Phrases I Never Thought I Would Say

"Honey, don't put Skittles in your ears."

"No sweetie that is not your daddy...no he is not your daddy either."

"Don't eat the dog food."

"Take the Skittle out of your ear."

"Stop licking the doggie."

"Yes that *is* a big poop."

"Why is your baby doll so wet?  Were you spitting on her?"  (The answer was a resounding "YEP!")

(Big Burp) "Honey, what do you say?"  Answer: "Thank You!"

"Stop picking my nose!"

"Yes that *is* a big booger."

Happy New Year's Eve Eve!

First Things First And Random Crap!

Here's a snow pic I promised - I have a few more on my camera, but alas, Holiday-Me is lazy and hasn't yet uploaded those pics.  Nonetheless - this was the pic from Dec 26th - and it's snowing again today!  Slowly but consistently.  We went for a nice walk with Little Miss just to get some fresh air, and the snow made her cringe.  She spent part of the walk covered in a blanket in her sled - yelling "I hiding!"

The rest of the walk she toddled along making snowballs (although the snow was not sticky and her snowballs imploded in her hands).  It was still fun!  My dear hubby who hates snow and cold decided he was 10 again, and climbed a snow hill created by a plow...then tripped backwards and hurt his finger.  Sigh.  Boys and their macho-ness.  Off to tape his finger for him.

I can't recall if I posted a pic of our tree - if I did, then just go get yourself a drink and pretend I am not posting again.

This next pic is a lotto scratch ticket.  Santa was so kind as to give dear hubby (DH), my kiddo and myself each a ticket to scratch.  I have no patience whatsoever...none.  I only like tickets that are quick and easy - tell me now if I won a million dollars...don't make me waste my time trying to decipher the rules and whether I won! LOL

And DH scratches them one square at a time...and often only a square a day.  It. Drives. Me. Crazy!

So I found a ticket on the fridge with a penny clipped to it (did I tell you my DH is a very logical, methodical person?!?)  There were three or four squares scratched.  That's it.  It drove me nuts to look at it.  So my mom (yes mom, I am outing you!) suggested I replace his ticket with my fully scratched, non-winning ticket.  It took him about 4 hrs to notice.  And boy did he notice.  Wagging finger and accusatory eyes...yup...he was not impressed!  hee hee

Notice the penny clipped above for easy scratching- he's so funny!

Finally...I have asked for new slippers for months.  I had gotten a pair two years ago from Costco and hated them.  At first.  They had so much fluffy fluffiness inside them, and actually made walking feel funny.  Like falling down the stairs would be easy.  And probable.

But then something wonderful happened.  The fluffy fluffiness settled a bit.  And I LOVED my slippers.  LOVED.  I have a lot of tile in my house, and the slippers make sure that my feet don't hurt.  Lately though, the slippers hurt.  Over two years I have worn them down so much that the inside has cracked and the fluffy fluffiness has disappeaed.  It is bare, naked non fluffy fluffiness.  They are the lesser of two evils (the tile floor hurts my feet so bad!), but the split area inside of them means that they chomp my feet daily.

DH and I looked for slippers several times at Costco and found that they only had big sizes and small sizes...not my perfect size 8. (I am normally a 7 or 7.5 but these slippers' fluffy fluffiness meant that I need an 8).

By Christmas time I knew DH was not able to find them.  I still held out a tiny bit of hope, but that was dashed on Christmas morning...sigh.  No fluffy fluffiness for my tender tootsies.

Then on Boxing Day, I was at my mom's for gift opening and low and behold, a miracle happened.  I got a pair as a gift.  I was sooooo excited!  My mom stopped me though and told me that I almost got *this* gift.  She hands me an envelope with this pic inside.

It's a pic of the slipper display at Costco...I turned it over and found this note she'd typed...

Yes - my mom is a kook!  I love it...and the fact that she looked so hard for the slippers as well!  As it turns out she had looked for quite awhile, and was shopping with my auntie, who was also seeking a size 8.   My auntie found that size 8, and offered it to my mom for me.  Thank you auntie - I haven't taken them off since! (except when leaving the house! And sometimes I forget and wear them out...I'm cool like that)

Merry Chocolate Christmas from Little Miss!

Post Christmas Post

Well, it's all done for another year.  We truly had a wonderful Christmas and Little Miss was good and spoiled.  I have now gone through her older toys and have two boxes and a big bag of items to donate.  She also has some new clothes that don't yet fit, but will eventually, which is great.  I am a big believer in hand-me-downs, and we don't have anyone to get hand me downs from...or really to give them to in our immediate family.  I box them up and send some to Nova Scotia to some special wee girls there, and the rest get donated locally.  It feels so wastefull, as she grows so quickly, but at least they don't et thrown in the garbage.

