What's Your Favourite Drink?

I went out at coffee to get a steamed milk because I've been wanting one for the past couple days, but sadly it did not live up to my expectations. Lately my favourite drink is a Caramel Steamed Milk (nonfat with no whip). Maybe I forgot to ask for nonfat milk, I forget. Last Thursday Tammy got us all drinks from Esquires and then Michael got me one from Starbucks so that's why I haven't had one in almost a week. Usually I can justify the expense, especially now that I've discovered that Esquires is a bit cheaper than Starbucks. However, I think that I like the caramel steamed milk from Starbucks better. Also, I'm trying to drink more milk now that I'm pregnant, as well as more real juice, no caffeine and no sugar. I'm still trying to work up the motivation to actually get on that stupid treadmill and work out. Maybe next week :)

Pictures

I brought my little camera disk to work to upload some pictures onto here - actually, just that one picture of my belly, but when I plugged it in, I discovered a bunch more pictures on there!

On Saturday Aidan was tucking all his teddies in bed for a nap while we were cleaning up his room, and then he decided they all needed something to read, so he got out his box of tiny books and gave each bear a book. He came to get me to show me and I thought it was so cute.

I forget when these were taken, but these are some examples of Aidan's superb dance moves. It is sooooo funny to watch him dance, he can sure bust a move! This past weekend he found some old sunglasses of Michael's, grabbed his flashlight, got Michael to put on some 'good beats', turned the light off and proceeded to dance up a storm. He always makes me laugh when he dances.

Aidan with his antelope and buffalo glove puppets.

We were going through his too big box and he was very excited about all the 'new' shirts I was pulling out and decided to try one out right away. He looked like a little safari guy with his green button up shirt and khaki's and I told him all he needed was a couple wild animals!

Earmuffs with the puppets. For anyone who's seen Old School, our son can do earmuffs!

Acting silly

He wanted me to take a picture of his back next and was very interested in how it looked.

And here it is: my little belly. Honestly the picture makes it look bigger than it is, I don't even think it looks this big because I still fit all my clothes except for a couple of pants that were pretty tight to start with. I don't even really feel pregnant since the upset stomach and nausea is done thank goodness. The only thing is that I have zit breakouts and super oily skin on my face, it's so disgusting! I knew I was supposed to have a 'glow', I just didn't think it was supposed to be from that! :)

Names

Since I can't buy anything for the baby until March (and believe me, I would have while I was in Walmart over the weekend if I knew what it was going to be) I've decided to start looking at baby names. Names don't cost anything, so I can pick as many as I want!

Here are some that I like:
Emily
Anna
Ella
Lola
Katelyn
Ava
Lily
Bella

Tyler
Jacob
Daniel
Jet
Caleb
James
Thomas
Evan
Nathan

Some of those I can't really pick because we know an Emily and Caleb that would be very close in age and that kind of sucks. I know I could pick it if I really wanted to which is why they're still on the list. Michael likes Audrey after his Nanny and I think it's okay but not really my favourite. Also, then we'd have 3 people with names that start with A in our family. Not that that's a huge deal either, but it might be cool to pick a name starting with M. I searched through some M boy names this morning and here are the funny ones that I came up with:

MacAilean – Son of the handsome man
MacDonald – Son of the world’s ruler
Machakw – Horny Toad

I don't think we'll be using any of those :)

Anyways, I know I'm not even halfway through my pregnancy and you can barely even tell that I'm pregnant (which I was super excited about for the longest time until I realized that I started out bigger than I did with Aidan. Now I'm not as excited, but it's still good) but let me know what you think about my names and give me any suggestions! I always think naming a child is such a huge responsibility, I really don't want to pick the 'wrong' name! I'm pretty happy with Aidan, I still really like the name. The only mistake we made there was naming him Michael Aidan Latham which is really confusing. The other thing is that if on any documents he has to have his first initial, it will look like this: M. Aidan Latham. That's like Maidan Latham. Hopefully he never figures that one out, and if he does I hope he's not mad!

