Back to School

Katie and Beth were back at school today. If I was one of those good 'get everything on camera' mothers I would have taken a picture, but I am not. Tomorrow is Anna's first day of Kindergarten. I am hoping I will remember to get a picture of her before I take her to school, and then I can snap one of the other girls as well and 20 yrs down the road no one will even know or remember it wasn't the actual first day of school. Especially if I ever get around to scrap booking and I journal it as the first day of school. I wonder how many other people scrapbook lies?

We're ready!

Almost.

I went school supply shopping on Saturday and picked up almost everything the girls need to start school. Last night we labelled it all and got it packed into their backpacks. All I have left to pick up are indoor runners for the girls, and Kleenex. I am getting excited! The girls have been fighting a lot lately. More than a lot. It's all they seem to do. Hopefully separating them with a few classrooms in between each should help curb that.

Katie and Beth start school on Thursday. Chris will take them in the morning and help them find their classrooms and meet their new teachers. The lists will be posted at the school somewhere and we don't know the teacher until the first day. Anna doesn't go until Friday, and we were given her Kindergarten information in June, so her teacher has already been announced. I am taking Friday off and am crossing my fingers that she is going to let me leave after I take her to her classroom. She's not normally the clingy type, but she also likes to surprise you.

I have to remember to take first day of school pictures. That's something I almost always forget.

What I bought at the party

My sister had a home party last week and I splurged and bought a picture frame. It's not a normal picture frame, I mentioned it in a blog a few days ago. It's a magnetic frame that you can add your pictures to, or you could add a scrapbook page, or a combination of the two.


This is a picture of the frame on the company's website so you can see an example of what you can do with it if you have some time and some creativity.

When I opened it up last night I went through my box of pictures to find some to display so I could show Chris how neat the frame is. He thought it looked nice, but wasn't nearly as thrilled as I was. These are just a few pictures from the girls' dance recital last year. They are just put on as is, with no background paper or embellishments or anything, so imagine how pretty it could be with some creativity! The round wooden things on the pictures are the magnets, and on the ribbon at the bottom the pictures are held on with mini clothespegs.

My sister and I are going to try and figure out a way to make some more of these frames for ourselves. It has got to be cheaper than buying them from the company. And we could make them in different sizes as well. Any ideas?

5 years

What was I doing 5 years ago at this time? If I remember correctly I was slightly uncomfortable and trying to sleep because I had been up most of the night before feeling slightly uncomfortable. It was actually the onset of labour, but I didn't want to believe it, lol.

I had been induced for both of my previous pregnancies, so I had never gone into labour all on my own. I wasn't actually having contractions yet, just cramps. Chris convinced me we should go in so I could be checked. We lived over half an hour from the hospital and my previous history of labours showed I like to get those babies outta there FAST. Not quite as fast as my mother who had her last baby, my little brother, in 45 mins from first contraction to babe in arms. But 4 hours fast, which is quicker than 'average'. I was worried I'd be like my mom and end up having a baby on the side of the road in a car, lol. Anyways, I grabbed my hospital bag and off we went. Katie had swimming lessons so we took her to the pool and left her with an overnight bag with friends of ours. I can't remember if Beth went with them also or if she went to stay the night at my sister's place.



We got to the hospital and I was still just having cramps. I was sure they were going to send me home, but I did not want to spend a bunch of time in the hospital only to get sent home so one of the first things I told them was if they were going to send me home to decide right away so I could leave, lol. Of course nothing can be that simple. I was there for hours. And I was on monitors that were not showing any contractions, yet I was still feeling cramps. I don't think they believed me, lol.



So we spent hours in the antepartum unit before they finally sent me over to the birthing unit. They told me that they didn't think I would be delivering any time soon, but they were running out of space on antepartum and needed to open up some beds. I was having contractions by this time, real ones, but the monitors were not picking them up, so of course they don't believe the woman in pain, they believe the monitors.



By the time I got over to the birthing unit I was feeling some really painful contractions. I wanted an epidural. It didn't help. They gave me more medicine in the epidural line. It didn't help. They gave me the same stuff you give for a c-section through the line. It didn't help. Nothing helped. Thank goodness for fast labours. Just like my last 2 labours, this one only lasted just over 4 hrs. When the baby was finally crowning, they discovered why I had been in so much pain. Her head was presenting sideways. They said in that position all my pain would have been in my bones and an epidural does nothing for bone pain. I wonder if that's true or they were just trying to make me feel better? They also said that was the reason no monitors were picking up that I was having any contractions at all.

At 10:10pm on August 19th, on her due date, Anna Renee was born. Today she is 5 yrs old. My baby, my last baby, is 5 yrs old. Wow.

Loving my Laptop

I'm outside on my deck.

Kids are playing in the sprinkler because it's super hot today.