We've had a ton of snow here recently - I do love it, but I must admit a part of me can't wait until spring when we no longer need to chase the wiry child all through the house in various states of undress...one boot, one mitt, a scarf on her head, her jacket upside down.  Ah well, they grow so quick I try to take a deep breath and run faster.

Yesterday I heard a wonderful noise outside - is that the singing of the birdies? No.  Is that the ringing of the ice cream man?  No. Wait...is that the sound of our neighbours brand new snowblower???  Yes!  And while my dear hubby shovelled at 5:30am and I shovelled at 8:00am and 1:00pm, that darn snowblower did not make an appearance.  It did however, arrive in time to clear away the giant snowbank left by the plow at the end of the driveway.  Like the timely arrival of a dear old friend, just when you need some help!  Thank you neighbours!

(I'll post massive snow pics as soon as I can!)

On an IT/techie note, I have been trying to post from my iPhone, as that's where I keep a lot of pictures.  I can see my blog but can't seem to post or upload anything.  I will keep trying - it sure would make things easier!

Happy Friday everyone!

Merry Christmas!

I hope you had as wonderful a Christmas as we have.  It's not over yet - we are off to my mom's for a day of turkey and fun.  Tomorrow it's back to the gym!

Christmas Traditions

I started my post last week meaning to get into some of the traditions we have, and got writing about memories instead...

We have a few traditions around our home...

On Christmas eve, we all get a gift to open, which is a new pair of jammies.  We then go and put them on, and get ready to watch a Christmas movie.  the last few years it has been Elf, because we all like it.  This year, Little Miss may want to watch Franklin's christmas...gulp!

For dinner on Christmas Eve, we make a meal of hot appetizers.  This could be a variety of things like tiny pizzas on mini bagels, spring rolls, garlic bread, veggies and dip, meatballs, chicken wings.  Basically it's whatever we feel like.  We eat in front of the TV in the living room watching our movie.  We light a fire and turn on the Christmas lights.  Later we have hot chocolate.  Little Miss got a new book - The Night Before Christmas - when she was a baby, so we read that as well before we turn in early.

On Christmas morning, hubby and I make a coffee, and my kido gets a hot chocolate before we open our stockings.  Everything in the stocking is wrapped by Santa - which makes it much more fun!

After we open gifts, there is a game.  Somewhere on our tree is a hidden pickle ornament.  You can't touch the tree or ornaments, but must find the pickle.  Whoever finds the pickle gets an extra present.  (My mom started that tradition and it carries on).

As we get into the most fun years with Little Miss, I can't wait to see her experience our Christmases and to see them through her eyes.

I plan to post a few pics - but we lost our battery charger for our camera.  Soooo, it's been a zoo trying to either find or buy a charger, then we lost the new charger in the bags of presents...finally found it and batteries are charging.  Will upload today!

Christmas Past

I was asked today about traditions we have through the holidays and thought I'd share.

I love Christmas - not the getting stuff, but buying presents, wrapping them, giving them, thinking about Christmases past...it all makes me think of family and friends.  Of being close and sharing meals.  Of love and togetherness.

I loved our Christmases as a child.  We would wake up SUPER early, and run to see if Santa had come.  Every Christmas but one, he had come in the middle of the night.  One Christmas eve, Santa must have nipped into the bottle a wee bit, because as the sun started to appear, he still hadn't come.  I ran back to bed, shut my eyes tight and went back to sleep.  When I awoke later, I was terrified to get out of bed only to find that he just didn't come.  I crept slowly to the living room, sure that we wouldn't get a Christmas after all.  My mind raced through all of the possible reasons...I shouldn't have hit my sister all those times, I shouldn't have stolen a cookie yesterday, I shouldn't have flung cat poop at my sister...boy I had a lot to think about.

Luckily, I was delighted to find that Santa had, in fact, silently arrived in the wee hours of morning to make sure we got our Christmas.  Oh Santa.  Right then and there I vowed to be a better person, so that Santa didn't scare me like that ever again.  And to hide the rum.

Once we awoke, we were allowed to go and get our stockings and bring them back to our beds.  i am sure that some years it must have been 4:30am.  We'd quickly unwrap each item, finding a variety of chocolate and candy treats, socks and hair clips, fun little games and comic books.  There was always a Lifesavers Christmas book which got opened immediately.

My sister and I would compare what we got - usually it was either the same items or similar items.  Santa sure knew how to make things fair.  Later we'd open presents with our parents, and then get ready to go to one of our Grandparents' houses for the afternoon and dinner.  I think when we were really young we would go to one Grandparent's for lunch and one for dinner.  I remember it being an exhausting day, but so much fun!

