It's done

It looks the same but it's actually way more organized and I washed all the shelves. No labels though :(

Operation Pantry

This will take me all afternoon I'm sure.

An idea hits me!

At this very moment I am standing in a long line at the grocery store because their tills are on the fritz. I am dreading getting home to empty the car because I remember what state my pantry is in. I HAVE to reorganize but I know my family will just mess it up again. What I need is a label maker to mark all the shelves! My life would be complete with a label maker.

I am still in line.

Peacock

Lions

Bears

Fun at the Forestry Farm

I was doing so well

And then I fell off the wagon. I guess the 365 pictures was not meant to be, lol.

I'll keep taking pictures, but until I can find a way for my camera to upload them here directly,...

Oooh....I bet that will be the next big thing in cameras...wifi capability!

Testing

Is this thing on?

Posted from my phone. Cool!

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Another silly license plate. I swear I was not taking pictures while driving. I was stopped at a traffic light.

I wonder if there is a Dr. Moore out there somewhere?

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My favorite thing to do while visiting my parents. I lost. Dad won. That rarely changes.

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This is the man made 'lake', or maybe pond would be a better description, that is along my daily walk. In the winter it's completely iced over and they clear a few rink sized areas for skating and hockey. The ice is breaking up finally, and the birds are already back.

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We've been away, but I've taken all my pictures! Most were taken with my phone, but they look okay.

14 (phone) - My car could only have this license plate twice a year.


13 (phone)


12


11 (phone) - A beautiful walk. The girls are half way across the bridge with grandpa.


10 - His eyebrows are not really as big as they look!


9 - My secret for a good bejeweled score....bring in a ringer!

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Brrrrr....we needed a fire this evening for a backyard bbq. The weather is just not quite there yet, as you could probably guess considering there is still snow on the ground! Not my idea for a bbq, and not my backyard. If it had been my choice, it would have been inside where it was warmer and there was a lot less mud!

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I took this yesterday but didn't have time to post it.

Breakfast

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Nighttime in my backyard. We had a busy day, and I should really start taking my camera with me where ever I go, but it's kinda big, so it gets left behind a lot.
We got home in time to put the girls to bed, and I decided I should take some outside pictures of the yard and maybe take one every week to see the melting progress. We've already lost a lot of the snow in our yard (yay!) and it shouldn't be too long before it's all gone.

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The 80's are definitely back.
She asked me with complete seriousness if I think the name Roxie Rockstar is already taken.


If you click on the picture (this one, and the others I have posted) it should take you to a larger better quality one.

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I had to snap this one quickly as my camera shuts off demanding more batteries. If I'd had to, I would have scavenged the batteries from the remotes, but I got a good one!

Beth is probably the happiest of the girls that Spring finally seems to be here. We're still only a few degrees above freezing each day, but that's good enough for her. The snow has melted off the trampoline so she's good to go!

It all started with a load of laundry

How is it that going downstairs to throw a laundry in turned into:

• a load of laundry
• helping the kids clean up the crayons they left all over the floor
• vacuuming the floor of all the little crayon bits
• vacuuming the stairs because I noticed how dirty they were when I walked by with the vacuum
• vacuuming the porch floor because I was now at the top of the stairs anyways
• vacuuming the laundry room floor
• refilling the cat food
• emptying and sorting through the central vacuum canister looking for an earring that I vacuumed off the floor that I should have just left in the canister to teach the owner a lesson
• vacuuming the mess emptying the canister made
• taking out the garbage

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it's all done, but I just wanted to do a load of laundry and come back upstairs and watch the rest of Survivor.

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I just don't think you can go wrong with stripey socks.

The litle guy I babysit was more than happy to pose for me this morning. He held his one foot right up to the camera lens and almost fell over when I asked him if I could take a picture of his socks, lol.

I think I figured it out

I noticed last week that my list of feeds, that tell me when someone has updated their blog, wasn't working. It says that every one's last update was May 22, 2009. Weird. Or so I thought.

Then I remembered that around the same time that the feeds quit working I had somehow changed my computer clock. I must have been looking at dates and instead of cancelling, I must have left it at that date, which was May 22nd, and the reason I know it was that date was because I sent two emails the next day. Chris said he never received the one I sent him, and I double checked in my sent box and saw the date of May 23rd on it. He still has not received the email (remind me on May 23rd to ask him if it arrives), and I changed my computer clock back as soon as I noticed

So because my computer checked for new feeds on what it thinks was May 22nd, it is not checking for them anymore, because my clock is back to normal and thinks they must be up to date since it isn't even May yet. The good thing is that I think I figured out why it's not updating, but the bad thing is I can't figure out how to fix it.

