Glenscotia

Daycare and Swim Lessons

2012-01-30T21:04:00.001-08:00

Sacha had his first swimming lesson today. It didn’t go great. I thought it was going to go well, because we rushed from daycare and made it to the pool in time (the pool closest to us had run out of room for preschool classes). He was excited to go, he was excited to get in the building and be with the other kids. Then he saw the pool’s water spraying guns. Tantrum ensued over not being able to use the water guns. He refused to listen to his swimming teacher and refused to take part in the first 15 minutes of a 30 minute lesson. Finally he got in the water and had fun with the three other boys (who had been listening obediently). After the lesson, he didn’t want to leave, but we were told that we had to leave and he couldn’t even swim in the empty baby pool.

Even though that was a bit of a disaster, both kids were very good this evening once we got home. Sacha didn’t eat much for dinner, but he was calm and not bouncy and was nice to his sister.

Alice had a good first day at daycare too. I need to pack more food for her, because even though I packed more food for her than I do for Sacha, she gobbled every bit of it up. I have never had to quantify how much she eats in 8 hours before and measure it out. I have now bought a package of baby cereal now that I will leave there and they can make up as much as they need at any given time.

I had an assignment due by 8:55pm tonight for one of my classes. My new years resolution was to get an A in my class, it has been down graded to hope i pass this class. It is a lot harder than I thought it would be and my life is more of a roller coster than I was expecting as well. I got 2 parts of a 3 part assignment submitted on time, and the final part (the hardest part, I think) will have to wait until after work tomorrow when I can see straight again. I am so tired.

Friends Indeed

2012-01-28T15:40:00.001-08:00

I am feeling better today. It is amazing how many people turn up to support you when you are in need. People who you expect, like parents and siblings and close friends, but people who you didn’t realize cared so much about you. It is nice. I think I feel less lonely now than when I had a marriage.

I am starting to make friends at work too, one of my co-workers invited us over for breakfast so Sacha and her son could meet and play. They had a great time and Sacha cleaned his plate! I keep thinking i must seem like such a basket case to everyone at work, who don’t know me all that well, I have only been there since October. I think I will be ok for now though and a bunch of the other women who work there have gone through divorces as well, so they are incredibly understanding.

I think I have figured out why Gus has been extra naughty for the past 6 months or so. He started drinking excessive amounts of water recently and when I googled that a check list came up for Cushings disease. Gus has every symptom. And from what i gather, it is cause by one of two things, either a tumour in the brain or the adrenal glands. The cure seems to be surgery. At this age, and my financial situation, Gus will not be getting surgery, so my goal is to make him comfortable. Andrew has agreed that he will take him to our vet on Tuesday.

Sacha was sad about moving from Roberts Creek the other night, he started crying. When he saw the dogs, he told the “you dogs make me feel better”. I am not looking forward to explaining what is going to happen to Gus to Sacha.

Unfair

2012-01-27T12:04:00.000-08:00

I did absolutely everything I could to save our marriage and keep our family together. There was literally nothing more I could do. So how come he gets to walk away and get what he wants and my life is now in shambles.

I had to leave work early today because I could keep myself composed.

But no one ever said life was fair.

Hedwigs

2012-01-26T22:00:00.001-08:00

I was reading on Birding BC that a flock of Snowy Owls was hanging out at Boundary Bay in Delta right now. So I thought I would take Sacha and check them out. I haven’t seen too many owls in the wild before. Just a Great Horned Owl and a Barred Owl, and probably a Barn Owl too, but not since I’ve been keeping my list.

My photos aren’t great, because I had put my better camera in the diaper bag and that was with Mum, who is looking after Alice this week until her spot in daycare opens up next week.

Sacha was very excited to see the owls but was saying that we can’t see owls in the day time, because they only come out at night. I told him that perhaps they would be sleeping, but that we could hopefully still see them. He wanted to yell out “1, 2, 3 … wake up owls!!!”. Just like “Wake up Jeff” from the Wiggles. We had a pep talk in the car about how if we did see the owls, that we had to give them space and not be loud and scare them.

So we got out of the car, Sacha got to carry the binoculars and went to go look for the owls. It took about 30 seconds to see where they were, about 500m down the path, which was filled with about 30 people, with huge lenses taking pics of the owls in the good light just before sunset. It was right out of a scene from “The Big Year”. I didn’t do an official count, but we saw about 15 of them. I think.

Awesomeness

2012-01-25T13:20:00.001-08:00

Just noticed that my husband's girlfriend has been reading my blog. Awesome. My life is awesome right now.

Things to Consider

2012-01-25T07:22:00.000-08:00

Things I'm thinking about now.

Should I keep my married name or go back to my maiden name?
How early am I going to be waking up from now on to get two kids ready and out the door before 6:45am?
Some way that I can earn about 50% more than I currently do?
How soon can I get divorce papers signed?
How long will it take to sell the house.

I am switching back and forth being upset and pissed off. But I am not going to be in a marriage with three people.

I am so pissed off about the kids. Sacha has had so much trauma in his life already so this is just one more thing to add to the pile but Alice had a clean slate. And now we will never know who she would have been with out tearing apart her family.

Tires and Toys

2012-01-21T16:27:00.001-08:00

About 10 days ago, Andrew hit a pot hole and the side rim of our tire blew out. He got on the spare and we started shopping for tires. We found out that Costco tires were the cheapest in the area by about $200 but when we went to go order them, their system was down. $200 was a big enough difference for us to wait it out, until we remembered how close we live to the border now. We price checked down there and the same tires were $200 cheaper than Coscto’s. Of course then it snowed. So I had a coupe sketchy days driving to work with three bald tires and a spare. This morning we checked and our tires had arrived, so we headed down to Blaine. We could really only go to Border Tire because of the spare. We didn’t want to be the jerks driving 45m/h on the freeway just to save another couple bucks. We ended up getting better tires than we had planned, for $130 less than the cheapest set at Costco, after taxes and installation costs. Pretty good deal and totally worth the trip over the border.

So once we were over the border, we figured we could make a day of it. We thought we might go to the Children’s Museum in Seattle, but had to stop for lunch first. Sacha doesn’t do well if he is hungry. We found a Red Robin at Northgate Mall and around the corner, a Toys R Us was having a closing sale, everything was 80% off. It had been pretty picked clean, but we picked up a kids MP3 player, a digital camera toy in the shape of Buzz Lightyear’s Phaser, some Green Army Man toys and a clock radio in the shape of a wienerdog, all for $25. Not too shabby. Of course, we had some tears when I wouldn’t buy a game that Sacha desperately wanted. But it was large and was some kind of hunting game, which we don’t have room for and I just don’t want in my house.

After the long drive, lunch and the craziness of a great sale in a toy store, both Sacha and Alice were not in the head space to go to a museum. And we were not in the mood to wrangle them. They have both been sick all week. So it was kind of a long driving day for not too much reward but still fun. Both kids were asleep in the car 5 minutes after we got back on the highway.

2012-01-17T22:19:00.001-08:00

Last week, we had to go to Ikea to pick up some things for the new place and it was the first time that Sacha had been tall enough, old enough and potty trained enough to go to the kid’s play area instead of tagging along with us through the store. He enjoyed it immensely. He had been asking if we could go back to Ikea all week and on Sunday we figured, why not? So we partook in some cheap meatball and lingenberry lunches and we dropped Sacha off to play for an hour. The Coquitlam Ikea is better than the Richmond one (play room wise), the Coquitlam one still has a ball pit and it’s bigger. I remember loving going to the Ikea ball room when I was little. We didn’t really have to much we needed and I suggested we just find a livingroom display to hang out in for an hour, but of course we managed to find a few little things we had to have. Mostly small shelves, because when you don’t have a lot of space, you have to go up.

It snowed a whole lot today near my work. Lots of snow day rumours buzzing around, but when I drove home there is barely any here. It was kind of disappointing because I had wanted to take Sacha out to make snowmen.

Sacha is really showing how stressed out he is. Moves always affect him like this and I don’t think he will be himself for about 6 months or so. That is my bet anyway. He is having tantrums a lot, being bossy, not listening. It isn’t fun for us. Hopefully it will pass more quickly if we can get into a good routine.

2012-01-14T14:16:00.001-08:00

It snowed here last night, at one point it was about 4 inches deep but by the morning it had melted pretty much just to a trace. We decided to check out the neighbourhood a bit today and drove down to Crescent Beach this morning for a walk. The winds were howling though and Sacha kept complaining about it, so it wasn’t the longest walk. I can see heading down their quite often, especially as the days get warmer and longer.

Here is a little video of some of Alice's first steps. These ones were pretty rough draft compared to what she can do now. She is pretty good with about 3 proper steps now. This video was from the time when she thought the falling and clapping were the best part of walking. We are waiting to see how quickly she picks this whole walking thing up. I seem to recall when Sacha learned at 15 months that by 18 months it was like he had always walked.

First Steps!

2012-01-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

We were so sure that Alice would be an early walker. That was before she learned how to crawl though. Before Alice learned how to crawl, she used to hate sitting down. She would fight you by straight legging when you tried to put her in a carseat or to sit on the floor or where ever. So we figured that she would go straight from there to walking. Well. Once she learned how to crawl, she was off. Then, it was as if she didn't want to slow down to learn how to walk, it was just quicker to crawl.

I've been trying to sit on the floor, stand her up and try to get her to take a few steps towards me. In fact, over Christmas, this was the favourite sport of most of the family. Trying to bribe her with kisses, cake and even iPhone access. None of these things worked, even though she was so close.

But last night, she took her first steps. The first time it was two steps and then Sacha, Andrew and I all started clapping and getting excited. She LOVED this. So she was on a role after that. She would take two steps and then fall like a board into my arms, clapping herself. It was kind of like those trust exercises, except she was falling forward. She got up to 3 steps before falling, but the whole time she was really looking for the pay off (the clapping). So as she gets more stable, we might have to hold off on our excitement bit by bit so that she has to take more steps before the clapping.

2012-01-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

We are in the new place. There were many glitches with the move, starting with the Uhaul, then the Vancouver side movers that I found on Craigslist bailed on us. Luckily, Kai, Margot and Nick were able to come over at the last minute and help us out. Our couch didn't fit through the front hall, the arms and back were too wide. We were able to give it away for free on Craiglist and in two weeks our new one will arrive. I've wanted a new couch since we lived in east Vanouver. So I wasn't too upset that we had to buy a new one. It was on the list but a bit ahead of schedule. We get Internet on Friday which will be nice.

We have been unpacking and checking out the neighbourhood. Sacha got to see his new preschool and we found out that Alice has a daycare spot by the end of the month at the same location which is so handy.

Last Night

2012-01-04T22:34:00.001-08:00

It is our last night on the coast. Our boxes are packed and we have arranged 3 guys to help us load the truck we rented tomorrow morning. I am really really sad to leave this house. I love it so much. I am trying to stay positive though, trying to be thankful that I was able to live here for 2 years. Which is kind of weird because when I first wrote about moving up here, I mentioned that if it all falls through and we have to move back to the city in 2 years. Kind of odd that I guessed the exact rate of failure of our little adventure. It feels like we were hardly here at all but in reality, Sacha has lived here for 1/2 of his life.

New House

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We spoke with a real estate agent today and the market has gone down a bit since we bought, which we knew but not as much as I had thought. So that is a bonus. We have a couple minor repairs to do and then cleaning and yard work. I think we are going to list it for Feb 1st. So if anyone is looking to buy a beautiful house on an amazing lot, email me.

Of course the move, which hasn’t even happened yet, has not gone glitch free. We got a call this morning that the truck that we reserved was not available in Sechelt for tomorrow and we would have to pick it up at the next closest location – North Vancouver. This is a huge hassle, it also means we need the truck for an extra day, had to take 6 hours our of our day today to go pick it up and it cost us $215 in ferry fares getting it up here. I am not impressed. We were totally ahead of schedule packing up but then pretty much lost most of today due to this stupid truck.

Our last night here, we had dinner at Molly’s Reach. It was really cute because out the back, there was a dog waiting by the kitchen door. He looked just like the Tramp from Lady and the Tramp. I think he was one of the cooks’ dog.

Sk8r Boy

2012-01-04T09:38:00.001-08:00

We took Sacha ice skating for this first time on New Year’s Eve day. My blog entries are all chronologically messed up because I was with out my computer for a week. Sacha was so excited to go. He really wants to play hockey. He’s still a bit to young to be thinking about hockey and hopefully he will change his mind to a cheaper sport that you don’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn to practise, but we did think that it would be a good time to take him skating. He was excited as we walked into the building, as we rented his skates and put them on. He was excited to wear his helmet and gloves. He was excited the first second he stepped onto the ice, then he freaked out.

Before

On his first attempt he lasted about a minute on the ice, flailing and clinging to the skate bar. He did enjoy walking around with his skates on (off the ice). He also, even though he was terrified of the ice was insisting that he didn’t want to skate, he wanted to play hockey. We made him try to go back on the ice twice more. Once with the bar again and once Andrew just held his and as Sacha held onto the side of the rink. With out the bar to cling to and have no weight actually on his skates, Sacha did a bit better and was definitely less terrified. And when he got off the ice the third time he said it was fun. So we know for next time – no bar.

Do Over

2012-01-02T18:46:00.001-08:00

I did not do any one of my resolutions for 2011. It has been a pretty shitty year. It started out really well with our trip to Disneyland and pretty much fell apart from here.

My resolutions for this year are:

exercise for 1 hour, three times per week
learn how to sew (hold over from last year)
get an A in at least one of my classes this term

I don’t think they are too out of reach to keep, especially if this year is less stressful than 2011.

White Christmas

2012-01-01T18:42:00.001-08:00

Sacha was very excited about Santa Claus this year. So excited that at 3 in the morning he climbed into our bed and started asking if Santa had come and brought presents. He fell asleep again for a bit between 5-7am. The only other problem was that really the only toy Sacha wanted seemed to be a pop gun and having talked to Santa myself, I knew that he was not going to be bringing a pop gun. So we were a little anxious that Sacha would be disappointed instead of appreciating all his new toys. So luckily for us, even though Santa doesn’t bring dangerous toys (he even said so in his note) Granddad knows what little boys want and he sent him a pirate set that included not only a toy pistol but also a cutlass (eye patch, head scarf and earring were almost completely ignored). Margot and Max had also gotten him a foam sword as well. So Sacha spent the whole day having duels. Max and Margot also got Sacha a light sabre for his birthday and Mum got Max a light sabre for Christmas so there were many Starwars themed duels.

This pic was taken about 2 minutes before the ceramic frosty figurine with the green top hat was sliced in half.

This is one of my favourite pics. Sacha telling off Alice for trying to open a present before everyone woke up. “No No Baby Alice” is one of his favourite phrases.

