Special treat day

Today was a rainy and cool day. The kind of day you sit around at home and snuggle with a good cup of coffee. We were having a slow morning puttsing around and playing whistle when the phone rang and on the line was BeachMama. She is in town visiting her sister and I had told her to give me a shout if she wasn't too busy, so when she did I was so excited. My first real life meeting with a friend met through blogging! And she is as funny and cute and nice in real life as she is on her blog, a real down to earth sweetie.

I was so glad that she came and we had a great time visiting and sharing stories of life. So much nicer than reading each others archives.

I got to thinking later on today about blogging and other bloggers and comments, after all that is how we met.

I must start with a thank you to SAJ, since it was through your blog that I clicked on Beachmama and saw her fabulous new banner a while back and got in contact with her. ( I used to peek in on her before that though, I just never said hi)

Anyway as I was saying I was thinking, (which may come as a surprise to my dear husby since he thinks I just plow through my days without much thought) about fellow bloggers and commenter's and I really want to say thank you.

To all you readers who leave me comments, thank you! I love comments and check the blog a couple times a day to see if there are any new ones. It always cheers me up and makes me happy when I see one. I see the numbers on the counter go up so I know people visit my site but when I get a comment I just love it, even when it is a simple hello. The I don't feel like I am talking to a virtual wall. So, thank you, you really make my day, I am kinda a glutton for the attention I guess. Or maybe it is the fuzzy feeling or happy sigh, cuz it is like a mini coffee break to sit and read a little note, whatever it is it works for me.:D Thank you!!!
I mean to write back and acknowledge you all when I read the comments, so I am sorry for that, no one deserves to be neglected. Please understand that I am super busy and usually have one hand full of baby and the other full of egg or crackers or something along those lines and just trying to click the darn mouse in such positions has become an art form.

Back to my day....above is a shot of what I found when I went into the bathroom this afternoon.(ya, I know we still have that hideous flooring) Sweetpea had opened a box of cookies, taken a bite from each one and placed them in a line. What possessed her to do that I have no idea. Sometimes I wish I could climb in that little girls head and see what is making her tick.

Later on even though it was still rainy out it just felt like a freezy moment so we ate 7 of them between the three of us. (I actually ate 4 1/2) Ethan is cutting 4 upper teeth at the moment so he really loved to chow down on them and Kaitlyn is cutting her eye teeth so she was in the same boat. I just had a craving and have no excuse.

I can't believe I'm not in jail!

So I had intended to do a post first thing this morning to catch up to date. I should have known better than to plan ahead...of course that meant that something else would come up. We were actually having a really good start to the morning, up earlier than the last few days at 9:30 rather than between 10 and 11 due to two teething babes. So we were up and even functional, dressed and all, when the phone rang at 10:30. . .

I saw it was Katie and answered "hey, what's up?"

Katie says(in a barely audible raspy tearful voice)"I'm bleeding and I can't see how bad it is, I need you to come now."

My heart is now in my throat and say"WHAT HAPPENED"

Katie: "the TV fell on my head"

Me:"I'm on my way"

So in my head I am totally freaking out, praying she doesn't die, thinking Aaaaahhhgg, I wish I could teleport myself, ok, focus, get first aid supplies, bandages, no, tape, no gauze, no....agh, I'll take the whole stinkin box, ya that way I am totally prepared. I grab the kids,put shoes on Kaitlyn, get their blankets, the backpack the box of first aid (which is in a speaker box, so not handy at all since it is overflowing and the lid doesn't even close) so I throw it in a Lululemon bag and drag the whole lot out to the truck in less than 3 minutes flat and drive like a speed demon over to Katie's. I shall not disclose exactly how fast I drove and how insanely I was yelling at other drivers and weaving in and out of traffic. I should be in jail! Seriously though all I wanted was big flashing lights and a bullhorn. Regina drivers drive like they have all year and then some to get anywhere. I am sure I broke records. Anyway I get to Katie's and my adrenalin is now through the roof (due to my insane driving and inner dialogue telling me that my sisters life is in my hands and I must get my gut under control because I may have to save her life) and drive right up into the muddy mess(soon to be a parking lot) to her front door.

Have I almost killed you with anticipation yet.....

I open the door and go in...silence...."Katie, where are you, are you all right?"

I hear movement upstairs and meet her at the landing halfway up. She is walking, I stare at her and think, whew was this some sort of joke. I expected a pile of blood and my sister laying in it with her TV on her head.

She is still tearful and says "I can't see how bad it is, can you take a look?"

I am still a little in shock that she seems ok and take a look at her head. There was a one inch gash open and oozing. "Stitches" I say.