*sigh* it's a Monday

Welllll...I shouldn't complain too much because everything worked out, AND it could have been worse, Aidan could have been having a major meltdown which thankfully he wasn't. Aidan was in a good mood this morning which was so wonderful. He stayed dry all last night so I gave him a couple candies and then once we were done breakfast and were all bundled up we headed out to drive to Darlene's house only to find that the car wouldn't start. It was making that clicky sound that means the battery is dead, and Michael's car wasn't there so I was stuck. Then I saw this truck driving through the parking lot, so Aidan and I headed out across the ice to ask if he could give us a boost. He very kindly drove over and got out his cables and we tried to start my car a few times but it wasn't working. This guy said he thought it was a starter problem (I sure hope he's wrong) rather than just a dead battery and then offered to give us a ride. I ran in to tell Michael what was going on and then we headed out - after warning him he was going to be driving across town twice which he said was fine. Aidan hammed it up all the way to Darlene's house since he had a captive and appreciative audience. Then he drove me to my work and dropped me off. It was so nice of him to go out of his way - waaaay out of his way - I'm not even sure why he was at the church in the first place! The worst part was, around 9/9:15 I see a truck similar to his drive into our parking lot and sure enough, it's him. Then I see my keys in his hand. I felt so bad - not only had he driven us all over town, but then I forget my keys in his truck and he has to come back yet again to drop them off!! Now I kind of feel like I should do something to say thank you but I don't even know his name, just where he works and that his girlfriend is pregnant. Either way, next time we need anything to do with sheet metal, we're going to Triton Sheet Metal!

We had a pretty good weekend. Aidan kind of bounced from being really co-operative and good to being a horrible little monster. We're having some difficulty getting him to nap at Darlene's house, and for some reason she seems to think he doesn't need a nap. Friday he didn't have a nap and then fell asleep in the car when Michael went to pick him up and we tried to get to just sleep a little bit more when we got home but that didn't work. We had an epic battle with him that culminated in the bathtub and then in a bath. When he has his little fit, I don't want him to wreck stuff and it's almost impossible to speak to him so Michael suggested just putting him in the tub and it worked really good. He flopped around and banged his head and didn't hurt anything! Well, lately when he does his little tantrum thing he likes to bang his head or flick his arm out and then get upset because it hurts. So he didn't hurt anything but he did bang himself around a bit. It took him almost 2 hours to finally get it all out of his system and then he was happy and silly and sweet - I don't understand it.

I had told him that if he was good on Saturday we would go pick up that Leap Pad Dinosaur book he's been saving up for and if he was good on Sunday we would go swimming. He was very excited about both these things but sadly neither happened due to his bad behaviour. I find it slightly ironic that just as I cancel my appointments with that mental health person, his behaviour starts taking a turn for the worse. I for one was thankful we didn't have to go swimming on Sunday. I know Aidan loves it and I should take him, but I really hate going! Instead Michael tried out his new buzzer and gave Aidan a haircut. We started out long and then ended up really short because Michael tried to trim the side and ended up making this one tiny section almost hairless. He was just going to leave it, but I made him do Aidan's whole head shorter. It turned out pretty good in my opinion. Then Michael cut his hair - or rather removed all his hair and shaved it bald. It was quite a change! Aidan was pretty intrigued by the whole process and said Michael's head looked funny.

I made roast beef in my new roaster on Sunday. The potatoes and carrots turned out pretty good, but the beef wasn't very tender or tasty. I've been cooking turkey's lately so I've got that down, now I just have to work on cooking beef.

Well, I think this has gone on long enough so I'm going to end it now.

TGIF

I'm so glad it's Friday. On the other hand, the house is a colossal mess (as is usually the case on the day before The Big Cleanup) and I really don't want to go home to that and have to pretend to ignore it. There's no way I can ignore it, yet also no way I'm going to do anything about it tonight. Somehow I am incapable of doing anything - cleaning, working out - on a Friday night unless it involves lying on the couch.

Speaking of being lazy, I read this story on the web lately and thought it was hilarious.