2011-12-31T15:43:00.000-08:00

I wrote nearly a full entry about our family Christmas up at Whistler on

Monday, then while rushing for the ferry, I promptly forgot to put my laptop in the car. So I've been laptopless for nearly a week. I'm writing this from my phone so if there are any crazy auto corrects, please forgive.

We've been busy packing up the house and trying to organize things. You wouldn't know it if you walked in here though. The thing about moving to a much smaller place is that not all of our stuff is going to come with us. On top of that, Sacha is very aware of where every item's proper place is, so a lot of items that aren't coming are sitting where they have always sat.

I have come down with a bad cold. Yesterday, I thought it was just an allergy attack due to dust but today it is a full fledged cold. Tomorrow, we are all going to go into town and pick up the keys. Let Sacha, Alice, Andrew and Mum see the place. Then the kids will be dropped off with Mum so we can finish packing up and not worry about looking after them and keeping then entertained and out of boxes.

Birthday Boy

2011-12-23T10:06:00.001-08:00

Wow, it's like I closed my browser and 2 days have passed. Sacha's birthday was good. I had to leave for work before he woke up and Andrew had asked him not to open presents until both Mum and Dad were home. And even though they were sitting right on the diningroom table, surely taunting him all day. Sacha waited patiently. He not only waited for me to get home from work, but then Andrew had an appointment, so he had to wait even longer until we were both home. Sacha was ecstatic with all his presents. He got a scooter from Baba, a pop gun and parachute men from Grandad, a very noisy electric guitar (thanks for that Devon), a sweat shirt with a dragon holding a sword on it from Alice and a toy whipper-snipper from us. I think the odd assortment of presents that have sent him over the moon happy kind of shows that he is an odd little duck.

The story behind the whipper snipper (or weed eater or what every you call these things), is that on our trip at one point the car started making an odd noise. So Mum dropped Sacha and I off in the Walmart in Emporia, Virginia and she went to talk to a mechanic. We wandered around the store for about 1/2 hour until he saw this toy. He HAD TO HAVE IT!! His life was incomplete with out it. But of course, we were still in the middle of a very long road trip with a car getting fuller and fuller with stuff and it is not a small little souvenir. We left in tears with out the whipper-snipper but Mum and I heard about it for at least 3 days. So 6 months later, for his birthday, he is now a very proud owner of his very own whipper snipper which luckily they also sold at Toys R Us.

We took him out to dinner to Whitespot and he got a pirate pak with mac-ee-ron-ee with grapes. He didn't eat too much of it though. Alice had mashed potatoes and she mashed them everywhere, including her hair. After dinner we stopped by Andrew's parents' house for a quick visit and play. Then we drove down to look at the lights competition on Triumph street and saw Santa walking down the side walk (the highlight).

Hail Mary Play

2011-12-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

I realized that I post when things are at their worst and then of course don't update the hours and hours of talking things over, trying to work things out. But I figured that if I don't say something now, it is going to be very confusing when Andrew and I are spending so much time together after breaking up. Again.

I am pretty sure my friends are getting fed up with me but I have my reasons for doing anything to work things out. Not only because I think our kids deserve an intact family but that I don't think either one of us really wants to be split up. Andrew stuck by me and put up with my years of crippling anxiety and panic attacks with little complaint. Before we re-evaluate, I want to see if him getting a new job, working full time will relieve some of his unhappiness. I know I am so much happier now that I am working everyday.

I have always hated in romance novels when the two main characters want exactly the same thing, both are unhappy but they have been too proud or are playing stupid games with each other. So that is where we are right now. The family is in Vancouver today to spend Sacha's birthday together. We are all going to spend Christmas in Whistler and at this point we are moving into the same house in January.

I am fully aware that I might be completely taken advantage of and disrespected by doing this, as I have been in the past. But I am willing to take that risk, and am going in with my eyes open, hoping for change. Honestly, all the disrespecting has gone on behind my back and the day to day is pretty much fine.

I will post about Sacha's birthday either later tonight or tomorrow when I have pictures.

Party Boy

2011-12-18T18:56:00.001-08:00

We had invited about 7 different kids to Sacha’s birthday party but due to travel plans and busy schedules just before Christmas only 3 were going to be able to make it. This morning we got a call from Andrew’s family to say they were sick and couldn’t make the trip up to the coast. So on the drive to the location, we were really hoping someone would show up to this party. Sacha’s best little buddy from preschool was also sick but luckily he did have one friend that could make it. I don’t think it even phased them in the slightest that it was just the two of them either. We had a splatter paint party at 4Cats Art Studio in Sechelt and they had the best time. They got to go into the Pollock room and go crazy with paints. They used paint brushes, syringes and popped paint filled balloons over a 7x3’ canvas which Sacha will get to pick up in a week and hang on his wall as a souvenir. The boys chased each other around with balloons as well and ate cake. Sacha got a microphone and stand for his birthday present which he LOVES.

I would totally do this party again and even sign him up for art classes there during the year. It was so much fun. Next year, I might try to have his party in early December rather than just before Christmas though. Even with a decent amount of time to plan it, there is just too much going on so close to the holidays.

Sacha’s chocolate cake, because “vanilla is for girls”.

Pro Photos

2011-12-16T17:15:00.001-08:00

I picked up the photos today after work. I am so happy with how they turned out.

Aquarium Party

2011-12-13T22:20:00.001-08:00

About 2 weeks ago, I had bought tickets to the members only Christmas party at the aquarium. It looked like it was going to be a lot of fun. The event sold out and the tickets were non-transferable and Sacha really wanted to go (and we wanted to take him), so we didn’t cancel our plans to take kids to the party. Andrew had offered to hang around or go get coffee while I took the kids, and I did debate it, but I knew it was going to be crowded and crazy and that is not a good environment to bring the two kids into and hope for a happy evening (for me). So we ended up going together as a family. The actual event was great. There was lots to see and do and we all had lots of fun (except maybe Alice who only had a little bit of fun and then got bored in the stroller).

Aquarium Party

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Sacha sat pretty well through the Bobs and Lolo concert. He really wanted them to sing Jingle Bells. They weren’t singing any other Christmas carols, just their regular songs, but Sacha was getting kind of peeved off. He wanted Jingle Bells only! We ended up moving along with 2 songs left for them to sing but Sacha sat entranced while Scuba Claus came in, jumped into the Georgia Straight Exhibit and searched for the missing bell of his sleigh. (It was under the halibut the whole time). They also had a really cute craft where you made a jellyfish ornament out of paper and a Christmas tree light up by electric eels.

After the party was very awkward and I ended up crying pretty much my whole drive home, followed by trying to have a phone conversation (or start an argument, either or) for an hour after that. I hate to say that I am not looking forward to this weekend at all. It should be a happy weekend, my family’s annual Christmas party and Sacha’s birthday party but it is not going to be anything but uncomfortable. I think I will go up on Saturday morning as opposed to Friday night like normal. I am not even looking forward to my two weeks off over Christmas. Work is a distraction that is keeping me sane right now.

This is the way my world ends…

2011-12-11T20:45:00.001-08:00

not with a bang but a whimper. I got a surprising amount of my list done, considering that a honesty bomb was dropped on me on Saturday night and my marriage has now officially ended. The next few weeks are going to be especially hard with Sacha’s birthday party, Christmas and related activities, packing up the house, dividing assets and moving, listing the house and hoping for a sale. Huge life adjustments for all of us. Because I am too tired right now to think and make any kind of profound statements about my new situation, I am going to just update my to do list and post the few pics I did take this weekend.

~~Update blog~~
~~Bake Pretzel cookie treats for preschool party~~
~~Make Christmas present for family member~~
Help make Andrew’s christmas present for family member
~~Do laundry~~
Rake Leaves
Make Dough Ornaments for Sacha to decorate
Therapy Appointment
~~Take Sacha to pick out presents for 3 people~~
~~Drop off dough ornaments and pretzel treats at preschool~~
~~Attend preschool party~~
Pack up house
Vacuum stairs
Clean bathrooms
Take Recycling to depot
~~Groceries~~

Pretzel treats were really good. Just melt a Hershey’s kiss on a mini pretzel and then smush an M&M on top. So easy and very tasty.

I made two batches and the first one was perfect but the second batch I left in the oven for too long and the kiss went weirdly crumbly and not perfectly melty and smooth. This did not affect the taste too badly.

I know my family member who’s name I picked does not read this blog so I feel confident in showing what I made for them. Andrew actually did most of it anyway, but it was my idea and my present to give so I am claiming it.

Andrew took the kids down to the beach on Friday afternoon and got 6 litres of sea water. On Saturday afternoon we strained the water through two layers of cotton cloth (I didn’t have cheese cloth, but cotton has a finer weave anyway). It took about 4 hours to boil down and evaporate to nothing and we were left with about 1/2 cup of sea salt. We left it to dry even more over night. I had two empty spice jars that I had been saving for an unknown project since the summer and those are both full of salt now and there was still some left in the pot after I took what I needed.

I tried a little bit of it and it is extremely salty. Way saltier than table salt or even the big crystal sea salt. I am really happy with how it turned out and also happy that I am done my Christmas present.

Finally, we had told Sacha that Santa was coming to his preschool today and even though Andrew and I didn’t get much more than 3 hours sleep on Saturday night, we went to the preschool party all together.

Sacha didn’t sit on Santa’s knee at all last year, we waved to him in the Sechelt parade. His first meeting with Santa did not go so well and he was nervous again this year until he saw his buddies go first and then we put Alice on Santa’s lap. Sacha finally joined in and asked Santa for a “wood chopper”. He wants an axe to chop up firewood to make a fire. Cute or creepy? Not sure. Andrew has been heating the house with wood fires, so I am assuming that’s what brought this wish on. We told him already that Santa only brings toys.

Weekend To Do List

2011-12-10T08:31:00.001-08:00

~~Update blog~~
Bake Pretzel cookie treats for preschool party
Make Christmas present for family memeber
Help make Andrew’s christmas present for family member
Do laundry
Rake Leaves
Make Dough Ornaments for Sacha to decorate
Therapy Appointment
Take Sacha to pick out presents for 3 people
Drop off dough ornaments and pretzel treats at preschool
Attend preschool party
Pack up house
Vacuum stairs
Clean bathrooms
Take Recycling to depot
Groceries

Wanted to start off my list with a tick. We will see how much of this gets done. I am hoping half by Sunday.

Delinquent

2011-12-06T18:41:00.001-08:00

I always feel so guilty when I don’t update for a whole week. I have just been so busy this week.

On Wednesday, Siobhan, Thalia, Diana and I meet up and had dinner at the Afghan Horseman. It was the first time that I had been seated in the room with the fancy cushions on the floor and low tables. It was lots of fun. And they always have delicious food. Siobhan and I met up again on Thursday and went to see Breaking Dawn. Siobhan and I have seen each one of the Twilight movies and we also took the trip down to Forks together. We are not real “Twi-hards” though. We know it is kitschy fun. The movie was so entertaining, so over the top cheesy. Definitely worth a viewing.

Andrew came in with the kids on Friday afternoon and we met up with some friends and their son on Saturday morning to go to kindergym. Their son Eli was going to come to Sacha’s birthday party but they are going back to Toronto for Christmas and won’t be able to make it, so they bought a couple mini cupcakes and we all sang Happy Birthday to Sacha. He is going to have about 5 parties this year I think. Both Sacha and Alice loved kindergym.

Saturday night was Caroline and David’s wedding. Of course it was beautiful because they are a beautiful couple and have beautiful tastes. The food was great too and I had lots of fun hanging out with everyone. It was a little weird being there by myself, but invitations went out during Andrew’s and my time apart and Mum was away so it worked out that he looked after the kids for the night.

Last year, my aunt gave me a gift certificate for a sitting fee at a professional photographer studio. I wasn’t too interested in having the infant pictures taken, because I wanted the kids to be together in pics and Alice was just too fragile last year. So i booked our appointment for Sunday. They are amazing! Sacha was a trooper and Alice is a star. We got 73 pics to chose from and we had to take out any we knew we didn’t like (funny faces, closed eyes, etc) and we whittled it down to 39. To walk away with signing over the deed to our house, we vetted down to 20 pictures and got 3 blown up to 8x10. I get a print of each and a CD of all the picture files that I can have reprinted anywhere. Which is good, because I am thinking that I should have gotten one of the 8x10 pics blown up to at least 11x17. They said I could pick everything up in a week, so I am hoping I can get them on Sunday night or Monday afternoon at least.

We Got It!

2011-11-29T18:19:00.001-08:00

We were approved to join the co-op. I am pretty excited. The area is really nice too. I had to pop by after work today to drop off some cheques. It is about 10 minutes away from my work and there need only be 4 turns to get there. Unfortunately at every turn on the way there I took the wrong one and then several wrong ones while trying to get back to the right spot. I ended up cracking out my phone to get GPS instructions and finally made it.

The benefit of not driving directly there was that I got quite the tour of the neighbourhood. Right around the corner is a big grocery store, a couple restaurants, a produce store, a liqour store, a library, a vet and a bunch of other little shops. Very handy. I am looking forward to January 1st when we get possession.

It doesn’t look like much, but the front of our unit doesn’t face the street, so I couldn’t take the picture. But it has a little fenced yard with a patch of grass and a patio, and a balcony off the master bedroom upstairs. I think it will suit us nicely for the time being.

Homing Pigeon

2011-11-28T18:17:00.001-08:00

I took the Prius in to get the deer dent fixed today. They gave me a loaner car which I am really greatful for but I would not be buying one of these cars. It took me the whole drive home, plus 15 minutes of fiddling when i was parked to find the dashboard clock. Plus I can just feel the gas guzzling compared to the Prius, which sucks with my long commute.

But on Friday after work, we went and checked out a house in North Delta. It is a Rancher in a nice family neighbourhood, about 15-20 minutes away from work. It wasn’t amazing, being a dedicated rental for at least 3 years but it was nice. It was however at the top of our price range for rent. We had talked it over because there was another one we were considering which was a bit cheaper, a bit closer to work but on a busy-ish street and didn’t have a dishwasher. On Sunday morning we called the landlord in north delta to say we would take it and about 2 hours later we got a call from a co-op that we had signed up for to say that they might have a 3 bedroom place available for January 1st. So at 8pm, I was meeting with the membership committee and getting a tour of the town house. I don’t want to be a jerk to the first guy, so now I want to find out as soon as possible if we can get this town house, because i don’t want to lose it either. The townhouse is little but it is nice and it is cheap and in an amazing neighbourhood.

