it begins...

Both of mine are now in the school system. Heaven help me ;)

I think I'm in love

My wonderful Sil and mil went together and bought me the most amazing coffee pot for my birthday. This bad boy even grinds the coffee before it brews it!! You all know how much I love my coffee 8) good thing that decaf doesn't bother me right now.

new layout

This is one of my creations for my September Design Team at Scrapper's Haven. Come and check us out! We've got a great contest coming up, Iron Chef III, so come on over and sign up to play!

exhaution

Its seriously been too long since I updated my blog. But I'm honestly so exhausted these days that I can barely put a few sentances together on the computer. And to think that I go back to work in 3 days, yeesh, I'm going to be dragging.

So many updates to do. First Abby is starting school sooner than we thought so she doesn't have an extra week at home. She's thrilled, mommy is a bit sad. Ethan is so not wanting to go to school but we've been trying to hype him up about it. You know the rah, rah, rah new teacher, new friends that kind of thing. But I think that he's on to us.

Poor guy had to have two teeth extracted this past week and be put under to boot. He did really well though and had no adverse effects from the anethesisa.

Other news I seem to be surrounded by pregnant friends and family, congratulations to all. Hopefully by Christmas we'll have some news :)

Oh and I turned 30. No biggie. Someone asked me how I was doing with that and I said, well I want another baby, what do you think? lol. No really I'm fine with being 30, because I'm totally better now than I was at 25 or even 23. I'm healthier, not overweight and fell content with myself and the decisions that we've made in our lives. What more could I ask for?

Happy belated Anniversary Honey!

Things have been so crazy busy here, hummm maybe that should be the name of this blog? Sure is a reoccuring theme. Ron and I got to go out for supper on our anniversary (aug. 15) and we had a really great time. Yummy yummy food, way too rich chocolate explosion cake. I didn't even count the calories because once a year it doesn't count, lol! So here's some pictures of us....best that I could do with a timer and short arms ;)

Happy Birthday Emily!

A Big Happy 3rd Birthday to my niece Emily!! One of these days Auntie will get a good picture of you, lol!

so worth the price of 2 slushies

We had some fun with multigrain alphabet pretzels. Planning on using this for a title on a scrapbook layout.
I so love this picture! Abby's eyes are just so blue! Can't believe that my baby is 5!!
The kids had some fun with this and of course the cat had to get involved. She follows them around everywhere.

This on is enlarged and printed in 8x10 format for my living room. I can't get over how much older Ethan looks. Love the coloring of it too.

so apparently

nobody reads this but me! lol. I guess my ramblings and odd pictures don't warrent an audience. Yeah, well I'll get over it.

We've been busy here, isn't that always the case? Had Ron's birthday party yesterday, lots of fun had by all. Gearing up for my niece's party next weekend. Had to recheck her birthday gifts because of the dumb Fisher Price recall. Yesh! Kids' toys no less.

I'm getting psyched up for my anniversary and birthday. So not sure how I feel about turning 30. On one hand I feel like I'm there already. On the other that's pretty grown up and I don't know that this is how I wanted my life to be by this time. Not sure if I want to say, yup done with having more kids, this is the career I wanted, we're just trucking along. Or do I want to go in another direction, possibly more kids (my mom would just be shaking her head at this point) do I really want to stay in the school for the rest of my life? I mean the pay is good, for what feels like glorified babysitting sometimes.

The whole baby thing is really at the front of my mind lately. Probably the bio-clock ticking. We were so sure, so happy to be done with the babies and diapers and all. I was enjoying how much simplier things were getting with older kids. No more babysitters anymore (for work that is) having 2 kids is easy. Ron and I tag team them with surprising agility. We are actually getting time alone, time for trips for the two of us, we can go out more (not that we always do) Do we really want to shuffle things up again? Are our finances able to handle a 3rd? There are things we want to do, trips, renovations that kind of thing. With another baby this all gets pushed aside for a very long time, possibly never to happen. I don't know how another baby would change all our family dynamics. Ethan and Abby need us especially starting school and growing up. Would we take away from them by adding another? Am I ready to deal with the job/maternity leave again? How would that affect my now job? I'm so not sure what to do.

odd ramblings

Lately I've been feeling a little reflective, sad and unsure of what I should be doing. We were at church yesterday and it was a baby dedication Sunday, so cute all those little babies and it got me thinking. Ron and I always said that we were done and I was ok with that. But now looking at all those little ones got me thinking. All day yesterday I thought and figured how things could work, trying to make it right in my head. I know that because my 30th birthday is coming up that I'm feeling those old bio-time clocks ticking. For every reason that I want to have another baby comes 3 more that say we shouldn't. Finances, going through all the baby stuff again, having to do the babysitter thing again. I just can't see it happening at this point. I mean Abby is 5 already. That's quite a gap. I don't think that I can be a stay at home mom, and I don't want to do the babysitter route again.

Then I got to thinking about the real reason I was sad. In some ways I think we missed our chance to have more but in reality I'm sad that I really won't have anymore babies. I'm sad that my kids are growing so quickly. I'm sad, in some ways, that I'm not sure of the direction my life is taking me. Is this what I planned? I wanted to travel and do cool things. Yes, I do get the fact that I can still travel and do all those things but I see old friends that are single with no kids globe trotting and mountain climbing. I have always been a homebody kind of person and wouldn't trade my life for anyones but I wonder if I missed out on something. Sometimes I'm not sure I want to be a grown up. Life just seems so....not sure. I know that all these thoughts are surfacing just because I will be 30 soon. That seems like the peak of grownupness. Not sure if I'm ready for that.

