Mama's Visit

Aidan was very excited about his Mama coming to visit him and had been counting down the sleeps until her visit. On Wednesday her flight was scheduled to arrive in Grande Prairie at 1:58pm and I had arranged to take a late lunch and go pick her up at the airport. Around 1:00 I decided to double check that her flight was on time, and it’s a good thing I did! The website said her flight was delayed, and then she called me on my cell phone to tell me that she was stuck in the Calgary airport, courtesy of a bird that flew into the engine of the plane. She said they were sitting on the plane and there was this gross smell and then they were all asked to get off the plane. When the engine was checked out it was deemed not safe, so they had to scramble and find another flight for everyone up to Grande Prairie. Fortunately it didn’t take too long and they had another flight scheduled to arrive here at 5pm. I never ended up taking a lunch, just left work half an hour early, picked Aidan up and we went to go meet Mama.

We saw the plane, and the airport as we were driving in, and then Aidan got to ride in the luggage cart I found in the parking lot and he was great until he saw Mama and then he became shy and grumpy – what is it with kids? Anyways, we got home and showed Mama her ‘little house’ and had some dinner and everything was good.

This is Aidan pretending to sleep. You can see the brown teddy peeking his head out of the blanket - this is Bennett, who came to visit Blue Teddy and got to 'sleep over' as long as he promised to be good. Aidan thought it was quite funny and made us sit down and have a little talk with all the bears before they went to bed - 'Are you going to be a good bear?' 'Yes' 'Are you going to talk?' 'No!' 'Are you going to get out of bed?' 'No!' My mom also made this blanket for Aidan when he was born. I have one like it with the same Paddington Bear on it that she made for me when I was a baby.


Aidan got to stay home and hang out with Mama on Thursday and Friday which he very much enjoyed. On Thursday they mostly just hung out at home, and went for a bike ride to the spray park nearby. Aidan started out hating the little bike trailer, but after a couple bike rides with Daddy and Mama now he loves it. I had mentioned in passing that our little boot room is dirty and disgusting, not hinting at all, but when I got home, it was clean! Aidan took this opportunity to use the mop and clean up on the deck, wearing Mama's slippers. I got home Thursday evening and Aidan started crying and was upset because he thought that since I was home Mama had to leave. It took us awhile to get him calmed down but then he was okay.

While I was digging for some potatoes in the cupboard, I came up with a yam/sweet potato I had bought quite awhile ago, judging from the length of the stems sprouting from it. There were about 6 of them, light pink and pretty light. So on Friday my mom decided that she and Aidan would plant the half that was sprouting and see what happened. They got out the little trowel that my Dad had brought for Aidan and initially planted it in a plastic and paper bag, and then transplanted it to a little blue bucket I found when I got home. This thing is amazing, I should post a picture of what it looks like now! It took like 2 days for the light pink to go away and for tiny green leaves to sprout and every day the leaves grow like ½ an inch! I’m going to have to get a bigger pot or something. The plan for Friday night was to rent a Backyardigans movie with the episode High Tea on it. Aidan’s love of tea (it’s really Cambric tea – half milk, half tea with some splenda sprinkled in) stems mainly from my Mom, and I thought they would enjoy watching High Tea, which is all about making a perfect pot of tea. Unfortunately I couldn’t find it! I went to 2 different movie stores and then we just got a different Backyardigans movie and picked up a pizza as well. While my Mom and Aidan were out they picked up some corn, so we made some corn on the cob and settled on the couch to watch the show with pizza and corn on the cob.
On Saturday we made our weekly pilgrimage to the grocery store – Superstore this week. Recently they re-organized the non-food half of the store to make room for their new clothing line, Joe. I’ve browsed through, but never bought anything even though the clothes are pretty decently priced and look good. When we got there on Saturday, they had about 5 racks full of clearance items – mostly t-shirts or ¾ length shirts – so of course we had to look through those, and 1 picked 3 cute ones. After Superstore we hit the mall for a stop at Zellers and then were off to Costco for diapers. I’ll be so glad when he finally starts to potty train because those things are getting expensive, especially the pull ups! Aidan was very impressed with the new Disney movie characters from Cars that were on the pull ups. He saw the movie twice in theaters and loved it both times and still gets excited when he sees a picture of any of the characters. We had lunch at Costco – hot dog for Aidan and chicken strips and fries for my Mom and me but of course Aidan had to ‘help’ us eat those as well. Costco fries are so good! I don’t think I even want to know the nutritional value in those, but I might have to go get another order of them before I go back onto Weight Watchers. The rest of the day was taken up with playing golf and running in the sprinkler outside, mending and making French toast with peaches for dinner. My Mom kindly agreed to help me alter about 5 pairs of my pants that I have grown out of. We cut 2-3 inches out of the waistbands of all of them and that felt sooo good – it was also great because now I have more pants! I’m so useless on a sewing machine, I just save all the mending for my mom to do and it’s very nice of her to spend her holiday helping me out. She even fixed Michael’s jersey (after we went and got BC Lions orange thread) and that’s saying a lot about Michael’s trust level right there.

