Life's Whirlwind Adventures

I can't believe I'm coming to the end of my six weeks!! It's been great and though I've just been working out and not focusing on diet at all, I've made some significant ground work!! Now I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be, I do get lazy from time to time, but I do push through and get the exercises done, I just have to set a time in my day and always work out at that time, and if I go to work out class then I need to adjust my schedule accordingly.  And that's exactly what I'm going to do, because I need to be in shape for my kids and for running this half Marathon in August.  August will be here before I know it!! No More Excuses!! I did say that there has been significant ground work done and that is the truth. I have not stepped on a scale (ok I didn't step on a scale at the beginning but I have since I just don't know if I've lost any weight and I don't actually care) but I have been measuring 10 areas on my body weekly....

Every month is a new adventure with Prince T!! He's a very happy baby, who loves to explore his environment, but he's taking after his brothers, he's a momma's boy!! It's amazing the advances he's making, he's becoming more engaged each day and trying new things. His current likes are: crawling, his brothers, the jolly jumper, playing soccer with Lil man, bananas, raspberries and tuna. His current dislikes are: having mom out of his sight, sleeping unswaddled, drinking from a bottle, mushy food. In this past month he's brought so much joy to our family. He's brought inadvertent laughs,(a full out explosion on his big brother, which his brother called an infestation).  He's started crawling, first is was an army crawl and man could he move, now it's the regular crawl, he's not a fast but he's moving throughout the front room. He's started to pull himself up on things, trying to stand.  He's started playing with o...

I always had a love for school, even when it irritated me I loved school. I loved learning new things, I loved finding new books, I loved hanging out with my friends, all in all I loved school. Sure there were times when I didn't like a teacher, or I didn't like a subject we were taking, but in the grand scheme of things I enjoyed school.  So it would not surprise anyone that one of my favourite rainy, non school day activity was playing school.  I would set up my sister and our stuffed animals in a classroom area of our basement.  I would then set up colouring or writing or story activities to do with them. Sometimes I even let my sister be the teacher, but she was younger and did not know as much as me, so that was only sporadically. It's ironic right, kids complain about school, yet when they are left to do free play they play school.  I find it funny, but I think it's one of the best games or activities that I as a parent can foster.  Do I want to guide th...

So I had my whole month of blogs planned out, I wrote what I could ahead of time and agreed to work on the rest as time permitted. Then, Life happened.  One boy needed to go to soccer, one needed to go to soccer and hockey, the flu invaded our house, another boy is teething.  So all that adds up to very little sleep for mommy+no spare minutes in the day = no writing completed. Plus hubby should have been home yesterday but now he's extended another week so what I thought I'd get done by having him home to help out is not getting done, so what does that mean for my poor little blog? Essentially it means my Christmas holidays will start after this week.  I have three more scheduled blogs ready to go and then that's it until the New Year.  I'll post a couple more blogs in the next two weeks but they won't be daily as I'm going to go on holidays.  I'm going to enjoy the time with my boys, and file away blog entries for the New Year!! I wish all you my reader...

Did you know I love Breakfast?? I am seriously in love with all breakfast meals, and if I can eat them all day long I totally would. So I found this recipe for Cinnamon Swirl Pancakes on, you guessed it, Pinterest and I decided to try them one morning. I used a box mix to make my pancake batter, I can make them from scratch, but Lil Man and Prince T were hungry and I didn't want to prolong this, especially if they didn't turn out, so quickly mixing up a batch of "just add water" pancakes I then started with the other parts of this recipe. Making the Cinnamon swirl stuff was just yummy!! Butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, yup nothing wrong there  ( 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted,  ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar,  ½ tablespoon ground cinnamon) Mix them all together then put them in a ziploc sandwich bag. making a small cut in one of the corners. The Cream cheese frosting was also very delicious!!! Butter, Cream cheese and icing sugar...

About a month ago my friend Marriann posted that she had just finished a 4 week session of private Yoga lessons with Nicole Schulz .  I really like yoga, but I'm not a yogi and I wasn't clear on my body positions so I didn't know if I was actually doing things correctly or just standing awkwardly in weird positions.  So I thought having some private lessons would be amazing. I emailed Nicole and we got started on our lessons in November. I loved the lessons!! They were amazing and I felt great after each lesson.  I now have a routine to do that helps strengthen and stretch my body so that I can enhance my training for the half marathon in August.  I'm so excited to have this routine and I love practicing it, I've just have to get more consistent in my practice. After the first lesson I felt taller, and I just felt more grounded in my life.  I felt a different relaxation take over me but it was very similar to how I feel after I go for a run, I think that's w...

I really love Christmas Time, it truly is the most wonderful time of  the year!! I appreciate the giving and kindness that exudes from people during this season, I think people truly are at their best.  And it doesn't matter if you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or the winter solstice, all have this time as a time of giving, a time of celebrating life and all the good things that surround us.  But I fear my kids are not being exposed to enough of the good things about Christmas and soon they will be xmas-ers . For me an xmas-er is someone who is only worried about the gifts they receive.  And they only give gifts to receive a gift and they judge the gifts they get in comparison to what they give.  They don't feel grateful for receiving a well thought out gift, they only care that the gift was the same or of more monetary value then the one they gave to that person.  To become this way at is not something I want my kids to become and in order to ...

