Limerick

There once was a girl named Adara
who wanted her own capybara.
Her rodent in turn
did in fact yearn
to wear a necklace and tiara.

I know it's a little crazy, but you should have seen Adara's eyes light up when she realized that she had her very own poem. And it's not easy to find rhymes for her name, either! *grin*

My little flowergirl

She looked so darn cute, I have to add a picture:

Straggling Home

We got back home last night, and after the usual scramble to unpack and do a billion loads of laundry (alright, only five, but still) I've finally got the time to sit down and type away to my hearts content. In brief, this was the worst trip I've ever been on. Ever. Don't get alarmed, Dad and Carol's wedding proceeded as planned and everyone here is fine. That being said, here's a not-very-brief but hopefully amusing rundown of how the trip went (and no, I'm not joking about any of it, it really happened):

Sunday
Mom and I and the kids leave for Edmonton. Connor starts teething again. Fussiness is the order of the day. We arrive successfully at the hotel, check in, wander about a little and get ready for bed. Connor is up many times in the night, waking Adara and I up regularly.

Monday
Shopping Day. We hit Ikea, where Adara manages to get green ice cream stains all over her clothes (happy St Paddy's day) and Connor falls while pushing a baby-size cart and hits his head on some metal bars getting a giant red welt across his forehead. He later also manages to fall asleep in the van, resulting in a very tiny nap and subsequent increased fussiness. Monday night is similar to Sunday night.

Tuesday
We go to the Royal Alberta Museum with the kids. We find five school buses in the parking lot, but because we're stubborn we go in anyway. There are school groups everywhere and the kids don't really get a chance to see anything up close. Later we go to the big dollar store downtown, where we normally find great deals, but this time there's zip. Trevor arrives on the bus very late that night and collapses on the hide-a-bed in the hotel room.

Wednesday
Mom heads up to Fort Mac and Trev and I meet up with old friends from Red Deer. They spent Tuesday night at the same hotel so that we could spend the whole day together. Their little guy (just a wee bit older than Con) slept poorly as did they, so we are all rather groggy. Both the little guys have their first crack at Galaxyland, after our waiting in line for nearly an hour to get in (we've never waited more than five minutes before). They were mostly freaked out by it all, but are over-excited enough to miss their naps almost entirely. We try to catch up on news while entertaining Adara and trying to pacify overtired toddlers.

Thursday
We travel to Saskatoon. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong. We are delayed over and over again, and arrive almost three hours later than expected. The culmination of the day occurs at just after midnight when Connor starts throwing up all over me. He does this several times in the night.

Friday
We decide that it was something Connor ate (he has a very sensitive stomach) so we proceed down to Moosejaw for the wedding rehearsal. We meet all of Carol's family (very nice people) but don't have time to talk to any of them in between trying to control our over-excited flower girl and trying to soothe our little sickie who is running a fever and wails whenever he's not being held by Mama. We have to skip the rehearsal dinner entirely because of the wailing. Sickie throws up again that night, and we begin to suspect perhaps it's more then a touchy stomach.

Saturday
The pictures are before the wedding and are in a greenhouse. We arrive late because my navigating gets us lost. The light is very bright, so every picture has the back of Connor's head showing, since his eyes are sensitive. The wedding goes well, although Adara scuttles away to sit with her Auntie instead of staying at the front, and I spend the entirety of the service in the coatroom because Con wants to 'talk' along with the minister and 'sing' along with the soloist. I change Adara into a less formal dress for the reception, and send Trev and Adara to the 'meet and greet' part of the reception while I try to put Con down for a nap. They return shortly thereafter, looking a little different as Adara has managed to throw up on both of their nice outfits. Looks like it's a stomach flu. I stay at the room with the two sickies while Trev returns to the reception (in clean clothes) to do his job as best man and make speeches and such. I start throwing up about 9pm that evening and it hits Trev about 3am.

Sunday
We extend our stay in Moosejaw by a day because we simply can't get up and leave. Con has recovered enough to be bored silly and wails about that regularly, while the rest of us slouch about eating dry bread and trying not to be sick again. When we phone Saskatoon to report this, we find out Joel was hit by the stomach bug about the same time Trev was, except they headed back Saturday night so he's sick in a different city.

