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Farewell February

Well, soo much for a quiet February ;) At first glance the only thing we had on it was mom's birthday, which we were definitely looking forward to celebrating, then it all snow balled. Birthday party one weekend, sleigh ride another, and just when I thought I was going to get a breather we had company this past weekend. Talk about a wipe out! Thank goodness next week is March break!

I have been sneaking some stitching in here and there, finishing mom's teapot and getting very close to a finish on Dragon Dream's Summer's Magic Dragons for Alex's room. Not nearly as much as I'd like mind you but some none the less! After much talk with Matt I did scale back some of my social engagements for awhile. I mean this is month two and the most we've done with the craft room reno is get a quote on some electrical! For all intensive purposes it isn't even 'busy' season yet!

We have March break pretty open at the moment, depending on the status of the Miramichi reno we might get a day trip in, or maybe a daytrip to Moncton and the rest I'm trying to set up some playdates on. Alex and I have a lunch date one afternoon at Luna Pizza and maybe we'll make that a library day too. :) He does want to learn how to cross stitch so maybe we'll finally get a chance to do that as well :)

Fat Tuesday

Oh my, I was all set to do some major stitching last night with Doctor Who and Heroes but the 'unexpected' element of sci fi didn't allow for much concentrating. Not to spoil the ending of the show but of my good lord! Ok, we all cried in Titanic (although there are probably some bb trolls out there who laughed) but it's the same old , someone dies stuff but I was teary for the last half hour of the show, even the 'valentine forgetter' cracked just a little. However in between DW and Heroes I did work a little more on the last dragon's tail and fixed some previous boo boos :)

Speaking of Valentine's, what I forgot to mention in all of my wallowing was that Alex loved his little gift. The night before I set out his card, a bag of cinnamon hearts, a new Magic Treehouse book and a Teen Titan's Comic book (special valentine's edition). He was sooo excited about his first comic book! It permanantly sits at the table and he thumbs through it at ever meal (or at least until I put it in his room again tonight). Woot! So that'll make one different thing I can add to his stocking at Christmas. We went grocery shopping about two days after and he saw the stand that's at the coop (he'd never noticed it before) and boy was he trying hard to convince me to buy him another. I haven't been complimented, loved, offered so much help around the house in a long time ;)

Today's kind of a blah day, so I imagine I'll be doing some stitching. Out of all the days of the year Shrove Tuesday is the one that was Alex's and my special date night with my grandmother (Alex even got to go once with my grandfather). Alex isn't big on pancakes and Matt doesn't get home in time for any of the church suppers so I have no date :( I guess I will get to Bodypump after all and make some at home.

Sleigh Bells Ring

Oh my goodness, is it March Break yet? I was really looking forward to a downtime weekend this coming weekend but unfortunately that got scheduled out from under me, hopefully it'll snow HARD! I don't mind company but February has just been a flat out month and it's not my parents that are visiting, they're easy to take care of and one weekend off would be really swell! It's hard to build a case when the next weekend is March Break and a dead zone though. It's just an extension to the exhaustion.

I convinced Matt to take Alex to Gym and Swim Saturday, I just couldn't deal with the headache that's become. There is a 'problem child' in that session to begin with. He's physically all over the other boys and there's rarely anything done about him, meanwhile his mother's flapping her trap about how unstrict the schools are now a days...I have to sit and put my iPod on to drown her out and not rip into her. Anyway, Alex worked very hard with his Pappy over Christmas and his swimming improved 10 fold. He was assessed at the beginning of the term and went right up to the max level of the group. Unfortunately that meant being grouped with the demon spawn. The second class Alex had done EVERYTHING they were supposed to without whining and did it better than the rest of his class and was peacefully treading water when hell child swam up and kicked him in the stomach hard enough to push him back through the water. Alex sat out and had dry heaves when I got him to the change room. The next session? They put Alex down to a beginner level because he didn't look comfortable, well if you'd been paying attention Barbie you'd have seen why he was in pain. It's been a big fight ever since to move him back up. I'm sooo frustrated. He loves swimming but he's frustrated at having to sit back and blow bubbles when he can swim widths of the pool. I'm not a competitive mom, if he can't do something he can't but how do you empirically measure 'comfortable'?? He's not learning and he's no longer having fun with lesssons and justifiably so and this is OUR hard earned money going into the program. I'm really conflicted as a consumer I'd be asking for a refund by now but really, I'd be taking lessons away from Alex and then he's punished yet again. Sigh...

