Here, There and Everywhere

Long time no blog! We've been here there and everywhere lately!! Thursday we went to Alex's parent teacher conference. This was a bit different as it was student led, Alex sure enjoyed showing off. Friday was quiet, I picked up groceries and prepared for mom and dad's visit. The house had been in complete disarray and I was hoping to get it somewhat back to normal!

Saturday was busy. Swimming was a disaster! It was report card day and the last activity they did was a 'fun' on where they got to fish something off the bottom of the pool with the lifeguard hook. There were only 3 in Alex's class and after the first 2 went they'd 'run out of time' and had to distribute report cards. Well Alex was pretty upset. I think it's the fastest I've ever flown to the change room to get him out of there and calm him down. Only after about 10 minutes did anyone come looking for him (I actually met him flying into the change room so that's really comforting...). While he finished getting dressed after his shower the 'instructor' came to explain what had happened. At this point I calmly but very pointedly said "So you think it's right to let 2 kids have fun and then there wasn't enough 'time' for the third and final child? That's somehow fair?....Seriously you had 3 report cards to give out and your class was pulled out of the pool before the classes of 5 and 6 kids." At about this point I set my jaw, stuck my nose in the air, took the report card and went back to Alex. Normally, I'd be having a serious conversation with him about having a tantrum but this time it was taking all of my control not to make a scene with 'Barbie' so I sided with him a little. I had to laugh at his report card, anything that wasn't checked was things he missed during the weeks he was exiled to the beginner/intermediate class that they never bothered to revisit and there were other spots that have both the introduction&mastery skills listed and the mastery would be checked, but the intro not. I think one was a swim on back x meters, that was checked but swim on back using either arms or legs for <= the meters of the first wasn't. I didn't want him to pass, he has some confidence rebuilding to do after those screwed up weeks but still. I guess it doesn't give with my empirical measuring processes :)

We went to Shur Gain after to blow off some steam and pick up an Easter treat for Jazz. That made Alex instantly feel better. It's amazing how generous he wants to be when it's my money ;) Mom, Dad and Jazz arrived around lunch and Alex managed to sneak dad downstairs to 'teach him how to play computer'. I think next time mommy's going to pull the power supply out a week before hand ;) Mom and I checked out the home improvement stores. We had a lovely family dinner at Boston Pizza and then retired back to the house. Dad offered to babysit but I couldn't find a movie date ;) So we ended up watching The Notebook instead. I love that movie!
Sunday we headed to the Sugar Bush at King's Landing which was alot of fun. We had a wonderful breakfast then a nice dessert of 'tire' afterwards. The smell of them boiling the sap over the flames was marvelous. We even got to go on a wagon ride which Alex thought was fun :) Before mom and dad left we showed him Steven's Easter present, a racoon puppet in his own garbage can (my brother's spent almost a year studying them for some parasite featured on House). Alex informed them if Steven didn't want it, he'd take it ;) Even I had fun with it, he could wash his arm pits, do the 'You didn't see anything' from madagascar, count on his little fingers, you name it ;)

I did sneak some stitching in here and there over the last week but things have just been busy, that and I'm this close to finally finishing The Nanny Diaries :) This weekend should be fun, I've got a trip to the spa planned with my Christmas gift and we're going to take Alex to TMNT. Factor in his excitement of being on CBC this morning and he should be pretty much bouncing all the way to Easter :)

NB Petition

Ok...not my normal post but ticked off with your assessment sign here http://www.petitiononline.com/jas1967/petition.html

Painting my deck should not equal a 10,000$ bump in assessed value or I'm really in the wrong line of work!

It's a Bird....It's a Plane...