I then follow her into her sitting room and want to know exactly what happened. She then goes on to tell me that she was adjusting the cables and had moved the TV a bit to get at them, it then fell on her head then onto her DVD player. It(the DVD player) is totalled! Has a huge dent on the top of it and is squashed. Oh, Katie's poor head, "lets go." (Oh, and about the raspy voice, turns out she was home sick with a cold and had pretty much lost her voice)

We drove to a walk in clinic and Katie got two stitches to hold the gash closed and a tetanus shot since she was due for it anyway. All better, and now I feel hungry, it is noon so we head next door to Houston Pizza for lunch.

That pretty much sums up the drama for the day.

Every thing else seems rather pale by comparison. But on with that post I was going to write...

Last night we went on a play date to "Lady and dawg's" house. (that is who 'Pretty in Pink' is according to Kaitlyn)

We ate super yummy homemade macaroni casserole and Kaitlyn and Ethan donned their swim trunks and suit and had a bath in the big jacuzzi tub. Ethan, who has yet to have the scare of dogs put into him loved hanging out with Oliver (the most beautiful dog ever) there are some pretty close seconds though in cow-town. Kaitlyn was terrified of him and spent most of her time sitting up on the counter where she was out of his reach. Turned out to be a fun evening had by all since mommy also got to visit with a friend, a nice treat to be out of the house.

Later in the evening I made the mistake of offering, ya, what was I thinking, a blanket ride to Kaitlyn, and we proceeded to do turn after turn after turn.....you get the idea, around the living room/dining room. Once I was totally pooped Kaitlyn gave her dollies a few turns as well. Here are the rest of the pics.(click)

And here are some pics from tonight. With all the hecticness of this morning I didn't even think of the camera so this is all you get for today.

Here is Dave helping move an old sofa out of Katie's old condo for Paul and Marita. They are open to take pretty much anything to help them get started so we are all dumping everything on them. They will probably hate this later.

And the last pic is just a cute one of Kaitlyn playing "hair" with mommy.

Afternoon on the trail.

Monday afternoon was gorgeous out and Dave had the day off so we dusted off the old rollerblades and hit the pavement. It was an amazing feeling and one I have missed for over two years. I am so glad to not be hugely prego's this summer!

Dave the kids and I headed over to my parents for a lazy visit out in the yard and hung out around a plate of nachos. I had gone into my moms pantry and pulled out a bag of chips, turns out they were lime flavour. Paired with cheese and dunked in salsa made for a rather strange combo, but we were all hungry enough to eat it anyway.

Now you see Emily on a swing in the picture above. Turns out it is forehead level for Kaitlyn. I felt like a terrible mom when I just couldn't get there fast enough and she walked right in to Emily in mid swing. The force knocked her off her feet and she hit the back of her head on a stack for boards. Poor child, look at that welt!

After recovering with a cool cloth to the head and a sympathy nurse we headed back out on the trail with Phil and Emily coming along to go to Katie's old condo one last time. She is moved into her new place now and it is so awesome, I hope she blogs it some time soon.


All in all it was an great day (of course slurpees were involved). To view all the photos click here.

I am way behind posting, so I will try to whip out a quick one in the morning about our day today.

My little sprout

Ethan has grown so fast and I feel the baby days slipping away, toddler-hood is right around the corner. This is something I meant to do a little sooner but just got around to. He turned nine months old yesterday. (the 27th) Click on the image to view larger.

Art Festival Treat

This afternoon Katie, my friend Tracy, her babe Breck, Kaitlyn, Ethan and I went down to the Cathedral Village Art Festival for the afternoon. It was super crowded and loud but also a lot of fun to see all the different styles of art come together in one huge collage. All our senses were tantalized there today. We saw neat stuff, and some really whacked out weird stuff. Heard awesome drum beats and terrible country moaning. Smelled yummy Punjabi food and mini donuts and yucky spray paint fumes. Tasted cheese qecedillas and delicious toastadas (sp? on both words)from the Casa Maya booth (they are opening a restaurant here in the next month), and thank goodness we didn't have to taste something gross. For the sense of touch there were so many different textiles, fabrics, cement art sculptures, glass and metal pieces to feel.

Some of the jewelry was so beautiful I wish I could have shopped all day but the kids would have had a fit. As it was I was so impressed, Kaitlyn stayed in the stroller the whole time and was happy. Ethan had his moments but we found a nursing station out front of Groovy Mama
and he was happy after that pit stop. Watching the graffiti artists and listening to the drums in the background was one of my favourite experiences of the festival. I was getting tired after 3hrs and Ethan had fallen asleep on Katie's chest so we called it a day and headed home....after stopping for slurpees...of course! The rest of the pics are here.

I would have loved to spend the whole day and eat and eat and eat, but I would have blown the budget, made Dave mad and be in the dog house, so I spared my butt (ha,ha...in more than one way) and have a happy husband.

A glimpse at a day in my life.

