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It Doesn't Get Any Worse Than This

Migraines
Sinus Infection
Ear Infection
Throwing Up

All at once.

I went to the doctor twice this weekend to get drugs.

Yuck.


Things I am thankful for this weekend:

1. My Husband. He stayed home late last night to help put the girls to bed before he went to work.
2. My Mom. She drove 2 hours last night to come help with the girls. She snuggled with Ella in the middle of the night so that I didn't have to get up.
3. My Kids. Brie was very compassionate about the throwing up and she tried very hard to be a good girl today. Both girls were thrilled to have their grandma out here today.
4. Drugs that take away the pain and let me eat food again.

Snow. Seriously?

Seriously? This is what I woke up to this morning. I am not impressed!!

7 Things

I was tagged by Tara to list 7 interesting things about me. I've been waiting for my brain to return from this cold, but so far it's not looking very hopeful. I'll just have to do my best anyways!!

1. I am a freebie/coupon fanatic. I frequent the Frugal Shopper discussion forum almost daily to get info about new sales/coupons/freebies. I used to enter the contests on there too but gave up because I never won anything ever. People often comment on where I get my freebies. I also am a Bzz Agent which lets me try stuff for free and sometimes share with other people too! The best freebie by far was the Sonicare Toothbrush, which was worth about $130! I love it and use it every day. I could talk for a long time about this stuff but I don't want to bore anyone. Just let me know if you want to hear more sometime.

2. I don't like being cold. I could easily become one of those snowbirds (aka retired people who travel wherever it's warm) for the rest of my life. Every day at home I am wearing my wool cardigan and my slippers. At night I also plug in my beloved heat dish (from Costco) to help keep me warm. Just call me granny, I guess!

3. I am a very restless person, always switching positions. I must drive everyone crazy at church if we sit on the same pew. John is used to it now but it used to bother him when he was trying to sleep and I was constantly rolling over.

4. I also get stir crazy easily. Unfortunately my girls also take on this trait. I can't wait until I am feeling better and then we will have a girls day in the city! We can go to some real stores (as opposed to the Saan here, or online shopping) and see some people.

5. I have a really hard time not singing out loud if music is playing and I know the songs. I think I have sung for most of my life and it's just become a big part of who I am.

6. I am terrified of wasps! I used to put bees into this same category but after gardening for several years I see that they really are quite harmless. Wasps, however, scare the crap out of me. I am the crazy person that you often can see in the summertime, running around in wild circles and waving her arms through the air, while shrieking. I have actually tried to tame this fear because of my girls and I have been quite successful. Unfortunately Brie has picked up the fear anyways.

7. My "J" personality is much stronger outside of home. I am still orderly about things, but not as obsessive about it when I am outside of home, at work for example. This means, my house is not always tidy like I think it should be, and I can't blame it all on the kids!

Well now I'm supposed to tag other people to do this meme.
1. Kim Olsen
2. Seanna
3. Kerry
4. Amanda
5. Kelle

That's all!

Robeez Tredz Contest

The Opinionated Parent is hosting another contest! This one is for a pair of Robeez Tredz, valued at $41.95. Unlike the regular Robeez, these ones are designed for outdoor use. Enter the contest by leaving a comment about your favorite design. Extra entry for blogging about it too!

One Month Left!!

After waiting for years and years to get to see this amazing show, I only have exactly one month left to wait!

This even brings a smile to my face today after a pathetic attempt at sleep and feeling worse than yesterday.

I absolutely cannot wait any longer!

Pity Party

Sorry for my lack of posting this past week. My goal with this new blog was to have several new entries a week. So far I think I have been doing well. Until this week, that is. It's just seeming to go from bad to worse.

I mentioned before that Brie was getting pink eye in one of her eyes. It progressed into both eyes and then she got a really bad cold on top of it. Bad en0ugh that she was napping twice a day. She hasn't napped (other than when sick) since her 2nd birthday. So napping is a big deal. I had to decide whether or not to take her to her dance pictures on Thursday. Pink eye, runny nose....that should make for some beautiful pics! However I did decide to take her, this is her first year and I kinda had my heart set on doing a scrapbook page of it. What was 30 minutes of out our day? Well it was fine until about 10 minutes before her group was scheduled and I realized I didn't have her dance shoes with me. Fortunately we live in a small town so a drive home and back only takes 5 minutes. BUT I left her there in her costume. She was hysterical. The full out screaming terror that you never want to admit is your own child. Yep that was my girl. I left her with Cheryl, a lady from church, who has one of her older girls in dance. Brie was smiling when I returned, much to my relief! I'm not sure how the pictures will turn out though.

Then Ella got the pink eye and bad cold. She has been MIS-ER-A-BLE! I cannot stress this enough! Normally when she is sick, she is of course needy, like all kids are, but she usually keeps her fun-loving personality and enthusiasm. Not this time. She has been awful to deal with. So many tears for no reason, horrible sleeps, zero appetite. Awful!