I have the greatest husband :)

heat wave pictures

This is so why I love my dslr! Love the fact that I can capture these kinds of images :)



Ethan always has the weirdest faces when I take a picture, kind of the "trying to look sneaky eyebrow raise" lol!

fun pictures

I picked up a box of sidewalk chalk pretty cheap the other day and the kids love it. They spent a couple of hours drawing on the sidewalk with Ron creating a virtual dinosaur mural.
Got up on a ladder for this shot, very cool.
love the perspective of this shot.

Nicki would be so proud

I finally have new window treatments up (after 3 years) lol
And I found fun new dishes yesterday! Aren't they totally me? That makes a total of 4 things that I bought for my house in less than 6 months! Crazy.

New design team members

We are looking for a couple of new design team members over at scrappershaven.ca
come check it out
http://www.scrappershaven.ca/designteamcall.htm

So the summer begins...

So glad that school is done. Definately needing a break this year. Hoping to have a quiet summer, poor Ron can't even take his long vacation days like he used to. In previous years he's been able to take all 3 weeks at one time giving him a really nice break. But this year with him being the boss, not going to happen. He's planning on doing a few days here and there. In mid-July he's taking a few days with my dad and uncles to go quadding up by the Fort. Mac. sanddunes. I'll have to make him take the camera :)

So this summer will be lowerkey, which is so okay with me. We are planning to take the kids to Walking With Dinosaurs Live and then head to Calgary to see my brother and his wife. We need to deal with the US consulte to get Ron's passport straightened out if we do decide to go to Vegas with my aunties/uncles.

Hoping to get lots of scrapping done and finish a huge chunk of my braille course and maintain the peace around here. Planning on giving the kids some jobs and such. Now if we could only get some nicer weather.....

soooo very busy....

but I feel guilty that I haven't blogged. Between end of school stuff and finishing up projects, Abby's birthday things have been crazy. Now that I'm on holidays I will really try to be more bloggish...;)

Anyhoo, here's some pictures from Abby's 5th (!) birthday.

more pictures....

These were all taken at the very top of a swing set. Love these pictures....



this was too cool to pass up, I'm not a big fan of honey bees but I love watching them stick their butts out of flowers when getting the nectar.

Spring!

My beautiful iceland poppies and pink tulips!

just a few from the weekend

These are mostly from our "talent" night and we all near about died laughing at the uncles doing hip -hop! Yes that is my dad! Dena and I were saying that we now have the best pictures for the newspaper when he turns 60 next year!
Uncle Wally, Uncle Les and my dad

Ethan sure made Ron run on Jaden's little quad. He just loved it!
Maylong weekend wouldn't be complete without Ethan's jokes ;)
The Germain boys (minus 1) did a very convincing performance of "men in tights"
My Abby and her cousin Nadia dancing to the "hamster dance" I think that Abby was nervous and couldn't think of any other moves cause this is what she did the whole song, lol. Normally she's full of great dance ideas.

Of course the ma tantes! They did a menage of country queens, including Tammy Whynot.

More pictures later when I download them....

So for all my going ons about "seeking a balance" in my life I've so not being doing it the past 2 weeks. I've taken on more than I can handle and yesterday I just broke down and cried. Didn't cry because of anything bad but Ron putting a card in my lunch kit yesterday. A lot of this stress is self induced and if I had just stood up for myself and insisted that "this get fixed the way I wanted" I wouldn't have had 3 nights extra work. But I didn't and now I'm paying for it with a pain in my neck, literally.

I'm so not ready for Maylong weekend, not like I wanted to be. Today is Friday. We have company coming to stay over and my house looks like its been ransacked. The grocery store didn't have what I wanted (grrrrr!) so Ron has a long list today. I'm going to be racing home from work to clean like crazy. So not prepared for the whole camping thing, honestly don't even want to go. I'd love to just hole up at home and not do anything but straighten up, do a little laundry, scrap and eat. Heck I don't even feel like eating much...that's how stressed I am.

On the upside, I haven't had any canker sores for about a month....thank you yogurt smoothies! I really wanted to get myself a wide angle lens and a remote for maylong (for my camera) but I just never got around to it. Hopefully my pictures will be ok. Got to remember to clear my memory card.

Just going to leave with a favorite layout that I've completed lately. The pink makes me happy.

Scrappy post...

Just some layouts that I've done recently. The one below came about from finding a "lost" picture that I didn't know I hadn't printed. This layout is one of my all time favorites. The rest of these are for the Scrapper's Haven design team that I'm on. Have fun playing with the new Urban Lily Happy Everything line....
Also my all time favorite picture of my son. One of the only pictures that he's taken in the last year that doesn't have his eyes over to the corner or a goofy smile. This was taken in the play area at WEM.

This weekend's pictures

Just some crazy kids I know....

and my cutie patootie :)

I swear that I've spent most of the past 2 weekends dealling with pheasant club stuff. Right now I'm avoiding the last 2 pages of bulletin and playing on the 'net. I've really got to take it to the printer's but so so wanting to scrapbook. I've actually got great ideas floating around and new supplies to play with but no actual time :( and the next weekend is totally booked with MayLong. Hoping to get some new great pictures then. I think that I need a day off this week that doesn't include kids so that I can clean my house and just veg.