Scientists raise white flags after 3-year battle with unmovable sloth
JENA, Germany (AP) - Scientists in the eastern German city of Jena said Wednesday they have finally given up after three years of failed attempts to entice a sloth into budging as part of an experiment in animal movement.
The sloth, named Mats, was remanded to a zoo after consistently refusing to climb up and then back down a pole, as part of an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Jena's Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology.
Not pounds of cucumbers or plates of homemade spaghetti were appetizing enough to make Mats move.
"Mats obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with furthering science," said Axel Burchardt, a university spokesman.
Mats' new home is the zoo in the northwestern city of Duisburg where, according to all reports, he is very comfortable.
© The Canadian Press, 2007

Obviously another characteristic the sloth and I have in common is stubborn-ness. After reading this, my one question is: Who is paying for this and do they know exactly what these people are doing? Not the type of scientific experiment that I would donate money towards, but that's just me.

Aidan has swimming lessons coming up again, but I kept missing the deadline for signing him up so he has to wait until Feb 24th which he says is 'taking too long'. This time he is going to be a Salamander and the best part is that I get to watch from the side. At first he was okay with that but once he thought it through and realized I wouldn't be in the water with him he was a little worried. I think he'll be fine. I'm sure he'll have tons of fun. The next level after that is some kind of fish and that's what he really wants to be.

I'm trying to get Michael to take Aidan out to do something where they'll be gone for a couple hours without coming right out and kicking them both out of the house but so far I haven't been very successful. I suggested ice skating and bowling but both ideas were shot down. Somehow it's so much easier to clean the house when there aren't people hanging around or sitting on the couch or at the computer.

Tonight Michael's making tacos for dinner. I'm so excited! He makes the best tacos. And I'm going to make chocolate cake for dessert and then after Aidan goes to bed we're going to watch a movie. He wanted to see the Night Listener with Robin Williams and I wasn't all that into it, but he rented American Dreamz for me and I'll watch that tomorrow when he's out with Pat. Hopefully Aidan's in a good mood when we pick him up...I'm so so so tired of fighting with him! Part of me thinks 'he knows I'm pregnant, why can't he just be good?' but obviously that's the not so smart part. Maybe he'll snap out of whatever it is he's in soon!

Time for an Update!

My lack of motivation is absolutely amazing. Honestly, I should bottle it and sell it - I would make a fortune! Aidan's behaviour lately has been awful and I've been a lot more tired than usual as well. I'm not sure why he turned into a little monster, but he's been sniffling and coughing so maybe that's why. Last night while he was having a time out he discovered some Gravol in his backpack and when I went in to check on him he was carefully popping them out and eating them. He was quite upset when I took them away from him! I think he managed to eat 3 or 4 of them and while I wasn't happy about that, he woke up in such a good mood I'm sure it was due to getting a very deep sleep the night before. It was such a nice change to be joking around with him this morning instead of threatening, cajoling and trying to get him to behave normally. His thing lately is to slip around on the floor as if it were tilted or slippery and he can't stand up properly. It's actually kind of funny to see him do it in winter boots in a store - but only for about 10 seconds.

I think we've entered the slushy season. Sometime this week we were supposed to hit +10 but I don't know if we'll make it that high. All the snow we got a couple weeks ago is all gross and brown and melted in big puddles and slush. It's precisely because of this that I like fall better than spring.

Well I really don't have as much to say as I thought I did - for once! Now I have so much baby stuff I literally have no more room for anything else. I told Michael I wouldn't buy anything else for 2 months, but he was skeptical, so now I have to prove him wrong. I don't think it will be too hard, money is super tight since I took time off to go to Calgary and we have to fix the bumper I smashed. I might actually be motivated to wade through the snow to the shed and take the cans and bottles to the recycle depot, although I'd have to be pretty broke for that to happen.

Nesting Has Officially Begun!

It's been less than a month since I found out I was pregnant, and already I have amassed an amazing amount of baby stuff! Today I had a doctor's appointment to get the results of the pregnancy blood test I had on Jan 10th. As we suspected, the blood test confirmed I was pregnant *grins* And, based on what he told me I was able to figure out my first due date - June 18th. It seems so much closer than July, even though it's just one month.

