Bits n' pieces

Busy busy busy is the order of the day.

Well, the summer is over. I know this for a few reasons: first, it's COLD!! Goodbye shorts and tanks, it's time for pants and sweaters. Except for when the sun is out, and it seems to hit 30 all at once, it gets hot. But, I love the fall. The crispness and the routine of it all is rather nice.

We've been having comfort food. The last weeks meals have been roasted chicken, then ribs, hamburger soup, I've baked pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (yum!) and even had a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. A sure sign of fall.

I feel like we've been found out. Sarah has had a really great start to pre-school, loves her teacher, is well behaved and has a great time. Until today.

Apparently she was hitting and kicking the other kids.

sigh.

Seriously, what do I do with this girl. Ms. Emshay (teacher) thought maybe her actions were coming from her little brother seeing as he's more that age. But there's no way, it's all her and has been for 3 years.

Benny has been enjoying his mommy time while Sarah is in school, though the first day, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end, or that someone was taking his monkey away when we dropped Sarah off. He spent the next 2 hours saying "say-ya?!?!" wondering where she was. It was a happy reunion.

I got called into work last night at 1 AM!!! and got home by 2:30. Poor guy with a broken hip had it fixed up in the OR, but man, am I tired.

I also dropped some clothes off to a consignment place. If they all sell, I should get about 60 bucks that I can spend on my superduper girls weekend down in the states that's coming up at the end of October. We're heading down to near Seattle to do some damage, I think at the same places Angella visited last week. I'm going to be rolling change and checking the couches to have more $$ to spend!!

And... Shirley and I have signed up for a pilates class, get this, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 6:15 am!!!! I'm pretty excited because it'll be fun to get into shape a bit, and I've always wanted to take a class like that.

Keeping up with the new things theme, Travis and I are going to be curling Thursday nights this year. I guess we'll be learning how to curl, and besides that, going out for a beer afterward will be fun too.

What else.... my little brother is getting married next weekend, and Sarah is going to be a flower girl. The dress is pretty cute, and if we think we've heard lots about being a princess, we ain't heard nothing yet!! I'm working on a slide show for them and it's so fun to go back and look at old pictures. He was a pretty cute kids, and Ben looks a bit like him I think, it's neat to see family resemblances like that. But seriously, who dressed me back then??? brutal. I'll post some pics later maybe to prove my point.

Listen to this tv line up for tonight -- the office and earl, on at the same time as Grey's Anatomy, then er. Why do they do this to me?!? I can't record two things at once. What am I going to do when we're curling?!?! (watching less tv on Thursday night, sadly, is not an option).

We're heading up to Angella and Matthew's cabin this weekend. To rest, relax, stamp, eat, read, sit, talk, sleep, watch a movie, eat, laugh, and enjoy the quiet. The only thing better than having your own cabin is having good friends who are so generous as to share it with you. I'm looking forward to seeing this spot that they love so much.

Those are the bits n' pieces happening around here at the moment. Enough action for ya?

:)

My little bear is 3.

On Monday, Sarah turned three. And what a three years these have been.

Sometimes I think that when we celebrate her birthday, we also need to celebrate the fact that I too, have made it three years as a parent. It's as much my birthday as it is hers. Before you have kids, you hear people say that it's the hardest job you could ever have, and you sort of believe them, but not really. How hard could it be? Surely, not that hard. Well, those people should say it louder. It IS that hard. It really is that hard.
Daily, I am challenged with my patience, my creativity, my endurance, and my patience.

But, it's true, with great challenge comes great reward. I really do feel like my heart will burst when I watch her sleeping, or trying something new with success (when there's no success, it's not so fun), or being at school and being so attentive and obedient to her teacher. Watching this little mind develop and learn to communicate brings something new every day, and often suprises me along the way. She is truly one of a kind, a beautiful little soul, and I wonder why God chose me to parent her when I feel so underequipped most of the time.

She is full of life, and we spend lots of our time trying to keep her mind busy.

Though she goes through these crazy phases (I'm going to kick that girl, or, that boy is BAD), she loves like crazy. Loves her aunties, her grandmas and great-grandmas, uncles and grandpas, great-grandpa's, cousins and friends. You will always get an excited hello if you talk to her on the phone.