My mom read Aidan a bedtime story every night and Bennett and Teddy took this opportunity to get re-aquainted.
Sunday was mostly just church and hanging around the house and then I had booked off Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from work. We walked to Starbucks for coffee’s/steamed milks with the bike trailer/stroller, my Mom took Aidan for a long ride in the bike trailer, we went out for breakfast at Smitty’s and went to go see Barnyard at the theater, well fortified with candy and treats. I would recommend that no one see this movie. The animation was weird – although that might just be me – but the storyline was not cohesive and jumped and skipped around with a very strange sense of timing. Aidan had a great time at the ‘cow moo-mee’ and that was the whole point of going, so that was okay.

All too soon Wednesday came and it was time for us to drive Mama to the airport. Aidan handled it pretty well – but the wagon wheel he was munching on helped quite a bit. The next morning he wanted to know if he could go into the trailer and wake Mama up. I told him Mama was gone and he was disappointed all over again. When my mom was here, he would get up, wake me up, and then I would take him out to the trailer for a little cuddle time with Mama during which he would also get a little present like a race car. Pretty lucky kid!

The other major project my Mom did while she was here was make a winter jacket for Aidan out of some of her scrap couch covering material. It turned out wonderfully and Aidan thought it was really cool, so we took a couple pictures of him in it.

Pet Peeves and Exciting Stuff

I am so excited that I finally figured out how to add a proper section with links to my friend's blogs! I went back to blogger help and decided just to copy and paste the links section in since apparently my template is missing it, and that seemed to do it! Also, I should mention that my friend Teresa has made a brand new blog! I never posted a comment when she started it up, and now it would be lame to comment on it because it's been up for awhile...but I thought I would mention on my blog what a cool blog it is! You can see it by clicking on my brand new links section, or by going to www.throwingstuffoutthere.blogspot.com.

I had to mention the exciting stuff first, so now on to the pet peeves. While Aidan was having a nap, I was sorting laundry and watching a movie and it was so annoying - the dialogue was so quiet, so I'd crank the volume, but then there would be an interlude and a song which would be so blaringly loud I'd have to grab the remote and turn it down quickly. This went on for the whole hour and a half movie. It was kind of a weird movie, maybe it was cheaply made or something and that's why the volume difference was so noticeable. It was called The Tao of Steve and the star was Donal Logue who looked vaguely familiar but I didn't recognize the name from anything. The funniest part was that it looked like they had stuck a beach ball up this guy's shirt and then other characters would make comments about how fat he was. It was hilarious, it looked so fake!

Aidan has been doing so many cute things lately and they're all pretty funny, so I thought I would share them with you.

