So, the baby has been teething for the last few days. It's so sad, because she is normally such a good little sleeper, and her eyes are looking so tired. (And I'm sure mine are, too :( ) Anyways, yesterday morning I got a nice surprise when Ken made me breakfast in bed. (yum yum) It was awesome. And then this morning I got an even BETTER surprise when the girl did the same thing! And she made me her favorite, cheese melted on toast. AAWWW....my family is so nice to me. And I love them, too!!
This is a video that my friend Matt and I did for a Business French class that we took back in college. I finally found the disc so I decided to post the video. Good times!
I have been saying for years that I want to run a 5K, but I was always too lasy, busy or pregnant to do it. UNTIL NOW!!! There was a thanksgiving Turkey Trot that was a 5K and I finally did it. I even convinced my sister, who was visiting, to run it with me and we had an awesome time! It was really chill and easy, and there were thousands of other people there even though it was really cold outside. And they said no strollers, but I saw a lot of families who ran or walked together. It felt really good to be a part of something on Thanksgiving, and I think I'm hooked. Next year I'm hoping to bring the fam, and we will do it together. That would be so much fun :)
We've been really busy the past few weeks. I've been needing a whole day at home with no appointments or plans and today was the day! IT WAS AWESOME! I love days when I can read my book or play with my kids without checking the clock. And I finally downloaded the pics from Halloween, so here are a few. Late but still cute :) The baby was a tootsie roll , The Girl was a flower in a pot And the boy was Elmo (and pretty happy about it :))
We had a good time and still have some candy left, if you can believe it.
So, the Boy and I had a busy day of errands to run so I thought I would make it more interesting to take the camera along. This is our day...
Here we are, ready to head out the door!
Packed in the car with a big smile! (Watch how the Boy's smile wanes throughout the day.)
Stop #1: A quick deposit at the bank since we finally sold our car!
Stop #2: Here we are across the parking lot at NW Beauty Supply buying some stuff for Mom. This the girl that the Boy picked up while I was making our purchase. (Well done, my son!)
This is the Boy showing the sucker he got from the cutie at NW Beauty Supply.
Back at home to pick up some things I forgot! (Ooops.)
Stop #3: The post office to send some stuff to Oma in Canada. What will the Boy do to stay amused?
Oh... this is what he did.
This is what the Boy did with the stamps the worker gave him at the post office. They were gone off his hand when we came out of our next stop. I have no idea where they went.
Stop #4: Just checking some stuff... for Christmas. (Little does he know...) There is a large wad of stamps somewhere in that store.
Stop #5: A renewed smile for Home Depot.
He insisted on taking this picture.
The Boy was hiding around the corner and jumping out so I decided to take a photo. This creepy guy photobombed the picture just as I clicked the button.
Stop #6: Must... find... food! PLEASE!
Stop #7: There we go... although he only drank the pop.
Another photo by the Boy at Walmart. We bought lunch at the deli and squatted at the Subway.
Stop #8: Off to Dad's favorite store! How will he be amused here?
Yesterday was the Girls 5th day of grade one. When I asked her how her day was she told me she was part of a new club. It's called the Popular Club and only girls in her class who are 6 and are cool can be in it. She said one of the other girls in her class is the "leader" and tells them what is cool or not. So, they have to wear "cool" clothes like capris, or skorts to school and they have to have their ears pierced. (The Girl does NOT have her ears pierced for a variety of reasons, but the "leader" is nice enough to let her join anyway.) Oh yeah, and NO BOYS!! I was a little shocked at how soon we have to deal with this type of snobbery at school. It may just be that they are copying what they see the older girls do, but I'm a little worried that this club may be hurting some little girls feelings. When I was in Grade 7 there was a popular club in my class that I was not a part of. We called them the Snob Squad and they called us the Nerd Herd. It sounds funny to me now, but at the time I was really hurt by the exclusion. And that was Grade 7. I don't know if my little Grade 1 girl really understands how much it hurts to be left out. So, for FHE last night we talked about being friends with people who are different and how that is okay. Hopefully, it will help.
On another note, our baby is AWESOME! She is the first of the three to sleep at night and I am amazed at how different I feel after 3 weeks. I should be WAY more tired, but I feel great! What a sweetheart :)
So, I don't care who you are. Being 9 months pregnant is no fun. It would be nice just to be able to breathe comfortably, or walk without waddling. I also don't appreciate when I go out somewhere and people's eyes pop out of their heads at how huge and low the baby is. And, no I am NOT having twins, and yes I'm sure. I had this guy the other day ask me if it was safe for me to be out by myself. ????? Seriously, who says stuff like that? I know in a few months I'll be able to say it wasn't so bad, and it is SO worth it. But right now I'm glad this is my last day. Tomorrow morning we go in, so wish me luck!!!