Sickie Sickie

We have had our run of illness in our house this year.  No more please!

Right now Little miss is sick again - after having been sick a few weeks ago.  This time it started with us thinking she was a bit warm one night, but nothing major.  The next day I picked her up at daycare and she had a 104.1 temp.  Our daycare provider gave her some Tylenol, and later we had to give her Advil to help bring down the temp.  She had an unsettled night (as did mommy and daddy of course), and I kept her home with a fever and bad congested type cold the next day.

Through the day she went from periods of relative happiness to whiny and screaming at ANYTHING I did, said or breathed.  Literally.  "Sweetie would you like some water" "NOOOOOOOO!!!" 
Sometimes she skipped the words and screamed like I was attacking her.  Oh joy.

We cuddled a lot on the couch and watched so much Dora she now speaks Spanish.  (True story - My son was calling her and she was replying "Si?")  Living in Canada I always assumed her first 'second language word' would be French, but hey, what do I know?

As of yesterday her fever was gone and she was just a bit congested and sniffly.  When I went to pick her up, I planned to frantically get home, get ready for dear hubby's work party and wait for our friend to come and watch her.  Those plans got tossed when she was again warm, and had a fever of 101 (which I think went higher before it came down, as she was burning an hour later).

She was dopey and lethargic and very clingy and cuddly.  I sent dear hubby to his party alone (and forfeited my $50 meal) and sat on the couch with Little Miss brushing up on our Spanish together.  She had so much congestion that she vomited on our (leather) couch while coughing...at least leather washes well.

As my work party was tonight, and it was a pot luck, I emailed my coworker last night to let them know there was a possibility my meatballs would not be arriving for dinner.  I was open to going if the fever did not return and she seemed passed the worst of it.  At 3:30am, the fever was back with a vengeance (and so were her feet in my back while I tried to sleep with her).  Today she is mostly fever free but definitely not well.  So we are missing party number 2, and having a quiet, cuddly, somewhat snot filled day with Dora. 

Elephant on the Shelf

I caved.  I am not proud, but am certainly a bit excited at my new purchase.  I gave in to the trend and bought an Elf on the Shelf for Little Miss.  She's a bit young but it's more for me this year (I'm not too proud to admit that!)

If you aren't familiar, Elf on the Shelf is a strange little elf doll that apparently watches over children in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and reports back to Santa on how they are behaving.  Each morning when the kids wake up, the elf is supposed to be in a new position or place, as if they scurried around the night before getting into trouble.

When Little Miss saw our elf, she decided it was actually an 'elephant' on the shelf, so that is what it is. I asked her to name it and she chose "Abbc".  It is said like the letters...like this - Eh Bee Bee See.

Here's a pic of our Christmas tree - It's artificial...I plan to go back to real trees in the next few years - they may be imperfect but they smell wonderful, and life is imperfect.  That said I like our tree.  This year it is decorated entirely in plastic and unbreakable decorations.  I am hoping to go back to all of my decorations next year as well...

Annual Neighbour Dinner

We have a dinner every year around Christmas with our neighbours.  How nice you say?  Well, let me clarify - it's not actually with our current neighbours...but with the neighbours that all still live beside each other from the street we moved away from 2.5 yrs ago. 

We started it of course while we still lived across the street (and gosh it was more convenient that way!), and have taken turns hosting each year.  Everyone brings some contributions to the meal and we eat, drink and be merry.

This year we hosted - and bless them all for coming since it's a bit far to stumble home in the cold.  I decided to try to make a vegan appetizer for my friend who has decided to stop eating normally and only eat black beans and rice (just kidding!!) I looked online and found a great recipe for avocado fries.  it looked quite yummy and different, so off I went to the health food store to get the ingredients. 

Baked Avocado Fries

 

Unfortunately, i left it to the last minute, and the health food store was out of Panko bread crumbs, vegenaise, soy free vegan butter, and clearly anything included in this recipe and dipping sauce.  So I decided to do something else with the mountain of avocados I had already bought.  (If you want to try the avocado fries above, here is the link to the recipe - Avocado Fries and vegan dipping sauce

 

I then got the bright idea to make a homemade guacamole - something I have not only never attempted, but have eaten only a couple of times.  It was in Montreal for my mom's 60th birthday that I first had homemade guacamole, and realized that it had so much more flavour and texture than the store bought stuff I avoided.  The authentic mexican restaurant made guacamole right there at your table, and it was marvelous!  Off to Google to find a recipe, and find one I did.  Most used lemons, however I had bought limes so it took awhile to find a lime one.