While the boys were gone I did some fiddly much neglected house work, like washing the valances and cleaning the blinds (dark blinds nice, dust magnets though). I stripped the guest bed and put in more loads of laundry. I even cleaned off some of the grimy prints on the walls. It was nice cleaning and not having the two of them behind me messing something else up! I got their stuff out and ready for the sleigh ride and put on a snack for the quick transition from swim to sleigh. The beaver sleigh ride was fun, although my back is paying for it ;) The potluck was fun but a bit awkward. We're a suburb's troop which equates to no other 29 year old mothers, Matt who's just shy of 34 is probably one of the closest in age to me (but there are at least some there that are his age!) so I really feel out of place. In the city there'd be younger families still in apartments and such but not in the burb's (although I'd have more mother's like the gym and swim mom's so maybe it's better just to be uncomfortable than completely frustrated). The kids had a grand time at the lodge especially since there'd been a birthday party just before we got in and they left all of the balloons. I made Alex one popular kid by teaching him about static electricity and what you could do with that and the balloon!

Sunday I got a little more stitching in (did some Saturday while catching up on Stargate) and tidied up more of my stitching stuff upstairs for transport down to the craft room. No more loose hand dyed's to sort out, hooray! Alex was pretty excited to see my summer dragons, knowing that they'll be for his room whenever they're framed. He and I are still suffering from the aftermath of our bug, decreased appetite and generally just wishywashy so it was a quiet day. I did have to buy another of the nifty 'crafting tackle box' I'd picked up last week, the first was confiscated for tidying up the ninja turtles. Now that they have a place they're played with ALOT more.

Tonight should be stitchy, the Doctor Who season finale's on as well as Heros (well not the season finale of that one), good night to sit and stitch :)

Valentine's Sucks

Oh my, long time no blog! Combine a fun family weekend with the re-emergence of Norwalk and I guess that's what we get ;)

We had a really nice birthday celebration with Mom Saturday, chinese for lunch and mexican for supper, followed by an irish cream chocolate cake and boiled frosting! Wrap that up with The Illusionist and some Epicure Three Onion Dip mix and I think her birthday went well ;) Alex ended up sick by Sunday though, sigh.

I've been stitching away at Summer's Magic. I think I'd like to have that WIP wrapped up before going back on rotation, although I'll be parking an ornament here at my desk for lunch hours. I should be able to post a progress pic tonight.

Valentine's was not romantic. Matt and I both ended up with Alex's bug although I didn't realize how bad I was feeling until I got to the office. When I decided to leave I went to take the elevator for once, pressed the button and boom...the power went off! I took the stairs down to the main level and the automated parking was out as well! Thankfully the security guard was able to get the gate open or they were going to have to assign a janitor to me! I spent the rest of the day in bed miserable, combine feeling rotten with no valentine card and you can imagine my state. What is so GD hard about picking up a card? It's not like they don't come out the day after Christmas. I don't need to to be extravagent, I just want a damn card. It may be cold outside but my shoulder's alot colder!

Yesterday was another storm day, I was still too sick and weak to do anything so I was in bed. Sigh if I hadn't have been so sick I might have been in the position to finish my dragon's this weekend. Oh well!

Sweet Sixteen

Well, here's what I've been working on for the past week quietly as it was for mom's birthday. Presenting the Winter Teapot by Fiddlestitch Cottage :)


Just 34 more projects to go before I can pick up another couple of charts ;)

Still Kickin!