So,... I know we are about the have our third baby so you think I would know that contractions coming 30 minutes apart for a whole day doesn't mean the baby is coming. We have been thinking the baby was going to come since last weekend, but no luck. I even came home from work on Tuesday to 1) fix a GFCI outlet that blew up and 2) all I could think about was the baby coming so I wasn't getting much done at work. M and I went to the doctor's to get her checked, but there wasn't much progression since last Thursday. The bonus of that disappointing afternoon was holding our friend's month-old son. He fell asleep on me and that made me even more excited for our baby to come.
What else... I walked out to my car this morning to go to work and I heard a pounding on my car! It was parked under a large black walnut tree and there was a squirrel ripping the nuts open and dropping them down onto my car. Not cool...
(...I think I am becoming a huge fan of ellipses...)
We saw Batman Returns at the the IMAX a couple of weeks ago and it was awesome! The sound was one of the best parts. Also, part of the movie was shot with IMAX cameras so those scenes were VERY impressive. They also played The Watchmen trailer and I am pretty excited about that movie. (Check out the song from the trailer at the left under "featured songs".) It's from a graphic novel (that is a way of saying "comic book" when one is an adult) that I read last year. It really helped me get in touch with my "inner geek".
Speaking of "inner geek"... that is one thing I miss. When I was in college, I managed a computer lab so access to people with similar interests (ie: computers, graphic novels, video games, etc.) was fairly easy. When I needed people who understood obscure movie references, could identify indie music, or knew what a Kandinksy was, I had my art friends. You would think that being surrounded by engineers all day, I could find some people like that, but most of the people at work don't even know what a podcast is! (Not that I don't enjoy the people I work with...) I gotta say that I appreciate M for knowing what a Chocolate Rain is, sitting through Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and indulging me while I ran network cable throughout the house instead of just setting up a wireless network (but I did that too). Thanks, M!
On Friday we finally broke down and bought a minivan. We have been talking about it for a while, but it was always something we were going to do...later. But, we ran out of "later" because our due date is SOON!!! Yikes. I swore I would never get a minivan, but I secretly love it. Maybe because it's still new and exciting, I don't know. I feel a lot more prepared for three kids than I did with our car. At least I won't be squishing them in the back, or homebound...right? I'm happy. Thanks, Ken :)
It has been a busy month! We finally bought the materials for our fence and spent two weeks putting it up. It is not 100% done yet, but it should be done by the end of this week. It was a really tough job to put up, but luckily, I had a friend who took over as project manager and he helped a lot. It looks really good and we are very thankful that we have some private space in the backyard now. We also bought a BBQ and were given a pool for the kids. Here are some pics of the fence:
So, that's about how it turned out. Now we just have a bunch of junk to take to the dump and we need to try and resurrect our lawn. Slowly, but surely things will come together.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Today is the 9th anniversary of the day we met. It's easy to remember because of Canada Day, and I can't believe it's been that long! We met at a BBQ so to celebrate we are getting a BBQ to go in our new fenced yard :) Yippee!! WW
So the Boy and I are trying to potty train. It was REALLY hard for the Girl, probably because I was doing it all wrong. She would go everywhere BUT the potty. Good times... But, the Boy's problem isn't that he won't go on the potty, he just HATES underwear. Even though we bought him special Cars underwear. So, what do I do? Do I let him run around naked? Do I force it? I'd love it if he was trained before the baby comes, but that's 9 weeks away and I think he may be more stubborn than that. Help?
So, the girl is graduating from Kindergarden and they had a celebration party last week. They sang us some songs and the girl even got to announce the last one. Her line was, "We're going to knock your socks off with 'I am a Promise'." Even though we practised all day she STILL asked her teacher for help! It was really cute.
On another note, both kids went to the dentist the other day. I was really concerned about the Boy because he HATES to brush his teeth and this was his first visit. But, our dentist is OUTSTANDING!!!! The hygenist let him help with the Girl's cleaning, wear a mask and glasses so he felt like a real dentist. Then he was scared of lying down on the chair so she put him on her lap and did his cleaning while holding him. The Boy LOVED it and was laughing and happy, which is the exact opposite of what I expected. So, I don't know if this kind of treatment is normal for children's dentists because the Girl never had any problems, but I was super impressed.
So, May was a busy month for travel... We went to Abbotsford, BC to visit M's family. That was a lot of fun and we saw Iron Man. (Awesome movie, btw.) A couple weeks after that, we went to Cardston, AB to see my family. (The only movie that was playing was Speed Racer... No thanks.) We did both drives at night and I must say that Washington State has way better roads than BC.