We missed out on an Easter dinner at my mom's this weekend, plus my nephew's birthday party. The girls were so very disappointed. So was I, but I was not going to take 2 sick and miserable kids to the city by myself. No thanks, I would rather have some teeth pulled!

Now John and I are sick. It really stinks. His version of sick is more of the "suck-it-up" variety, not your usual "man-cold", which I greatly appreciate! It makes my being sick at the same time much more pleasant, if that is possible. I'm just really hoping and praying that I don't get the horrible cough that my girls have. I start up my new session of Music Pups this Friday and I obviously need my singing voice for it! Yikes.

Now to get back to resting.....

See Kai Run Contest

The Opinionated Parent is giving away a cute pair of kids shoes from See Kai Run. To enter you can leave a comment at TOP about your 3 favorite styles. Warning, it will be hard to pick just 3!

Rose Petal Cottage Contest

Mom's Views is giving away this awesome Rose Petal Cottage right now! It is valued at $210 and I think that both my girls would absolutely love it. Heck! I would love it too!

She Strikes Again!

Oh the wonderful age of two! We just bought a new 1 Litre of bubble bath on the weekend. It was still unused until this evening. Ella was already out of the bath and in her pajamas.

There is hardly anything left in the bottle now. Sigh.

It has been a very long day already. A short sleep, a dentist appointment, a child with pink eye (who literally thinks we are trying to kill her with her medicine) and a trip to the doctor....my leg/hip is sore today and I am out of patience.

Here's to a peaceful evening. I am supposed to help at the preschool in the morning, but I may be going without Brie if her eye looks awful in the morning. Good times!

Mish Mash

Today is just a mish-mash of thoughts and events that have or will occur soon. I have way too much on my mind to just settle down to one or two ideas so you will just have to bear with me!



This weekend we all went to Saskatoon for errands/fun shopping/birthday party. It was rushed but good to see lots of family in a short amount of time. Next weekend we are back for an Easter dinner and also another birthday party. What is with these nephews being born 1 week apart?!? My girls have been very excited to go to the parties. Presents, cake, kids...who could ask for more?



This weekend we bought a new bike for Brie! The past few years she has not been interested at all in riding a bike. My in-laws bought her a second-hand one that was in great shape, but she would refuse to try the pedals...or cry and have a big show. Fun times. Fortunately this year I think she is ready. We used some of her allowance to pay for the bike, as her birthday has already passed this year. She was thrilled to get the money to pay for it herself! Her conditions were that the bike had to be pink with NO HOLES. I'm not entirely sure what no holes means but we just went with it. I was also surprised that she wanted pink, as her favorite color is red. She makes sure everyone in the world knows that her favorite color is red!!! So we picked up her bike on Friday and John put it together yesterday afternoon when we got home. She is still learning how to rotate her feet in a circular motion but is slowly getting the hang of it. John and I are just impressed that she isn't freaking out but that she keeps trying, even when she doesn't get it right the first time, or the fifth time. Definitely a sign of her maturity.



Friday also was the conclusion to my very first session of Music Pups. For those of you who don't know about it, I started up an early childhood music program in Wynyard. It is for young babies and goes up to preschool ages. It's perfect for me! I love kids and I love music, plus I get to take my girls with me. It's just a great fit for something "to do" plus earn a little bit of money along the way. Each session is 10 weeks long and goes for 45 minutes a week. This first session, for winter, I was trying to be too considerate of other people's needs and decided to only have classes when there was no elementary school that day (being Fridays). Well that makes 10 weeks go WAY too long! I started in November and just finished now. I am starting up another session next Friday but am doing it a straight 10 weeks in a row. Much nicer. Keeps everyone feeling connected and interested in the music, I think.


Tonight we are headed out without kids (how often does that happen?) to a farewell for 2 of the members at the detachment here. Soon they will be down to just 3 members, one of which is John. Yeah. Only 3 of them to keep the peace during the busy summer months. I am SO looking forward to it. They are currently working on making up a new schedule for the 3 of them. It will obviously include a lot of on-call and overtime, which is nice only in the compensation. We aren't entirely sure how our holidays will work. John may have to add only a few days to some days off to make it close to a week off at a time. (The other 2 members are really considerate and they have all discussed never being off for more than a week at once) So we will just make the most of it when he does get time off. Nothing can be worse than last Christmas when he was working double shifts at home and then in Saskatoon for the Corrections Worker's strike. That was an awful month!


Now to tidy the house before we go out tonight....

My First Win

I won a healthy plate today! This sure didn't take long to win a blog contest! Very exciting.

I also won some Clinique mascara because Roxanne entered me this morning for a Lou Lou giveaway contest. Thanks sis!