Today I went to pick up a stroller carseat combo I found on a local classifieds website. I didn't want to get too much stuff right away, but it was way too good a deal to pass up. Brand new the set goes for $350 and it's only been used for 2 kids. It looks in good condition and it's pretty much exactly what I wanted so I was really excited about it. Here are some pictures of it:


Aidan had fun trying to push his teddy around the living room in it. I was explaining to him that once he was done with his carseat, the baby got to use it. He seemed to think that it was pretty cool that he got to pass down the stuff that he was done with to the baby.

Tomorrow I'm picking up a highchair and lounger that I found on freecycle - now I just have to find room in the house to put all this stuff! I'm so thankful I've been able to find all this stuff either through freecycle or the classifieds. It's such a blessing to be able to save some money - I had forgotten how much stuff babies need!!

Evanescence

Well, here I am finally! So on Monday after I finally got Michael out of bed at the unearthly hour of 11am we headed over to the nearest Old Navy. Sadly there was no maternity section, but I did get a couple longish shirts and a cute toque and matching mittens. We had plans to bring some pizza over to Ben and Sarah's house in Airdrie.

It was so good to see them again! They have 2 boys now, Isaac is going to be 3 in March and Caleb I think just turned 1 in December. We had stopped at Toys-R-Us on the way to Old Navy because I wanted to get a portable fold up toilet seat for him -which they conveniently had with a Diego design - and I grabbed a couple cute little trucks for the boys which went over great.

By the time we headed back into Calgary, we just had time to get changed at the hotel - because I had to get into my 'concert outfit' *smiles* - and then head out to the Keg. Ben used to be a server at the Keg, so he told us which Keg was the 'nice' one - and it just so happened that it was next to a Old Navy that had a maternity section so of course we had to stop by that one first. The Keg was soooo good! I haven't been there too many times, but I don't think I've ever had steak. So this time, I decided to try the ribeye with mashed potatoes and a side of asparagus. The seasonal vegetable was beans and onions which sounded pretty gross. I really didn't think there would be that much asparagus, but it was like they took a huge bunch, the size they sell in stores, and cooked the whole thing! It was seriously the best dinner I had had in such a long time. Michael and I both decided we would never eat again.

The two openers for Evanescence were Black Maria and Stone Sour. I had heard one song by Stone Sour, called Through the Glass and it was actually pretty good. However, it was the only good song they had! It turns out they're more of a (very) hard rock band which was too bad. The lead singer was pretty hilarious. I totally thought he was a woman when he walked out on stage. He had shoulder length blond hair, permed and maybe a mullet. He kept stomping around, throwing water bottles into the crowd, headbanging and fingering the crowd. It was pretty dumb and also pretty funny.

Evanescence, on the other hand, was really really great. There was a piano that came up so Amy Lee could play for certain songs, and then would disappear when she was done. There was one funny part where she was walking backwards a couple steps in the middle of a song and she just about tripped. Then she turned around and stomped on the spot as she was walking the other way. They played most of the songs from their new cd and a couple from their first one - Going Under, My Immortal and one more, I forget the name. By the time the second song of the encore came around though, I was getting just a little claustrophobic and tired of being squished between Michael and a different guy, so I made him leave even though he said he liked the song. Michael insisted on buying me something, but all the Evanescence shirts were either black or gray, and after seeing Stone Sour I refused to wear one of their shirts - which actually looked alright - so that narrowed it down to a toque, necklace or stickers and I chose the necklace. Also earplugs. That ticked me off. I brought 2 pairs along with me to Calgary and of course I forgot to bring a pair to the concert, so Michael had to buy me a pair for $2, nevermind that we have a HUGE box at home.

Tuesday morning we made it out of the hotel by 9:30 and stopped at Krispy Kreme and Winners and McDonalds and got gas and were on the road by 10:30 and home to pick up Aidan by 5:20! I had promised Aidan that if we got home in time I would take him and Michael out to dinner at Joey's Only. Aidan was really excited about it - and about his Diego potty seat which we tried out at Joey's Only. As we were walking in and Aidan was sniffing the air I said Smells like fish? and he said Yeah, like yellow fish. The little fish mascot or whatever for Joey's Only is yellow and I thought that was kind of cute. He was very excited about the fish and ate quite a bit of it. Halfway through the meal he noticed one of the large fish on the wall, one that had a long pointy nose, so I asked him what the fish looked like, hoping to get a funny face from him. Instead he held up a piece of battered fish and said Like this!