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As promised...a picture a day.
I won't be giving them all a title, but this one is "Wishful Thinking"

and by the way, that's a sand toy NOT a snow shovel, lol. It currently sits about about a foot above ground level. And that's not the highest snow point in our backyard.

I had a dream

I dreamt I had been recruited by my dh's workplace to apply for a job.

I remember I had finished 2 of the many steps and was working on the third. I was in a huge hall full of people who had been working towards this job for so long, and here I was thinking about at which step of the process would be the best time to back out, lol.

I would NEVER want my dh's job. I have zero interest in that type of work completely. Plus our schedules would never work out that we could see each other anyways. Why would I dream something so ridiculous?

When he gets home from work late tonight I'll have to tell him about my dream. I know he'll laugh. There are many couples who do what he does, but I have no idea how they make it work. I know we couldn't.

Okay Spring, last warning

If the fact that the weather has actually made it above freezing the last few days and the forcast says it's going to be even warmer next week is just a cruel trick, I will cry.

Please stay nice.

Please.

I promise to blog more often if the snow goes away.

In fact I want to jump on the 365 photos bandwagon.

I'll start in April, if it's nice.

Come on Spring!

Dear Spring,

My kids really need to get outside and play. For a few hours. At a time, not combined through the month. They are grumpy and I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

Sincerely,
Corra

Lent

I’m not really ‘into’ Lent, but I do know that it’s the 40 day long church season before Easter. Easter is something I’m into, lol. Chocolate, chocolate, and don’t forget chocolate. Of course that’s not what Easter is actually about, and Lent isn’t just about ‘giving something up’. There’s so much more to it than that. If it were that simple, maybe I’d be more of an active Lent participant.

But you are supposed to give something up that is important to you, that will teach you something about self discipline. Something that will teach you about sacrifice. I never know what to give up, so I never give anything up.

I think of trivial things like giving up certain food items, or tv, or the internet. But would that really teach me anything about self discipline or sacrifice? It’s only 40 days, it’s not like these things are gone forever. So am I learning self discipline or just biding my time until I can turn on the computer again?

Maybe the key is to fill the time you would normally be doing  whatever you gave up with good things. Things you don’t normally do. More prayer, bible devotions, random acts of kindness, volunteering, etc. That might actually mean something and you might learn more than the fact that 40 days without chocolate makes Easter that much more exciting and unfortunately, a lot less meaningful.

Pause…

It still makes me laugh when my kids are playing some make believe game and one of them has to leave to go to the washroom or a get a drink or something else and they say to the others, “pause the game until I come back”. It used to make me laugh even harder when Anna would do it with a make believe remote in her hand that she would point at the other girls.

I wish I could pause life sometimes, like a snooze button for reality. I’d get a couple more hours of sleep every morning at least. 

What would you do if you could pause?

There’s a birthday soon!

I really have to get on the birthday planning wagon soon! Last year was a complete bust and poor Beth (and Katie when it was her turn) didn’t get birthday parties with their classmates.

This year Beth would like to have a party at the pool AND a sleepover. I will have to check out the pool prices and see what we can arrange for that day or the day before and then decide if we want to follow that up with a sleepover.

The sleepover will have to be limited to a couple of girls though, we don’t have the room for too many, and I won’t have the energy after a pool party I’m sure. A sleepover also limits which days we can have the party.

On second thought, maybe a sleepover should be arranged at a later date. She asks daily about it though, and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold her off.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Last night we were invited over to my parents' house for a birthday dinner for my grandma. I don't recall ever being with my grandma on her birthday so it was really nice to be able to spend the evening with her now that we live in the same city.

My grandparents moved to the city in the fall, into a much smaller home than they had before. As a result, they don't really need more 'things' for Christmas and Birthdays, their home is full enough already. I was on a mission to find something edible for a gift earlier this week when I found a website for a coffee and tea store in the city. My grandparents live in a condo complex where one meal a day is provided for them in a large common dining room. Every night they ask for 2 Lipton's Ginger Peach Tea bags with their meal. They share one and my grandpa puts the other one in his pocket and then they share it later in the evening. I have looked everywhere for this brand of tea and cannot find it! I thought I was lucky one afternoon when I came across a different brand of ginger peach, but they say it's not the same.



So off I was to the coffee shop (with a side mission to pick up some caramel crunch coffee beans recommended to me by a friend) as soon as my day home kids were picked up. Unfortunately the only ginger peach they had was loose, and I was pretty sure my grandma would only want tea bags. They had lots of other ginger versions in bags, but none were ginger peach. So I picked up my coffee and headed out.