Monday
We slowly and painfully pack and return to Saskatoon. Joel is feeling a tiny bit better, but is still recuperating. We take the kids to Costco to run around and end up spending money on all kinds of things including an ice-cream maker. We start hoping that maybe things will take a turn for the better. Con even has a decent night.

Tuesday
Trevor's uncle (also staying with Joel & Jeannette) reports feeling sick to his stomach. We take the kids to the Western Development Museum, and find out that as far as Adara is concerned we could have skipped it all but the one old car you get to actually sit in and an old-fashioned mechanical horse ride that costs a loonie. We return to find Trevor's uncle much worse. In desperation, we decide to leave the next morning very early and drive all the way home. We spend the rest of the afternoon packing. Connor's teething resumes. The night is interrupted by wailing often.

Wednesday
We get up at 3am and are on the road by 4am. The kids are troopers. We stop in Edmonton just after 9am for a few hours, have breakfast and run around in a big mall. We stop again at Grasslands at 1pm for lunch, and are home just after 4pm. 980 km in 12 hours. Craziness. But so glad to be home.

Summary
I'm tired just typing about it. But we did get to see our friends from RD, and the wedding did go well, and Trev's Dad and Carol didn't catch the stomach flu (thank heavens), so there were a few bright spots. On the whole, though, it felt like there were so many bad things happening that it was almost funny, and I'm glad it's over. I think I'm going to go and sleep now.

On Our Way

Well, the bags are almost all packed, and I'm about ready to collapse - I mean, get some repose. *wink* All of the prep work has been done: Trev has his new glasses (with clip-on sunglasses, which will make driving so much nicer), both of the fellows have had a haircut (it was Connor's first visit to the barber), and there is enough food in the fridge and freezer to keep Trevor going until he heads down to meet us on Tuesday night. Whew!

Mom and I and the kids will have a few days of fun in Edmonton, then on Wednesday Mom will head back north and Trev and I and the kids will have a day with some very dear friends from Red Deer. Their little fellow is only weeks older than Con, so it will be both the little guys' first time on the rides at Galaxyland. Should be a blast. Thursday we travel to Saskatoon, Friday morning down to Moosejaw, Saturday is the wedding, Sunday back up to Saskatoon, Wednesday back to Edmonton, and then Friday back home. I think it will definitely be one of those vacations where you're more tired at the end than at the beginning, but at least we'll see everyone and hopefully have some fun too. Adara is so excited at being the flower girl that I don't think she really cares what else will happen, and Connor is too young to care about much of the details anyway. He'll just be irked at being in the car seat so much.

Prayers and happy thoughts are much appreciated, and I'll write again when we return. Hopefully I'll have some good stories to share.

My Girl's Growing Up

Adara seems to be growing up so quickly these days. In the space of the last 48 hours, she has:

• Had her first eye exam (her eyes are just fine)
• Finished reading through the last of the "beginner reader" books we have, and
• Been registered for her first experience with organized sports, namely soccer this May

She draws and makes 'floam' sculptures all on her own, she puts her own dishes away after meals, she is starting to think things through...and on the flip side, she pushes the limits, trying to tell adults what to do, teasing her brother, doing what she can to get her own way.

This parenting gig really isn't easy, is it? But I love it every minute - even the minutes I want to tear my hair out. I wish I had better control of my temper, though. The only good thing about being transparent is that it's teaching Adara who to lean on - when she sees me about to lose my temper, she says "Quick, Mommy, let's pray". If I could only teach her one thing, that might just be it.

Projects on the Go

As things are becoming more organized thanks to my to-do list, I have been spurred on to tackle some other tasks I have been neglecting. The biggest one is something I started last year, an attempt to get our affairs organized so that the children would be taken care of in case (and I pray it never happens) something happened to both Trevor and I. I'm arranging to meet with a lawyer to get a legal will in place (I know, we should have done it years ago), and I'm working on setting up a document with all of the information (bank accounts, mortgage info, van info, insurance, and so on) that our executor would need. No, nothing terrible or morbid prompting this, just the awareness that we need to get it done to properly look after the little ones, just in case.

Another long-delayed project is catching up on my scrap booking. I am one and a half years behind, at the moment. The good news is, there's only about 7 more pages to go and then I can start on Connor's baby pictures. I love looking at my kids' baby pictures. Maybe it's overly ambitious, but I'd like to be caught up by the time we move. I'm pretty sure I can do it, if I just stick to it.