Good morning mommy! Two smiling happy children this morning, a great start to a beautiful sunny day. We had a brunch of pancakes, played "pie-doh" and spent the rest of the morning cleaning, doing dishes and cleaning up little puddles since a certain little squiggly girl kept ditching her diapers.
Kaitlyn loves to help me clean. She swiffers the carpet and sweeps the floors, always when I am trying to get things done quickly. We go back and forth, I swiffer so she wants to, I sweep and she changes her mind and wants to sweep too. We trade and trade and it takes 50 times longer than it should to get it done, but she is learning valuable skills. She then wants to dump the dirt from the dust tray into the garbage for me so I do one little pile after another and she goes and dumps them. Turns out she was dumping it in the bottom of the cupboard instead. Oh, well, half way there. Then it was lunch and Kaitlyn wanted a picnic. Ethan was sleeping so she pulled up a stool and sat on it. I dragged a chair over and put a cloth on it and she ate her "Dora, Dora" there, still sans diaper.

Ethan then wakes up and we need something new to do. I chug an ice coffee and on we go. Hmmm, more play-dough, no....as I am thinking of what to do next Kaitlyn is sitting on her blanket in front of the TV watching Dora (hello, what else is there....I don't know why we have satellite, it is now after 11:00pm and she is on Dave's lap watching....you guessed it, Dora) and eating a Kinder surprise egg which she slipped in to the shopping cart while getting groceries last night. I decide we should draw a map and play cars and head off to the basement to find paper. On return I find Kaitlyn cleaning up her chocolate and dumping it into the plant pot, then removing it with a napkin and dumping it back on her blanket along with fist fulls of dirt. We get cleaned up and make the map, play cars, and then it is nap time. I whip out a painting, decide I hate it and paint over it and voila naps are over and I swig more coffee.


Now what to do, hmmm, lets go play outside. We get bundled up, not because it's cold but because Kaitlyn likes to dress up to go out. She gets her little stroller and a few treasures. Today we took a toy truck, two cars, a princess Belle crown, a blanket, a sippy cup, one pine cone and a pine needle for a walk. Ya, I know, a pine needle?! Yup! Along the walk she also collected dandelions, lilacs and a variety of other flowers that I have no idea what they were, another pine cone and a leaf. We took turns pushing Ethan and her stroller of treasures, and wound up with Kaitlyn in the big stroller pushing her little stroller and I carried Ethan and pushed the stroller with Kaitlyn in it home. Kaitlyn screamed and screamed the whole way home an then continued to scream as I made supper. She was over tired over hungry and did not want to be in the house. After nursing both babes I was able to continue on with supper prep, singing happy songs with my now happy again kids. Dave came home, we ate and rushed over to see Katie's new condo. Stopped at DQ on the way home for cool treats and that brings us to a close.

Both kids are asleep now, Kaitlyn fell asleep watching Dora and I can almost guarantee that if she wakes up crying in the night it will most likely be for Dora. And that is a wrap, here I now sit having me time, thinking I should probably be doing laundry or something, but I am beat and my caffeine induced buzz's are worn off.

Tomorrow is another day.

Improvise

Kaitlyn loves to play baby. She likes to dress and undress, feed, and make her babies have naps. Last night she wanted to put a diaper on mini Annie and well, the diaper was bigger than she was (she is sitting on a preemie diaper in the picture above) so we improvised. Since Kaitlyn insisted that she needs a "dipe" we made one out of a Kleenex and painters tape (that was what was kicking around).
If you are wondering if I ever wash my child's face or if I leave her like that all the time. Well...I try to remember to wash it but sometimes she has her snack and takes off to play. In this case it just hadn't happened yet. She is clean this morning though.

Of course I couldn't do a post without mentioning my hunky little dude "Eth". I thought he was such a chub till I saw a bunch of other little guys his age. Now I think he is just right, and just a little husky, mmmm I love my little sprout!

It was a blast at It's a Blast!

This morning we went out on a playdate, yah! It was awesome to get out of the house and see other moms with babes. Though I am sure we picked up new germs. (we just got over being sick here for three weeks) We had one little scary moment when I turned around to grab the camera and when I went back Kaitlyn was gone, it had only been maybe 13 seconds. I searched and searched for her and my heart was starting to pound. I knew she was there somewhere since they have security measures so kids cannot get out or someone else can't take your kid. But where was she?!! Turns out another little girl had pulled her over to her table to get rid of her so she could play where Kaitlyn was playing, so as I ran around looking for her when she had been right behind me, she was trying to follow me. By the time I realized she was following me she was bawling her little eyes out and clung to me like she would never let me go. We ended up going home then because she was done!