Surprise

2011-11-26T20:56:00.001-08:00

On Thursday while I was at work, I had made plans to go see Brooke while she is in town. And out of habit, I texted Andrew to say I would be hanging out with her that evening. It was lucky that I did too, because unbeknownst to me, he had planned a surprise date night for us with Mum as our babysitter. I felt bad that I had to cancel my plans with Brooke about 5 minutes after making them but it was such a nice surprise and not the most simple plan to pull off, due to ferries and work and looking after the kids. We went out to dinner and then to a comedy show at The Comedy Mix. We both really enjoy comedy shows, they are a lot of fun, even if it is amateur night (this was professionals) and they are about the same price as a movie.

We had a bit of time in between dinner and the show so we had fun taking pictures of the lights on St. Paul’s Hospital with our camera phones. Which must have been pretty funny to watch us do.

Catch Up

2011-11-23T17:02:00.001-08:00

I have just gotten over a pretty bad cold or mild flu that hit me right after Alice’s birthday. I ended up missing two days of work and headed up to the coast on Friday afternoon. I spent almost two full days in bed. I was back down to Vancouver on Sunday afternoon for Caroline’s wedding shower. I can’t believe the wedding is almost here already, just a week and a bit away now. I have my hair appointment booked already.

Last night after work, I popped down to the outlet mall in Tulalip. It was a bit of a longer pop that I had remembered. I figured being so close to the border at work, it wouldn’t take me so long and that if i was already going to go to the outlets in Burlington, I might as well drive the extra 10 minutes to the premium outlets. The premium outlets are 20 minutes past Burlington, not 10 minutes but they have the two stores that I wanted to go to that the regular outlets don’t have. I got some really really good deals. I am almost done Christmas shopping for the kids now too.

Birthday Party

2011-11-16T22:14:00.001-08:00

Alice’s first birthday party was fun but pretty low-key. We had Margot, Kai and Steph over to Mum’s house for dinner and cake. I made pulled pork sandwiches and coleslaw.

Alice had skipped her afternoon nap and dinner was a little late because we were waiting for people to get off work. So we rushed through the main meal so that she could blow out her candles. Or more accurately, she could sit there while we sang and candles were blown out for her. I decided to stick with Alice’s elephant theme for her cake and I am happy with how it turned out. I was slightly worried that it wouldn’t live up to my hopes while I was in the middle of decorating. It is frustrating having to stop and wait for the crumb coat layer of icing to harden up.

Alice loved cake. She started off quite politely, just kind of scraping off the icing and tasting it. By the end there was cake every where, all over her, and the floor.

Sacha had lots of fun too, because he got to unwrap all of Alice’s presents. Even if he wasn’t too excited about the dresses inside. Devon dropped by as well but Alice had already gone to bed for the night which was unfortunate but necessary.

12 Months

2011-11-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

I can’t believe Alice is 1 year old today. This year has gone by very quickly. In the last month, Alice experienced her first Halloween, has 5 teeth coming in all at once, has stood on her own for 30 seconds and added more and more foods to her diet. We have yet to find a food that she won’t try and she almost always finishes her dinner before Sacha. Alice is also making the transition to one nap per day instead of two, which means that she gets tired earlier at night but isn’t quite so house bound. She is still called “Baby Alice” pretty much all the time in our house and I have a feeling it might be a nickname that sticks around longer than she will like.

November 15, 2011
One Year Old

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 - 5 - 6 – 7 – 8 - 9- 10 - 11

If the elephant makes it, I will try to get a picture on each of Alice’s birthdays for at least the next couple years. However, Oliver has decided that the elephant makes a nice pillow and has taken to sleeping on it. It has taken more and more fluffing up to get him to sit up on is own as the year has progressed.

Clean Up

2011-11-13T08:45:00.001-08:00

I’ve tried to spend most of the weekend cleaning the house and organizing a bit as well. Yesterday, Sacha was helping me organize shoes. I put all the summer sandals away into a box and swept the cupboard. I always think of myself as a person who only has the minimum amount of shoes but I also wear shoes until they are falling off my feet and usually buy about one pair per year. So I had about 12 pairs of shoes in there. I threw away two because they were just done, and there were two more pairs that probably could at least be donated.

Sacha also helped me sweep the whole main floor and for the first time ever he was a legitimate help rather than hindrance. There was one instance where he dropped the full dust pan back on the floor, but accidents happen and we just swept up again.

I also went through both Alice and Sacha’s drawers and took out all the clothes they have out grown. It is hard for Sacha because pants that tend to fit him around the waist look like capri pants on him now. He has two categories of pants. Ones with belt loops and ones with out. The belt loop pants being the superior kind. There is a sub-class of belt loop pants, that have small belt loops which are also inferior to proper belt looped pants but better than nothing. He is obsessed with knights and swords right now and always wants to be armed and ready (this is why belt loops are important). He has fashioned himself a sheath out of many items, oven mitts were especially memorable.

Crazy Commute

2011-11-12T09:14:00.001-08:00

I had such a crazy day on Thursday. I waited all day at work for a phone call, that came at 3:25. I get off work at 3:30 and to make the 5:30 ferry on a long weekend, I have to leave right away. The phone call was so important that I had to take it and ended up staying until 4pm.

The ferry sold out by 4:45 and it was doubtful that I would have made it there on time even if i had left on time. But it meant that I was sitting at the terminal for two and a half hours waiting for the next ferry. I have been practicing my drawing again lately and I have my phone to keep me busy too, so that wasn’t too terrible.

On the drive from the ferry to home, I was in the conga line of cars driving along Henry Road in Gibsons when I heard a big thud against my car. I obviously hit something but wasn’t sure what it was and there was nothing around. After pulling off to the side of the road, the car that was behind me filled me in. A deer had jumped into the side of my car and then run off. It was pretty crazy. The car now has a pretty big dent but it is just on one panel and didn’t affect the door so it should be ok. I never did see the deer but it was at least alive enough to run away.

It was a really crazy drive home. In total it took me 5 hours to get from work to home.

Hallelujah

2011-11-05T16:14:00.001-07:00

I wasn’t so tired right now, i think I would be giddy. I got my tooth fixed!! On Thursday, I talked to my regular dentist to get the price quote on just pulling the stupid thing and I was referred to yet another dentist who does both root canals and extractions and is much cheaper than the Endodontist I saw and had a time available to see me today (on a Saturday). In the end, it took 4 times as much freezing to make it numb for me, compared to a normal person. He said it was because I left it so long. And apparently it was a difficult root canal because my tooth had three roots and two of them have curves at the very bottom. But it is fixed. I am really interested to see what my mouth is going to feel like once the freezing wears off. He said I might still be a bit sore because of the abuse the tooth took in the root canal procedure but I wouldn’t feel any more pain when I eat or drink cold things right away.

Hopefully I will get a good sleep tonight. I have been woken up almost every night for the past 6 weeks because of tooth pain.

Room

2011-11-02T19:28:00.001-07:00

by Emma Donoghue

This book was CREE-PY! Told from the point of view of a 5 year old boy who was born and raised in the 11x11 prison cell that his mother was being held captive in by her abductor. When i say it is creepy, it is not so much what you read about what is happening. More like what is implied and the damage that has been done to this young boy due to sensory deprivation. To make his world a more pleasant one, his mother told him that only she and he were real humans and everything they see on TV is pretend. The man that would come and visit some nights was not human (in her story) and Jack had to hide in the wardrobe every night so the man could never see him. And they played games, like “Scream” where they screamed as loudly as they could, but only on weekdays.

The mother also had bad teeth, after not brushing them properly for a number of years and would cause her agonizing pain. Which I could totally relate to. My tooth is still not fixed. I wanted to cry this afternoon when the dentist told me that I need to schedule another appointment to do a root canal, and that this tooth is broken as well. It depends on how it is broken, as to how best fix it. He can’t tell how it is broken until he drills into it and has a look. If it is cracked down into the root, then it will probably need to be pulled, but this dentist doesn’t do extractions. My dental plan’s cap is $1500, I have been told it will be $1100-2000 for the exploration/root canal. Not to mention refilling the tooth with stuff and the crown I will need. I should get a crown for my other cracked tooth, but it isn’t hurting me anymore, so definitely can wait until the next calendar year (new cap). I think this is going to cost me at least $3000 and that is after getting reimbursed.

I hope Alice appreciates her nice strong bones and teeth. Andrew heard from someone he met on the ferry, that there is a saying that if baby’s teeth are slow to grow in, that means they are strong (the teeth) and Alice is only just now getting her upper teeth. They have taken almost a month to start to poke through. I have bought myself some chocolate milk, because I don’t like the taste of milk and I really have no source of calcium right now, other than the occasional latte and a bit of cheese here and there. I also hate pills and always forget to take them. I might change that stance though because my stomach doesn’t care for milk much either.

I called my regular dentist to get a quote on just pulling the stupid tooth out to start with and to either live with a hole in my mouth or to get a bridge done, I find out tomorrow how much that will cost. I just want it to stop hurting.

Trick or Treat

2011-10-31T21:21:00.001-07:00

This Halloween was a whole lot of fun. Sacha was a dragon and Alice was a chicken. We started the evening trick or treating at Kai and Steph’s and Max and Margot’s houses (across the street from each other. Kai had a cool pot full of dry ice so you had to reach your hand into a smoking cauldron to pick candy. Margot and Max had about 12 pumpkins on their steps.

Next we headed over to Steve and Natasa’s house, where we have trick or treated for the last 3 years. Their neighbourhood is teeming with kids and Steve had put on a firework show that keeps getting bigger and better every year.

Jack was Darth Vader and Sacha was very impressed with his costume and light sabre especially. At the park, while waiting for the firework show, we ran into another little boy dressed up as a dragon. They were the same age, same height, same costume. The only way you could tell apart was that Sacha had shoes that lit up with red lights and the other boy had a flashing red light on his back attached to his wings. They had a great time chasing each other around. You could hear them calling to each other “dragon, where are you dragon” when they would misplace each other amongst the other kids. Very Cute.

At first Sacha was scared of the fireworks but when we got far enough away and sat on the ground (thank goodness it was dry) he really got into it. On the drive back to Mum’s he asked the whole way to see more fireworks and let us know that he preferred them from the car because they didn’t hurt his ears. So maybe next year we will bring him some earplugs.

Cake Walk

2011-10-30T20:08:00.001-07:00

Sacha’s preschool had a Kids Halloween Extravaganza this afternoon as a fundraiser. They had lots of games, decorating cookies, masks, glowbowling, a candy table and a table full of bowls where you had to put your hand in blind folded and feel gross things like wet noodles and I think one was pomegranates in Jell-O. They also had a cake walk. I had baked a pretty cool cake to donate. 4 layer devil’s food cake with Swiss meringue butter cream icing and smarties all over it. I was kind of hoping that my cake was cool enough to get picked first, BUT Sacha ended up winning the first cake walk so we told him he couldn’t pick mine. He chose a pretty cool spiderweb cake instead. I don’t really know if he totally got what was going on, or why he got to pick a cake.

This is my masterpiece. It was chosen 3rd and I am happy with that. There was another cool one that was shaped like a snake and another with fondant moulded pumpkins. Pretty impressive turn out in the baking department all around.

Sacha didn’t want to leave but I had to catch the ferry back to Vancouver and Andrew had to get groceries before I left. It is really hard to shop with both of them, especially with Sacha on a sugar bender. Tomorrow night should be interesting.

Dress Up

2011-10-29T20:00:00.001-07:00

I feel bad about not updating often anymore. I started this blog when I had been working at my old job for 3 years already so I really knew what was accepted in the down time periods. I updated during work all the time. Now I am not as certain, and this last week was crazy busy. Report card deadlines, a building evacuation, arranging TOC coverage for teachers at the last minute and more. By the time I got home in the evenings it was hard to stay up past 8:30pm. On Wednesday, I did a bit of shopping for Alice’s birthday and met up with Caroline and Ruth to see The Big Year . I really enjoyed it and I think Caroline and Ruth did too, so you don’t just have to be a fan of bird watching to enjoy it.

Thursday was a big day for the kids. Sacha’s preschool had a pumpkin party at his teacher’s house, which is on a farm with chickens and bunnies and a duck pond. I sadly did not get to go, but Andrew took some very cute pics. Sacha and Alice were both dressed up in costume. Right after the party, they all came back into Vancouver and we attempted to go to the ghost train again. We were successful this time, I guess that’s the difference between going on a Thursday and trying to go on a Sunday, because even though Andrew stopped and bought tickets hours ahead of time, it wasn’t sold out at all. It was busy but there were still tickets left.

Alice in her Chicken Costume

Sacha – The Dragon

One cool thing about Sacha is that you can tell he is scared on the Ghost Train, this one had creepy clowns jump up at that train, but it doesn’t seem to stay with him. He doesn’t seem to have bad dreams often. And when he has, it has not been as a result of something like a scary show. The one time that he did come into our room in the middle of the night telling us he had a bad dream, he had dreamt that he was alone and we had gone. I can’t remember what was happening at the time to prompt it either, it had seemed a little out of the blue.

Metcha Day

2011-10-23T20:39:00.001-07:00

Saturday was also our third anniversary of the day we met Sacha. I try to take a pic every year on or as close to the day as possible. These are the results.

Sacha is not great at look at the camera, smiling or holding still. I am surprised we even got the first one. It really set the bar high for family photo retakes and I just noticed that Sacha is wearing the a blue shirt in every pic. There was actually one more that I took today where both Andrew and Sacha have great smiles but I cut myself out of the pic almost entirely. I should have used my phone.

Jack-o-Lanterns

2011-10-23T14:03:00.001-07:00

Andrew and the kids came into town this weekend rather than me going up to the coast. I had the worst commute so far on Friday night and the normal 45min-1hour commute took me 2 to get home. I finally got to go see my dentist yesterday, I have had an incredibly painful tooth that I had been putting off seeking help for because I was told I needed a crown and wanted to wait until I had a dental plan to cover some of the cost. Turns out, while I do have a cracked tooth, that will need a crown at some point, it is the tooth next to that one giving me grief. Apparently I have a bruised nerve in one tooth, possibly from grinding my teeth at night (he asked if i have been under any stress lately – hahaha). I have now been referred to an endodontist to see if the nerve is permanently damaged and i will need a root canal, or if it can be saved.

After leaving my dentist with my tooth still unfixed, Sacha, Alice and I met up with Tina and went bowling. Sacha was happy for about 5 frames. We managed to get him to bowl 7 frames, then Tina just took him to the arcade while I finished up the last of it. We had to pretend he was 5 so they would let him bowl. There were at least 2 other “5” year olds bowling next to us too, so we weren’t the only ones being a little creative with ages. He was very cute in his little bowling shoes too.

Today we carved our pumpkins. Unfortunately one had rotted so it was unusable. But we had lots of fun scooping, carving and cooking up the pumpkin seeds.

