~Ethan’s Slide~

We installed some new pantry cabinets the other day…the ones for our new kitchen, YAY!  Anyhow they came already assembled in huge boxes.  So while we were putting then in position Ethan took it upon himself to get a little creative with the boxes and have some fun!

Ethan’s Slide VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I don’t know how his butt wasn’t totally bruised from this but he had so much fun and played for almost an hour at it! I love good free fun!

~Ethan-isms~

Some of my favourite things out of my little guys mouth lately:

“I no like tires” as he picks the olives off his pizza

“Put corn back on!” the cob that is…

“I enough sleep Daddy” at bedtime after and hour of singing in bed

“Mommy do craps” = let’s do crafts.

"Mommy too big for balloon, I go with Daddy" said when we were discussing riding in a hot air balloon. I'm not sure if he was talking about my age, size or height but regardless I was a little offended. I told him I didn't want to ride in it anyhow!

I just want to capture these moments. They are precious!

~Trying to Fill Mommy’s Shoes…a story about an escape artist!~

So we managed to get all the drywall for our basement for $200 on Friday…woo-hoo, saved ourselves around $400!!!  Anyhow, Randy spent Saturday drywalling the basement (pictures coming soon).  He was in and out hauling sheets from the garage and Ethan wanted to help…

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so he threw on my STEEL TOED work shoes and trudged out the door.  SO hilarious because they are heavy and he got so frustrated because he couldn’t lift his feet into the garage to clear the doorframe.  The worst thing is, that neither of us even knew he was gone until we heard him squealing in frustration because he couldn’t lift his foot!  Not that he could have gotten anywhere, the whole yard is completely fenced in but still we missed the whole getting outside and how that transpired…

Too cute, I love all these funny little things he does!

~ Computer Genius~

Well I turn my back for a minute to pour Ethan's bath and look what I find:

He jumped at the chance to play on my laptop while I wasn’t looking.  Thankfully  I was smart enough to log off before walking away or he would have been contacting Mars with the keyboard banging he was up to!

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~Date Night~

So for Christmas I bought us a new card game to play called Scrabble Slam.  We finally took some time to try it on Wednesday, our date night, to try it out.  Basically the game is about making a four letter word out of the letters you have on your card.  Randy sucks at English so I totally kicked his ass in like 3 minutes.  You simply put down your cards to change an existing 4 letter word into a new one and the first one to lay all there cards wins.  So after two games where I totally kicked Randys’ butt, he quit.  It wasn’t a challenge for me and he sucked at it.

So from there we moved onto another game that we had and hadn’t played in awhile called Phase 10.  Now we were pretty sure that we had played it before somewhere and that it would come back to us really quickly.  WELL!  After reading the instructions 6 times and trying to play one hand for like 15 minutes we gave up on it too.  It was so stupid how they laid out the game play.  We are now certain that we never played the game before.  But this was us trying to figure out how to play it:

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Looks like fun eh?  So needless to say we gave up on the card games and went to bed…

~Spring is Here, Death for Snowman!~

Our snowman has died:

but that means that Spring is here so we don’t mind all that much!  We packed him up for more snow fun next year!  We can’t wait for the mud pit (I mean backyard) to dry up so we can go back and play in the back yard! 

~Played OUT!~

 

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This is what it looks like when you have squeezed all possible play out of the day.  (Well at least the part before 1pm)

Ethan sat down and was having a cheezy snack and next thing I know, I look over and he’s asleep!  Too cute I tell you!

~I’ve made a Decision!~

I want a second wife in my house.  Seriously I think it would be a huge benefit.  I’m going to discuss it with Randy this weekend.

Let me list the pros:

• It would be someone to share housework with
• She could share in caring for Ethan
• She could get a job and contribute to the finances
• She could free up my time so that I can do some fun things
• I wouldn’t have to pay her
• She would be a tax deduction (dependant)
• She could deal with some of the less then fun parts of being in a relationship (no I don’t mean the bedroom part)
• It would be someone to talk to 24/7 about things that she could TOTALLY relate to

So don’t you see, I think it would be a HUGE benefit, I totally get now why polygamy works for people.  Also since Randy and I aren’t married, it wouldn’t be illegal!

What do you think?

~I caught The Intruder!!!~

Yes, you know that you are a psycho worrywart when you don't sleep a wink all night because of the creaks and noises your house makes thinking that there is someone hiding in your house. When Ethan woke up crying at 2:30am having a bad dream I hopped out of bed like I was on fire and grabbed him thinking something was going on. Psycho... but you can't blame me given that I had proof that there was someone peeping in my window.