It's Super Alex! Let's just say after a relatively crappy week there was one happy little boy when I informed him that I received the e-mail from CBC saying he was chosen for their 'Superkid' slot Thursday March 29th after Tractor Tom (10 am). Essentially they take a picture morph the head on a cartoon superbody and have it fly across the screen announcing the child's name, what makes them super, etc. He saw this over the Christmas break and freaked, he though it was soo cool. So set your VCR/PVR's :) I know we'll have our 2 vcrs set and the WinTV card so we can hopefully burn it to DVD :) It's not everyday your child gets to rule over the CBC for a whole hour :) I guess I'm vicariously living out my wishes to be spotted just once in the magic mirror on Romper Room. I'm sure if it were still on their'd be a Katie spotted every week, but 70-80's name wasn't that common.

Last night I tidied up a little more, yay! I finished stitching in the word Love, if I'd actually sat down and stitched more I'd probably be almsot done the lettering. It's a pretty quick stitch. Tonight we have our parent teacher meeting at 7. This time it's a student lead session which should be interesting. At least Matt and I'll both be able to go and not have to juggle arrangements for Alex. There's no school tomorrow and the boys are having a boy day. They're apparently going to swing by the office to get some lunch and see the new cube :)

Out Damn Spot! Out I Say!

Omigosh, there is nothing worse than getting 'something' on your project!! My spoon broke free from my lunch bag and managed to get a spec of sesame oil from my won ton soup onto my Summer Dragons just before I finished it. So I took it home finished it and put it under boiling water with a little soap to get the grease to release. Been there done that so many times I knew the drill. Then it dried. I must have grabbed the moisturizing soap instead of the clear ivory and the small blotch that was on the visible part looked worse and the big blotch on the edge will was only the size of the dollop of soap oye! 3 washes later I can only see it or think I see it when I look really really hard ;) It may change how I frame it if I notice it once it's laced but we'll see. Thanks for all the comments!!

We've had a pretty quiet week. Alex is pretty depressed, they've gone all lab ratty on the kids again and he's only allowed to play with kids in his own grade and is having problems finding people to play with. Poor little guy.

Last night I started Wedding Row by Bent Creek. Ideally I'd like to have it ready for our anniversary but again, we'll see!

Here it is...

Sorry for the delay, there's a reason which I'll write about when I have an itty bitty bit more time. Let's just say "Out damn spot"

Be Prepared

The latest Happy Dance is drying and patiently awaiting it's glamour shot ;)

Moving Along

TGIF. I always find the first week back to work after a long break well, long. Thankfully there's a St Paddy's day potluck at lunch to break things up a bit. I decided to try out this. Hopefully it A) turns out and B) Managed NOT to get hair on it. I had it tied pinned and everything last night but I always worry that it's going to fall in or something.

Yesterday I got even closer to putting Summer's Magic in the 'Please Lace Me' pile. Maybe once that's done I'll be motivated enough to do the rest as well. I'm trying to decide if my next project will be Bent Creek's Wedding row or to finish up SB's Baby Bug Ball, decisions, decisions.
I was relieved last night to find our storm drain running. I kept telling someone that it wasn't collapsed but that with the lack of snow last year the frost had gotten down that far but did anyone want to believe me??? Not that I'm totally comfortable with the upcoming storm tonight but it is a relief knowing the water can be drained away from the house. One of these days, after the bedroom window is replaced I'm going to have to bite the bullet and put eavestrough on the back. The weeping tile isn't supposed to be doing that job as well!

Nothing much on the agenda for this weekend besides Alex's swimming lessons and a trip out for groceries. Just the way I like it! Have a great weekend!

Ding

Ack...just say no to property assessments!! Gee, our house went up 10 grand, I just about fell over. Guess I must have done a really good job painting the side deck :P Thankfully we're in a low tax zone so it didn't equate to too much ;) Speaking of being dinged, I was sooo ticked last night. I went to gas up and someone hit my gas door, there's a scratch on it and the paint is chipped over the door. It's been awhile since I filled up so I can't narrow down when it happened either :( This is the reason I probably will NEVER buy a new vehicle! Sigh...