Yes, it's true! I'm still kicking. I've been sidelined quite a bit this week though! Saturday was crazy. I was going to take Alex to Gym and Swim but saw he was a bit whiny due to the Beaver sleepover so I brought him home to rest, avoiding the potential nuclear situation of whiny kid with G&S bully. It had snowed the previous night and with the crazy winds the drive out to the birthday party was extremely stressful. We cut through a subdivision instead of taking a main road which saved 10-15 minutes but I was regretting it the whole way down to the old highway, however the old highway was in worse shape due to the blowing snow than the subdivision road! I didn't kick myself for long. Where the party was 2 hours and I was minutes away from Cathey's I finally went to see her gorgeous home :) Cathey got to see my stocking first hand and I started a new little project. Those 2 hours really flew by. The drive back to the house was no better (although it seemed faster where I was confident of where I was going!) and I ended up arriving with an extreme migraine.

Sunday we had a very quiet family day. I was kind of moping around the house as it was the sad realization that it has been a year since I last hugged my grandmother so I really wanted to be home with the boys and enjoy the family I have as you can never take that for granted. Also, until the gym settles down I've rearranged the schedule to avoid going there on the weekend until I can essentially arrive for class and leave again, being there super early to secure a slot and not actually working out while I'm waiting is not worth missing that family time! We had our little superbowl party that evening and I resisted all of the Superbowl sales!!

Tuesday was crappy, for me anyway. I've been at odds with how the project I'm on has been run for awhile. All of the little bottlenecks in the system result in big delays by the time they arrive at my desk. Now combine this with a meeting that cut our flex time back when my area of the project has no reason for it and suggest overtime when we spend half our week in meetings...I swear I think there are meetings to discuss if someone should be able to pee...and I wasn't a happy camper. Matt arrived home with a nice raise so I guess our day balanced out...however that didn't deter a second round of the migraine and I was out for the count Wednesday.

Thursday was exciting, stitching exciting and not the Office Space moment I had with the consultant on this project ;) I got word that a very exciting project that I'd discussed with Tracy of Fiddlestitch Cottage is going to be available to the public very shortly. It was kind of a brain child that involved a permutation of one of Tracy's existing patterns for a very awesome charity project, it would be like whomever suggested changing Giggles in the Snow to Giggles in the Leaves or Giggles in the Sand seeing the light of day AND benefiting a very dear charity close to one's heart. I'll leave it at that, but I'm really excited!!! This is as close as I'll ever get to designing, unless of course I'm ever called off the benches of model stitchers and it's just neat. I can't wait to share the details!!

Today is a day for rememberance, I can still picture the events of last year in slow motion as if they happened hours before. I remember being brought to tears in training over at Polar Bear in the middle of the morning out of the blue, the huge feeling that I should find some of my family at the hospital, running into Reverend Lovejoy (not really his name but ask my bridesmaids, he conjures up images of Rev Lovejoy off of the Simpsons) and knowing deep down that something was truly out of sorts coming off the elevator and walking into a room of someone that looked very sick, not deceased as I was soon to find out. It didn't matter how many times I'd told Matt that I really thought the doctor's were missing something all along, it was still a huge shock. It's been a year since the first time I've had to deliver that sort of news to someone as unsuspecting as myself. It was probably only on that day that I would end up coming home late after picking dad up from the airport and not cry myself silly in frustration that my entire house was covered in vomit! Who knew a little boy's stomach could hold that much?? I was almost greatful to have something to take my mind of the days events no matter how gross it was ;) We miss you Grammie...

Tomorrow though is a day of celebration! Mom turns 39 again ;) Alex is super psyched for their visit. He helped me bake a cake last night and tonight we get to frost it, we have reservations at our favorite Mexican restaurant and the rest will remain a mystery mom if you're reading :P

In closing I thought I'd quote this little ditty I found on MSNBC. I don't claim to condone anything that people do to wind up in the tabloids however this sadly speaks volumes about our society.

"The level of meanness in our current society isn’t exactly a news bulletin, but this is brutal. When someone like Anna Nicole Smith goes, with all her baggage and scandalous exploits, it says a lot more about the people who dump on her dead body than it does about the woman herself."
~Michael Ventre MSNBC

Finish 15 :)

So here it is, minus the charms until Alex's is finished. Presenting MY stocking :)

Tori's Stocking by Shepherd's Bush