Anyhow I got up this morning after tossing and turning all night to go outside to see if I could figure out who it was that peeked in my window. I went outside my garage and opened the gate to my backyard to see if they had taken any of Ethans outside toys, nope they were all there. Then I noticed that there were no tracks from the gate into the yard, that they just appeared at the slide. Hmmm, that's weird. But the slide is next to the fence so maybe they jumped the fence...ummm maybe if it wasn't a 7 foot fence on a hill sloping downward. Not a chance you could jump that fence!

So finally I thought a little harder about how this came to be....my intruder that kept me up all night!

So I picked up the phone and called my friend Leanne who watched Ethan for me on Friday.

Me "Ummm did Morgan and Wyatt go outside to play on Friday when you guys watched Ethan?"
Leanne "No they didn't play outside"
Me "Did they go into the backyard?"
Leanne "Well Morgan took off to the backyard and then ran up the stairs to your deck"

Me "Oh, I see...I'll talk to you later."

To myself "Dumbass"

And so is the end of the intruder mystery. He is about 4 feet tall and is 5. Yup, big scary intruder...woooo...

Enjoy the laugh.

~Ethans' 1st Owie!!!~

Here he is in shock! See his little fat lip? Awwww poor guy!



Apparently he's over it now, he's cracking a smile....



A closer look...awww poor little guy!!!




THE CULPRIT:





Yes, the giraffe did it. Mean giraffe. His silly head fell forward and bopped Ethan right on the lip!

~Well this deserves a written letter!!!~

Okay, I will be the first to admit it, I have not always been so environmental concious. There I said it, feel free to lambast me into smithereens!

I only recently in the past couple of years have begun recycling everything I can.

However, I've always had an affection for this planet I call home and a duty to protect it...hence the like 99 page essay in Grade 9 that took 6 months to write about saving the Amazon Rainforest. I got 99.5% on that, damn straight I did, I'm proud of it too! (and yeah, I still support saving the Amazon, watch Planet Earth, you'll see why)

You will remember, if you were close to me, my zeal for saving the Amazon, how I wanted to take on the world and stop the logging, the open pit mining, the senseless destruction of centuries old plant growth.

Well that same passion and fire are still in me! I will be directing it towards this:




Yes, an egg carton.

You see, I usually buy the Omega 3 eggs that come in the clear plastic carton. I prefer those eggs, and I can recycle the carton. (On a side note, I am not happy about the amount of plastic they use in their cartons, but that is another battle for another day)

Anyhow, I digress. The other day I went to Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up my weekly run of eggs, milk and cream (they have the cheapest by the way) and lo and behold they had NO eggs, nada, zilch. No biggie, I had to go to good old Walmart that evening so I figured I could pick them up there. They didn't have my kind so I picked this carton up there.

Again, not my first choice, it is made with polystrene and is not the Omega 3 enhanced ones I usually buy. (for you non-environmental saavy friends you can not recycle that stuff) Also I needed eggs and another trip to another store was a waste of gas. So I bought them, used them, the eggs were fine of course.

And then I came upon this:



Sheer and utter stupidity!!! Who the HELL would MAIL one freaking (or even 10?!?!) of these back to WASHINGTON to be recycled?!?!?? Let me list off the reasons why this is a stupid idea:

1. Who will actually PAY to mail it?
2. It will take alot of fossil fuels to get that egg carton from me (in the middle-of-nowhere-Canada) to them in Washington state.
3. The upside of actually sending it in is totally mitigated by the amount of energy and damage to the environment getting it back to them.
4. Ummm why???

(If you have any others, feel free to leave me a comment and I'll add it to my letter)

So hence the reason for my title. This deserves a letter...they did give me their address after all... I'll let you know if I hear anything back...

~Scrapbooking~

So I'm still plugging away at the mini album I got hired to make for the bank. Almost done. Then I'll post pics and add some new stuff to the blog. For now, you wait. HAhaahahahahaha!!!!

~A Post about a Big Brother...~

So I am working on getting Ethan to have better naps that do not require me to rock him to sleep. Basically I'm doing some sleep training. I don't have a book, just winging it based on stuff I've read online. Anyhow, I'm sure you know that it means that Ethan has been doing a little more crying that usual around here.

So today I put him down for his first nap of the day and he starts crying. I go to the kitchen and start emptying the dishwasher. After a couple of minutes I hear Tigger meowing. I go looking for him because he was driving me nuts and I wanted to tell him to shut up. I couldn't find him anywhere! Finally I walk by Ethans' room and he jumps down off of the nightstand next to Ethans' crib and comes towards me meowing. The whole time, Ethan is crying his head off. So I tell Tigger to be quiet and to get out of Ethans' room. I walk over to the crib and give Ethan a little reassurance that I'm still around and leave the room again. Ethan continues to cry. A bit hysterically actually. But I knew it was just for show. So Tigger walks into Ethans' room, plops down on the floor beside his crib, looks at the crib and then me, meowing the whole time! As if to say "Hello!!! Mother, baby Ethan needs you!!!" I grabbed the camera to get some pics and wished I had a video camera! He kept meowing until Ethan went to sleep and then he moved to the foot of the crib and laid down and kept one eye on Ethan while he had a nap.