Sitting at my new (to me) patio table, compiling an address list for my camp job on my laptop. I love that there are no cords all over the place and with a wireless router I can even email and blog.

This is the life.

Ahhh...Coffee

Gotta love a nice cup of coffee mid way through the morning. I was too busy after getting home from the gym to start a pot. My kitchen was left in a mess last night. Chris promised to get up and help me with it in the morning since it was almost all his doing.

He made it into the kitchen in time to watch me wash the last dish.

So I made him make the coffee, which he normally does anyways, so he didn't care.

We're having a BBQ this evening. Last count we had about 35 people say they would be attending. It started out as a BBQ for us and 2 couples, but just grew and grew. It should be a lot of fun. But I think tomorrow I am going to need some more of that coffee to get through the day.

This morning Chris made potato salad and I made guacamole. We still have chip dip and fruit dip to make and we have to cut up all the fruit. That will have to wait until after lunch because I am too busy enjoying my coffee at the moment.

Oh, and I drove the car this morning. The windshield wipers have two settings. Off and Super Fast. And when you turn them off from Super Fast, they just stop wherever they feel like it. We're going to need to figure that out before we're driving in the rain.

Driveway Decor

So while I continue to think about decorating the inside of my house, Chris has been busy 'researching' how to decorate the outside. He started with the driveway. This is our newest decoration.

We've been contemplating a second vehicle for a while now. Technically this is a third vehicle, but don't get me started on the giant blue monstrosity that is currently parked in my garage. I will continue to pretend it's not there and call this our second vehicle.

We threw a bunch of ideas back and forth, new, slightly used, used, lease etc. and spent a couple of months thinking about it. We visited every dealership in the city and met a lot of salesmen. We even visited a few dealerships 2 and 3 times, and each time got a new salesman. We obviously have no loyalty, lol. And then in the end we decided to get a used car that was being sold privately. It's a 1999 Malibu and hopefully it's more loyal to us than we are to salesmen.

Back to Blogging

It's been a couple of months, but I swear I have a good excuse. Well to be honest my good excuse is only good for the month of July, I cannot explain what happened to June.

In July the girls and I went to the lake, for the whole month. I took a job there at a children's' camp as the Camp Administrator. I caught up with some old friends and made a few new ones. A good time was generally had by all. Unfortunately though, the Internet was dial up only at the lake. It was painful, but I must say, less painful than I originally thought. So my Internet time was limited to downloading email and once in a while I would check on a forum or try to catch a friend of two on MSN...oh and Facebook, I'd try to check that once a week or so as well.

So now we are home and back to the same old same old. Which I am already a little bit tired of, lol. I'm hitting the gym every morning, even though some mornings I can barely drag my butt out of bed. And I bought a new bike with part of my summer pay cheque so I am riding that to and from the gym at the moment. Once the snow falls (Mother Nature I beg you...please let me have until at least Halloween) I will start driving my van again. I am also back to babysitting every weekday. Luckily I have great kids, so it's a pretty easy, yet very busy, job.

Now that I am back to blogging, I need something to blog about. A theme for the year, or a while, I suppose. Not that I will stick to a theme, but if I have one there will always be something in the back of my head nudging me to write. I've been thinking about what's missing in my house lately. We have all the basics and more, but if you came into my house, I think you'd notice one main thing that is missing. DECOR.

It's glaringly obvious that I am not a decorator. Our walls upstairs were white when we moved in and they are still white a year later. Our pictures, those that are up, are just hung on old nail holes. It's really quite sad. I suppose I should give myself a little credit though, we have a small nook in our hallway that is decorated. Chris spent some time in Nunavut a couple of years ago and brought home some soap stone carvings which are beautiful. I have those in the nook with a painting I found at a garage sale for $5. It looks nice to me, but remember, I am not a decorator. I'll have to take a picture and post it sometime.

It's not that I am scared of paint exactly, that's not why my walls are still white, it's more that I am scared of starting painting and not knowing where to stop. All of our corners upstairs are rounded corners so one wall leads to the next, and the next and the next. I'm told you can still paint and just make sure you tape the corner well so there is a definite line, but I don't trust myself or my husband to tape it that well. So we just don't paint, and we look at our white walls day after day after day.

Which brings me to my goal for the year and my blog theme for a while, again, not that I will stick to it, lol. I want to decorate my home this year. I want to place my pictures in planned places, not left over nail holes. I want to buy some home decor items. I might even want to buy some, dare I say it, curtains. I don't really like curtains, but they often look nice in other peoples' homes, so maybe they would in mine too?

I went to a home party they other night and bought a magnetic frame thing which I am excited about getting and planning what's going to go in it. It's one that you can put scrapbook pages or pictures in and change it up every so often. It was my first step in my home.

My first step on my blog was to change the background...much easier, and no paint lines to stress about.