one of the 4 told her at dance today that she is going to a different birthday party instead, but it would be nice if the parent had phoned to let me know. Oh well, we'll make sure it's still a fun day! And I'll force myself to take pictures even though I hate my camera.

We got so much done today!

Bathroom is done (almost, lol). We even got the old silicone stripped off the tub and tub surround and put down new stuff. Boy does that make a difference. The bathroom would be completely done but we were mysteriously short 2 ft of baseboard. We have since found the baseboard when we cleaned out the disaster of a front porch. We have been storing all our work crap in there while we were doing the bathroom. Most of that crap has been moved to garage now, lol. So there is a 2 ft piece of baseboard left to be put on in the bathroom and then the paint touched up on it, and it will really be all done in there.

I decided that for now I am going to keep our white shelving unit in there. It looks fine when it's not all cluttered and since we will be selling the house soon, why buy a new linen shelf (the one I want is about $100) when I don't know if it will even go anywhere in our next house. We do want to buy a small shelf to put some decorative candles on for above the toilet though.

We also (and by we I mostly mean Chris, although I did help by standing on a piece of board every now and again) finished the porch floor. The tiles in there were the same as what used to be in my bathroom so it was in desperate need of a flooring makeover. These tiles were so easy to peel off though, each one came of whole, and it only took a few minutes. Chris is at this very moment putting the baseboards back on, that's how done the floor is! We still have to rehang the closet doors and although I would like to do that tonight yet, Chris is looking pretty tired and he has a First Aid course to study for tonight yet. We'll see.

Chris must not have hated working with me to do all these renos too much since one of the first things he asked me when the flooring was getting layed in the porch was which room was next, lol. He wants to do something in the kitchen, I'm not so sure. I'd just like to get my house back to being clean and uncluttered for at least a week first, lol.

Monster Trucks!

We thought about maybe travelling home to see Chris's parents today, but those plans changed once we got a call from a friend of Chris's. Every year this friend offers us free tickets to see the Monster Truck show, and believe it or not, our girls LOVE it! Today was the last day to go.

We find that the length of the show is too much and the seats are in the so called 'nosebleed' section, but we have fun anyways. Personally I like where our seats are each year. We're quite high up, but we can see over the whole track.

We arrived at 1pm to pick up our free tickets at the back entrance, and the show did not start until 2pm. We left at 5pm since Beth and Anna just could not stand any more. Having to sit for that long, combined with the noise and fumes was just too much. We watched the last of the monster truck free style and then left. There was still a demolition derby left to see (cars, not monster trucks), but we had to get out of there. We see one or two demo derby's every summer anyways, and Chris's brothers and brother in laws are often driving or in the pit crews at those ones, so it's more fun for the girls to watch those ones.

Don't be deceived by the name of the show leading you to believe it's all Monster Trucks though. Actually there is less time devoted to monster trucks than anything else, but they are what draws the crowds in. Along with the trucks there is motocross racing, super cycles, tough truck racing and souped up ride on lawn mower racing!

Here are a couple more pictures. Unfortunately I don't know how many more pics I'll be taking in the future since during the Monster Truck show the cars were not the only things that got crushed. Our camera experience and crunching of it's own when it got folded in an arena seat and now the LCD screen is cracked inside. The display just shows a mess of black and white now with cracks. It still takes pictures okay, you just have to use the old fashioned view finder and you can't changed any of the options on the menu. I guess we'll be camera shopping one of these days.