Anyways, I thnk that's long enough for tonight. I made this super great chocolate cake tonight - from scratch - and I need to scrounge up some icing and put it on a plate and get it ready for tomorrow. It's Bonnie the new bookkeeper's last day, so I thought I would bake a cake. If it tastes as good as it smells it's going to be super yummy!

Calgary

I was going to post yesterday but I couldn't find the picture I was looking for. I got another milk frother and I was going to put a picture of it on here but I couldn't find one and then Michael needed to go on the computer...I had one of those handheld ones that you stick in the milk and then it stirs it all up and froths it, but then I left it soaking with other cutlery in a big glass of soapy water and corroded the batteries. I'm not really sure what the technical term is, but there was a really cool turquoise-y color coming from the batteries and I know that's not normal, so I just threw the whole thing out. Then of course after it was gone, I wanted steamed milk, and couldn't have any. Michael had won these 2 $50 gift certificates for Canadian Tire from his work party and I had to go there to get an oil change (having left it to the very last second) so I figured while I was waiting I would look around for a milk frother. They had 2, and one was like the one I had (although 3 times the price I paid for it) and the other one was like one of those single cup coffee presses with the glass beaker and the metal domed lid and stick in the middle with a filter on the bottom. It seemed a little more advanced, so I got it and Aidan and I tried it out when we got home. Aidan wanted chocolate steamed milk so I put some Nesquik syrup in it (he calls it bunny-treat) and pumped the little filter up and down to froth the milk. It worked really good! Now I've got like 4 mugs waiting to be washed because we had some that night, the next morning and then I had another one before we left for Calgary!

Speaking of leaving for Calgary, the plan was to leave around 11am on Sunday. I was going to drop Aidan off at church and leave his little sign in number with Pat and Michaela, and then Michael and I were going to take off. The only problem with this was that this weekend is right in the middle of Michael's 2 weeks on shift, and he was still somewhere out near Manning/Fairview when I called him at 7 on Sunday morning. He made it back around 11am and then had to watch half the seahawks game, pack, have a shower etc. So we only made it out the door at 1pm! Plus we had to stop at his shop so that he could tie back a piece of the bumper I wrecked so that it wouldn't melt onto the tire. Finally at 1:30 we're on the road, Michael driving, having had only 1 hour of sleep the night before and refusing to take an energy drink. He made it to Whitecourt and then wanted to sleep, so I drove from Whitecourt to Edmonton. My only highway experience is driving to Sexsmith and back and that almost doesn't count. I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to go fast enough or that the roads would be bad or that I would total the car or something, but it actually went alright. I managed to go fast enough - well, I managed to do the speed limit or a little above and once everyone behind me had passed me it was pretty good. Then we started getting closer to Edmonton and it was almost 6 and it was getting dark and there was heavier traffic and turnoffs and all sorts of stuff so we stopped at a Safeway and I let Michael drive again. We stopped for dinner at Harvey's - which wasn't as good as I remembered it - and filled up with gas - it was 84.9 and almost a whole tank was only $26! Michael said that was the cheapest trip to Edmonton he'd ever seen and I was pretty happy too, since I was covering gas costs. Then we headed to Calgary while Michael listened to Howard Stern and I watched Dreamgirls. Michael had downloaded it for me a couple days before, but I saved it for the trip. It only lasted me from Edmonton to Red Deer, I thought it was going to be a longer movie. It was alright - either that means that the story was too fluffy or the actors did such a superb job that they made it look super easy. I'm not sure which, but I don't think it deserves best picture.

Our hotel room is okay. It said it had a 2 person whirlpool bathtub. Which is kind of open to interpretation. It wasn't all that impressive, especially since we couldn't find the button to turn the jets on. This morning I found it, I think my skittles must have been sitting on it last night. We stopped at Krispy Kreme donuts last night and then at Superstore to get some milk (and ended up getting way too much other stuff - that place is like a mini-costco!) so I had a donut last night, and 2 for breakfast and I think I'm on sugar overload! I'm not used to so much sugar anymore - I need to go find some regular food.