• He's been really worried about noises lately, especially noises outside, so one day we were outside and the wind was blowing the leaves in the trees and he was worried about the noise this was making. I told him what it was and showed him the leaves moving and he seemed to understand. A little while later he went inside and came back with a pair of scissors and asked me if we could 'cuck leaf' - he wanted to cut all the leaves off all the trees so they wouldn't make the noise anymore!
• We were talking about him taking lessons to learn how to skate and in the book there was a picture of two little kids playing hockey, so he said that when he learned to play hockey he was going to hug and I said hug your team? And he said yeah, win - he was going to hug his team after they would win hockey games.
• I overheard him singing to himself while he was playing on the deck - sometimes he'll sing the Dora song ('doot doot doe-ah, doot doot doe-ah') or the Diego song ('go eh-go go, go eh-go go') but this time he was singing, slightly off-key, the alphabet - 'a, b, c, d' he'd get that far and then, since e sounds like a, would start over again. I asked him if he was singing the alphabet song and helped him sing it. He seemed pretty impressed that I would know it.
• While we were getting ready for church on Sunday I said that Teddy should probably stay home and he said yes, Teddy was sick and needed a nap. Then it turned out that Mommy's teddy, Red Teddy, Blue Teddy and White Teddy (yeah, we're really imaginative when it comes to naming his bears. Blue Teddy is the original and has a blue ribbon around his neck, Red Teddy is the replacement with a red ribbon and White Teddy is really white) all needed naps, so we tucked them in before we went off to church. Aidan's idea of tucking in, is to cover the bears completely with the tiny teddy blanket his Great Grandmother made for his bears, and then to cover all of that with his larger blanket. I guess they were really cold or something. Then he turns the light out and we tiptoe out, being really quiet. He told me that the light has to be off or else they can't sleep.

Of course, when I thought I would write down all the cute stuff he's been doing lately, I forgot half of the list!

I picked up a copy of Community Connections while we were at the Library on Saturday, it's a really handy magazine because it's got all the programs and events happening around the community for the next4 months or so. Even at Aidan's age, there are a lot of options for programs he could be enrolled in. There are about 4 or 5 different levels of preschool swimming lessons, skating lessons, gymnastics, and U4 - under 4 soccer team for soccer tots, music lessons, programs at the library - I want to give him opportunities and have a well rounded child, but it's hard to pick. I don't want to overwhelm him so I want to do just one program at a time so that he can focus better. And besides, at his age, most of the programs are just playing. We've decided on swimming lessons before Christmas, and then skating lessons starting in January. I talked to one of my co-workers about the CanSkate program here and she said she wasn't impressed with it because if your child isn't self-motivated they won't do much, so I'm going to buy Aidan some skates and take him skating myself and then also go to watch the Fall session of the program and see what actually goes on. Hopefully I'll like what I see because Aidan is thrilled that he's going to learn how to be a hockey player!

Ramblings About My Job

I had this great thought - maybe instead of checking all my friend's blogs and seeing if they've updated, maybe I should update my blog!! And it's about time, my last blog is about my Dad's visit and since then my mom has come and gone and we're settling down after all the excitement of grandparents on both sides here to visit. I will post about my mom's visit later along with pictures.

I took 3 days off from work, so including the weekend, I had 5 whole days in a row off. It was glorious! It was so nice and such a wonderful needed break - and then I was back to work for 2 days and here I am on a weekend again! It does feel like I had a week off, I think I would prefer to do it this way instead of taking the full week off because then (I'm hoping) the paycheck will be less of a shock than if I took the full week off. When I got back on Thursday Tammy was so excited and came out of her office to say that she had missed me and that she was soo glad I was back, and then Al happened to be walking through and laughed and said he was really glad I was back too. I wasn't sure how to take it, because Al doesn't say much to me - not because he doesn't like me but because he's the big boss and the most interaction we have is for me to pass on messages or to run up and down stairs with single sheets of paper to fax or copy - so I asked if it was a joke and they said no, they were really glad I was back. Even Martin said he had been waiting for me to get back because with me gone he had no one to talk to. No one to talk to, yet there are all the guys in the back, Al in his office, Thyra who constantly is coming in to ask questions, and Tammy...so all of that made me feel really good and appreciated, even if I am just a glorified gopher and phone answerer. After being at my job for one month yesterday (yay!) I think that a revised estimation would be that with this job I made a step down from my last job. I definitely had more responsibility and more stress at my last job - I guess I was more in charge of whole areas like ordering the parts, making sure the inventory was kept up, and then the WHOLE office thing. Not that I would want to go back to that, but now I just answer phones, do whatever Tammy or Martin needs getting done (whole days spent at the photocopy machine, making a copy of a large 3 inch binder) so it feels almost like a demotion even though I was desperate to get out of TC Equipment. I am working more with Simply Accounting and figuring out that out and that is definitely a bonus. Originally I thought I was going to be doing THE bookkeeping rather than helping with the bookkeeping, so I formed all these grand plans of working from home, doing the books for small companies while my children played quietly in a corner - I'm allowed to dream! But who knows, I might be able to take on more responsibility and learn more and maybe even move up. Tammy told me I wasn't supposed to tell anyone, (so I'll just tell the whole blog world) but I was supposed to start a a certain wage and move up $1/hour in 3 months, but she said she would give me the raise on my second paycheck there, so within a month I'll get it. Isn't that cool?