I'm also looking at finishing three presents for next Christmas before we move if I can - one cross-stitch and two quilts. Can't say more than that or someone may guess who they're for. My reasoning is that every time I move, I spend months afterwards trying to find everything again...so I might as well finish them now, before I lose them all in the chaos of moving. *grin*

And that's about all - if I tried to take on any more, I know nothing would get done at all. As it is, it's pretty ambitious, but I'm going to try.

Weight

It's not that I can't post without being negative, it's just that I've been busy. Really. *grin* The spring-like weather has been prompting a very long to-do list.

Something I've been ruminating on recently while checking off to-do items is weight and our perception of how we look. I've been just a little on the heavy side since I was about thirteen. It always bothered me, but not enough to really do anything about it. Since we moved up here, I've found myself outside more and more since my kids are very energetic and need to burn off energy for their own good and the good of those of us who live with them *wink* So I've gotten more fit sort of involuntarily. The same goes with the weight loss thing. While I have made some choices (no refined sugar, for instance), some choices have been made for me (no refined flour, no fatty foods, very little dairy). And so I'm slimmer than I've ever been (at least as an adult). I choose to feel blessed by this, rather than lament the many things that I can't eat anymore. Otherwise I'd be miserable to live with.

The point I'm making in all this is that I was convinced for years and years that if I ever got to a size 'X', I wouldn't worry about how I looked anymore. I rolled my eyes when I read articles about models and actresses that said they still worried about looking fat. But you know what? It doesn't seem to matter what size I am, I still look in the mirror and see the areas that I need to improve on. I'm not complaining about this, please understand - I'm kind of fascinated by it. I'm realizing more and more that it really is a state of mind, not a state of body (just like all the books said, I know, I just didn't believe them). Yes, it's important to notice when I get out of shape, and to establish an exercise routine so that I'm at a fitness level at which I can comfortably keep up with my children and also set a good example for them. And if that eliminates some 'problem areas', then great. If it makes clothes fit better, wonderful. But I think I just have to choose to disregard that little voice that insists on pointing out how there's some extra fat there, or some loose skin there, ad nauseam. It's hard, though, since the little voice is fed by so much externally as well as internally.

Perhaps it's the same as this no complaining thing - the first step is to notice the voice is there. Notice when it starts speaking. And then choose not to listen.

So Far, So Good (I think?)

Here's an interesting thing: it seems that I take this whole being a good role-model to my kids thing even more seriously than I thought. When it's just the kids and I, I hardly ever have to switch the bracelet at all. The times I do are because I am criticizing, rather than training. I'm working on that.

This positivity stands in sharp contrast to my conversations with adults, where I seem to be very prone to complaining. When Trev phoned at lunch, I switched my bracelet 4 times in less than 3 minutes. Being a natural optimist, I find this dichotomy interesting and oddly encouraging - after all, it proves that I can be positive when I choose to be. I just need to choose to be little more often, it appears. *grin*

In other news, Connor now has 8 front teeth and 3 (soon to be 4) molars. Rather strange, but hey, the way he eats the sooner he can really chew the better.

Taking on a New Challenge

It's funny how the mind works...the night before I start a diet, I'm always tempted to binge on junk food. Tonight, I'm tempted to come up with things to complain about. Sound bizarre? You see, I'm taking on the "Complaint Free World" 21 day challenge. I ordered the bracelet, but put off taking on the challenge until I got the chance to read the book Will Bowen write about his project. It finally came through via interlibrary loan, and now I'm ready to take the plunge.

The goal is to have 21 days go by without complaining, gossiping or criticizing. Every time I catch myself doing one of those things, I have to switch the bracelet to the other wrist. The theory is that once you become conscious of complaining, you can begin to avoid doing so. From reading through the book, I fully expect it to be weeks before I get through even one full day...but I can't help but wonder how much nicer life would be, not only for myself but also my family, if there's no griping about things from Mama. I'm nervous, though, not only that it will be hard, but that I'll have to face just how much complaining I do regularly. Not good for the ego, I suspect.

Wish me luck! I'll post occasionally on this, but not often, especially in the beginning (I'll only have complaints, which aren't allowed). Still, I'll let you know when I reach milestones.