Right now I'm just waiting for Michael to wake up - or rather for it to be 9:45 so that I can wake Michael up. I want to do a little bit of shopping today and then we might be going out to Airdrie to see Ben and Sarah and their kids and then we're going to come back and go to the Keg for dinner and go to the concert! I'm very excited - although I think I'm about as excited for the Keg as I am for the concert. I was listening to Evanescence yesterday while I was driving and Michael said I was breaking the concert rules by listening to them. I thought that was pretty dumb, but I've never been a big concert person, so I guess I just don't know the rules. Either way, I'm going to keep listening to them.

Well, I think that's it for now. So far I've been able to resist buying any baby stuff, but if there's any super cute stuff on sale at Old Navy I think I'm going to get it!

Sometimes I am just sooooo smart...

Here are some things I said in the last couple months:

My stomach cramps were so bad I could hardly move, it really sucked. The pizza was pretty greasy, I guess that's what the problem was - it's amazing that a couple pieces of pizza can cause that kind of reaction! – October 31

It's almost like I'm trying to eat everything that's bad for me and I can't stop! – December 5

Lately I've been hungry all the time and that gets annoying real quick. – December 11

When I got home last night my stomach was still hurting so I lay on the couch and then I started to get flu symptoms like that hot cold thing with shivers. This morning I still felt yucky, but not that bad. It's like my body is faking being sick so I don't make it work out. I honestly thought I was sick last night and I felt so gross that there was no way I was working out and then this morning I'm almost all better. Very suspicious. – December 20

Well, all I'm really doing here is majorly procrastinating. I'm not really sure what's wrong with me this weekend, but I am really feeling 0 motivation to do anything at all! – December 24

I also remember saying to someone, also on Christmas Eve 'It's so weird because I haven't gained any weight since my surgery, but it's like I changed shape; my stomach is really puffy still'

You'd think after going through this once, I would recognize the symptoms....but no. This time it took me three months to realize that I'm pregnant! I had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday, blood test on Wednesday and ultrasound on Thursday and I am officially 13 weeks. Pretty crazy to all of a sudden find that out and then go to the ultrasound and see this little baby that actually looks like a baby (instead of a blob) moving it's hands and feet around! Aidan's pretty excited about it and up until yesterday wanted the baby to be a girl and then all of a sudden he decided he wanted a boy.

Stupid Winter

This is what it looks like here:

This could be a picture showing my driveway, a view of my house, the road I tried to drive on to work or Aidan's daycare, or it could be an aerial view of Grande Prairie itself.

I think we must have gotten at least 15cm of the 10-20cm of snow they were forcasting. That would have been sort of okay - I mean, it is winter and we're in Grande Prairie, so I expect there to be snow, but then the wind picked up and blew it everywhere! There were drifts all over the place, I even had to shovel a little path out to our car this morning.

Aidan has been very unimpressed with the snow, especially the wind that blows those tiny particles of snow into your face and neck and any exposed area. The only good thing about it is that he really hustles his butt from the house to the car! This morning it was so cold that we brought a blanket out to the car and bundled him up in it to keep him and his bear warm.

The roads were and still are really really awful. The main ones have been plowed so they're a bit better, but getting into the cul-de-sac where his daycare is was not cool. I actually got stuck once pulling in and then again trying to get going after I pulled away from the side of the road but I managed to get unstuck all by myself. I was very impressed with myself and was zooming around the side of the snow mountain (when they plowed the cul-de-sac they just piled all the snow in the middle in a big mountain, so you have to sort of drive around it to turn around) when I plowed right into a 3 foot drift. The sides looked clear, but the snow had drifted and it was pretty much just solid snow back there. Fortunately there was someone with a truck and tow rope handy and I got pulled out and was able to make it to work an hour late.

I thought that this was going to be the end of the major difficulties, but it was really only the beginning. I assumed, wrongly, that the streets would be better by the end of the day because there would be trucks out there clearing them. There were trucks, but I guess there are too many roads because the roads were pretty much the same, maybe a little better, as on the way to work. And, I was going a little too fast and wound up nose in the air on a little mini ice mountain on the side of the road. There goes the bumper. Needless to say it was not a good day yesterday. So imagine my excitement this morning when my car wouldn't start and I only got into work at 12:30. It was partially my fault because I didn't want to get stuck in the driveway, so I parked in the parking lot and didn't plug the car in. Then since it was about -34 there was no way the car was starting and the wait for a tow truck from AMA was 4 hours!! Hopefully my trip home today will be less eventful.