The only downside to this wonderful job (besides the constant swearing from all the guys - so annoying!) is a woman that was hired 2 days after I was. Her name is Thyra (pronounced tear-ah, you can remember how to pronounce it, because she makes you want to tear your hair out and cry tears of frustration) and she is supposed to be the safety person I think. I am not totally clear on her responsibilities, mainly because she is the type of person who likes to at least try to get you to do them for her. She acts as if anything that goes wrong is a personal affront to her. For example, she can't find a 2 hole punch or the printer is out of paper or I don't have a pen in the drawer she's looking for in MY desk for her to use. She constantly comes downstairs and puts stuff on my desk or takes the pen off my desk to use or interrupts what I'm doing to tell me something about something I had given her before which I am no longer working on, or asks me to do something which is not my job to do. I know they all sound small and petty but she does them all the time until I just want to leave when I see her coming. I also have a hard time saying no, so it's difficult for me to handle her asking me to do something that is clearly her responsibility or something so dumb I don't know why she's asking me to do it - i.e. look up a phone number. Usually I just remain noncommital and the longer she keeps talking the more she figures it out and usually she just takes it with her when she leaves then. I try not to talk behind her back or gossip about her but it's really hard. That's the other thing - where is the line there? It's one thing to complain about her - I don't think it's bad to say she's frustrating, but when does that become bad or something I shouldn't be doing? Anyways, enough about her. She has her office upstairs and works an earlier shift than me so I enjoy my time between 3:30 and 5 when it is generally a little quieter in the office.

I watched this show on ABBA on my days off, counting down their top 20 singles. It reminded me how much I like ABBA and so I listened to my ABBA Gold cd on iTunes today. Michael hates iTunes which frustrates me, but I like it. It's also helpful to link up my iPod to - I don't know if there are any other programs for that, maybe there are, but it makes sense to me at least, to use the program designed for the iPod. I have almost 1000 songs on there. That's including some cd's that I uploaded, but still, so many songs! I tried to put it on a DVD to back it up - the idea was to put all my pictures and songs on this DVD so they wouldn't mysteriously disappear like they've been doing lately, pictures anyways, but the whole thing was going to take like 5 GB!! Once I thought about how much stuff I was putting together it made sense, but I hadn't thought it was going to be that huge. Guess I'll have to buy a couple more DVD-RW's.

Aidan is obsessed with golf and with playing outside and mostly with playing golf outside. When we get home from work/daycare he says 'Play yout lil bit?' and then gets downright sulky if I say no. Yesterday he thought it was a great plan for him to play outside and then for me to call him inside for dinner, but today I wouldn't let him and he was upset at me. I asked him what he wanted to do this weekend and he said he wanted to - wait for it - play golf. Also that he wanted to play outside. He was really excited when I mentioned going to the Art gallery which I thought was funny because I'm pretty sure he has no idea what it is. I hope he's not disappointed when we go tomorrow. They have a kid friendly interactive exhibit that kids can play with, so we'll go check it out. He told me that he wouldn't touch and would ask before he touched and I said it was okay to touch but he still didn't seem to sure about it.

Anyways, that's enough for tonight. I will try to get on here this weekend and post about my mom's visit along with some pictures. She made Aidan the cutest little winter jacket - all blue and white fleecy - and fortunately Aidan loves it too. He thinks it's 'lee coo' which means really cool and is his highest stamp of approval.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Grandpa's visit.

Aidan was very excited for his Papa to come visit him and was already looking for him on Wednesday, when the little trailer showed up that my Dad was going to be staying in. We were fortunate enough to be able to borrow a little Scamper from a lady at the church and have it there the next day for my Dad and leave it so my Mom could stay in it as well. It was really really great because our small house is not very accommodating for guests.

Michael cooked up some steaks on the barbecue for dinner on Thursday and Aidan took the opportunity to play golf with Papa. Any spare moment he has, he wants to play golf. He also loves watching Michael play golf on Xbox so I’m wondering if maybe it will be something that will hold his interest as he grows up. If it is, I should probably start saving up now! A little golf bag with clubs for his size is $170 now and probably increases exponentially as he grows up! Aidan got to stay up a little bit later than normal but was still worried that he hadn’t had enough time to play with Papa when he went to bed.