Odds and Sods

2011-10-17T19:46:00.001-07:00

I am so tired today. I am doing official training this week and I knew I would be staying late tomorrow and Wednesday but found out at 2:30pm today that I was needed to stay until 5pm tonight. Add an hour commute on each way and it makes for almost a 12 hour day. So in one way it is good that the family is apart right now, because I can really devote myself to work and hopefully impress people. It is not like I have to rush home and cook dinner for anyone but myself. And I can go to bed at 8:30 if I feel like it (which I think I do tonight).

This weekend, I was up on the coast. I went down into our storage area and brought up one big box of Sacha’s old baby toys. There were a couple little wooden blocks, a bunch of big foam blocks that we bought in Russia, a hammer game and a little bear that rides a bike. These toys are all way too young for Sacha, although he still really likes the hammer game, but it is hard for him to let Alice play with them. She likes the big blocks in particular, I think because they are light, soft, squishy and colourful.

Also down in the basement was a box of clothes that I was given for Sacha, but 18 months ago when we moved into the house they were all way to big for him. So we sorted through and I was getting him to try on things and choose if he liked things. I waited a bit too long for a couple items and they were already too small. But it was very cute, because when Sacha found certain items that he liked, like a pair of shorts with sharks on them, and a t-shirt with a baseball player on it, he kept saying “Lets buy these”. I reassured him we could buy everything in the box that he liked, as long as it fit. We ended up “buying” a couple items that he didn’t like specifically but that fit him well.

Unfortunately right when I left to catch the ferry back to Vancouver, Sacha got into a bottle of nail polish (which was high up on our dresser and should have been out of reach for anyone but a little monkey). So he had his hands scrubbed with nail polish remover and a time out right before I left. He hated the smell of the remover and we let him have nail polish on his toes but he had gotten it everywhere on his hands, and our bed sheets. Hopefully we can have a couple good Skypes this weekend.

Eleven Months

2011-10-15T09:40:00.001-07:00

This month has been a bit rough for Alice. She had her first real cold with fever, that I am pretty sure she caught at the aquarium. She also discovered that fire burns when she touched the glass on our fire place. Andrew rushed her to emergency to get her checked out, I was on my way home and stuck at the ferry terminal and my uncle Al looked after Sacha. By the time I got home, she was all fine and home. They gave her some cream and a bandage, which she took off during the car ride home. She now weighs 18.4lbs, I haven’t measured her height in a while, but she seems pretty tall and skinny for her age. Mum taught her how to ride Sacha’s Tow-Mater car and now she can climb on by herself. She can push it while walking a couple steps but she hasn’t stood on her own yet for more than a couple seconds.

October 15, 2011
Eleven Months

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 - 5 - 6 – 7 – 8 - 9- 10

She also seems to have been getting her two front teeth for about two weeks. So Alice has been pretty miserable this month. I had such a hard time picking which photo to use this month because there were three good ones.

Gobble Gobble

2011-10-11T17:47:00.001-07:00

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Margot and Max’s new house last night. The food was so good and there was so much left over, we each got to take a big plate of left overs for dinner tonight. Sacha wasn’t too adventurous with his eating but he did try turkey and some yorkshire pudding that Max made. Alice takes after me and does not like brussel sprouts, what a clever girl.

For the past year, Gus has had a weird bump on his face and I took him to the vet a while ago to check it out, who said that as long as it wasn’t bleeding it was no problem. Well, for the past couple weeks it had started to bleed just a little and on Sunday it basically ruptured and started bleeding everywhere. Luckily we found a vet who was able to take him on Monday even though it was a holiday and remove it. It makes it more complicated because Gus has a pretty significant heart murmur and cannot be put under anaesthetic, so the vet had to sedate him and freeze the area locally to remove it. Apparently he was an excellent patient and in 2 hours was able to come home. He now has a cone of shame that he has to wear for a week.

I started my job today. There is lots to learn but nothing that I don’t think I can handle. It is very similar to my old job but different at the same time. Enough of a change to make it interesting again anyway. I think I will like it there, everyone seems really friendly and helpful.

Patchy

2011-10-08T15:10:00.001-07:00

This morning we went to the pumpkin patch. It is always one of our favourite family outings for the year. I was pretty pregnant with Alice last year when we went. This year we went with a couple that we met at the Imago workshop we went to two weeks ago. Sacha loved their little boy, they both loved the tractor ride and tromping through the mud.

They added a new tent full of hay bales this year and Sacha loved it, especially tossing hay in the air and at people and climbing all over the place. After the patch we all went to White Spot for lunch and again the boys had fun picking out their pirate paks and laughing at each other’s antics. We ended up with 3 pumpkins this year, including one of Sacha’s favourite green pumpkins. I don’t know when we will all be together to carve them though. I think we are going to have Halloween in Vancouver this year.

Good News

2011-10-04T22:30:00.001-07:00

One piece of the puzzle of my life has clicked into place, and I now have a new job! I am pretty excited too because it is a really good job. It is similar to my old one but in a different school. It is actually the one that I interviewed for in July and didn’t get, however due to stars aligning in my favour or something, it all worked out. While thinking about it recently, by not getting it right away in the summer, it may have saved my marriage. Because if I had fully left and started working and setting up my life while I was still so angry, I don’t know if I would have gone back where we were sort of forced to work on things.

I start on Tuesday, so I will have plenty to be thankful about this thanksgiving weekend. The hardest part is that until Andrew also has a job in the city, he is going to be up on the coast with Alice and Sacha and I will go up on weekends. I think i wrote this before, but we want to keep Sacha in as much consistent routine as possible for as long as possible, and we do love his preschool. Of course, it also stresses him out when we are not all together, so we will see how it all plays out.

Second exciting thing that happened today, is that Sacha pooped in the potty for the very first time ever! and it was completely unprompted, he just went into the bathroom and did it. So hopefully this is another hurdle over come in the challenge that has been potty training. And is a vast improvement over the time I went into his room and complained that it smelled bad, so he took me to his chest of drawers and showed me where he had pooped, in the upper drawer. So gross, and how that was easier or less scary than using a potty, I have no idea.

Adventure Days

2011-10-03T09:49:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a fun day. Andrew and Sacha had a boys’ day out and went to Whitespot for lunch. Sacha chose macaroni and grapes in his pirate pak. Then they went to the Whitecaps game in the brand new BC Place stadium. It was Sacha’s first soccer game too and from all reports, he was very well behaved. He lasted the whole game. They got keepsake flags to take home too.

Too bad the Whitecaps did not win the game, but at least Sacha got a giant cotton candy puff.

Alice and I also had a nice afternoon together. We went to see Siobhan’s hula performance. It is the third show of hers that I have seen, but I haven’t been in a couple years, so it is cool to see how much more advanced she is now and how much more relaxed she looks on stage. As Colin observed, “you can tell she’s smiling for real now” during the performance.

Alice sat pretty well the whole show, which was 2 hours long. There was only one stretch where I was going to take her out because she began fussing, but when i passed her to Colin so I could pick up by purse and diaper bag and get organized, the change of scenery was enough to make her happy again and she was fine for the rest of the show. Her favourite dances were the ones with shakers and clapping, rather than the slower hulas.

Last night I went to book club and now I am waiting until early evening when I have a meeting regarding a potential job. I don’t know if it is exactly an interview but I am going to treat it as such until confirmed. I have three potential jobs in the wings right now and I am hoping that one of these leads to an actual job soon. I am hopeful though.

Victorious!

2011-09-30T12:51:00.001-07:00

In the battle of the vegetables, I have emerged victorious this round! Sacha ate a whole piece of broccoli! On purpose! On any given night, I have no idea what Sacha will actually eat. Just because he gobbled up one kind of food one night does not mean he will touch it ever again. He’s good most nights with chicken or pasta, sometimes rice. (always french fries). However, vegetables are pretty universally hated. Green ones even more so. He will sometimes try a yellow or red pepper if it is in something, I can hide some finely chopped onions on spaghetti sauce and he will eat carrots if they are in a store bought stew/soup.

Last night, I made noodles and chicken with a peanut, soy, ginger sauce, which was really good. but also made “Broccoli Diego” a recipe I got from my aunt. You sauté ginger, garlic, and peanuts, steam broccoli or green beans then add a hint of maple syrup. The broccoli crowns soak up the maple syrup and it is like eating waffles (or that’s what i told him anyway, and it worked!). It is supposed to be made with proper good maple syrup, but after I had started the recipe, I realized that I only had butter flavoured Aunt Jemima syrup, a guilty pleasure, but it still tasted great.

Dunking Apples

2011-09-29T10:04:00.001-07:00

We took the kids swimming yesterday because Sacha has been dying to go and they were both pretty well over their colds. One boy at the pool was building a fort out of foam mats in the shallow end and Sacha loved crawling through the tunnels. It is also a really nice and warm pool in Sechelt so Alice would sit on a ledge and splash until she got too cold and then we would dunk her in to warm her up.

Andrew has now caught their cold though and he usually drops Sacha off at preschool, because while he will complain to Andrew about not wanting him to leave, Sacha will let him go. This morning I got to preschool with Sacha 10 minutes early and I didn’t leave until 9:15am, with him screaming for me not to go. I know it only lasts for about 5 minutes after I leave and by the time I pick him up, he doesn’t want to go home. I know he will have a great time there today because they were going to peel, chop up and make apple sauce. It looked like a lot of fun.

Weekend Workshop

2011-09-26T22:53:00.001-07:00

This weekend was good, but it was intense. We had workshops on Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday with Homework on Saturday night. We came home each night absolutely exhausted. On Saturday night, they told us not to discuss with each other conversations we started using their techniques, that we might be quite snippy with each other and that we probably shouldn’t do anything like have a glass of wine with dinner cause it can undo a lot of what we were working on all weekend.

It was definitely a valuable workshop. Andrew and I are in a place where we now have to go to couples therapy using the Imago technique because our problems were too big for just the workshop, which is intended to be educational rather than therapeutic. I could totally see how we should have done it about 3 years ago, it could have prevented so many of our problems. For the weekend, we had to promise to give up negativity, criticism and blame. If that didn’t sit right, we could pick it back up on Monday but for the weekend we had to be open-minded and curious where we would normally be negative.

Another big part of the workshop is how your childhood affects you as an adult, and that was a very interesting part for me. Especially relating to Sacha. They talked about how the nurturing you get in the first 18months of your life really affects how your limbic brain reacts to events as adults. And I think about poor Sacha who had his needs met but didn’t get a lot of nurturing in teh first year of his life. Definitely not like how Alice experienced it, and this will affect him for the rest of his life.

On Friday, we took the kids to the aquarium. I definitely noticed a difference in how Sacha interacted with the exhibits. He was more focused and interested in things that he had just given a cursory glance to every other time. The shark tank was the big hit for him this time. But as seems to happen on a regular basis after visiting the aquarium, both kids are sick. Sacha just has the sniffles, but Alice has her first full blown fever with cold. She is totally in a daze too. She is known for being a “bright eyes”, I have had that comment from so many different people but now that she is sick, she looks almost stoned.

Working Through

2011-09-22T20:53:00.001-07:00

This weekend, Andrew and I are doing an Imago Couples workshop called, Getting the Love You Want. Three different aunts, unbeknownst to each other all separately recommended that we give it a try. I have never been the biggest fan of therapy for regular emotions, I did find it useful when I was having panic attacks though. I am not sure if it is something along the lines of worrying about how emotional this is going to make me, but I have been quite upset this whole week. Out of the blue and over things that shouldn’t have me so upset.

It is interesting too, back in July after my big spill my guts post, I changed my relationship status on Facebook to separated. But obviously not everyone who I am friends with reads this because I don’t keep it secret but I don’t advertise every time i make a post either. I figure that people will find it if they are interested enough. Anyway, so it is weird because I’ve gotten to find out when different people read my profile because like 4 weeks, 6 weeks later, even this week I will have someone ask me about being separated. Which hardly seems applicable at all right now because I have been living back at home since September started. I had this workshop as the weekend that I was going to change my status back to married if things go well.

Born Standing Up

2011-09-21T13:51:00.001-07:00

by Steve Martin

Steve Martin and Bill Cosby are the two funniest people on Earth. When I saw this book in the Park Royal Indigo Books “Books That Will Change Your Life” section, I knew I had to buy it. I can’t say that it changed my life, but it was really good. It was funny but wasn’t just joke after joke, it is Steve Martin’s autobiography about his beginnings and stand up comedy years, which sadly he has completely given up on, because I would love to see him perform live. I have now seen Bill Cosby perform live twice. The Jerk is probably one of my favourite movies ever. It was also interesting to see names pop up from his life that were characters in his movies. Like Sandee from LA story.

Prep Work

2011-09-18T20:25:00.001-07:00

Over the summer, we had gotten a confirmation email to say that Sacha was going to be in preschool for 2 days a week this year. We had signed up him for 4 days last spring and were basically told by the new administrator that she had us on the list for 2 and now the rest of the spots were taken so tough luck. Because we are planning on moving back to vancouver when both Andrew and I find jobs there (the kids will stay up in the Creek with the parent who finds a job second as longs as possible to avoid disruption), we didn’t make a big fuss about it. Even though we were annoyed. Sacha loves preschool and asks to go every day.

On Wednesday, his teacher was mentioning about how she missed him on Tuesday and wasn’t he supposed to be full time? So we really did sign up for 4 days, it wasn’t our imagination. It has all been sorted out now, and starting this week, Sacha will be in full time. Well, 9-1 Monday-Thursday. Which is much better than when it was 9-11 Monday and Wednesdays only.

Today was a very domestic day. In the morning, Sacha and I baked oatmeal muffins so he has something to take for lunches this week. The only sandwich he eats is peanut butter and jelly which is verboten of course. I mopped the whole lower floor, as the dogs have decided that they prefer to pee in doors lately. Baked a new batch of macaron cookies, to use up the last of the butter cream filling left over from last week. This new batch turned out perfectly and taste delicious. And for dinner, I made Ropa Vieja which is kind of like a Mexican beef stew and is really good, I made the salsa from scratch and added a zucchini for more vegetables. The name means “old clothes”. I was also going to make the remaining blackberries into syrup, but when I opened the container, they had moulded. I should have made it last week.

I used this recipe for the macarons, except I used blackberries instead of strawberries and used wet food colouring because I didn’t have and didn’t find powdered food colouring.

There are a bunch of rules about what food Sacha can and cannot take for lunch to preschool. But he is allowed homemade cookies, so I guess I can send him with one of these along side his muffin and nectarine.

Ten Months

2011-09-15T16:41:00.001-07:00

I think this month has been the fastest so far. Alice is now lightning quick at crawling, she pulls her self up and coasts along furniture. She can climb up stairs in a flash and like a cat with a can opener, she knows the sound of a door opening and will dash towards it. Her two new favourite foods are scrambled eggs and baby puffs. Mum and I tried the baby puffs, they are pretty revolting but Alice loves them. She still only has two teeth but is always grabbing at her gums, so I am expecting to have a whole bunch more pop in at the same time, rather than one at a time. She likes car toys now too and will make her own version of “vroom” when she plays with them.