I am feeling the need to stand on a soap box right now.  I've recently heard that some schools are considering doing away with recess (this is an older report)because they are unable to meet all the objectives of the curriculum in a school year.  I think this will only make the situation worse, it will not improve it!! Kids need unstructured time in their day, especially the 4 and 5 year olds in Kindergarten and grade one.  Kids are being pushed to hard to be academic, being pushed to hard to grow up and they are missing out on their childhood.  Ok that last statement may be a bit of an exaggeration, but come on, school is putting a lot of pressure on kids now a days. Now it's been many years since I was a student in an elementary school, but I remember my school days very clearly.  School started at 9 am, but the buses started arriving at 8:30.  I was a town kid, so I walked to school, now because I liked to play before school I would get to school jus...

Decorating for Christmas is a huge family tradition in our family. We usually spend Grey Cup Sunday setting up all the decorations in the house and in the yard.  It's a fun time and Christmas Carols are pumping through the house as we set up the tree, the Christmas Village and the window decorations.  We've done Christmas Ice Balls (food colouring in water and put into balloons to freeze) and we've done snowflakes, and other purchased outside decorations plus hubby always hangs lights. This year is a bit different, hubby is away working so it's just me and boys.  We started decorating on the Saturday prior to Grey Cup Sunday, I got my Christmas village set up and my partylite votive tree, and the Christmas tree was brought upstairs.  That was about all we did since Lil Man spent Grey Cup Sunday with his grandparents and Chandler had his girlfriend over. So now we waited until the weekend after Grey Cup Sunday to finish decorating for Christmas. Hubby is still...

So I struggle with snacks sometimes. I really want to provide healthy snacks, but sometimes providing fun snacks is ok too.  I just don't have a lot of creativity when it comes to snacks my kids can have and usually I just send them to the pantry to get a pre-packaged lunch snack.  BORING!! The other day I was thinking of making Ants on a Log for Lil Man.  I don't think he's ever had them, but that's also because he's not a huge fan of peanut butter.  (He's a weirdo, I know lol just kidding).  But then I was thinking what kind of snack could he have using items he likes, I have all these marshmallows from camping that we need to use up before they become pellets and I have some chocolate chips. That's when I thought of snowmen.  I know I'm all into this winter season right now, it's crazy, we've done snowflakes, snow forts and now we are eating snowmen.  Yup you bet we are. I took three marshmallows and put them on a toothpick.  Then I ad...

So I had originally planned to do a post on my yoga sessions with Nicole Schulz, and I will but something else came up that I feel the need to articulate about. So here goes. Social media, as great as it is, in keeping us all connected it is an evil, an evil that drives me crazy.  An evil that probably drives teenagers crazy because they feel so much pressure to be perfect and to always be virtually engaging with their friends. Yet Social media is supposed to be a network or your friends and your friends should support you, yet, negative comments, judgemental comments always seem to creep in. I don't share a lot on Facebook, and yet I do.  But most of what I share is pretty neutral, it's not thought provoking, it's not anything to start a conversation, it's things like going to stars and strollers, or thanks to a friend for having a great visit.  I get lot's of likes and that's very uplifting, that people care enough about me and my life to spend even 5 seco...

Sometimes when I'm talking with people I get a peek of how they see me and I am often very surprised by what their perception is of me.  It's not usually a bad thing either, it's when people see me so vastly different in a positive way that I don't always see myself. I can be a pretty private person (I know laugh, I'm writing a personal blog hahah).  I don't always share everything in my life as it happens with everyone and it can take a bit of time for me to be comfortable sharing at all, and sometimes I suffer from share spewing where I just share everything that's on my mind and it does not pass through a filter at all. But generally, I'm a pretty private person,  and in that I can be a little shy.  I'm not super comfortable approaching people I don't know and striking up a conversation especially if I feel like I have a motive.  If I'm trying to approach people to sell things I'm very uncomfortable (I love Fifth Avenue Collection Je...

I'm not a big fan of winter I don't care for many winter sports and I HATE the cold.  Despise, loath, detest the cold, after -15 it's all the same really, too cold to function, in my opinion.  So when I had boys I had to decide, did I move somewhere warm, or did I learn to embrace winter?  I learned to embrace winter.  I still don't like it, but it can be pretty, it can be nice and warming up after being out in the cold is a favourite activity of mine!! Lil Man loves being outside, he loves being active and he loves the outdoors.  It's not always his first choice, because of the generation he's apart he likes those technology things and covets time with them.  This may be because I limit his use of iPads, computers, video games etc to the weekends and then only for 2-3 hours.  Even TV is limited in the house, so if he thinks he can get me to allow him to watch TV, he'll try to play that game, but once you get him outside, he will stay out until he's ...