The next day was Friday and I went to work, leaving my Dad and Aidan to hang out together all day. I had taped up the jogging stroller so they could use it and my Dad put it to good use! They went traipsing all over town, visiting me at work with donuts and ending up at a John Deere dealer looking at machinery when Michael picked them up. By the time I got home they were off again, this time to the spray park. I made mini pizza’s on the barbecue (they turned out really good!) for dinner, Aidan played more golf and then it was off to bed for him. I peeked in on him that night and he was wiped! He was lying on his back with his arms flung outward, gently snoring.

On Saturday morning Aidan, my Dad and I went down to the nearest Starbucks in Safeway and had coffee. My Dad likes their regular coffee, I like a nonfat sugarfree vanilla latte (which I am still trying to convince Michael is not something he can’t remember!) and Aidan had a kids/short hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce (for only $1!). We talked a little and read a couple books of Aidan’s I had brought along and then headed out into Safeway to pick up a couple groceries. I actually managed to keep this grocery bill relatively low which I was quite happy with, but at the end it was pretty clear Aidan needed a nap – and I did too, for that matter. We had both woken up feeling sick with stuffy/runny noses and had our respective medicines. During the week I had arranged to buy a secondhand car seat for $30 and to pick it up on Saturday, so we had stopped there before coffee with no luck and we stopped by again after grocery shopping, but no one was home again.

Once back home Aidan and I lay down for naps and my Dad spent some time in the sun catching up on his book. After we got up, we had some lunch and headed out again, this time calling ahead to the house where I was picking up the car seat. I went to the same house I had stopped at the previous times and it turns out it was the wrong house! Finally I figured out which house it was and we were on our way. We stopped at Nevada Bob’s Golf store to see if we could get a golf shirt for Aidan, but they didn’t carry any kids clothing, just some real and plastic golf clubs for little guys. His $5 Walmart set is not holding up so well, so I bought him the plastic set, but he still wasn’t very happy because I wouldn’t buy him the $6 bag of tee’s! Then we went to Walmart, still looking for a golf shirt but no luck there either. However, my Dad did spot a Go Diego Go! outfit which was pretty exciting. It was a little navy vest, red long sleeved shirt and khaki pants – very cute.

After that I decided enough money had been spent, so we went home. My Dad had offered to take down and clean the pool we had set up for Aidan and I gladly took him up on his offer. It had been sitting out there for maybe a month and a half and at least 3 weeks without a cover so it was yucky – but not as bad as I thought. Aidan got right in there and helped with the scrubbing and I sat and took pictures of them *smiles* I did help a little with holding it up and flipping it over, but not much. After that my Dad cleaned up our car as well – both cleanups are very much appreciated, thanks Dad!

Sunday morning we went to church and then out for lunch at the Golden Star which was really nice, especially since my Dad treated us. Aidan ate all the broccoli. He’s figured out how to say broccoli and makes sure that he gets it all on his plate, cut up, so he can eat it. After that we stopped at Costco to see if we could return our jogging stroller. A couple of the plastic pieces were bending and the seat just kept lying down instead of staying up, but after 2 years, I thought it wasn’t that big of a deal. Michael said we should try to return it, I agreed, on the condition that he be the one returning it, and amazingly, they took it back! Crazy! If I could have found the company on the internet I would have ordered parts, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. So then the plan was to drop Aidan and me off at Ernie’s so we could look at Bike Trailers, and Michael and my Dad were going to go take a tour of Michael’s shop, but on the way to Ernie’s Aidan fell asleep, so I just waited in the car while the guys looked at Michael’s shop. When they were done, we stopped at Ernie’s and Canadian Tire to look at Bike Trailers, and bought one from Canadian Tire while Aidan slept and my Dad stayed in the car with him. Once we got home my Dad finished packing up, we said our goodbyes and Michael drove him to the airport. Aidan had woken up by this time but was still quite tired and not sure what to think of the Bike Trailer. When Michael was away with Pat in Dawson Creek on Saturday at the Rodeo/Carnival, he had won 2 dogs for Aidan, so I told Aidan that the puppies wanted to go for a ride and once the puppies wanted to go for a ride, he wanted to as well.