September 15, 2011
Ten Months

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 - 5 - 6 – 7 – 8 - 9

This month is also special because this is the same age that we met Sacha back in 2008. He was 10 months and one day old when we first met him. So we are finally getting into familiar parenting territory. Alice is way taller than Sacha at the same age, but they are about the same weight. Sacha was a little smaller, he also had two more teeth than Alice and more hair too. But he was crawling and coasting as well.

Back to Class

2011-09-12T14:15:00.001-07:00

Today was Sacha’s first day of preschool. It was a short day too, 9-11 rather than 9-1 which it will be next week.

I gave Sacha a haircut yesterday because it was getting a bit out of control and because he is squirmy and I am not good at cutting hair, it looks a little odd. I made a mistake while cutting the front/top and then had to cut the rest of the hair to match, but that meant it is now cut really short. Really really short. We tried to put a bit of hair product in it this morning, because we thought he would think it was fun to be like Dad. And so it looked textured and not like an escaped mental patient with a self cut hair cut. Sacha hated it. He didn’t like smell I think but it did make it look a bit better.

He was happy to go to preschool but wanted us to stay. We stayed for a few minutes but after blowing kisses good-bye and trying to sneak away he bolted out to follow us. The new preschool administrator had a pretty shocked look on her face too. I think she didn’t expect a 3 year old to be so quick, the gate was locked after that so no one else got ideas.

Sacha doesn’t like posing for pictures. Hence the scowl but because he has been so stressed out lately, I hate to say that this is face more often than we would like. I am hoping having more interactions with kids his own age will help him. We are also thinking about eliminating tv for one week to see if that calms him down a bit too.

We are trying to keep things as “normal” as possible for him and trying to reduce his trips in and out of the city. It makes things hectic and unsettled for him, not knowing where he is going to be sleeping on any given night, even if he does love Baba’s house too. We are also doing our best to work things out between us.

Macarons

2011-09-10T23:05:00.001-07:00

I had moderate success with the cookies. They are very tasty and I have 6 that are close enough to perfect. The other 12 were much farther away from being perfect than i would like. I made them too big for one. I doubled the cookie recipe but made the filling recipe as written and i only made 18 cookies and have a huge batch of filling left over in the freezer. I guess I can try again next week on a second batch of cookies to use up the filling. The shells crush so easily, they do not with stand poking from little curious fingers.

The most important thing is that they are really tasty. I am never good with straight lines or perfect circles anyway. And they all did have the “foot” which is the frilly edge that macarons are known for so I am pleased with that.

The Colour of Tea

2011-09-09T22:06:00.001-07:00

by Hannah Tunnicliffe

Dad sent me this book for my birthday. It was good, if a little bit predictable. But it was an easy enjoyable read and left you craving macarons, which is good because tomorrow i am going to start making them for book club. It is a two day process. In the book, she makes really complicated and fancy ones. The simple ones I am going to make seem complicated enough for me. As I have never tried one, I won’t know if they turn out perfectly or not. Apparently macarons are the next “it” dessert. Cupcakes have had their moment in the sun. And it was clarified in the book, macarons are the French almond meringue sandwich cookies and macaroons are the coconut ones.

Sacha loved the cookies on the front cover. He asked to make them all week, whenever he saw me with the book. While we were in the ferry line up today, he asked me if i could pass him the books so he could admire them.

It is about a woman who moves all over the world, following her husband for his work. She sets up a French cafe in Macau, China and it is about the relationships she builds and following her passion.

Berry Hunting

2011-09-06T21:21:00.001-07:00

One of Sacha’s favourite things are blackberries. One of his least favourite things is “pricky bushes”. So he ends up in quite the conundrum come late august/early September. How to get the berries with out having to touch or even get close to pricky bushes. Blackberry - the cruel temptress. I am supposed to make a French cookie for this coming week’s bookclub and I have decided to try my hand at blackberry macarons. Which seem incredibly finicky but totally delicious.

Alice enjoyed hers too, even though she didn’t get to help pick this year. We managed to get a nice big full bucket full of the berries and I got scratched up quite a bit but Andrew and Sacha faired better. There are so many berries just 6 inches past my arm’s reach. Big huge ones, the best ones, are left for the birds or someone taller anyway.

Sacha with the fruits of our labour.

When I was little I had a book, if it was not called “Muppets go Camping” it was certainly a story about when the Muppets go on a camping trip. Sacha loved this book too, loved it to death. We did manage to save his favourite page though before the rest got recycled. Which along with “What is black and white and wet all over?”*, is his favourite joke. I did the poor/lazy man’s scan job and took a picture of the page. “Bear-y Hunter, Wocka Wocka”

* “A Newspaper on a rainy day”

Girls’ Weekend

2011-09-05T20:32:00.001-07:00

Margot’s whole wedding extravaganza has been kind of backwards. First they got married, then she had a shower, then the reception and finally this weekend she had her stagette. Next week is her birthday so she is going to be partied out this summer, I am sure.

Ten of us went up to a cabin near Kelowna on Lake Okanagan for the long weekend. It was lots of fun. Margot’s friends are really nice but it is weird hanging out with a big group of friends who aren’t your friends. All the memories being shared aren’t your memories, even if they are funny. And I have never been to a party with my friends that turned into a full blown dance party. We play board games and stuff like that, much nerdier.

I also worried because I was really enjoying just reading and napping and not having any demands on me but I felt like Margot was worrying that i was feeling left out or not having a good time, but I was.

I did drive the hour up to Vernon to visit Brooke and James and Keiran. It was so nice to finally get to see their house and to visit. Vernon seems like a nice town. Small but not too small. No where near as small as the whole of the Sunshine Coast.

Long Way Down

2011-09-05T19:48:00.001-07:00

by Nick Hornby

I bought this book no less than 3 years ago, I always like Nick Hornby books but I never got around to reading it until this weekend. This book is about 4 people who meet on the roof of a building on New Years Eve because they all want to commit suicide but all kind of get distracted and don’t and they form kind of a club. For a book that could easily be very depressing or very poor taste humour, it was really good. I think the best sort of message taken from the book, is that if you are ever in a place where you are thinking about committing suicide, to wait 90 days because usually by then like may not be good, but enough will have changed to change your mind and you will find home to keep living.

Goodbye

2011-08-29T13:38:00.001-07:00

I am behind in my posting. On Friday, we tried to go to a Canadians Baseball game but when we pulled into the parking lot we were informed that the game had been sold out. We were totally surprised by this because we didn’t realize that Canadian’s games ever sold out. However, we later found out that it was the last game to use a Groupon from the beginning of the summer. So that all made sense and made for a very disappointed Sacha.

So instead we headed downtown and renewed our Aquarium Membership. Andrew took the kids to Clownfish Cove, the kids area, while Dad and I checked out the 4D movie. We were the very last two to sneak into the showing. It was the same show that I saw last time i went, but it is still lots of fun. 4D movies are 3D movies but they spray water on you and buzz your chair and poke your legs.

After the aquarium we had to take Dad to the airport and say goodbye. It really felt like a quick visit this time. I think because of all the big family events and on top of that, all the stress in our life right now as well. I really do want to make a trip down to Australia to visit everyone and take the kids. Hopefully in the not so distant future when things are a bit more settled.

I came back to the coast with Andrew and the kids after dropping dad off. We didn’t do much this weekend and i have been feeling sick still so that doesn’t help. The house is tidier now at least and almost all of the laundry is done now.

Today I took Sacha with me to a long over due trip to the recycling depot in Sechelt. He was very helpful for the first 3 loads to the bins. After that, while my arms were totally full, he decided that he was going to bolt over to the dollar store. I found him opening up a package with a toy bullhorn in it. Ugh. I ended up buying it because the package was destroyed but at the same time I wasn’t going to let him have this new toy after being so naughty. So off it went immediately to the Salvation Army for children who behave and don’t run away and who listen to their parents. I am hoping this will teach him rather than traumatize him. I could hear him wailing from the car as I dropped it off with some other clothes that I was taking at the same time.

Tin Anniversary

2011-08-26T10:09:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday, it was our 10 year anniversary. I was pretty sad all day for me probably because it should have been so happy. Andrew and I did go on a “date”. To a movie and then to dinner at Glowbal. Both were great. I am glad we had a big gift certificate to the restaurant though, because it was not cheap. Afterwards we went to True Confections and ate our desserts at the beach.

We tried to talk about things but it didn’t really work. We ended up sleeping in different places, even after 4 days of being together at the hotel. I am frustrated and I am tired. I have caught some sort of cold that makes me wake up sick and congested every morning, but by about noon gets better. I am in the groggy fog right now.

The Help

2011-08-23T23:22:00.001-07:00

by Kathryn Stockett

This is the first book that I have finished in months, it is my book club’s October book. It is not even the book I was reading during PIG week, but with only 30 pages until I finish that book, I have lost it somewhere. And it is the 5th in a series of 10. If I can’t find it soon, I guess I will have to go to the library and finish off the ending.

I had a tight deadline to finish this book, because I think we are going to see the movie tomorrow. I started it on Sunday afternoon. That was ok though, because it was really good and a quick read. I am really interested in seeing the movie now and if the characters will still be as likable (or hateable in some cases). I am also interested in hearing what the rest of book club thinks about it. Book club was definitely something I missed while living full time on the Coast.

Day at the Fair

2011-08-23T23:12:00.001-07:00

As a whole family we met up with Kai, Steph and Dad yesterday and went to the PNE. We had planned to go on Monday ahead of time, but found out that it was free admission day. So that was a bonus. The only downside was that it was absolutely pouring with rain. But that meant we found a table for lunch right next to the food stand (even if it was sopping wet) and there were no lines for any of the little kiddy rides that Sacha loves. I am pretty happy that we have managed to go to the PNE every year with Sacha so far. The highlight for him this year was the lit up sword that he won in a fishing game. We told him he couldn’t play with it in the barn because it would scare the animals, so he had almost no interest in trying to pat them. He just kept wanting to go back out side so he could play with it again.

His second highlight were the mini donuts. We all loved those. The low light was when Sacha and Andrew went on the Sizzler ride while I fed Alice in the parent’s room. It was one of those ones what spin around and make you sick. Sacha did not like that ride and just wanted it to stop and it made Andrew nauseous for the rest of the night.

Wedding Weekend

2011-08-22T08:19:00.001-07:00

Margot and Max had their wedding party on Friday night. It was lots of fun but I was surprised by how many people there that I didn’t know. Then someone reminded me about what a social butterfly Max is and that even though only two of his family members came, he had made lots of friends since moving to Vancouver.

Andrew and the kids didn’t come to the party, instead he took them home for the night, all the way back to the Sunshine Coast. Sacha had been asking to go home. He is very stressed out and Andrew had forgotten to bring Sacha’s special things. Sacha has two special items, a pillow case with a koala on it (Koala Pillow) and a stuffed dog (Puppy). I had forgotten Koala Pillow on our road trip and I will never forget it again. I heard every day about how I forgot it, I did remember Puppy though so that was some consolation. He is definitely a little bit happier with his special items now.

We didn’t get up to too much over the rest of the weekend, which we have spent together as a family. We are staying in a timeshare downtown during this wedding week. It has been kind of fun to live downtown for a week . So many things you can walk to and window shop and we are up on the 20th floor. Sacha absolutely loves the Cafe Crepe Nutella Milkshake. I haven’t tried it yet, but he has had 2 in 4 days. It is noisy at night though. We are pretty close to St. Pauls Hospital so you get sirens and loud people leaving the clubs.

Pro Shots

2011-08-19T08:40:00.001-07:00

I think this just settles it, we need a professional photographer following us around all the time.

Skinny Dippers

2011-08-18T08:54:00.001-07:00

After Pasley, my Dad came and stayed at our house for a couple days before we all headed back to Vancouver. We broke out our fondue pot for the first time and had an amazing meal. We did the cheesy kind of fondue and dipped in chicken, shrimp, vegetables and bread.

We also went to my aunt Sall’s house for lunch on Tuesday. She and Sacha picked strawberries from her garden and he was in heaven. They were weird because they were super sweet but totally white. I have no idea what kind of strawberries they are.

We played a little bit of croquette. Nothing close to a real game, but Sacha loves to whack the balls around. We made sure we had a few minutes on the beach before heading back to our house and getting ready to catch the ferry. Sacha stripped down and hopped in right away. We was wearing 3 shirts, and it was a nice and hot day. He must have been roasting.

It is pretty bad we live 500m from the ocean and it was the first time Alice had been in the ocean. We have just had too much going on for beach days, on top of the terrible weather up until the last couple weeks. She totally loved it and I kept having to stop her from eating handfuls of sand.

It is cool too, because Alice’s first ocean experience was in the exact same spot as Sacha’s.

Sacha's First Ocean Day (Age 16 Months) – he also was a fan of eating rocks/sand

We also found out whose skin Alice got. She was only uncovered for about 15 minutes but she got her first sunburn on her thighs. It’s not bad and doesn’t seem to bother her. Sacha and Andrew are lucky never burn.

Nine Months

2011-08-15T11:29:00.001-07:00

Alice has had a busy month. Not only did she start crawling up a storm but she had her first boat ride and trip to Pasley. She also attended her first wedding. She doesn’t do it often, but she is also pulling her self up on our coffee table and will try to stand up on her own. I am pretty sure she will be walking by Halloween. She really loves fruit and crackers. She ate a huge bowl of blueberries yesterday and a bunch of watermelon for breakfast this morning. She now weighs 17.8lbs, about the same as Gus, a milestone which is in all the baby books. 9 months – should way as much as a slightly over weight wienerdog.

August 15, 2011
Nine Months

One – Two – Three – Four - Five - Six – Seven - Eight

Alice is so easy going or maybe it is just because she is so young. She doesn’t seem to be troubled by moving around between the two of us, in Vancouver, at Pasley or where ever. She is also happily passed between doting great aunts and uncles and cousins, who all want a bit of Baby Alice cuddle time as long as they let her hold on to their hands and let her practise standing. She will also let you know that her preferred state is standing.

Mr. and Mrs.

2011-08-14T21:39:00.001-07:00

I really feel like this has been the summer of suitcases. I spent this weekend at Pasley with the kids and family for my brother’s wedding. It was a really quick ceremony followed by a huge seafood feast, two of the crabs had actually been caught in our trap, the rest were supplemented from a fish vendor in Gibsons. It was totally out of character for me, but I didn’t take a lot of pictures this weekend. There were about 20 people at the wedding and about 15 cameras, including one professional photographer so I assume I can get a couple from people later.

I am also hoping that the pro got a picture of both my children looking in the same direction in at once, because I didn’t. This is as close as I got, and this was with an M&M bribe.