Luckily just down the block is a cheese shop. My grandma loves cheese. Since they have moved to the city, we pick up my grandparents every Sunday to take them to church. I have heard so many stories about my grandmother's childhood that I have never heard before during these car rides. One of those stories is why she loves cheese so much, so I know I can never go wrong with a gift of cheese. I picked up a nice blue cheese I know she enjoys and a little container of olives and my mission was accomplished.



She was so please to have so many of her family with her last night on her birthday. I, as usual, forgot my camera, but my new phone has a camera built in. I know that's how most people's cell phones are nowadays but it's been years and years since I got a new cell phone, so it's very new and exciting for me, lol. It's not a great picture, seeing it's taken by a phone, but oh well, at least it's a picture.

Would you like to know how old my grandma is? I'll tell you what she tells me every time I have ever asked her "I am as old as my tongue, and a little bit older than my teeth." Happy Birthday Grandma!

I love that relaxing feeling

The one you get when you clean something. Not just a straighten up clean, but that deep clean, the one where you don't just move stuff around and rearrange it while you dust, but when you actually put away that thing you've been meaning to put in the storage room for months now but never get around to it, kind of deep clean.

My side of the bedroom looks so nice now. It makes me want to sit on the edge of the bed and read, or listen to music or just sit. Ahhhh.

I should sleep well tonight just knowing it looks clean, even though it's dark and I won't be able to see it. I'll still know.

It's like it's new!

My computer has been acting horrible. Slow and annoying. Chris has added a few programs here and there trying to fix issues and then we installed Norton on it in case it was a virus. The scan came out negative, and then since Norton, it was even slower. So last night I backed up all my pictures and documents and Chris wiped the computer and started it over from scratch.

What a huge difference! A blank slate is very refreshing.

Luckily I backed up my favorites as well, so all the blogs I visit and web pages I like to hang out at, were safely tucked away until this afternoon when I put them back where they belong.

Things are all sparkly!

That's what Anna said when she put on her new glasses.

Awww.

To think that before she had glasses things were not sparkly makes me almost sad. We had no indication from her that she was not seeing well. Never a complaint. We had taken her to the optometrist last year as well and learned about the astigmatism, but it wasn't bad enough to do anything about yet and we learned that many kids have a slight astigmatism and it improves each year (Beth's did). We were told to wait and see and come back in a year and we did. So it's not like I should feel bad, we did everything right. But it still tears at my heartstrings that things were not sparkly before.

I will work very hard to get a picture taken of her in her new specs. But if you know Anna at all, you know that very well could be mission impossible.

Snow, snow go away

I am already tired of snow. Shoveling doesn't help that feeling at all. I'll take a picture later to show you just how much snow we've had to shovel this year and a picture of the undisturbed drifts in the back yard. Spring cannot come soon enough but I know it's months away still. Darnit.

Eye see you... Or not.

So my baby needs glasses. She's only five so it actually surprised me. When Katie needed them last year we were not surprised since both Chris and I needed them around the same age. But at five? The dr. used the alphabet chart this year, or tried to now that Anna is in kindergarten but she couldn't recognize any letters. I told the dr. her recognition is not great, not like it was for my older girls. Then she tried numbers which Anna also had trouble with. Then we moved on to E's, left right and upside down. That seemed to do the trick.

I noticed during the exam that she was getting a lot of them wrong but only on one eye. Turns out she has quite severe astigmatism in her left eye. Treatment options are starting with glasses that she will wear for a month and then go back for a re-check. If it's still not any better we will have to patch her good eye after school until bedtime to encourage her other eye to step up and do its job.

The dr. also mentioned that astigmatism can distort images and not always the same way each time you see the image. She felt it could be why her letter recognition is not very good. Or that could just be her LOL. Maybe we'll find out soon enough. She gets her new glasses in about a week and she is so excited.

Things happen for a reason right?

Can't go into details but I just need to reassure myself that when one door closes, another, hopefully just as nice or even better, door opens. My fingers are crossed that the door we are looking towards opens up soon. Even if we can't go in just yet, seeing it open is all we need.

iBlog

Maybe now that I have this handy little iPod touch with a blog application I might update a little more often. It may only be a sentence or two because I have to individually type each letter with one finger but it will be better than nothing which is what this blog has consisted of lately. And thank goodness this little machine self corrects pretty darn well most if the time or it would take even longer to plug in these few sentences.