Canada Shawl

I started working on my Canada shawl (Wool Peddler's Shawl from Folk Shawls, Rav Link) on March 25th. It sat for a long time on my desk. After a good month of working on it again, I finally finished it today, August 25th. Five months is a long time, but at least it is done.







Now I'm ready for the triple digit weather to go away so I can actually wear it.

Twitter

I don't have much interest in twitter. I don't do anything worth "tweeting" about all day long. I recently read where someone was twittering in the voice of their cat. Now, that is someone with too much time on their hands.

However, today, after B turned to DH after communion and asked him if he was done eating his Jesus thing, I thought it might be humorous to tweet as my 3 year old. He's way funnier than I would ever be!

keeping busy

B is a little lonely with the kids back in school. He doesn't go back to preschool for another 2 weeks. Luckily the baseball guys are keeping him busy.

The First Day

I love the first day of school. I didn't have to drag the kids out of bed. They got up and got dressed all on their own. There was no yelling, screaming or crying, even when the cereal bowl spilled. If only every morning could be this pleasant!

T - 42 hours

The end of summer approaches quickly. Just a day and half left before school starts. I'm looking forward to the kids returning to school and being back on a regular schedule. However, I stayed in bed until almost 9am this morning, relishing it as long as I could.

A panicked last night about starting 4th grade. She says she has forgotten all of her multiplication tables and she is going to fail. Oh, the drama! I told her that she cannot go from making A's to failing school. We did flashcards this morning to help her remember and hopefully they won't have a timed math test the first week of school. I swore they wouldn't and I don't want to be a liar.

The class lists go up at 5pm. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that A gets the teacher she wants this year. She has never gotten the one she wanted. Even thought all of her teachers have been fine, I'm just hoping to avoid the initial disappointment. J is hoping for a certain teacher and I'm hoping to not get her. Not that she would be a bad teacher, but she had a class pet rabbit and I'd like to avoid having to take it home for a weekend. I wonder if I could suddenly become allergic to rabbit fur?

I have uniforms cleaned and ready to go. I tagged outgrown uniforms to drop off at the used uniform sale tonight. I started a grocery list for lunch fixings. I might make some homemade cookies for a special back to school treat.

I have about 42 hours or so before I drop them off for the first day of school. I think I'm ready.

The end of summer - Ouch

There's only one week until A & J start back to school. I decided that we should take advantage of the end of summer. The children were lazing in front of the tv again, watching endless repeats of Wizards of Waverly Place and Suite Life on Deck. I turned off the tv and announced we were riding our bikes to the pool. The children all protested, but I insisted. I packed up towels and sunscreen and off we went.

I should have known better.

We got to the pool fine. At the bike racks, I turned around to get Brian out of the bike seat and the bike started to go over. I grabbed the handlebars to straighten it up but somehow managed to pull up on them instead. That threw all the weight to the back of the bike. The bike was already falling over, there was no way to save myself. I tried to turn back to help break B's fall but could do nothing, we were both going down. I landed on my rear, and the bike went down on the side. B was screaming. I sat up and got him out of the seat. He was screaming but he had his helmet on so he was okay. A was yelling over and over, "Are you okay? Are you okay?" I told her I wasn't sure. I waited until B was calm enough to set him down and stood up. Wow, pain! I called DH and told him that he needed to come pick up us after we went swimming. There was no way I was going to ride my bike home.

I don't think I broke my tailbone, but it is definitely bruised. I never realized how much you use that part of your body. Every time I stand, sit, lift, reach, etc, I feel it.

At then end of it all, A turned to me and said, "See, Mom, I told you we shouldn't have gone to the pool!" I guess she was right.

New Disney Ride

We're going to DisneyWorld in November with the ILs, their treat! Everyone is excited, especially B since we'll be there for his 4th birthday.

Last weekend, after pushing our cheap stroller at the zoo, DH got frustrated. He told me there was no way we were going to take that stroller to Disney. We looked into renting but figured out with the cost of renting, we could buy a new one.

I jumped onto google and started checking forums for the best stroller for Disney. I had narrowed my choices and even bought a stroller online when DH sent me a link for another stroller. We headed out to Babies R Us the next day to test drive and decide once and for all. It was a worthwhile trip since I changed my mind. The company I had already ordered from also carried the one I wanted and they price matched Amazon. It was a great deal and great customer service.

We are now the proud owners of a Joovy Kooper





We can't wait for Disney!

Our family is expanding

No, we're not having another baby, but DH is getting a lot of use out of the line.

J has been on the campaign to get a dog. He really, really, really wants one. We held him off by telling him that he would have to pick up the poop in the yard. He's gotten past that and wants a dog.

In order to avoid a dog, I was open to other pets. J's friend has a gerbil/hamster like thing. We checked out books on turtles. I was willing to buy a snake.

Last weekend we took a trip to PetSmart to look at potential pets. I ruled out the gerbil/hamster route. I couldn't handle the smell. I was disappointed to find out that a small milk snake costs $100.00. I wasn't willing to spend that on a 6 inch snake. In the end, we went back the pets we had 3 years ago, fish.

We came home with 2 bettas


And 3 stripey fish, a sucker fish and a frog


The bettas are for A and the boys are sharing the others. We lost the sucker fish after two days. Luckily, PetSmart has a 14 day guarantee on fish. I bagged it up and took it in. B was mad because he wanted the bones to come out so he could take them into the Science Exchange at the zoo and get points.

We've had the fish for less than a week and J is still campaigning for a dog. This afternoon he told me that he was going to grow up and have lots of dogs. I told him it was fine with me but he had to make sure that he married a girl who wanted lots of dogs. He told me that he was going to marry a zoo keeper then she would love all kind of animals. He and A started naming all kinds of exotic animals he could have. B said that he could have a tiny baby giraffe. Both J & A told him no. His response, "Oh, yeah, you can't have a giraffe because they poop."