And she gets so excited about things. Ice cream, the beach, the park, mcdonalds, doing a puzzle, playing with play doh, pooping on the potty, it doesn't take much.

She is a pretty good listener (for a three year old), and will come when we ask, or do things that we ask of her. usually.

She looks like she has bad hair most of the time because she really does have bad hair most of the time. I do it most every morning, and it's a matter of hours if I'm lucky, that it's looking like it does in most of the pictures.

She loves to dance. And move. And make music. There's nothing like a good dance party.



She is our princess, and my prayer for her is that she becomes the kind of princess whose beauty shines from the inside out.

Love you, bugga.

Why children should NOT play in the McDonald's indoor playgrounds, or, Why you should at least disinfect them before leaving the building.

A little while ago, I told a little story of #2 proportions here. If only it were the only one.

The other day, we enjoyed what was, I think, to be our last day at the beach. We were there with Trav's grandparents, his mom, and Shirley and the kids. Sarah decided she had to go to the bathroom, and after to refusing to pee in the water (I refuse to believe that I am the only parent that has told their kid to do that), we went over to the public washrooms. I KNEW she wouldn't pee there, something about the black toilet seat lids and old cement floors gross her out. Plus, it's hard to squat when your feet don't touch the ground. Anyways, she refused, and we headed back to the beach.

Getting back to where everyone else was coincided with a meltdown only Sarah can do, so we loaded up the car and headed to McD's where Trav's mom was going to treat us for lunch.

The playground at McDonald's has a slide that you climb up to, or if you don't want to do the slide, you go the other way, and it takes you out to this little 'pod' that Sarah calls the helicopter. Whatever. Underneath the helicopter is a blue mat that the really little kids can run on and do their thing.

We enjoyed our gourmet lunch of chicken nuggets and ice cream, and were actually enjoying a few minutes of peace when we realized that there was something inherintly wrong with a 3 year old and peace happening at the same time. As I got up to call her name, I heard screaming and saw this little trickle of water from the 'pod' all at the same time. oh crap. Well, actually, NOT crap, but pee. Poor thing was full to the brim. I wiggled myself up to the top, and pulled her out of the pod as she was freaking, and helped her down. (read: pee pooled at the bottom of the pod, and streaks of pee all the way down as we got out). I took her to the bathroom to clean her up, & rinse out her underware. When I came out, Mom was laughing because as we were in there cleaning, Ben ran around on the blue mat (under the pod), and slipped in the puddle of pee and was covered head. to. toe. Monkey was too. As we stood there, he did it again. Slipped twice.

Sarah: covered in pee from the waist down, no underware, and holding her wet dress up around her pits, freaking out and showing everyone her lady parts.

Ben: covered in pee from head to toe on the back of his body, Monkey is too, and is not too happy to leave the playground.

Mommy: soaking wet rinsed out underware in my back pocket, carrying pee drenched child in one arm (and therefore covered in pee), and dragging another pee drenched-freaking out child beside me to the car.

Playground: emptied out.

People beside us: laughing.

Needless to say, there were baths and showers in this house in the middle of the day, that day.

Ain't motherhood grand?

:)

Let me rephrase that...

This bloggers almost back.

Right after I posted yesterday, we lost our wireless connection (that I had been borrowing) from the neighbors.

Then I had to give up my beloved laptop, um, I mean, my dad wanted his laptop back.

Then our computer is having some major issues -- it feels like it's trying to wade through mud when it's working. It's like dial up back in the day. Brutal.

So.... I will be back, soon.

I have lots to say -- our summer happenings, Sarah just turned 3 (!), another McDonald's playground story, otherwise known as "Wash your kids as soon as you get home from those things"... lots to say.

But, it will have to wait, as I'm at work at the moment and don't want to get 'dooced' haha, so I'd better go. Check out the new link to the right called 'our pictures' -- and you can at least see what we've been up to.

ta ta for now! :)

Hey na, hey na, this blogger's back!

Did ya miss me?