By far the cutest thing I've seen him do in ages!!! Don't get me wrong, it's not the first time he's meowed when Ethan has cried. I just thought he was doing it before because it annoyed him...not because he was worried! So here are a couple of pics of 'Big Brother Tigger' trying to get me to go into Ethans room!

~My 'Coke' Garden~

Yes, I have a Coke garden. I know. You've watched me with pensive eyes for years, wondering when my inner bad a$$ would come out. Well it's here, now that I've become a mother. I need to save money for my kids education right? Don't they say that it will cost something like $1,000,000.00 to raise a kid nowadays? I want to have two!!! So I needed to have ALOT of money!!! So I searched online how to best do it, got the instructions, went to Home Depot and bought the stuff, and came home and got the ball rolling. I figure in a couple of weeks my first crop will be ready. Betcha didn't know you could grow Coke eh?

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Hahaha! Anyhow, I found this idea on a recycling website and liked it so much that I thought I would try it. You basically use the bottles as a greenhouse to help start seedlings and then as they start to grow you cut off the top of the bottle and they grow out of the top. There are holes punched in the bottom to allow them to be watered and you just sit them in a pan of water for like 5 minutes once or twice a week. I planted some Thai Basil and Mint in mine so we'll see how they turn out! I'll keep posting pics as they grow!

Also here are some cute pics of Ethan from the last couple of days!

I went to get him up from his nap yesterday and walked in to find him cuddling up to his Stollery Hospital bear and alternatively chewing on its ear. I had to get the camera! It was so cute!



So I've let my hair grow out since Ethan was born...lack of time, energy and money for a cut honestly! But now I have another good reason...he loves playing with my hair! Usually he just sits and giggles when I run my hair over him and lets his hands run through it. I knew it was coming soon though...I'm not that naive...the time where he would close his little fists with an handful! I had to call Randy to help last night, he had handfuls! So what does he do? Laugh his butt off and run for the camera! Anyhow...


Well that's it for me! I'm off to bake some banana bread for Randy's lunch, I've only had the recipe on the counter for two weeks now!

~Rollercoaster Day~

So yesterday was one of those days. You know, the ones where you would rather peel paint off the wall and eat it, shovel cow dung in the humid heat, or run with the bulls rather then do that day again? Oh yeah it was that eventful.

It started off with Randy getting ready to leave for work for four or five days. We were running around trying to find the last minute things. He took his stuff out to the work truck and came back in the house and asked me if I had dumped everything out of the console in the truck onto the seat. Of course I hadn't. So yes, wait for it, our truck was broken into and Randy's wallet stolen. (Yes he is a smart one who leaves his wallet in the truck all the freaking time!) Well that would be bad enough but it was made worse by the fact that they actually didn't have to break in to the truck, I had left it unlocked the night before. Not one of my finer moments I can assure you. I had come home last night flustered from a nightmarish trip to the grocery store and had my mind so wrapped up in what had happened there that I forgot to lock the doors. Nice.

So wallet gone. Truck a total messy disaster from stuff being rifled through. Not a good start. Plus I had to head to Mary's house to watch Cole for the day in like 15 minutes. So I called the police. They were closed, press 1 for an incident...okay. So then I get the police comedian of the year on the phone. When I told him that a wallet was stolen, his comment was "Well it wasn't that smart to leave a wallet there was it?" I said "Not very, but it wasn't mine" Then he said how did the get into the vehicle, I told him I left the doors unlocked, his comment?

"That wasn't very smart either eh?" Jeez, do you think? No I thought I could have a bum party in my SUV and have all my stuff stolen for fun, you idiot. Whatever. So then I called the bank and told them, Randy called his credit cards and all was fine. Just the pain of waiting to get them all replaced and hoping they hadn't used them yet. They also got all the change in our ashtray, probably about $30 or $40 bucks. I do think that that was pretty much it. They obviously didn't have an eye for quality though because they left Randy's Rayban sunglasses behind. Thank goodness, they were the most expensive thing in there.

So Randy spoke with the credit card bank and they hadn't used his Visa yet. My guess is that they don't look like the type of person that would be carting around a Gold Visa and that any stores that are open at night here probably know them and know that their name is not Randy. Sucks to be them...Randy hardly ever has cash in his wallet, and he didn't this time! Just some receipts and Blockbuster coupons.