Sacha was in a bit of a mood on Saturday. Not misbehaving, just grumpy. Probably because he was in somewhat fancy clothes that he was not allowed to get dirty until after the ceremony and because everyone was busy getting ready and setting up and that left no one to really play with him.

I have a few more pictures on my camera that i will have to email myself. I am writing this here as more of a reminder to myself that anything else. Tomorrow I head back to Vancouver.

Peeps

2011-08-10T19:49:00.001-07:00

We’ve been up to a lot since I updated last. On Sunday, Sacha, Alice and I met up with Brooke, Jill and Kelly and their kids and went to the mini trains in Confederation park in Burnaby. Sacha was a handful. I really don’t think I will be taking them both on a public outing again unless I have one adult per child. Sacha needs his own dedicated supervisor.

Plus, at one point he came running up to me, very excited because according to him, “He peed in a bush” but in reality he did a bit more than just pee and I have no idea where he did it. He has gotten the peeing part of potty training pretty well down pat now. He has not worn pullups during the day since we got back from out trip. We have had many many accidents but he has turned a corner with peeing. The key is that he needs privacy to do it and prefers to be outside. So if we walk out the door we will often be told to “go back in house!!!” followed by him running inside boasting about peeing in the potty. Today and yesterday he is back in pullups however because our success is only pee related and we think he has a bit of a stomach bug. It has been unpleasant.

On Monday, we picked up Dad from the airport and Andrew and the kids came too. Sacha got a couple hours to play with Grandad before they caught the ferry back up to the coast. Margot, Max, Dad and I went to a really nice meal at the Boathouse down in Kitsilano. I drank way more than I normally did and we ended up walking back to Max and Margot’s condo and hung out until 12am. Margot and Dad went up to Pasley on Monday morning so I said good-bye until Saturday and the wedding. Last night I was out until the wee hours of the morning with Tristan and Tara. In what were probably the two latest back to back nights out I have had in the last year.

Andrew came back into town with the kids today, we have a counselling appointment tomorrow and he has a business meeting afterwards and Sacha is getting noticeably stressed out with us not being together all the time. Andrew forgot to bring in work clothes though when he packed up the kids, so we went to Value Village to get a shirt and pants. While Andrew as trying on clothes, I looked at some shoes and Sacha had a great time trying on shoes too. His favourite seemed to be black stiletto 3 inch heals. It was very cute.

Retail Therapy

2011-08-06T21:03:00.001-07:00

Siobhan and I drove down to the outlet malls in Washington today. I have to say I was much more successful than she was, either that or I am just so weak when faced with adorable kids clothing. I also found a wedding present for each of my siblings. Hurrah.

Everything that I bought was marked down greatly, except for one outfit from Gymboree for Alice. But I couldn’t help myself. I am really too weak to be allowed to go into Gymboree. They are just too cute there. I can’t find a picture of the dress and sweater set that I bought online. But the dress is lavender and white corduroy with a lavender cardigan as well and a headband. So very cute.

The one thing that I had wanted to get was a shirt for Sacha to wear to Kai’s wedding. In my mind, I had wanted a Hawaii/luau/bowling/50’s shirt. I did manage to find the exact shirt I was looking for at Old Navy but it was in the clearance section and only came in size 18 months. I was pretty disappointed. I got a different shirt that was nice, but not quite what I was picturing. It will have to do and it was only $6.

I also got them each a pair of overalls. Sacha’s is camouflaged and Alice’s is denim with embroidered hearts. I am seeing a matching forced posed picture in their future.

The overalls are the only pics I can find online, which is a little odd because I can find lots of things that they had in the stores but not the specific ones I bought. I got a couple body suit tops for Alice from Carters and a pair of pyjamas* and a Star Wars shirt for Sacha from Old Navy as well.

So even though I am staying at my Mum’s by myself with the dogs in an empty house right now, I am keeping busy. I almost don’t have time to do everything i need to do between now and Tuesday. Andrew and the kids are coming into Vancouver tomorrow. The plan is to all sleep in the same house. We wills see how it goes.

*This looks wrong to me, but spell check tells me it is so. I thought it was pajamas. no?

Deliberations

2011-08-05T21:50:00.001-07:00

Do you know what is awkward? Trying to pick out a card for both your bother and sister congratulating them on their coming weddings in the next two weeks, 3 weeks after separating from your own husband with out sounding like a total hypocrite. I think I managed to do it though. I found two cards that were thoughtful but there was nothing in either about being happily together forever. Most of the cards just felt really wrong to buy, either that or they were just too ugly, too godly or just not right. They didn’t have a nice selection of blank cards either because at one point that was how I was thinking i would have to go.

Andrew and I had a promising therapy session this week. It was the first one that has felt at all like there is hope. We have another one this week too. I think this will take a long time, but we might be able to mend things. I really don’t want to rush back though at the first sign of getting along. We have done that before, gotten too confident too soon and it is me that gets burned. I am being very cautious this time.

Island Retreat

2011-08-03T14:50:00.001-07:00

Just got back from Pasley. It has been a nice week away. A little stressful and totally tiring looking after both of the kids with out modern conveniences like microwaves and tvs. Usually, up at Pasley, I will finish a book a day. This year, I got 2/3 of the way through a short one.

Sacha had so much fun paying with his cousin Jack. They explored all over. It was a lot of fun this year, much less stressful with him because he has a bit more common sense and he can have a bit more independence. There is a fine balance though between having him playing happily somewhere and knowing where he is. I found it was best if you could discover where he was but if he didn’t see you looking for him, he wasn’t disturbed and stop what he was doing. He especially liked the large collection of water guns up there and playing with digger trucks in a big pile of dirt behind the woodshed. I brought up a tonne of clothes for him to wear while we were away and every piece of clothing is now filthy dirty.

I think Alice liked it too. She liked all the attention from all the relatives, that’s for sure. She tried lots of new foods, even some chicken. Which she gummed on but didn’t swallow. The three girls who were born in 2010 were all very cute together. Next year, Alice will get to run in the toddler trundle race.

Moving On

2011-07-29T12:27:00.001-07:00

I am procrastinating packing up for going to Pasley for a week with the kids tonight. Margot and I are in charge of cooking dinner tonight for 20 or so people, so I have a huge pot of chilli cooking on the stove as we speak. So I haven’t been completely lazy.

I spent the night at our house last night for the first time in over a week. It is uncomfortable here now. A lot of silent tension, then a lot of just practical things that have to get done as well. It is hard to get the motivation to clean the kitchen and do the laundry while the rest of your world falls down around you.

I found out yesterday that I did not get the job. Which for some reason, on Wednesday, I had that feeling already. So I was disappointed but not completely depressed about it. Apparently I was the second choice and it was a really tough choice. The HR woman wanted me to call her today and she really tried to express what a tough choice it had been for them. Like hours and hours of discussions. She also said that I gave an excellent interview and had excellent references. Which is reassuring as well and that she has my resume on file if anything else opens up. You never know what it comes down to when things are that close. So, onwards to something else.

I am trying not dig myself into too much of a depressed hole right now. Trying to keep myself busy. I do worry that Pasley might not be the best place for me right now. No internet, no electricity (really) and lots of time to think and think. I am not ready for introspection yet. I need distraction to keep my spirits up. I do know enough to never say “well, things can’t get any worse”. I can always come back if it is too much for me.

broken

2011-07-28T09:25:00.001-07:00

I had always believed to the core of my being that if two people wanted to make things work, no matter what, a marriage can last. This is despite my parents splitting up when I was 8. I never felt that I was too emotionally scarred by the divorce. Maybe it was because i was so self centred when it happened, but I never thought that it was my fault like a lot of other kids of broken homes think.

However, you can only be lied to, cheated on, betrayed and disrespected for so long before becoming more of a pathetic doormat rather than a human being, just to save the marriage for the kids sake. Adults take responsibility for their actions and decisions. If they say they want to save the marriage they don’t immediately go and backstab and continue with exactly what they were doing. Pleading the whole time that they don’t know why they do it, they can’t help themselves, they want to save the marriage, they do love you.

You forget. Unless you are living in the exact moment. You forget and throw away what we have together. How we grew up together and formed a family. How we used to be close and how maybe YOUR actions have caused me to become distant. All for cheap virtual thrills. I had not written about any of this until today because I honestly still thought that we could work things out. But then he is more worried about hurting her feelings than mine. So fuck him.

Everything that is happening is leaving me feeling like a worthless piece of shit that can just be thrown away. There is no begging me to forgive him. There is him getting caught repeatedly. There is hiding and lying. There are feeble apologies with buts and blame. Words and actions that do not match.

Job Interviews and Wedding Showers

2011-07-24T17:56:00.001-07:00

I have a job interview tomorrow. I really hope I get this job. Actually, I don’t even know what the salary/benefits/hours really are. I have a pretty good idea because it is another school office job. So I am totally qualified for it.

We found out yesterday that Andrew didn’t get the job that he had interviewed for last week. So that makes things a bit more complicated. We still have to move back to the city though. We now have to figure out if we should sell our house at a big loss, or try to rent it out and cover expenses and keep it. Ideally down the road we could turn it into a vacation rental and use it for ourselves through out the year as well. All of our money is tied up in that house though. It is all very confusing.

There are a lot of things up in the air right now. I hope things get a little less confusing soon.

I found this picture online today and really like it. Dragonflies are my good luck charm and I need a bit of that right now.

Today was Margot’s wedding shower. It all turned out really well, but I did feel like I wasn’t as organized as I usually am. One item that I was organized about was the photobook-recipe book that I spent over a month putting together and then paid extra for UPS to deliver it. I was assured on both Thursday and Friday that it would arrive by Friday night at 7pm. There was some truck break down or something though and UPS Canada offices aren’t open on the weekend. Basically it sounds like no one knows where it is right now. So Annoying!! I was calling and asking where is that truck now, I will go to it and sort through the packages to get it. I ended up having to print off the pages and just give Margot an idea of what it will look like. It was good though too, because people could pass around the individual pages and all have a look, rather than one person at a time with the book. So it wasn’t a total loss.

Rainy Day Delays

2011-07-17T19:52:00.001-07:00

Andrew got seasons tickets to the Whitecaps. He got one seat and our friend Ciro got the other one. They trade off tickets when they can’t make the games and until yesterday he had either taken Ciro or had another friend who really wanted to go or we didn’t have a babysitter. So yesterday was my day to see a Whitecaps game for the first time. I am not they biggest soccer fan, but I thought it would be fun. Unfortunately the weather did not want me to see a game and it was rained out and cancelled. We did not find this out until about an hour and a half before the game was about to start, so we were already in Vancouver.

We don’t get an afternoon out with out the kids all that often so we took advantage of Mum’s babysitting offer and we went to lunch at Las Margaritas and then to see Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows Part 2. Las Margs was good as always, and they have changed up their menu since the last time I went. I had Mexican street meat tacos which were very tasty.

Harry Potter was good too; a very good ending to the series. My favourite part was the Snape side story. I read that book but I must have read it too quickly because i barely remembered anything about the plot.

Eight Months

2011-07-15T10:15:00.001-07:00

I didn’t get to see almost 3 weeks of Alice’s eighth month because of the trip, but a lot has happened in that time. She went from hating to be put on her stomach to loving it. She is almost crawling. She can move around on her stomach, mainly through spinning or rolling, but isn’t up on her knees moving yet. She has a bunch of toys that she loves now too, Paddington bear is one of her favourites, as is Sacha’s Wiggle’s piano book and her Jolly Jumper at Mum’s house. She also now has two teeth, which seem to have stopped coming up and down through the gums so we get a bit of a break from constant teething. She weighs 16lbs now too.

July 15, 2011
Eight Months

One – Two – Three – Four - Five - Six - Seven

I finally got a picture of her teeth today too; that has been difficult. The second picture is of her “Piggy Face” at the park. We have been going to the park most afternoons lately. She likes being on the blanket and watching the big kids run around.

29 Down

2011-07-14T09:05:00.001-07:00

create your own personalized map of the USA or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

22 to go, because they counted Washington DC as a state, or at least a button to tick. One day I will see them all. Oh and if you are Andrew, and don’t count places you have only been to the airport, I have to take away Texas and North Dakota.

Potty Dance

2011-07-11T07:28:00.001-07:00

We have started having some minor breakthroughs with potty training. Sacha is now asking to use the potty or toilet. He has yet to find a toilet that has worked out for him, because they are too high and he doesn’t like sitting on them so he is still having accidents often because he only wears a pull up at night now. His potty location of preference is outside on the deck, either at our house or Mum’s house.

He is also terrified of Mum’s bathroom. A couple of months ago, he locked himself into the bathroom and for about an hour they couldn’t get him out (he was staying there while Andrew had his surgery). So Max ended up climbing up a ladder and breaking the bathroom window from the outside, climbing in and rescuing him while Sacha stood in the bathtub. Now, he doesn’t like going in to that bathroom at all and will stand at the door and peak in nervously.

We were at Mum’s yesterday and she had a big family BBQ. Margot and Max were there and Kai and Steph came over as well. It was fun. Andrew is back in town today for a big interview. I really hope he gets this job, it is a really good one for a good company.

Family Photos

2011-07-05T20:13:00.001-07:00

This morning Alice was sitting in just the right light. I got the cutest picture of her.

I also needed a picture of Sacha, Andrew and Alice for a project I was working on and I actually got a couple where everyone looked good.

We are back to working on potty training with Sacha. We are going through a lot of pants per day. We might getting him peeing outside with the dogs before he will actually sit on a potty. Right now, he will just wet himself, take off the old pants and find a new pair. Andrew ordered some cloth training pants online that should make it harder to take off and escape the gross feeling. I am hoping that this gets sorted out over the summer, he is too big for public change tables now so that makes things difficult as well.

Home Again

2011-07-03T19:49:00.001-07:00

I don’t know if there is anything much better than the first night of sleeping in your own bed after being away for a while. Sacha and I finally made it home after about 24 hours of traveling.

Our flight to Minneapolis, which was supposed to be about an hour long, ended up getting diverted to Fargo, ND to refuel and ended up being 3 hours instead. Our connecting flight to Vancouver left without us about 15 minutes before we landed. Sacha had fallen asleep on the flight from Fargo to Minneapolis, a deep sleep too. So when we landed, he was half asleep as we disembarked. He was not in the mood to line up and wait to figure out what we had to do next and basically started screaming. One lady waiting in line with her husband, took pity on me and tried to help, but Sacha freaked out that a stranger was talking to him and he flung himself backwards and hit his head on the hard floor. So instead she just watched my bags so I could carry him while in line. When we got to talk to the customer service agent, she informed me that the 9am flight to Vancouver was sold out, so we would have to catch the 5pm flight. When I asked about hotels, she said she had a coupon for me, not a voucher. I am not sure if she just took pity on me, or was worried that I would just sit in from of their ticket station and let Sacha scream all night. But she went away and worked magic for us. She got us a free night in a hotel, 6 meal vouchers and upgraded us to first class for the flight home. There was nothing more she could have done for us, however she asked if there was. I didn’t even get her name, but she was great. Thank you Delta lady who works in the Minneapolis airport.