Blizzard Warning!

Apparently today there is a blizzard warning in effect for Grande Prairie! We've been getting a lot of snow lately...pretty much every morning I wake up and there are a couple new inches. They say it's going to snow 5-10cm during the day and then another 5-10cm overnight and in the evening is when this blizzard is supposed to develop and do it's thing. Hopefully it's nothing serious, or as serious as our tornadoes. Since the one that actually did some damage we've had numerous tornado warnings issued for our area but only one little wimpy one ever showed up as far as I remember.


This is a cute picture I took of Aidan maybe a week ago. He brought me the camera and wanted me to take a picture specifically of him.

This morning he was doing what he usually does before getting his coat on and going out to the car - tucking his teddies in to bed. Those bears sure get a lot of sleep!

Here he is with most of his teddies - he's holding Green Teddy, then in the bed is Red Teddy, Blue Teddy, White Teddy and Gopher who had to go to sleep with his head under the blanket and his bum sticking out. The names are really imaginative, I know.

Eggnog Bread

I think I figured out why I haven't made Christmas baking before. Because I don't eat it! I still have some squares left over and half of the dough for both the oatmeal raisin cookies and the rugalachs sitting mostly frozen in the back of the fridge - oh, and the rest of the raspberry pinwheel dough rolled up in my upstairs freezer. And those I actually liked! Plus, I gave away most of the stuff I made. I brought a big plate to work, some to Darlene, some to Bev and then I just sort of picked at what was left. It's kind of too bad, but I guess I'll know for next year. Oh, and I made Portzelky/New Years Cookies on New Years Day as well and that was a first. I thought I had gotten the recipe from my mom, but when I looked through my little recipe book it turned out that I actually hadn't, so I called her (forgetting that it was the morning after New Year's Eve) and I think I woke her up. Michael and I watched a movie together but I only made it til 11:24. I think he made it past midnight, but not much after. We were both falling asleep watching the movie and then he got a call that he would get called out - and not only called out, but called out to Rainbow Lake which he was really less than thrilled about. So Aidan and I were on our own the next day and he didn't look too impressed with the deep frying of the Portzelky and only took 1 bite because I told him to. I was fine with that because I thought 'good, more for me'. I brought a couple to work and it was really funny because they didn't go over too well. But, now it's a week after New Year's and I still have 6 of them sitting on the counter. Deep fried yummy Portzelky that I probably shouldn't be eating - but how can I throw them away? They actually turned out pretty good despite the fact that I forgot all about needing raisins and had to use cranberries and even then didn't have enough. Aidan was rather alarmed about the big popping noises that were coming from the deep fryer which turned out to be raisins popping.

Today I finally got out my breadmaker that I got courtesy of freecycle mid summer. Freecycle is pretty cool, I'm not sure how many of you guys have heard of it. It's a group of people that basically recycles stuff they don't use among themselves. For example, I can post that I want stuff or that I have stuff I want to get rid of and then other people can contact me to pick up the stuff I don't want or I contact someone to pick up the stuff they don't want. In this case, someone posted that they had a breadmaker and I emailed back quick enough and got to go pick it up. And the cool thing is that it's totally free. Usually it's done through Yahoo, so check it out and see if there's one in your town! Anyways, I finally hauled mine out and decided it was time to make bread. I found a recipe for buttermilk bread but I'm making eggnog bread instead. Aidan found the mixing process highly amusing and spent a good 5 minutes kneeling on the stove hovering over the window in the top of the breadmaker watching it mix the bread and laughing. If it turns out well I think I'm going to be making bread a lot more often!