Well, that was our weekend, pretty fun and exciting. Next up is my Mom who arrives Wednesday afternoon to stay for a week. Aidan is very excited for his Mama to come visit him, they have fun reading books and drinking tea together – and I’m sure he’ll teach Mama how to play golf while she’s here as well!

Here are some pictures from Aidan and Papa's time together. I meant to take a proper picture of the two of them together, but I forgot.

Aidan's doing a little silly dance instead of smiling at the camera.
Aidan got quite into it, helping Papa scrub the pool.
Papa set up a little golf course outside.
Teddy was sitting at the last hole and once Aidan got the ball in they all cheered.

Grammy Bread

I think I forgot to mention that when Michael’s parents were here they brought us some buns that were freshly baked by Michael’s Grammy. They were so good!! They had that certain taste that is only in stuff baked by Grandma’s, I’m not sure what it is….does anyone else know? If I could bake buns that tasted that good I probably would! Anyways, I just wanted to say thanks for the super yummy buns Grammy!

Pictures from the last couple weeks

Here are a selection of pictures from the last couple weeks:

Aidan stole my sleep mask and thinks it's hilarious to put it on before he goes to sleep, but it hardly lasts for 5 minutes. This is another example of a swiper smile.

While Michael's parents were here Aidan took the opportunity to rope Kim into playing golf with him. He's trying to stick the tee into the porch here so that he can set his ball up and then hit it.

Last night (wednesday) Aidan was having a bath, and I found his little shaving kit while I was cleaning up the bathroom, so here he is shaving.

We went for a rainwalk because it had been raining pretty hard that day, but we had to walk all the way to the front of the parking lot to find any puddles!

This was his favourite puddle - a nice long one. By the time he was done his pants were pretty wet!

Nanny and Grandpa's Visit

Wow, it has been way too long since I posted last. We had a pretty busy weekend last weekend and things are looking to stay busy for the next week and a half at least. Michael’s parents were in town over the long weekend and we all had a great time.

They arrived Friday evening and came over for a steak barbeque. Aidan got to stay up pretty late which he thought was really great. The next day Kathy took Aidan and I to see a movie. Before they came, Aidan told me he wanted to go see a movie with both Nanny and Grandpa and also with my parents when they came. We had already gone to see the movie Cars when it came out, so I showed him the trailer for that one and also for the new one, Barnyard, but it didn’t stand a chance next to Cars. He’s really into little race cars – he calls them ‘hum’s’. We went and got some treats at Walmart, as well as a helmet and some elbow and knee pads for his new (to him) scooter Nanny and Grandpa had brought for him, and then headed over and Aidan actually lasted the whole movie which was great. He got whiny about 20 minutes from the end, but we managed to stick it out. While we were at the movie, Michael and Kim had gone with Pat to play a round of golf and then picked up some more steaks, so we came home to another barbecue. The scooter they brought had been left in Michael’s Grammy’s yard, and no one claimed it, so she put it in her garage and gave it to Kim and Kathy when they came to visit, for them to bring up to Aidan. Thanks Grammy! It’s a pretty cool scooter, called a Zooma, with a large bike sized tire in the front and then 2 flat panels behind for you to stand on. It’s sort of a tricycle scooter so it’s very stable. It’s also pretty heavy, so I have to push Aidan on it because he’s not strong enough to get it to go on his own, but he enjoys getting little rides. I think he gets annoyed with the pads and the helmet (even though they’re really cute and say Hot Wheels on them) but I don’t want him to get hurt.

By Sunday he was one growly boy, so after visiting with Nanny and Grandpa a little after church, he had a nice long nap. After the nap, we went out for dinner to Mama Panda’s. Aidan’s whole dinner pretty much consisted of broccoli and oranges with a little knawing on a drumstick thrown in. Once he was done Michael scooped him some ice cream and he was so excited about trying to get spoonfuls to his mouth, he knocked it off the table after 2 bites, so Michael had to go back and get him more. In his defence, it was very hard ice cream, but still!

