And the award goes to

The award to which I refer is the "Mother of the Year Award". And I highly doubt I'll be getting it. Linden is becoming quite mobile which would not be a bad thing except for the fact that he has no fear. Add on top of this new found mobility the fact that he is cutting his two top teeth to go along with the bottom two and you have disaster in the making. This morning, while walking along the furniture Linden took a little spill and smacked his mouth on his wooden rocking chair and cut his top lip open. There was blood everywhere...... okay.... not everwhere just mostly on my white top. The good news... he'll survive, it barely slowed him down. The bad news, and the evidence of my not getting the mother of the year award.........

That's right. My boy is crying because he hurt himself, hubby is mocking him and I'm taking pictures. But of course we made sure he was okay first.

MOTHER OF THE YEAR HERE I COME!

A little thing I like to call....

Me and Kirsten time. It's a legally binding contract that I have with my best bud. No really... I have the contract on my computer at work. I'm not exactly sure of the actual legality of it, but there sure is a lot of legal mumbo jumbo in it.

But I digress. Unfortunately this little thing we call life has gotten in the way of "our time" lately and we really have had to fight to schedule it. Between work, kids, kids work (hers, not mine), hubbys, hockey and dancing, it's been tough and I'll be the first to say it, I miss it. Whether it is just sitting at her kitchen table drinking coffee or partaking in a little thing we like to call playing with paper. Luckily, my hubby is pretty much done reffing hockey for the season and was able to stay home with Linden on Friday night and Kirsten and I were able to spend some time playing with paper.

However, since I don't get to do this often, my creativity seems to have faded and I was having a hard time thinking of any ideas. So I popped over to Kirsten's scrapbooking blog and took a peek at one of the challenges she had posted. And I give her full credit for this layout because I basically stole her idea. And here it is in all it's glory

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As a sidenote: I ABSOLUTELY LOVE this picture of my boy. And I can't even take credit for that either. Hubby took it one day while I was at work.

So hopefully now that hockey is over, I'll get more opportunities to scrapbook becaues I really do enjoy it. (I think it plays well into my self-diagnosed OCD)

spring is in the air

And I am loving it. Not only does it mean that sometime in the near future winter will end but it also means that I can again open my windows. I'm one of the weird people who love the smell of fresh air and as soon as it's not minus 1 million degrees outside, my windows are open.

What else does the coming of spring bring.... SPRING CLEANING!!!!!

And I do love to spring clean. Out with the old and in with the new. On my agenda for my spring cleaning this year is to convince hubby that he needs to clean out his closet and dresser and get rid of all his old clothes that he doesn't wear. I swear he had shirts he has never ever worn, but heaven forbid I throw them out or rather donate them to the second hand store. We usually do the later. So that covers the out with the old. What's the in with the new you might be asking yourself .

Well here it is, nothing fancy, but we decided that we wanted a new bed. Did we need a new bed? Probably not. But we both have been wanting to get a king-sized bed for a while now, so yesterday we drove into Winnipeg in father in law's truck and proceeded to buy a new bed. I can't wait to sleep in it tonight.

So today has been a combination of my usual cleaning routine, laundry, taking apart the old bed, putting together the new bed, getting odd little jobs done around the house, and all this while hubby is away at a hockey game. I do get more done when he's not around. My dad came over and installed our new thermostat. Our new one is digital and programmable. I'm so excited to see if it saves me the 33% on my hydro bill that the package says.

Well, the bathrooms are not cleaning themselves......... someone should definitely invent a self-cleaning bathroom. I would totally buy four of them.

The thing about small towns is......

Mechanics can pretty much charge whatever they like and get away with it. I just finished paying $300 to have one window fixed in my car and an oil change. And why did I pay this outrageous price, because I had no other choice. My usual mechanic is unavailable until April and well, having your driver's door window fall down into the abyss of the door in February is not such a good thing. So, being that it really did need to get fixed, I took it against my better judgement to one of the dealerships in town. It just so happens that we take all of our vehicle from work there and both of my in-laws work there also. Therefore one would like to think that they would get at least decent service.