Over the weekend we had a really nice impromptu lunch with Mom, Dad and Steven. It's a good thing it was impromptu as Alex was WIRED by the time we got there. He tried his darndest to strong arm them into a 'sleep over'. We arrived home and realized that we'd forgotten his hat there so I went down later in the afternoon to pick it up. While I was out on my own I snuck over to Discount framing and picked up an odd size frame for one of the 'please frame me' pieces downstairs and some Kreinik ribbon that was on 50% off for my Marbek Nativity. After that I dropped by Eleni's to pick up my BYC order. The poor store must think I'm shunning them or something, but I'm just using up the mounds of stash I've accumulated! We had a really nice chat (Matt thought I ran away). It was nice to do something unscheduled.

However it is nice to schedule some things :) Plans are in motion, date set, back up room reserved for a trip to the States instead of going to the annual spring retreat. I haven't been to the States in ages so I'm really looking forward to a trip to Maine, it'll make fall retreat even more special as well. I'm really excited to finally go to an AC Moore store and check out the groceries. Poor Alex hadn't heard of the Keebler elves until I mentioned them. Oh how I used to love their magic middle cookies!! They probably don't make them anymore with my luck, but finding all the neat 'other' cake mixes and stuff will still be fun. That used to be one of the highlights of our trips down there when I was young (well for me anyway). :) I'm sure there will be plenty of stitching in the hotel room when we're too stuffed to move from a trip to the Olive Garden ;)

Sittin By The Dock of the Bay....Wasting Time

Yes...I'm still alive ;) This week has really been a big break from just about everything and it's been wonderful. There's not much to show for an entire week off, not even a Miramichi trip :(, but sometimes that's actually a good thing. I've just been going flat out for so long that it's been nice catching up on movies, building legos and Christmas shop :P Yes, Christmas shopping!! Chapters has had a wonderful sale with Children's and Adolescent books on 20% off, so I stocked up on a couple hardcover Magic Treehouse books for Alex's birthday and Christmas and picked up Eragon and Eldest for Matt. I think a Flat Stanley book snuck it's way in there too ;) I also picked up a Cranium game for Alex for 9$ at Toys R Us and some Bionical (or however you spell that) on sale too. Tried my hardest to get one of those friggin bin systems but every single one of them had a damaged right panel!! I swear I'm going to pick one up in the states (after triple checking one) and willingly pay the duty! Oye...

Alex and I have been taking advantage of the toonie movies that Empire theatres had over the break, mainly Christmas/Jan movies and it was nice because it was sooo hectic then (and there's not alot of extra leisure money) at that time anyway. We both LOVED Eragon (Matt had seen it before Christmas) and were completely enchated by Arthur and the Invisibles, Happily N'ever After just fell short after seeing those to (but for Alex and I to go for 4$ we were still ahead of renting at Blockbuster). We also ventured out to Frenchies in Oromocto one day (it's amazing how kids think visiting a town 10 minutes or so from the city is a cool trip). As usual I didn't find anything I liked but found some new denim shorts for Alex, a Children's place tank top and some frog shirt that he had to have for 'Creeker' days. We found Matt an awesome Old Navy dress shirt which surprisingly he didn't turn his nose up at and some books for the boy.

As for stitching Summer's Magic is in backstitch mode :) I might get it finished after swimming this afternoon. I would have loved to take Alex to rec swim a bit more but chlorine and my 'winter' skin do NOT agree. See, I really haven't been up to much at all ;)

Almost There

Woot! Just a couple more hours and I'm off for a week of pizza, movies, Star Wars Lego Wars, swimming and other fun stuff with Alex!

Last night we headed out to the Coop for one of their big specials week. They had Dockers on sale so even Matt was in tow. Help nice, but it also jacked up the grocery bill. I never buy oreo cookies, yuck! I picked up a new Columbia rain coat for me (first in over 10 years, essential for the block and a quarter walk from the parking lot to work!) for 29, Alex got a new hoodie for 6.99 and Matt finally got some new pants and some dress shirts, but paid while we were grocery shopping so I didn't see his total. We came home pretty tired though and just had a bowl of ice cream and vegged. Alex was super excited that I'd allowed him to pick out some 'fruit gummy thingies' for next week that normally are not allowed in the house. Seriously, between
Halloween, Easter, Valentine's and Christmas there's enough of that stuff around ;)