On the flight to Vancouver, I learned that Sacha cannot taste Dramamine crushed into orange juice. So he slept for about 2 of the 3 hours home. It was very cute actually, he fell asleep while eating the cake that came with our dinner. We got Chicken Masala, that actually looked like chicken and salad and Tiramisu, served on real china plates. The people in couch got a package of peanuts.

Andrew and Alice met us at the airport and we rushed out of there and made the 8:40pm ferry home. Sacha was very happy to see Andrew, Alice, the dogs, his Koala pillow, his blue hockey stick and his toy lawn mower. That list is not necessarily in order.

Now that we are home, it is kind of weird having no plans until late July. I will have to come up with a new project.

Final Stop

2011-06-30T20:13:00.001-07:00

I am pretty sure Memphis is located directly on the Sun. It is so hot here. It was 39 degrees today and I have been reassured that this is a cool day, and it is pleasant because it wasn’t too muggy.

On our way to Memphis, we stopped at Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville. I took the house tour while Mum and Sacha explored the grounds. The planation was built in 1853 and was a Thoroughbred farm. There was authentic civil war bullet marks on the front columns and had once taken up about 5500 acres on the outskirts of Nashville.

When we arrived in Memphis, we decided to splurge on a hotel. So we checked into the Peabody. Memphis’s fanciest hotel. They have a flock of ducks that live in the fountain during the day and in the evening, the waddle down a red carpet, into an elevator and up to their nests for the night. It is all a big deal. We arrived just in time to see the ducks on parade.

We met Diana over on Beale Street, a blocked off touristy area and had BBQ for dinner. It was very good. After dinner, we took the 25 cent trolley loop tour down by the river front. Sacha really like being on the “trains” and found a new person to jump on all evening in Diana.

Mum looked after Sacha at the hotel while Diana and I went out again. We got some frozen yogurt, went back to Beale street, which was much livelier than it had been earlier in the evening and then took a horse carriage tour. There are many horse carriages here, some are done up like princess carriages, we took a more normal looking one. And each of the carriages has a dog that rides shot gun. Our horse’s name was Penny and our dog’s name was Mabeline. I don’t remember our driver’s name.

It was a fun evening, even though it wasn’t too rowdy. Diana was tired after working all day and I am tired from driving all day. It was a nice casual sightseeing night. And a billion degrees Celsius.

And, we have decided that Sacha and I will fly home from Memphis tomorrow night. It is the last major city for a while with a whole lot of open prairie coming up. I was quite upset about cutting the trip short when we decided this, this morning, but he has had enough. It is really obvious. He good moments are fewer and farther between that they ever have been. We are all tired but he just can’t contain himself for any period of time now. On top of that, my tooth that had a temporary fix to it back in May has unfixed itself and I am back in agony. I probably should have bucked up and paid to have the crown put on more than a month ago. Oh well. I have a new list of things i want to revisit on a future road trip. But probably not for at least 10 years, when both Alice and Sacha can come and enjoy the experience and remember all the cool sites we see.

We are catching an evening flight tomorrow night so we will get to check out a few more sites tomorrow. Like Graceland and a river boat up the Mississippi river.

Old Smokey

2011-06-30T05:32:00.001-07:00

Day 14

I am not entirely sure where we are right now. We are somewhere between Knoxville and Nashville in Tennessee. We drove through the Maggie Valley, Cherokee Nation and Smokey Mountains today. When we were picking our route, I saw Pigeon Forge on the map and that name sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember why. So, I texted Andrew, our almost as good as google connection. Pigeon Forge = Dollywood! We knew we had to go even if it was just a quick stop in.

The road over the Smokey Mountains (Appalachia) was slower and twistier that we had thought, but it had beautiful views. I saw one small part of the Appalachian trail as well so that was kind of cool .

We didn’t get to Dollywood until about 5pm, and it really is a whole day event. It is a lot like Knottsberry Farm but with more Jesus thrown in. We got to take a train ride on an authentic coal powered steam engine. I got Sacha back on to a carousel, this time with much better results. They also had a kids section with 3 very tame rides that he could go on by himself. So that was pretty fun.

We really only ended up seeing about a 1/3 of the park and it was SO hot. I could never live in the south, I would melt away.

Swarmed

2011-06-27T20:01:00.001-07:00

Day 12

My day time impression of Chincoteague Island, is that it is still a really cute little place with lots of fun shops and things to see. Assateague Island, where the ponies actually run free, is a bug infested swamp. We drove over to explore the island and immediately jumped back in the car to drive back to Chincoteague to buy bug spray. After heavily dosing ourselves, we headed back to try again. We had paid the park entry fee and wanted to get our money’s worth. It was slightly better with all the bug spray, we walked up a little forest trail to see a light house but the bugs were swarming us, if not biting us as badly as before.

This picture was taken very quickly, and then we all dove to safety from the mosquitos in one of the little buildings having an art show. I bought a framed print of a sanderling. When we got out of the woods and out to the visitor centre, which was on the sand bar it got better. The visitor centre directed us back to the woods to see the ponies. We decided that if we couldn't’ see them from the car, then we would give up, because we couldn’t go through being swarmed again.

We were very lucky though. We spotted the wild ponies! Off in the distance but I was able to get a picture.

We headed back to Chincoteague and Sacha needed a change of shirt and pants because he had squeezed a whole juice box on himself. So when we stripped him down, this is what we saw …

He is covered with bug bites. Apparently they had swarmed up his shirt where he wasn’t covered in bug spray and went to town on him. This picture doesn’t even do justice to how bitten he is.

After a pony ride on one of Misty’s decedents, we started on the road again. Even though we didn’t do as many miles today, it was a lot of driving. Slow roads, I guess. We did cross the 20 mile bridge/tunnel over Chesapeake Bay though. I was a little worried before we approached that it would be 20 miles under water but only about 3 miles was tunnel, the rest was bridge.

The car has started to make funny noises and with an unofficial consult from a guy who used to work at Volkswagen, it might be the air conditioner or the compressor. We are not sure. We have stopped in Greensboro because they had an appointment available for tomorrow. We are going to stay here two nights so that we can spend a day by the pool while the car is being serviced.

Capital Beaches

2011-06-26T19:53:00.001-07:00

Day 11

Today was the first day we stopped in a real big city since Vancouver. We woke up early and drove into Washington DC. Thank goodness it was a Sunday, you can tell that week day commuting is hectic from Leesburg to DC.

We knew that Sacha could only handle one major museum, so we chose the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. We got a free parking spot right out front, which was great, especially when they made Mum take her multi-tool that she keeps attached to her purse back to the car. All the Smithsonian museums are free as well, so when Sacha and Alice are older we will have to come back and check them all out. Sacha really liked the planes and the rockets. He was most impressed with the mannequins dressed up in full gear, including parachutes. He LOVES parachutes. If anything the museum had too many functional plane displays and not enough of them crashing and people having to parachute to safety.

We have found out that Sacha is affected very much by his stomach. When he is hungry he is a demon child, he embarrassing, tantruming child in the restaurant. When he gets to this point, he also refuses to eat. He reached this point today in the museum, I literally had to shove a French fry in his mouth to get him to stop freaking out. Once he ate one fry, he was fine again. It is really weird. The other problem that goes with this, is that he is a very picky eater. So we are stuck between, not letting him just eat the junk food that he wants to and huge melt downs. We are definitely going to make sure he is all fed up from here on out, even if he didn’t eat his breakfast 1/2 hour before hand and should really think about why he is hungry now. A 20 day road trip is not the time for that lesson.

After the museum, we were really just going to drive around and take pictures of things from the car, but again a magic parking spot opened up right next to the white house, so we got out and took a couple pictures there.

This is actually the back of the White House, but we didn’t know that when we were taking the pics.

Sacha playing in a fountain right next to the White House. It was really hot in Washington DC today. Hot for us anyway.

We headed out of the city and over the huge bridge that crosses Chesapeake Bay and out to the beaches of Delaware. We stopped at Dewey Beach, DE, which was just beautiful. We played in the sand and waves and saw two pods of dolphins. At first, Mum just saw a fin and it was not clear what kind of fin it was, but after keeping back from the water a bit and watching, we could tell there were about 10 dolphins playing in the waves.

We have stopped for the night in Chincoteague Island, Virginia. It is home to a herd of wild ponies. There is a famous book called Misty of Chincoteague that is based here. We are going to look around the island in the morning because there are a lot of cool looking shops here. Hopefully we will see some of the ponies as well.

Long Haul

2011-06-26T19:17:00.001-07:00

Last night we got in so late, that we all just fell into bed. We started off in Niagara Falls, Ont and drove down through western New York State and Pennsylvania “Mountain” country. They are really more like large hills. Better than Iowa’s highest point (approx 1850 ft) which we had gone past earlier in the trip, but we were seeing summit signs for around 2200 ft. I always considered Grouse and Cypress to be small mountains and people are skiing on these hills. I tried to find a pin for New York State but because we were on the small roads away form the interstates we were not in the most touristy areas.

I did get a pin in Pennsylvania. In Punxsutawney, home of Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog day groundhog.

After meeting Phil, we got back in the car and drove down to Cumberland, Maryland where we got some dinner and played in Constitution Park, after a few interesting directions from the women at the grocery store. So now we have officially crossed the Mason-Dixon line and are in the South. We had wanted to stop for the night in Charles Town, near Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, about 1/2 hour away from Cumberland, MD, however, we had not anticipated that this was THE place to go on a mini-break vacation from Washington DC. All the hotels were sold out. We were even hotel hopping with another couple to see if we could find rooms.

I ended up calling Best Western and booking the next closest hotel with two beds in it. This was all the way in Leesburg, Virginia an extra hour and a half away. So we made it by 11:00pm, we were exhausted. We were a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to see the historical sites of Harper’s Ferry, WV but it was too far to back track. Oh, and because we didn’t stay the night there, I didn’t get a pin for West Virginia either. My list of internet ordering is growing.

O Canada

2011-06-24T18:51:00.001-07:00

Day 9

We had discussed which way we were going to drive out to the east coast. Either down via Ohio or across via Ontario, and on Amy’s recommendation we took the Canadian route. We stopped and had lunch at Tim Hortons in London Ontario and saw the sign for the Labatt Brewery, so we had to go check it out.

Unfortunately they couldn’t give us a tour until the evening and as we were just passing through, we were out of luck. They did point us to the Pioneer Village which had a recreation of the original brewery and a picture of John Kinder Labatt (great, great, great Grandfather) so that was pretty cool. It was pooring with rain though so we didn’t spend too much time exploring the whole little exhibit.

We are now in Niagara Falls and have been down to check out the falls. They really are amazing. We let Sacha bring his water toy gun with him, he is obsessed with guns right now, which I am not pleased about. He wanted to fill it up in the waterfall water. We are back into the USA tomorrow and continue on towards Washington DC.

Catching Up

2011-06-24T18:25:00.001-07:00

Day 7-8

We drove across Michigan to go visit Amy, Tatiana and Alexander. Along the way we stopped at Junction Valley Railroad, the longest 1/4 scale railway in the world. It is similar to the one in Burnaby but a bit bigger and more realistic cars to sit in. You can even lock the kids in cattle cars if need be.

After the railway, we stopped in the Bavarian style town, Frankenmuth which has two rival famous chicken dinners. We had the Zehnder chicken for lunch. It was so much food, like Thanksgiving dinner for 6 people. We had so much left overs and no way to store it. I felt bad for just letting all that food go to waste. Frankenmuth has a cute covered bridge as well.

Sacha had chosen to be picky that day and did not eat more than a bite of bread for lunch, so by the time we checked into our hotel and went to Amy’s house, he was starving. We all went out to dinner in the little town next to hers and Sacha has never eaten so well. After dinner we all came back to Amy’s house and played in the back yard. The kids had so much fun together. Sacha and Tatiana look so similar and even though she is a year older, Sacha is the same height as Tatiana.

In all the pics I took of the kids, either one of them isn’t looking at the camera, or they are moving to quickly and are blurry. I know mum got one good one of all of us and I think Amy got some good ones too.

We stayed two nights in the same hotel, the only hotel in Croswell, MI and it did not have Wi-fi. Luckily I survived. It was really nice to have a slower day just to putter around. Amy had to work, so we drove up the coast a bit to see the Port Sanilac lighthouse and then down to Port Huron to do a bit of shopping. The mall had a cool carousel in it and Sacha spent about an hour playing in the play area. I found a dress for Kai’s wedding and a couple pairs of shorts.

The weather was not kind to us while we were in Croswell. Actually during the day it wasn’t so bad, but every time we met up with Amy and the kids and tried to go out to a restaurant or playground it just poured buckets of rain.

Slow Boat

2011-06-21T19:49:00.001-07:00

Day 6

When debating which ferry we should take across Lake Michigan last night, either the slower, cheaper ferry that is more north or the quicker, more expensive southern ferry, the southern ferry sold out of reservations. So our route was chosen for us. It meant a 4 hour ferry until a 2 and a half hour ferry ride and a bit of a further drive from where we stayed last night. It was weird riding a non-BC Ferries ferry. We took the SS Badger from Manitowoc, Wisconsin to Ludington, Michigan and that is where we have stopped for the night.

The ferry is really old, it used to be a railway car ferry. You don’t drive your own car on either. You park it and the crew drives your car on, and you can’t visit your car during the trip. They did have lots to do on the ferry too, Bingo, a kid’s playroom, an arcade, a movie theatre and a cafe. It was cold and drizzly but I went up on deck and watched us pull away from the dock. Sacha thought it was too windy. Mum decided to rent a stateroom which had two beds, so she and Sacha had a two hour nap. He wouldn’t settle down while I was in the room so I went off and explored the ferry and started watching Tron Legacy in the movie theatre.

I realized yesterday that I had been making daily route maps but forgot to post them. So here are the two missing maps.

Custer, SD – Brandon, SD

Brandon, SD, via Iowa and Minnesota – Mauston, WI

Today wasn’t too exciting. More of a travelling day but not too much driving and an early stop at night. It was kind of nice to have an easy day, if not the most action packed.

Farmlands

2011-06-20T21:03:00.001-07:00

Day 5

As we go further and further east, we keep losing hours due to time differences. It was tough to get up in time for the free hotel breakfast this morning and out the door at a reasonable hour.