I guess I made the fatal error of mentioning that I had another vehicle that I could use since my parents are out of town. It took a week to get it fixed, now granted two of those days the world (well my world at least) stood still because of a freak warm spell and rain in February, but really how long could it possibly take to replace 2 plastic clips? Which I might add, better be coated in gold if I ever take the door apart to look. Seriously? $68.00 for a little plasitc clip!!!!!!! And explain to me this, 1 window, 2 clips, 2 different prices for each clip! Something sounds a little fishy to me. Especially since I could probably go online and find them for, oh I don't know, $5.00.



But really, the price is not the best part of the story. The best part is this. Turn the clock back to Friday. At this point they had had the vehicle for 1 week already, and it was getting to the end of the day. The service department is not open on weekends and because of the civic holiday would not be open on Monday (yesterday). So the outlook of having my vehicle back for the weekend was getting kind of grim, because as previously mentioned I had another vehicle to drive, therefore they could take their sweet time. But I digress. At approximately 5 o'clock, while sitting down to have a quick supper with the hubby before he went to hockey, the phone rings. It is one of my co-workers informing me that the shop had called and if I could get there before 6, they would leave my keys at the front desk. I thought it a little odd that they phoned my work, considering I left a message at the service department that morning to call my cell phone. But I didn't really care, I was just happy to get my car back for the weekend. Now, fast forward to Tuesday. Around 11 o'clock this morning I call my house to listen to any messages left on our machine. There is one from the service station saying that my bill is ready and if I would kindly come pay it. The punch line of this was, they couldn't be bothered to look up my home phone number to tell me that my car is ready, but they sure had no problem calling when the bill was ready.

Gotta love small towns!

And the road was paved with good intentions....

.... but really, are good intentions going to help me in my weight loss goal? I think not.

I had the best of intentions of going to the gym to get a good cardio workout in, but unfortunately that was not to be the case. You see, my office has two pass cards for the local gym which are there for us to use. Well, technically I think they are for the officers to use, but I digress and I refuse to pay $200 for a membership. (PS: Kris if you're reading this, send that letter!!!! You know which one I'm talking about) Oh look, apparently I took a left turn without signalling. Anyway, since these passes are for everyone and anyone they stay at the office with all the keys to the cars. I went to pick one up this morning, not just needing to go to the gym but also wanting to go and for some bizarre reason, they were both gone. Now one might question as to why I want to go to the gym when I have a treadmill in my basement. Well here is the answer..... it's old.... does't have a timer or any features for that matter .... and most of all, to adjust the speed is more of a workout than actually running on the treadmill itself.

Why the sudden interest in exercise? Well, our office is having a Biggest Loser competition of it's own. We started January 1st and are going for 4 months. I did fairly well the first month with a total weight loss of 6 pounds. February however, not so good. I'd like to say it's because hubby has been busy with hockey and between work and dancing and hockey I just haven't had the time. But really that's just a poor excuse for being kinda lazy. We're no busier this month than we were last. I just have to make a point of going to the gym EVERY night that I can. Whether I have to go straight from work before hubby goes to hockey or whatever, but it needs to be done.

So basically this post has absolutely no point other than a means for me to give myself a stern talking to about being lazy and lethargic and to give myself the kick in the butt I need to get moving. The weight isn't going to just fall off. Is it? Maybe if I wish REALLY REALLY hard I will wake up 5 pounds lighter. And while I'm at it, I wish for a money tree and for the ability to turn everything I touch to gold.

How do I do this again?

So I have been introduced to a new blog that I have become a daily reader of. This particular blog is written by a co-worker's hubby, who is now a stay at home dad of two little boys. Well, before the boys were born and him and his spouse moved to our neck of the woods, he was a professional journalist, so one can only imagine how well this man can tell a story. This made me very aware of the fact that I have been somewhat neglecting my blogging duties by being merely a passive participant instead of an active one.