I was really excited yesterday to see that the theatre is bringing back some of the movies we missed during the holiday season (Eragon especially) for the toonie matinees. Guess that'll suck up two afternoons next week (Happily N'ever After is on the list). Alex also wants to learn to stitch. I picked up some aida (in disguise so no one would see me ;)) for him to fiddle with. He's convinced he's going to stitch a dragon! I also found a Carebear movie in the bargain bin at the grocery store so we have that too. I'm probably going to bring up his art table for the week so we can just lay our projects out, like the nifty ones Santa brought, and work on them as we please. I had been hoping to go up to the Miramichi but the reno/work/weather doesn't look like it'll cooperate for more than a day trip so this will actually be one of the longest stretches that it's just been Alex and I at home in awhile. Alex has been saving his Toys R Us giftcard for this week to have something new and exciting to play with, we'll probably stop by there Monday on our way to the movies :)

As for stitching next week, I'm hoping to plug away at it during any down time :) I'd ideally like to finish sorting out some materials in the craft room so we can start the renovations on it. I'd like to get the wall painted before someone thinks about redoing it again. The wall in that room was a cheat installation by the previous owner, no biggie unless you want to put power on that wall which I've talked myself out of. I was steaming when I heard mentions of the FIL taking a look at it, he's known to start something and take forever to finish, but thankfully the forgetfulness factor kicked in and they left without looking at it ;)

Here's hoping the weather stays decent despite the forecast. I really need my haircut tomorrow or I'm going to start looking like cousin it!

March!

Woot, February's behind us...I hope ;) Last night I managed to keep up my resolve and go to Newbody. I just have not been that overly motivated to go to the gym lately. I do fit in some workouts at home but I'm probably down to 2-3 classes a week. It was a really good class and I worked up quite a good sweat. I returned home and showered while Alex was out at Beavers. You'd think I would have been motivated to finish the cross stitching portion of the dragons but no, that wasn't the case. After a bowl of popcorn with my favorite beaver I found myself in the Outlands of Azeroth with my hubby ;)

Well now that it's officially March I guess its time to review my stitching goals that I set last year

• Shepherd's Bush Terri's Stocking (for me) (Finished)
• Fiddlestitch Cottage Winter Teapot (Finished)
• Fiddlestitch Cottage Spring Teapot (90%)
• Dragon Dreams Lost Dragon Sampler (for Alex) (Finished)
• Finish Dragon Dreams Summer's Magic (95%)
• Finish Lavender and Lace's In The Arms Of An Angel (this will probably go to work on status as I'd like to stitch Alex's stocking)
• Leisure Arts In The Life Of A Child (2%)
• 6 ornaments (0)
• Finish Mirabilia's Guardian Angel
• Finish SB's Baby Bug Ball (65%)
• Work on Lavender and Lace's The Wedding

Next week I'm off so I'll probably get to do a little more stitching than usual. Alex really wants to learn to stitch so I'll have an excuse to get all of my stuff out :) He really wants to stitch a dragon and I think I have a dragonlet freebie that'll be easy enough for him to do after he masters making his x's. He LOVED the time I let him play with my mill hill beads. They do some big hundredth day of school thing in February and this year we didn't just send 100 of something in (last year was pennies, pretty cheap), it had to be divided in noticeable groups of 10. So, Alex made a little bracelet of mill hill beads. It's soo pretty :) Plus it was a really good activity to work on his fine motor skills. Tonight, no big plans. I'd like to head out to the coop where it's a sale week and Saturday will be insane. I'm hoping to finish stitching the sand at lunch today which should be doable ;)

I'll end this with a new Alex'ism. To begin Alex really wants a digital camera, so Santa has a whole year to price compare/match the Fisher Price camera. However that doesn't mean he still doesn't want a chance to play with mine. I was at the computer uploading some pictures when he came in the room and said, pointing at the camera and without skipping a beat 'Mom, when you get old and die can I have this?' Great! I've got a will chaser already :P