We took a little detour this morning through Iowa, basically just so I could tick that state off my visited-state list. I feel I have seen as much of Iowa now as I need to. We were there for maybe 2 hours, which included a play in a playground and about 6 gas station stops because I am collecting lapel pins (just like the Olympic pins). I had no luck in Iowa. I stopped in every town we went through, in every gas station and a dollar store, a drug store and a grocery store and now one had pins. I did get an Iowa Hawkeye’s keychain, which will have to do. I am thinking I might buy one online when i get home so i don’t have a hole in my collection.

Northern Minnesota looks really nice and has a lot of touristy things to do. All I can say about southern Minnesota is that we stopped in 3 towns and 2 of them smelled like ham. And not nice ham, like canned ham.

Our big sites for the day were the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, MN and the Spam Museum in Austin, MN.

This is not my picture, I borrowed this one off the internet, but I am tired and don’t feel like downloading my pics tonight because I didn’t take a whole lot and my camera is across the room. The best part of the spam factory was trying to stuff as much pretend meat into cans and label them as fast as you could and time yourself against the factory. I made 6 cans in the time they made 500.

We crossed the Mississippi River and are spending the night in Mauston, Wisconsin. So we hit 4 states in one day. I also think I lost the Wisconsin pin I bought with in 5 minutes of owning it. Hopefully it will turn up, but I am kicking myself about it.

South Dakota

2011-06-20T20:49:00.001-07:00

We started the day off by visiting the Crazy Horse Memorial Monument being carved into the side of a mountain near Custer, South Dakota.

We decided after paying to go into the museum and gift shop at Crazy Horse that we would only take a picture of Mt. Rushmore from the car, because it had started to rain, it was busy, not cheap and they aren’t our presidents.

With a bit of fancy driving, I think it turned out pretty well. After the Blackhills Monuments, we drove up to Rapid City, SD to see Dinosaur Park. Because I didn’t google it before hand to reconfirm which was which attraction, I had thought Dinosaur park was going to be like an indoor museum of dinosaur bones. It wasn’t. It was an outdoor concrete dinosaur sculpture park. Again it was raining pretty heavily, if it had been sunny, we probably could have got on board with the kitchiness of it, but as things were it was a bit disappointing. Sacha liked it.

We drove through a small part of the South Dakota Badlands and saw some incredible rock formations and found a prairie dog town where you can buy peanuts and feed the happiest prairie dogs in the world. Sacha LOVE LOVE LOVED them. He did chase them around a bit too much and scared them down holes. He also tripped over a prairie dog hole as well. He didn’t want to leave. But when we went to the 1880 Town a couple miles down the interstate, prairie dogs were all but forgotten. We watched a saloon show, petted some donkeys and played bandits on an old train.

Today was such a busy day, after the old west town, we drove to Mitchell, SD and saw the famous Corn Palace. We got there with 1/2 hour left of it being open. All the murals are made of different colour corn cobs and inside is a huge corn themed gift shop. It is hard to believe how many things you can buy that are corn related. We were trying to make it to Sioux Falls for the night, but ended up missing the turn off and instead are spending the night in Brandon, SD. I am not sure what we are doing tomorrow, other than crossing Minnesota, before we left, I had researched up to South Dakota for things to do. I have to up date myself now.

Home on the Range

2011-06-19T08:27:00.001-07:00

Day 3

After we passed through Livingston, MT, I was on all new roads for me. Mum had done this drive back in the ‘70s on her honeymoon drive across the continent. We decided to get off the Interstate pretty quickly and although it meant that we would not make as good time, we got to see so much more.

We drove down towards Lovell, WY and took a tiny road through Big Horn National Park. And I got to see Wild Horses!! I have always wanted to do this.

Ok, to be fair, if we hadn’t just gone to the visitors centre and had them show us where the wild horse range was, it would be hard to tell the wild horses from regular old owned horses, because there was even a fence to keep them off the road. But. It was still cool.

We saw a lot of animals, horses, 2 moose, hundreds of antelope, a marmot, deer and lots of prairie dogs. We had dinner at Gillette Wyoming and then spent the night at Custer, South Dakota. Today we are off to see Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument and the Corn Palace. Pretty exciting stuff here in South Dakota.

The Beginning

2011-06-17T21:53:00.001-07:00

Road Trip Day 1

We got off to a late start because Mum had an appointment, but there was hardly any wait at the border and Sacha fell asleep in the car so we got a good couple of hours driving done right off the bat. We stopped at Leavenworth, WA for dinner and a play at the park. We also watched a bunch of people play a few innings of baseball.

We kept driving until 10pm, Sacha had totally fallen asleep again and we spent the night in Moses Lake, WA. At the exact same hotel that Andrew and I stayed in the first time we went to Yellowstone.

Road Trip Day 2

Because I have been along this road quite a few times already, today was a big driving day. We stopped in Spokane and asked at a gas station where a good playground was and we were directed to Discovery Park, which was one of the best parks we have ever been to. We stayed there for an hour and then hit the road again.

The drive between Spokane and Missoula always takes way longer that it looks on the map, plus we hit the time change once we crossed over from Idaho into Montana. We have been in 3 states in one day today. So we got to Missoula around 3pm. I had seen a website for a really cool carousel there so we found it and had a go-round. Unfortunately the horses were a bit to fast for poor Sacha who basically screamed the whole way around. We did have a play in their dragon themed playground. We had a quick dinner in Butte, MT and have stopped for the night in Bozeman, MT, which is right next to Yellowstone NP. I have been to this town a bunch of times, as recently as last year, so i don’t feel like I have to explore much. Tomorrow we hit all new territory so I think we are going to be off the interstate quite a bit, looking around.

Aftermath

2011-06-16T10:43:00.001-07:00

The Canucks lost last night, they played really well for the first half of the game but once Boston scored it’s third goal against us, it was like the team lost it’s wind. Like they knew they could never get four goals behind Tim Thomas.

After the Olympics, there was such a great feeling of celebration and community in Vancouver and this year the play-offs felt like that as well. People would gather down town to watch the big screens outside CBC. When they showed the 150,000 people crowded on the streets last night before the game, I had a feeling that something was going to go terribly wrong. Unfortunately I was proven correct.

Click on the pic to make it big enough to read, but I think that is about right. What a bunch of drunk losers….

Making the riots worse, were the 10 times as many people hanging around taking pictures and posing with the riot police and damage and rioters behind them. Would things have gotten quite as bad with out an audience? With out huge crowds making it difficult to clear areas?

Obviously the majority of the rioters were too young to remember 1994 and the constant no fun zone Vancouver became for the next 5-10 years because every event was waiting for something like this to happen. Vancouver will be on a major “time out” after this one. I have seen some groups on facebook and some pictures of ordinary people going downtown this morning to help clean up the mess. These are the real Vancouverites, these are the real Canucks fans.

This is my favourite picture from the riots, it might be photoshopped, but I still think it is funny. Two people have their priorities straight :)

Seven Months

2011-06-15T16:19:00.001-07:00

This has been a huge month for Alice. She has a tooth. It is still too low for a good pic, but it is there. She has started eating and liking real food. Well, not really real food, but pureed baby food. She is a bigger fan of vegetables over fruit. She would much rather have peas over apples. She is also pretty good at sitting up on her own now, she will topple over still but i can sit her on the floor and she will stay put. She is also in her own room at night now. And as of just two days ago, she tolerates being on her stomach. So we think that crawling will not be too far away. This latest achievement is because now when she sleeps she rolls over like crazy, you put her in the crib in one spot and the next minute you look over she is at the other end and on her tummy. This was waking her up in the mornings pretty early, but we have now put her in a sleep sac for bedtimes (not naptimes) and she will sleep through the night again.

June 15, 2011
Seven Months

One – Two – Three – Four - Five - Six

I was in a big rush to get these pictures taken this morning, because Sacha had his preschool end of year party and we leave for the road trip tomorrow and are in Vancouver this afternoon to watch the game. I am pleasantly surprised how well they turned out considering I took them at 7:30am and in about 2 minutes.

Bridal Showering

2011-06-11T23:31:00.001-07:00

Last night I was in Vancouver to go to a wedding shower for Steph, Kai’s fiancée. The party went later than the last ferry home, so Andrew stayed home with both Alice and Sacha.

It was a really classy do. I hadn’t met any of Steph’s friends or family before but they all seemed really nice. We all bonded over the Canucks winning game 5. And one of her aunt’s had some crazy stories about nicknames and romances, it was most entertaining.

Before the party, I stopped at Kidsbooks and picked up a few new books to keep Sacha entertained on the roadtrip. I also got Andrew, Go The F*ck to Sleep for father’s day, except we are not going to be here on father’s day, so I gave it too him when I got home this afternoon.

It is a pretty funny little book, and you used to be able to read it all online, but I couldn’t find a good link in my two minutes of googling, so I didn’t post it here.

We leave on Thursday, and have a very busy week leading up to departure. I have packed up Sacha but still need to pack my own bags and get a letter of consent from Andrew. I did find an 8GB SD card at Costco today for $20. The last one I bought, in 2008 was a 4GB card and it cost me $60, so I was pretty pleased with that deal.

Maintaining Hope

2011-06-08T21:30:00.001-07:00

Apparently it was predicted that the Canucks would win the Stanely Cup in 7 games, I am starting to lose faith however. The last two games were probably the worse I have seen. I can’t help feeling like injuries must be affecting key players, because they just don’t have the jump that they did before. Hopefully the home ice advantage will kick in again. Maybe the ghost of Luc Bourdon is in Rogers Arena helping direct the puck. The Friday night knitting group that I go to has been cancelled this week because hockey is serious business! I couldn’t have gone this week anyway, because I am going to a wedding shower for my brother’s fiancée. I have to admit though, that because of this shower, I am kind of glad that there will be at least a game 6, because I don’t want to miss them winning the cup.

Since moving Alice to her own room, she has decided that 4am is the proper wake up time. I am not impressed with this. On top of that, every afternoon I have been giving her one meal that is not formula. Today I tried a cereal/porridge mix that had fruit in it. She really liked it and ate it up quickly, but about an hour after eating she wouldn’t stop crying. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong, changed her, played with her, cuddled her, put her to bed, gave her another small bottle of formula… Then we looked at the ingredients on the box. Contains milk. Alice has been on Soy formula since she was about 6 weeks old and it has made a big difference. Both Andrew and I have trouble with dairy products too so it is to be expected but for a little baby, she is very sensitive to it. I will be reading labels closely from now on.

When I was mixing up the cereal, Sacha was helping me. He couldn’t try any because it contained apricots and I was not in the mood to test out whether his orphanage diagnosed allergy to apricots is true. But when we were mixing it up, he said how he used to eat this when he was a little baby in Russia. That is a little bit of a translation, rather than a direct quote but I still thought that was pretty cool that he remembered that.

Alice Adventures

2011-06-06T11:40:00.001-07:00

So much has been going on in Alice’s life right now. She has outgrown her bassinette totally now. She has spent almost a week sleeping in her own crib, in her own room. It is weird not having her with us at night anymore. The bassinette is still in our room and we put the baby monitor in it so it sounds like she is there.

Also, last Tuesday she started getting her first tooth. I was waiting for it too poke up enough to get a picture before posting about it but it seems to be going up and down, making her miserable and not being easy to photograph.

She is also almost totally able to support her self while sitting up. She will teeter over now and then, but I can put her on the floor sitting up with a toy and she can reach and play with it.

Kids’ Fest

2011-06-03T22:52:00.001-07:00

Lately, I haven’t been updating all that often because I haven’t done anything worth writing about. This time it is because we have been so busy. I have really been trying to make an effort and get out of the house and do things.

On Wednesday, Andrew had a networking/hockey game watching meeting, so on last minute notice we came into Vancouver. At the meeting he found out about a conference the next day, so we spent the night.

While Andrew was at the conference and Mum looked after Alice, I took Sacha to the International Children’s Festival. It has moved from Vanier Park under the traditional big tents, to Granville island so they can use the theatres with more technical abilities. I guess it is good so the shows can be more “of the times” but I kind of miss the old tents. I always remember it raining during the Children’s festival when we were younger and the weather didn’t disappoint for Sacha’s first experience. It poured rain. We were so lucky, we got the last 2 rush tickets to see the Pirates Cove show. It was so much fun and Sacha loved it. They turned the aquabus into a pirate ship and took us (the crew) on a treasure hunt around False Creek. After the show he painted a stick for a big group sculpture commemorating Vancouver turning 125.

He was very very good, until he just wasn’t. On his insistence, we lined up to get his face painted. He waited pretty well in the 20 minute line but when we got to the front, he refused to sit down, he didn’t want to get his face painted, but he didn’t want to leave either and threw a fit. I had to haul him out, cause it was such a long line, it wasn’t like I could let him hum and haw while 30 people were waiting out in the pissing rain. It was pretty down hill from there, we tried to do a couple other activities but nothing was going right for him. So we just went back to Mum’s house, where he had a 2 hour nap as soon as we got there.

Rings and Things

2011-05-31T13:00:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple more pics from our Whistler weekend.

Sacha still gets really excited when he sees the Olympic rings. Because he wasn’t talking at the time, it was hard to know if he really had fun during the Games. Now we know he did and that it was fun enough to be excited a year later. The two pics below are from Shannon Falls.

Mini Break

2011-05-29T21:55:00.001-07:00

Our quick little trip up to Whistler was a good one. We saw 3 bears along the highway as we drove up, and they were real bears, not stumps. I have occasionally made that mistake before, gotten all excited over a stump. Andrew saw these bears too.

On Friday we drove up to Pemberton to have a look around. It is much nicer than the last time I was there about 6 years ago. I think they got a bunch of new shops and a coat of paint on everything since for the Olympics. It is really beautiful in the valley too. Green farmlands surrounded by huge mountains.

After our little driving adventure, on which I managed to break my brand new iTrip/phone charger combo that I had only owned for about 24 hours while driving around a sharp bend, we had lunch in Whistler village. Luckily the charger was fixable, but now looks like crap with scotch tape holding it together. After lunch we played at the park in the village for a bit and then headed back to the house so Alice and Andrew could have naps.

We saw another bear on the drive down, and it was in a spot that was easy to stop and take pics of, so we made a u-turn on the highway and took some pics. We were probably way to close to the bear for safety sake, but he was just a little one and we were quick and in a car.

On Saturday, while Andrew went to the Whitecaps game, Sacha, Alice and I went out to visit Devon. Sacha flung himself off her ottoman into her arms for about 45 minutes straight. He fell asleep quickly on the car ride back to pick up Andrew and meet up with Siobhan, Colin, Ali and Diana for dinner. It was really nice seeing a bunch of our friends again. Definitely feeling a bit more “reset” but I am pretty sure my road trip is on. Rearranged a bit, but it will now be me, Sacha and Mum driving across the USA to the east coast and Carolinas. I am looking forward to it a lot.