A great day!!

Mostly Thankful

This week has been a great week for my girls. They seem to play together almost constantly and they rarely have disagreements (although when they do it gets ugly!). They play dress up together, they color together, they play toys together, they watch TV together. It's very sweet to watch each day!

Brie goes to preschool once a week on Wednesday mornings. Yesterday morning it was just Ella and I at home. She comes over to me before 11:00 and says, "Can we go get Brianna now?" She was sad because she missed her sister. I would think she would enjoy the 2 1/2 hours of peace each week, but nope! She misses their time together. How cute. I just love that they get along so well.

Getting along so well also means that they conspire together. This week I have been dealing with the aftermath of a few "incidents". At the beginning of the week they each took turns destroying Ella's children's bible....shredding pages of it into tiny little pieces of paper. At the time I was in another room listening to their laughter and thinking what cute girls I have. Then I heard the sound of the ripping paper. Grr. This was a gift from our church when we had Ella dedicated so this was quite disappointing to me.

Yesterday afternoon the girls were playing together as per usual. Brie was in the bathroom washing up and suddenly I heard the sound of the potty. It didn't sound like the normal potty sound, it sounded like it was plugged. So I very quickly raced to the bathroom. (Had I known that I would be blogging about this...I would have taken a picture, but who is thinking of taking a picture when also thinking of strangling your children?!?) All of the bottles of shampoo and body wash were in the toilet. The plug for the tub was mysteriously gone. Flushed down into no-man's-land. Grr. So we are now without a plug. So far the toilet is okay, but how do you retrieve a plug from inside? Hopefully it doesn't get stuck in there!

Free To Five

I have 5 FPCs (FREE product coupons) to give away in a draw to anyone who leaves a comment on this post. The FPCs are for one FREE 4-pack of Nordica Single Serve Cottage Cheese, any flavour. Made by Gay Lea and the coupon is good until Sept. 30/08.

These coupons are courtesy of Matchstick, a word of mouth program. If you wish to enter my draw, you must be Canadian and enter by Friday March 14 midnight. I will mail out these coupons to 5 lucky winners. Good luck!

Prima Princessa DVD Contest

Thanks to Tara I am entering a contest for a cute DVD for kids all about ballet! Since my little Brie is in dance I think that this would be perfect! She is always interested in ballerinas and such, as was apparent from her ballerina birthday cake and all. There is a review and the contest at The Opinionated Parent.

They Don't Mix

This week I was asked to lead singing at church while my friend Kristi played piano. We are happy to help out, especially since this allows us to sing more "current" songs. I still remember when we moved here and the pianist introduced a new song "Praise The Name of Jesus". I believe that song is circa 1970. She called it a new song. In 2005 it was a New song! Very sad. I don't think our church congregation will ever be ready for the likes of Chris Tomlin unfortunately. So we listen to praise and worship music a lot at home. Lately Ella has been singing along which is so neat to watch. She has an amazing pitch and she always sings with a smile on her face. Even if she doesn't know the words she sings along.

While us 2 moms were going to the front to lead, we were leaving our children to behave themselves in the pews. Apparently this is easier said than done. Brie is a great kid, who always listens to instruction. Unfortunately if she watches other kids getting away with stuff......then she figures she should be able to do it also. So there I am at the front of the church, singing into the microphone, while Ella is running up on stage and Brie is running into the room that is just off to the side of the front. Sigh. What was I supposed to do? Stop leading the singing to yell at the girls to sit down? Kristi's son Sam was also on the stage and he was interfering with the overhead. Not distracting at all. Big sigh.

This is when I wish that my husband worked a 9-5 Mon-Fri type of job. Not going to happen. Last night he worked until 3 am. He came home to sleep, was on call all morning, and went back to work at 2 pm today. He is the only person working today. Another sigh. It's not fun being the one who "HAS" to take the kids to church by myself. They don't really get anything out of church, except playing with their few friends. No one ever offers to watch the kids so that we can actually hear an Entire sermon front to back. It's very hard to come home feeling frustrated, once again. But we keep going. I have faith that things will get better. Once we find out the results of the NCD survey we filled out recently, we should be able to make some good changes.

Is it bad to already be thinking and praying about the church we will be in next? After all, we will still be here for another couple of years, for sure.

Poncho Contest

Skipping Hippos ponchos. They look absolutely beautiful and I would love to win one for one of my girls! Check out the contest here at momsviews

Momsviews also has another contest on these stylish Good Pails To Have They are really nice and I could come up with many uses for them.

Family Painting

Earlier this week, Brie got to paint with her nose at preschool. Slightly odd, I think, but she has been talking about it quite a bit so obviously it was a big hit! She was practically begging me to let her paint this morning, but as I hadn't even finished eating my breakfast, I was able to hold her off until this afternoon. After seeing the finished products (and my filthy table...even though we put newspaper down) I remembered why we haven't painted in a very long time!