On Monday Aidan had a trial day at Jolene’s Dayhome from 9am-1pm and during that time Kathy and I went shopping. She wanted to get a vacuum cleaner and really wanted a Dyson and we were actually able to find her one at Canadian Tire. You’re supposed to only be able to get them in the States, so it was really great that we were able to find exactly what she wanted (even if it was a little pricey)! Hopefully it lives up to the hype. We went to Walmart again and Kathy stocked up on socks for her guys and also got me a cool can opener. Sadly (according to me) we are still using Michael’s old camping can opener that we’ve had since we were married and he’s had since who knows when. According to him camping can openers are the best kind you can get and there’s no reason to be dissatisfied with it. Anyways, this one is electric and can open super tall cans, also has a bottle opener and a knife sharpener. Of course, I haven’t had any cans to open since then, but maybe I’ll have soup tonight just as an excuse to use it.

The daycare went really really well. They went to the park and had a great time and Aidan was sad to leave which is a good sign. He was tired again, so we went home and had a nap before heading out to the spray park with Kim, Kathy and Pat with a stop at the Marble Slab Creamery on the way. I got way too much frozen yogurt and had to leave it in the car to melt so I could re-freeze it again. That place has such good ice-cream. Well, I only have the fat free frozen yogurt, so I can only say that stuff is excellent but the ice cream sure looks good!!

Aidan had a great time at the park and of course, was really upset when it was time to go home. We had to spray him off in the shower when we got home because he was all sandy. Then we had a little dinner, cleaned up the boxes of toys that Nanny and Grandpa had brought for him and headed off to bed. There was some pretty cool stuff in those boxes. He doesn’t really have any toy animals, especially not scary ones, so it was really funny to see him playing with a shark with a big open mouth with lots of pointy teeth, an alligator with an open mouth and lots of pointy teeth and a spider. He put the spider in the middle and then positioned the shark and the alligator on either side so that the spider was almost covered with their mouths and then left them that way. I’m not sure if he thought the spider was going to run away or what. Then Kim or I would take the shark and pretend to eat the spider and Aidan would take the alligator and fight the shark for the spider – it was quite funny. There were also some potato heads in the box which I was really excited about! I’ve been thinking of getting them for Aidan and I had sort of decided on this Christmas, so this gives me a good headstart. They’re all adult potato heads, so maybe I’ll get him a hockey potato head and some little kid potato heads and give him the whole collection for Christmas.

Aidan was sad to see his Nanny and Grandpa go, but Michael promised him he could call him in a couple days once they get back home. (Watch out for that call, Nanny and Grandpa!) We were really glad they came and had a great time with them!

I got home from work on Tuesday and just about pulled my hair out – my babysitter literally is driving me crazy! I’ve tried not to whine about her too much on here because it’s not really a rant forum, but yesterday I had had enough. I called Jolene and arranged for Aidan to start there today (Wednesday) and then called Amy and told her I was able to get Jolene to start early to which she replied ‘Oh really? Awesome!’ as if she had been hoping I would ‘fire’ her sooner than Thursday. It makes me feel so old to be frustrated with my teenage babysitter! I’m only 10 years older than her…

Aidan was very excited to go to Jolene’s house today. I explained that Amy wasn’t coming back because she didn’t clean up a mess when she made one and that she wasted food and that made Mommy upset and he nodded like he totally understood. I’m not sure how much I wrote about Jolene before – she’s got 2 kids, Tristan is 4 and Brooklynn is 8 months, it seems like she goes to the park every day, and she’s got a fenced yard with a glass sliding door, so the kids can play in the yard and come in and out while she keeps an eye on them. And, the best part, she’s only $550/month. I’m only paying ½ a month for August because my Dad is taking Aidan this Friday, and then my Mom is taking Aidan from the 17th to the 23rd. I’m very happy with the situation – she even has me sign in and out when I drop him off and pick him up – and I think I might even stick with her and not switch to my first choice if a spot becomes available.

Tomorrow my Dad is flying into town to stay until Sunday so tonight I need to clean the house! I’m still ‘recovering’ from Michael’s parents – I need to sweep, vaccum, do dishes, clean the bathroom etc. All the weekend stuff I was able to put off because we were off doing much more exciting things and I didn’t think my Dad was coming. Aidan is very excited about Papa coming to visit and is also counting down the days until Mama comes. Today it’s 7 sleeps til she comes and 1 sleep til Papa comes.
Well, I think this entry is long enough. Aidan and I went for a walk in the parking lot last night so he could splash in the puddles and I took some pictures, so I’ll post those, along with some from the weekend hopefully tonight.