We are preparing to decorate our house for the holiday season and since my Lil Man likes to be involved in all things that I do I had to come up with some crafts that would be easy for him to help with. Where do I go for all things craft, Pinterest of course! So a checked out a few different snowflake crafts.  The one I liked the most was probably the most complicated when trying to put it together.  It was a popsicle stick snowflake that you could paint. They made these huge snowflakes, but like many things on Pinterest, when you start working on them they turn into an EPIC FAIL!! So I had to come up with a new craft that would be easy for Lil man to help with.  And I really liked the idea of snowflakes! That's when I saw the pin about different patterns to cut out snowflakes on paper and figured Lil Man would love to colour some paper then cut out different snow flake patterns. And because I would make him colour the paper before we cut it out, I could draw out the ...

In October I had the brilliant idea to put together a meal exchange group.  The idea was that we could all make meals that we can freeze and share them with others.  Initially, I had made the group and stated that if ten people participated then you made 10 meals, but that can be really difficult for someone working a full time job.  So I made it a get what you give meal exchange group.  That being said if you brought in 6 meals you would get six separate meals  from 6 other people, if you brought in 10 you got all ten.  It worked out really well.  I got some soups, a lasagna and I made shepherd's pie for everyone. It was the easy shepherds pie, not the traditional shepherds pie.  I used ground beef, corn and potatoes and cheese. I pan scrambled the ground beef with onions and garlic and added in an onion soup mix seasoning.  ( I was going to use the clubhouse seasoning packages but that's basically all it is so the onion soup mix was c...

In the spirit of becoming more consistent with my writing and dedicating time each day to this craft I've chosen I decided it was time to get more organized.  As I was walking through my local Walmart store I spotted their desk calendar display and this great family organizer calendar popped out at me. It's fabulous, just perfectly girly for me, and though it's designed for a family calendar I'm using it for my daily calendar of organizing my life.  I've got a section for workouts, for blogging, for photos, for writing (typing out the novel), and a Miscellaneous section.  It's great, but because it also has all these spots I can make the calendar into a monthly calendar for my blog ideas. So I've got my blogs all set up for the month of December, now they aren't completely written in stone, and some my have to be changed as I write and some other ideas may come up. I've divided the week into different sections so that I blog about a specific to...

So because I've become determined to finish my novel that I have written I've dedicated a blog to my writing.   Imagination Destination   is the blog title, it's where I'll post short stories, character sketches in the form of interviews, some time line sketches and writing prompts that get my creative juices flowing. If you would like to contribute to that blog, once I get it to brome a more consistent blogging platform, please let me know and I would be happy to get that set up. Here are some other author blogs that I read regularly! LisaAnn used to write at Kicked, Corner, Bitten and Chased but has upgraded recently to this website, I enjoy reading her posts, check it out.  http://lisaannokane.com/blog/ Mireille is a friend of mine from school. She's the first published author I know and I am so proud of her and all her writings.  I didn't know she had the same love for writing as I did back in school, wish I had known that I may have been inspired to s...

Someone asked me once if I loved my job, and I took awhile to really come up with an honest answer.  I mean the easy answer is (now) yes, (years ago) no.  But I really wanted to figure out why I loved my job, I want to quantify what it was about this job that made it a job I would be happy working at my entire working life should that happen. Now most of you know I have a Bachelor's of Education (Go Huskies) and I used that degree in the teaching field for approximately 8 years from 2003-2011.  I had temporary contracts and I had subbing positions and it was fine. I actually really enjoyed subbing because I could make my own schedule but it sucked because the work was inconsistent.  I enjoyed being a classroom teacher, I enjoyed teaching, I didn't enjoy the politics of teaching though.  Don't get me wrong, I know that all jobs come with their fair share of politicking, but with teaching I just didn't want to play that game, I wasn't interested in it.  I j...

Guilty pleasures, those things we relish and enjoy but know that they are either bad for us, or something that would get us mocked for it people knew we indulged.  I have a few guilty pleasures, surprising none of them are food. My guilty pleasures revolve around television.  I love television, if I'm home alone I watch television just to watch television and it's never any of those news programs, it's daytime television or some recorded television I happen to be watching at the time.  Now depending on the programming time of year my guilty pleasure can change, if one program is not on, I find a replacement for it. In the summer my guilty pleasure is Big Brother. I love Big Brother, it's hilarious to watch these groups of people fall into a mini community confined and excluded from all other life.  I think it's fascinating, and I also think it's fascinating that there are always different winners each year, sometimes it's with a lot of background help ...

I'm horrible for using chore charts. Translation, I don't use them, I just sort of assign chores at random.  It makes things a bit chaotic, and sometimes things don't get done and if the kids don't know they are supposed to do that chore, then they don't do it. Lil Man loves to help out around the house! He's all about the vacuuming, and sweeping and mopping and doing dishes. Granted none of these are done to a standard that would pass a health inspection but he does the best he can and that counts for something. My hubby and I disagree on this point, I believe that if a child puts in the effort to complete a task and they say its complete then you leave it, making notes in your head to show them next week how to improve that task.  My hubby is of the mindset that if they don't do it the way you want the first time, make them do it again, and if it gets too frustrating then you just do it yourself.  So because I'm me and I think I'm right, (maybe...