This is Ella, note the brownish-greyish hands. Actually her hands didn't get really bad until I put the camera away. The paint almost went up to her elbows!

Ella's finished product. See the fingerprints/hand prints throughout?Here is Brie goofing off for the camera (as per usual)
What a "beautiful" blend of colors!

I guess Brie made the swamp...John made the alligator?
Country Gal by Brianna

Country Gal by Moi. Quite the talent, I must say. Heh heh heh!!

At least my table is now clean, my kids are now clean too. I would love to post a video of Ella's "mess" (somehow that word doesn't seem quite accurate enough) but now my computer won't let me add from our camcorder. Grr. I can't stand computers!

Blog Contest

It seems like there are LOTS of contests out there dedicated to bloggers. Since it's usually my sister who wins everything (Right, Roxanne?) I thought that it's only fair to get into this again.

There is a book giveaway at Bits of Myself for a children's book called "C is For Coco". The draw is open until March 31.

Spring Fever

Sometimes I think that I must get spring fever worse than other people! I have been doing everything in my power lately to make the weather turn into nice spring temperatures. I have purchased new sleeping bags for both the girls. I also bought another Thermarest (it's a self-inflating air mattress for one) for camping this year. I have been searching Saskatchewan camp sites for making decisions on where we want to go this summer. I ordered a new spring coat which came yesterday and I love it. I have been looking at bikes online, trying to figure out which size we will need to buy for Brie this summer. I am convinced that THIS is the year that she will actually be interested in trying to pedal herself around so we need a larger bike to fit her growing body. I have already purchased seeds for starting in the house before they go out in the greenhouse.

Yet all of these efforts seem to be in vain. Today it is -35 with the windchill. Seriously? It is March, people! I am officially DONE with winter. Bring on the puddles and the wind. Bring on the rain. Just no more freaking snow please!!

Cute Kids!

I haven't yet put any pictures of my girls on this new blog of mine. I had lots of pictures on Multiply (my old blog) and then mostly used Facebook to update friends and family with new pictures. However today I have to share some pictures from yesterday.

This past week the girls have had 3 late nights due to meetings that I have had to drag them to. This is the very unfortunate part of having a husband that works shift work and with the short staff here, it means he is mostly working the night shift. So the girls have been very tired. Monday night was another meeting so the girls didn't get to bed until 9:30, when the norm is 8:00. Ella decided to wake up at 5:30 am and although she was able go back to sleep for over an hour, I was not. So we were both tired yesterday. Anyone who knows Ella well, knows that she is a busy girl but she gave up her naps about 4-5 months ago. Very sad since she wasn't even 2 at the time. Yesterday she was whiny and grumpy. She is a girl who completely loves physical touch...back rubs, hugs, etc. This is definitely her "love-language"! John was giving her a back rub and she actually fell asleep in his arms before supper. So cute! Here's a couple of pics:

Last night as the girls were getting ready for bed, Ella decided to pick out some pajamas for Brie to wear. I should have taken a picture of the pile of clothes as I'm sure there were about 10 items of clothing there. John and I acted very serious and told Brie that she had to put it ALL on! She is often too serious and very legalistic sometimes, so we try very hard to make her less so! Well it must have worked last night. Here she is wearing 2 pairs of PJs to bed:

You can see that the purple fleece shirt isn't fitting so well over the other top.

As you can see from her purple feet, she has the purple pants underneath the striped ones. She actually slept this way all night and said she wasn't too warm.

Compassion

It's always amazing to me how God works out timing in our lives! As some of you may already know, John and I are sponsors to a little girl in the Dominican Republic. Her name is Ashly and she is 4 years old. Just last week we received 2 letters from her. They are very simple, but I love and appreciate the heartfelt gratitude that is apparent in each and every letter.

I have been trying to figure out how to better communicate with Ashly and to make it an entire "family" experience, rather than mostly myself. When I signed up at Breakforth last year, I was one of almost 1000 people that also signed up to sponsor a child! 1000 people! That's huge! What a difference it makes in each of these children's lives.

After reading Jen's blog last week I discovered that Compassion (USA) sent 15 bloggers to Uganda in February, with the purpose of blogging about their experiences. I have read several of their blogs lately and it has really inspired me to get more involved with Ashly, as well as helping to spread the word about the great organization that Compassion really is.

I have already added a banner to the top of my blog. You can get lots of info on sponsoring a child there. It's only $35 a month. Not everyone can afford it, but realistically...most of us can. Without even noticing it! I encourage each of you to see if this is a good option for your family. So often in these experiences, we think we will be blessing someone else, but they in return bless us so much more!

April 6th is Compassion Sunday. My plan is to promote it in our church. What can you do to help these kids out? Pray. Promote. Provide. Very simple.