 

Finally I found one and started my very first guacamole...and it was heaven in a bowl. Seriously - it was ahmazing!  Here's a pic of the final product:

 

The pic is a wee bit blurry, but in person it was delicious.  So delicious in fact that I used my second last avocado the next day and made a mini version - and ate the whole thing as my lunch.  Nom nom nom!

Of course it's only afterwards that I realize I actually didn't take many pictures that night - could be due to the lovely white wine I was drinking, or the great company that kept me occupied.  At the end of a great night, we put the food away, only to find these in the fridge.  Yep - a bowl of olives and a bowl of pickles that never made it out to be served.  My mother always has a list handy every time she has people over.  She diligently checks off each 'to do' item, and each food item, to ensure she never misses anything.  I laugh at her ... but she never has this happen so maybe she is on to something!  Oh well - we dug into the pickles the next day and they were just as yummy!

 

 

Elephant Ears!

My small person overheard me telling my mother-in-law that with each new renovation we do, i love our house more and more. 

The next morning, I leaned over and said to Little Miss "You're such a sweetie Pie".  She looked at me with her giant blue eyes and said "Mommy, I love you more and more."  I. Almost. Died.  Kids are so hilarious - and they hear EVERYTHING!!!

Yesterday when I picked her up at daycare, our daycare provider told me she'd overheard something very funny at the lunch table.  She had left the room for a second, and heard the conversation between Little Miss and her 2 yr old friend (we'll call her C)...

C:                  Are you weddy?
Little Miss:   I weddy.
C:                  Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls...
Little Miss:    Wait C!  I weddy but first, I check my emails.

Yep.  My two year old precocious child has emails to check before she can attend what can only have been the lunchtime circus.

What a little ham!  And mommy had better remember that the walls have very big ears!

Hmmmm

I just tried to publish a post and it has disappeared. This is my first time using my iPhone to post.

Long story short I will repost the middle pics and after pics of our bathroom. We still have a couple of minor things to fix/finish, but we got the 18 year old boy out of our bathroom so I am happy.

Stop The Insanity

My hubby and I are slightly insane.  (Those who know us, feel free to bite your tongue at the word 'slightly').



We like to renovate things - floors, cabinets, shelves, houses...  In the spring we renovated our kitchen, powder room and front entrance.  We gutted the kitchen entirely, leaving only a couple of walls (even the ceiling was removed) and rebuilt it from scratch.  We put in Ikea cabinets, granite counters and tile floors.  The bathroom was mostly updated and refreshed with fixtures and paint.  Here are the "Before" pics - Keep in mind that in the first pic, we had already replaced the nasty appliances (they were original and very dirty and icky)

And here are the after pics.  The lighting isn't great in the pics - the room isn't as dark as they look.

 

We are thrilled with the outcome and love our new spaces!

 

We have two other bathrooms upstairs that also need updating lest they remain in 1981 forever.  After much deliberation we decided not to do them both at the same time (thank goodness!) and attack the main bath.  unfortunately we both like to jump in head first sometimes with minimal planning, and we ripped apart our bathroom during the busiest month of the entire year.  I was travelling for some events for work, our daughter and my son had birthdays, along with my mom's 60th bday and my 40th...both milestones which involved days away from home.

I was also wrapping up a course I had taken, and having paid for an extension already, I was NOT going to be getting another one...so I had to bust my butt for weeks.  Throw a toddler in there and you have, well, chaos.  And good old Murphy decided to make it interesting - the weekend that we took out our toilet, I accidentally dropped a stick of deodorant into the only other upstairs toilet, rendering it useless.  Poor hubby had to replace that toilet before we could even get further on the torn up bathroom.  We also found a pipe that had never been glued properly - we found it when some tap water ran through two floors of our house cascading into our basement laundry room.  On the plus side, we found it before we put in our floor tile (small victories!).

Today we completed our bathroom - 12 weeks after starting it.  Yes 12 weeks.  We redid the entire kitchen, powder room and front hall in about 7 weeks.

Things we learned:

Anything that can go wrong, will.  Anything that should not go wrong, will as well.
Piles of tools in the hallway may not be the safest place for a toddler to play.
Dust will settle into every crevice available - in your home and your body.
Dust does not taste good.
Measure twice, cut once, and have a back up for when you screw up the cut.
You will never like the new toilet as much as you did the old one...you must reacquaint your butt to the new seat gradually.
Drywall is hard to do.
Sharing a bathroom with an 18 year old boy is yucky.

But despite all of that - we love our new bathroom.  We have a couple of minor paint touch ups to do and then I will share pics of the before and after. 

For now I am off to wash some sheets for Little Miss, who is toilet training herself.  This means that she runs around with no diaper and sometimes uses the potty.  Hence the need for clean sheets...for the second time today.