Ethan met some of his little friends there and they sat around sucking on yucky colorful balls together. He played strange a little too and I think it was because he was just overwhelmed by all the kids and colors. Anyway...we were up at 9:00 am, went to It's a Blast, came home had naps from 1:45 to 2:30 and went about our day...shopping, playing...eating, playing, playing...the usual. I put Ethan to bed at 8:30pm and he has woken up three times already and Kaitlyn finally went to sleep at 11:30...what is with that!!!!

She fell asleep on Dave's lap watching Scrubs, is she always going to be like this? Is it because both her parents are night owl's and it's destiny, why!!

Sucked back in...

So...I reactivated my facebook page. For those of you pestering me to get it going again, I did it for you. This does come at the expense of blogging, facebook and twittering are consuming! Don't worry though, blogging must go on, it is still my favourite social release! I made links on the side bar to my pages.

How is this?

Hey everyone, does this header fit? (For those of you who had half of Dave hanging off your screen before)

Long weekend with the Calgarian G-parents

Grandma and Papa A. came down for the long weekend, though it felt really short, we miss them already and wish they could have stayed another day. Dave and Papa spent the day building a new shed, and Dave was happy for the help, it would have taken him a few weeks on his own.

My mom and dad came over for lunch and stayed for the afternoon. The Grandmas, K, E and I took Tubbs and Castillo for a walk to the park. Kaitlyn has usually been a little afraid of the dogs, with good reason. She has been snapped at by Tubbs twice. However this time around she opened right up to them and loved holding the leash so the dogs could drag her along on the walk. Just before supper everyone was tired and Kaitlyn was playing quietly next to the dogs. Somehow she startled Castillo and he snapped at her biting her hand. It bled a little from the puncture but she was so brave. She cried a bit but decided she was alright and didn't even want a band aid, such a big girl!


Sunday morning was time to paint. Grandma was admiring the paintings Kaitlyn did over the last few weeks and wanted one for her office. She sat on the floor with Kaitlyn and Ethan and they created together. Sweetpea now has three canvases under her belt, soon she'll be having a show of her own. Ethan sat there with them watching the whole time and sucking the paint tubes, soon he will be old enough to paint too, what fun! There are a ton more photos, but I am now trying to conserve a bit of my bandwidth space, so click here to see the rest.

Toothless Auntie Em

I have a ton to post from the weekend but that would mean finding the camera and uploading all the pictures so for tonight this is it. Last week Auntie Emily lost 'her two front teeth, her two front teeth, her two front teeth', oh wait a minute it goes 'all I want for Christmas is.....'

Anyway in other news I joined twitter and so I am now inviting you all to join as well. It is super easy, as anonymous as you like, and a fun way to keep in touch with friends. It is like MSN and text messaging together and, well all you do is join then click back onto my link and click the 'add' button. Let me know in a comment or e-mail me and let me know when you join so I can add you as a friend. Then we can chat or leave messages. Calling all aunties, non bloggers, far away and close friends and fellow bloggers it is fun, trust me!

Click here to see my link.

The birth of a painting

This is how it begins. This painting was inspired by a photo of a flower. I loved the colors in it and thought it would be a challenge, something I am always up for. this took roughly 8-9 hours over two days, I should say nights since most of my paintings birth sometime between 10pm and 3am. My brain just seems to be wired to paint and create at that time, when the world slows down, quiets down and gets dark. As you can see I have taken over Ethan's room as my temp studio, I just haven't been inspired in the basement and his room is the only other option. It works well for me, small and cozy, no distractions, well once the kids are asleep.


Please ignore the socks!!! I am usually a little claustrophobic when I wear socks and almost always go barefoot, however when I paint I get cold feet and socks seem to fix that.

The finished product.

Little walk

Summer days are finally here and we just have to take advantage of them. Emily came over the other evening to join us for a walk to the little playground a couple o blocks away. Along the way Kaitlyn collected treasures, something she has done since before she could walk on her own. Twigs, dandelions and even a piece of discarded cable. Whatever fit her fancy came along with us.


I wasn't sure how Kaitlyn would react to the sand considering she has never really played in it before. I thought she would get grossed out and want her hands washed like she does with mud. I was wrong, she loved it and filled her little dress with it, the beach should be fun! Once Kaitlyn went down the slide it was "moe, moe, moe" and Dave would help her up the structure and Auntie Em would go down with her, over and over and over.......and over.....and over.............................


Ethan took a few turns as well but didn't seem the get the same enjoyment out of it as K. He just liked getting carried around in the snugglie, pulling his hat off and chewing the brim, throwing it on the ground, getting it back and sucking off the dirt. Oh well, those germs are the good ones right?

The walk home felt like it took five hours. Kaitlyn was distracted by everything from a chunk of coaxial cable to dandelions and rocks in the alley. Then she was just too tired to walk the last block and daddy had to carry her stroller, baby, purse, treasures and the little princess herself home.