Well today was pretty boring. Michael's gone to Seattle with the Sebring so I am without wheels. I was going to dig out the bike trailer and go to Safeway with Aidan (it doubles as a stroller, it's far too icy out to be riding a bike for me, at least) but I wasn't feeling all that great and then it was dinner time and the day just kind of slipped by. Last night I was craving Costco hotdogs and fries, but we had grilled cheese and mushroom soup instead. That's right. Imagine my disgust when, after searching around, I realized I was totally out of tomato soup, but had already started the sandwiches. Too late to go back and mushroom sort of worked. I had about 12 cans at one time, but I guess that was longer ago than I thought. Anyways, today we had hotdogs and some fries I found downstairs in the freezer. I deep fried them and they were so yummy and crispy. We filled up on lunch so much that neither of us was hungry when dinner time came around which is pretty remarkable for both of us.

All this talk about food and I'm starting to get a little hungry! My bread still has about 45 minutes to go, so I think I'm going to go warm up a Portzelky.

Nothing Much

I don't really have much to say today except that I love the new line of clothes at Superstore by Joe. I am sure that most of you have a Superstore fairly close - these huge box stores are taking over the world! Anyways, if you haven't, you should check out their clothes. They are fairly reasonably priced, shirts $10-15, jeans $19-$29 and they have a whole section for fun comfy sleepwear! I never thought I bought too many clothes, but all from Superstore since summer I have 5 long sleeved shirts, 1 pair of jeans, 2 pairs of pajama pants, 3 t-shirts, 2 tank tops and 2 sweaters! When my mom was up visiting in August they had a bunch of stuff on clearance and the shirts were $3 or $4 and then I bought some more on Boxing Day. It's so easy to justify buying too many clothes when they don't cost that much. I think that they have pretty much replaced Old Navy as my favourite clothes store with the exception that they don't have as much selection. I'm looking forward to hitting an Old Navy store when we go down to Calgary in 2 weeks time. Maybe I should go through my closet and get rid of some stuff. I keep having to buy more hangers because we keep running out!

Today we were driving up to Darlene's house and Aidan wanted to go to Blackman's Butcher shop. I think it was Blackman's. As we drove past the little plaza he said "I go in there, mommy please?". In the plaza is Blackman's, a vacuum place, an asian restaurant and either a realty or a lighting store. None of those places seemed like a place he would really want to go, but I thought maybe Michael had taken him there before to get some meat for the bbq, and he agreed that he wanted to go there and get steaks for the bbq. He is a little carnivore. I made this really great soup yesterday with broth and creamed corn and carrots and celery and onion and potato, and as he's eating it he says "I like these no" and points at all the vegetables floating in his soup. I guess he prefers them cut up and with dip. He was eating carrot and celery sticks for lunch - he really likes celery, I'm not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with where he ate them first. We were out at Earls for Sunday lunch and Pat had ordered wings and Aidan was eating the celery sticks and dip.

We had another meeting with the Mental Health person today. Aidan is really excited to go there and gets really excited when he sees her. It makes it even more funny because I thought I saw just a slight frown or something like 'oh, she brought the kid again'. But really, I'm not going to drop him off at 7:45 in the morning, I'm not even sure if Darlene is up that early. Things went well and just as I thought we were going to be wrapping up at 8:30 she suggested that she and Aidan go in the playroom for half an hour. So I ran out and grabbed some medicine and stopped by the bank. She asked me how I would rate things out of 10 and I said a 7 and she said that was better than most of the people she saw - and then we scheduled another appointment. I hope this will be the last one because I'm tired of missing work over something that really doesn't seem all that important any more.

Aidan's potty training is progressing very well. We re-introduced nibs and added Turtles which really seemed to help. Last night I gave him a flashlight so that he could see and not be scared if he had to get up in the night to pee and that was a big success. We don't have a plug in in the hall and the one in the bathroom is very inconvenient (under the light fixture) and he was very excited about the flashlight. So much so that right away he had to try it out and then the next morning while I was having a shower he came in and turned the light off and turned his flashlight on. I'm not sure if he understands that the flashlight is just for night time or whether it's just more fun to use the flashlight.

Well, tonight we're off to McDonalds for dinner and some playtime in the playplace. I asked Aidan what he wanted to do on Monday and he said he wanted to go to McDonalds. We never made it there on Monday and I was planning for Friday, but Michael is taking a trip down to Seattle to see the Seahawks play and scalp some tickets, so today's the day!