While we were in Cardston, I was able to see my brother and sister and their families. I also met my new niece who is three weeks old. She is really cute and seeing her made having our own baby that much more real. I must say that I'm pretty excited about our upcoming addition to the family.
So, we came back from Cardston on the Sunday before Memorial Day and I am glad that we did. I ended up spending all day getting ready to go to Bethlehem the next day for work. (You may be thinking that I am lucky to get to go to Bethlehem, but this is in Pennsylvania, not the Holy Land.) The day we left for Cardston, my car would not start after work. I wasn't sure what was wrong, but I thought it may be the battery or the alternator. It would cold start, but the more I turned the key, the stonger the battery got so I thought that was really odd. I cleaned the contacts to the battery, but it didn't help. So, I took the battery to Napa and they tested it and said it was good. I figured it was since it wasn't that old. I bought a brush to clean the contacts and then it worked perfectly. A few months ago, I was having the same problem with dirty contacts, but it was also freezing outside so I really did think it was cold starting. A guy at work told me to clean the contacts and put vaseline on them. I did that, but all I had was baby powder scented vaseline. I guess that is not a long term solution for battery maintenance.
Anyway, off to the corporate holy land... at 4:30 AM. I have done this flight before, but it still isn't very much fun. Spokane to Chicago, Chicago to Allentown. The nice thing about travelling is that I am on per diem. I always go to Starbucks in the airport and by an Odwalla juice puree and a banana nut muffin. Thre trip was okay and the meetings over the next couple of days were good too. I met some of the other graphic designers that work for sister companies and we had a good speaker come in from Canada.
On the way home, my flight to Chicago was delayed and I missed my connection to Spokane. I spent the night at the Crown Plaza hotel. I didn't get to see much in Chicago, but it did make me feel like a small-town boy. Everything is so BIG. We don't have a lot of tall buildings in Spokane. So, I finally made it home on Friday at 2:00 PM. I immediately had to turn around and head to the community college because my company had a team in the Relay For Life. I did this event last year and it was a lot of fun. I ended up walking a lot and getting a chance to talk with people from work that I normally don't a chance to talk to. I fell asleep after being up for 24.5 hours. I slept on a cot in a sleeping bag with a sweater wrapped around my head. The bad thing is that when I am that tired... I drool. (The sweater has been washed.)
It has been a crazy few weeks, but I have had a lot of fun. I have had a couple days of routine and that has been nice. It's good to see the family again. Below are some photos to show what we have been up to.
The Boy playing with the same car set I used to play with
The kids on the new swingset that The Girl and I built!
Aww... us at Waterton (PS: Rain sucks)
This is a really funny video a guy sent around at work... These two guys go to Gonzaga in Spokane.
I haven't been blogging because I felt like there is too much I want to share and not enough time. SO, today is recap day- bullet style.
A few weeks ago we went to a HUGE neighbourhood garage sale and ended up buying a bread maker. I've wanted one for a LONG time, so I was pretty excited. And I must say that I love it!!!! The smell of bread in my kitchen is my favorite at the moment.
Ken and I went to see Ben Folds for our anniversary and it was AWESOME. I don't think I've ever seen anyone play piano like that before, and I loved how he took pictures of the crowd for his website. Good Times! Except I felt really old because it was at Gonzaga and pretty much everyone there was 10 years younger than us.
Spring is here and to our surprise we have a billion random flowers growing in our yard. I guess the lady that lived here before us was quite the gardener, until she got dimentia. It makes me sad because I'm sure it was really pretty and now I don't know what to do with it! It needs a lot of work, and I don't have the energy this year.
We went to Abbotsford last weekend and that was a TON of fun, but too short. The Girl loved to play with the dogs and The Boy (who is terrified of dogs) was warming up to them by the end. We went to IKEA and tried not to spend too much money, and we went to see Ironman which was really good. We also had some really good chats with the fam and we celebrated Mother's day before we left on Sunday.
A few days ago my car battery died in the middle of a busy street. It was just me and the kids and it was an hour before The Girl had to be at school. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, but I was able to call Ken for a tow truck and there was a McDonalds across the street so the kids could play while I watched for the truck. Luckily, there was one of the Girls friends from school at the McDonald's and her mom was so nice and drove her to school for me. The Boy and I got to ride in the tow truck and that pretty much was the greatest thing ever to happen to him. He kept saying, "MOM! Monster truck!!" and laughing. So even though it was a REALLY long day, we are all okay and the car is fixed.
Okay, recap complete. We are planning on going to Oma and Opa's next week so all our travelling will be done before I become too big to drive comfortably. So there is more excitement to come :)