So here I sit on a Saturday night, Valentine's day nevertheless, alone (well, not quite alone, I have the dog, the cat and Linden here, but they are all sleeping), trying to figure out if I remember how to do this thing we call "Blogging".

Well, between both me and hubby working full time, both of us instructing dancing, bowling and hubby reffing hockey, we haven't had alot of spare time and therefore nothing really "Blog" worthy has happened. I'm just writing for the purpose of writing and hopefully this will ignite my spark to do this on a somewhat regular basis.

Long time.... no blog....

It was recently brought to my attention that I had not paid any attention to this blog in quite a while. And it wasn't until I read it, that in fact it has been a while..... almost 5 months to be exact. Where has the time gone????? In a nutshell, it has gone to spending every spare minute of my day with the most handsome, charming little boy ever..... Linden. It's been a very busy and interesting couple of months and here is a brief recap, (considering I can't remember what I did last week, we'll see what I can remember from 5 months ago).

August

The first weekend of August was like every other August long weekend in Gimli. Icelandic Festival weekend. Which at work we call, well I'm pretty sure this is a family site so I can't say it. But I'm sure you can figure it out. What with an influx of up to 50,000 people, bars open until 3:00am, and packs of roving teenagers and adults who feel that the laws go out the window for the festival weekend. This is the one weekend of the year that it is MANDATORY that the office staff work (fyi: I work in a police station). Being that I was on Maternity leave, the office was automatically down one person. Usually this would be bad enough but no, it got worse. There happened to be major staffing changes while I was on leave and that left only one clerk to work in the office and she only had 2 weeks experience. So I, being the dutiful employee that I am, volunteered to come in and work the night shifts for that weekend. And work I did, I believe I ended up working over 22 hours between 7:00PM Saturday and 3:00 AM Monday morning. Add to this a baby that still wasn't sleeping through the night and a husband who needed to be at his job in the mornings. It was a long weekend, but it was nice to get back to work, if even for a short and STRESSFUL time and who doesn't like to feel appreciated.

The rest of August consisted of Folklorama where my dance students were performing, a couple of weddings and spending time with friends and family. The rest of the month pretty much paled in comparision to going to work for that one weekend. (Those who know me, and know what happened this August in Gimli will know what I'm talking about).

September and October

Nothing really happened in September or October worth writing home about. Linden got bigger, and so did his personality. Man is that kid a character and a flirt. Give him a room full of people and he's bound to put on a show.

November

What an interesting month. I went back to work full-time and my hubby took some parental leave and stayed home with Linden. While it felt really good to get back to work, a part of me really missed being at home with my baby. But, the smiles I got everyday when I got home from work made it all worth it. I'm one of those people that needs to be doing something, I need a routine and to feel productive and with the weather turning colder out, getting out of the house was becoming less and less and cabin fever was starting to set in. I had absolutely no reservations about Garrett staying home with Linden everyday, he is absolutely wonderful and Linden is a true Daddy's boy.

So back to work..... It probably took me a good two weeks to get back into the swing of things and remember how to do everything. It did take me at least three weeks to get my desk back in order and find all of the desk supplies that had been pilfered off my desk while I was gone. But man does it feel good to be back and to feel needed. At the risk of sounding conceted, I really don't know how they survived without me, I mean half of them can't even send a fax without screwing something up. As the boss said on my first day back, "The techno geek is back". And by no means am I a techno geek, I'm just not a techno tard and know my way around a computer.

Linden was teething something terrible and finally on November 30th he started cutting his first tooth. Now he has his bottom front two teeth and must chew on everything, but his favorite things to chew on are our fingers and noses.

December was a big month for us and I do believe that the two big events that happened deserve their own entries, which I promise to get to before summer.