So that was the stolen wallet. I head over to Mary's house, cringing the whole way because I want to bleach the entire SUV...get there, Cole is still in bed. No problem. He gets up, I start making him his breakfast. Eggs, bacon and half a bagel. I throw the bagel in the toaster, start the bacon and eggs and am chatting happily on the phone when the smoke detector goes off. Nice. So I start waving a towel in front of what I *think* is the smoke detector. Not working. So I start panicking. Mary's building is full of special needs and handicapped people so there is really only a small window of time to get it to turn off before the entire building alarms and the fire dept is sent out. So finally I realize that I am stupid and that the smoke detector is not the light on the wall but the disc on the roof. Yeah, I know, another of my less then stellar moments. Meanwhile I still don't know where the smoke is coming from. I've thrown the phone by now and am running around like a maniac trying to open windows, keep Cole calm and find the smoke. Finally the smell hits me...burning toast. What the? Why didn't it jump? So I pop the bagel out of the toaster, run it to the balcony and hurl it out into the field behind her house. (DOn't tell anyone K?) Cole didn't see me do it. Meanwhile the detector is going off again. Ethan is awake and scared by this time and Cole is yelling at me to turn it off and is fixing to melt down. So after about 10 minutes of running around like a crazy woman I got it figured out. So note to anyone visiting Mary: Her toaster does not pop...you have to pop it yourself. She says it is the best toaster ever. Wonder how much she would like one that actually WORKS!!!! I think I'll buy her one for Christmas...

Okay, round two for the day over. Then it was Ethan's turn. Cry, cry cry. All.day.long. My little boy will be welcoming a new arrival in the next few days. His cheeks and nose are so rosy red and you can feel a distinct bump in his mouth. So I'll get you some pics soon of that.

So after a long day at Mary's where I laid on the couch like a dishrag because I'm not feeling well, I headed home after supper. I just get in the door and get Ethan out of his carseat and the doorbell rings. I never answer the door if I'm not expecting someone unless I have my phone in my hand. Couldn't find it. I looked out the window and it was someone of lets just say a less fortunate nature. So I knew it was someone with Randy's wallet. I opened the door and asked him how I could help him. He asked if Randy lived there. I said yes, did you find something of his? He said I might have something of value for him. I said, do you have his wallet? He said he did and that he'd found it in the park near the public pool. I asked for it back. He made the comment that he had seen the picture of a baby in the wallet and thought Randy would want it back. I thanked him, said a few other things, took the wallet and closed the door. I called the police and told them, they were shocked. Between us we think that he possibly took the wallet himself and was angling for a reward for returning it. I didn't give him anything. Now I know that sounds bad but I trusted my instinct on it and didn't even offer. I didn't feel that he was honest about finding it and the manner which he was trying to make it about Ethans picture told me that he was angling for something. The last thing I need would be for someone making a business of ripping me, or someone else off, and then returning it for a reward. As for the wallet, everything was still in it with the exception of all the receipts and blockbuster coupons. Credit cards, debit cards, drivers license. health card, you name it, all there. I was so happy! The cards are all cancelled and useless anyhow but it feels good to know that Randy isn't at as much of a risk for identity theft. I will still pull his credit report in a month to check it out to be safe but I think we'll be fine. I'm hoping he learned his lesson about leaving the wallet in the truck. I've certainly been more diligent about locking doors.

So that was yesterday. Today could not possibly be any worse I'm sure.

I know I promised pictures a few days ago but I haven't had a chance to upload them off my camera. I'm at Mary's house all week and when I get home at night I've just been putzing around for a few minutes then going to bed cause I haven't been feeling well. Friday I'm at Mary's house all day and then I work at Reitmans that night from 6 to 10pm. That will be a long freaking day! Randy will be back on probably Saturday, if the weather holds out. But I'm off to make coffee for me and breakfast for my kiddos.

~Too Funny!!!~

Excerpts from a Dog's Diary...

8:00 am - Dog food! My favourite thing!
9:30 am - A car ride! My favourite thing!
9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favourite thing!
10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favourite thing!
12:00 pm - Lunch! My favourite thing!
1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favourite thing!
3:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favourite thing!
5:00 pm - Milk bones! My favourite thing!
7:00 pm - Got to play ball! My favourite thing!
8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favourite thing!
11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favourite thing!

Excerpts from a Cat's Diary

Day 983 of my captivity.
My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects.

They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength.

The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet.

Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a 'good little hunter' I am. Jerks.

There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of 'allergies.' I must learn what this means and how to use it to my advantage.

Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow -- but at the top of the stairs.

I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released - and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded...

The bird has got to be an informant. I observe him communicating with the guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe. For now.........