Welcome to Motherhood

Had a good night's sleep last night - or as good as one could have with a 5 week old baby and a major sore throat. Woke up at 8:30, fed my baby, fed my other two kids, waited for my husband to get out of the shower so I could have a turn. Got into the bliss that is the shower. While I was in there (for about 4 minutes) I diffused two arguments between my older children, and sang '5 little duckies' to my baby to keep him amused while I'm hidden behind the shower curtain. Got out, dried off, brushed my teeth, got dressed. Wrapped up a tired baby and put him in his bed. (Hello miracle! He fell asleep on his own!). Did my make-up, thought about putting a load of laundry in, but hesitated. Ran my fingers through my hair to prep for blow-drying and...what? Why is my hair so filmy? That's right people...I forgot to rinse! So here I am, pretty much ready to go and I realize that I never actually finished my shower! Good thing I have short hair and rinsing under the tap at the sink is fairly easy. It's also a good thing I hadn't thrown that load of laundry in, so we still had hot water!
Seriously, I'm losing my mind...what's left of it anyway.
Feel free to laugh - I have.

This Month is Such a Special One

Here's a picture account of the boys' birthday weekend:
Happy Birthday Dad!
Birthday Party - bubbles, family and hide-and-seek!
Cake and Presents:
Sneaking:
Kite-flying and Hot-Tubbing:
Nerf-gun war prepping:
relaxing:
Happy Birthday Boys!

FHE Fun

Since the weather was so beautiful yesterday for the middle of March, we decided to take advantage and have our FHE outside. We packed up dinner and headed to the 'red park' to meet up with Jason, Ali and Jacob for a little fun. The kids didn't eat the greatest, but they did have fun. Especially when Dad put both of them in the swing at the same time. It was pretty great. I spent most of the time cuddling a crying baby, but hey, that's my life these days. If the weather is nice next week, we're going to head outside again - only this time with hoola-hoops. Should be fun.
(Ok, I need a new adjective other than 'fun' - I must be tired)

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Finding time to blog, or do anything these days, has been difficult. I get moments of time here and there, but the list of things to get done in those moments is so long, it's hard to decide what to do first. For example, this morning I am starving because I haven't had breakfast yet. I chose to shower rather than eat. Good for the waist-line, but not so good for the energy. Anyway, we've had some fun over the last week or so, and some not-so-fun. Let's start with the fun. It was Auntie Janeen's 18th birthday last week, so we celebrated by going out for dinner at Tony Roma's and then throwing her a surprise birthday party on Friday evening at the church. Her mom rented a bounce-house obstacle course and sumo suits for her and her friends to enjoy, but I think the most enjoyment came from our kids. They got the hang of it pretty quickly and enjoyed climbing and racing and bouncing around. Once they took their socks off, there was nothing stopping them.We also had Logan's baby blessing on Sunday and then a giant family dinner at Williamson's after church. It was our first time to church since Logan was born and emotions were high (at least for me). It was a sweet and special day, but not one that I took any pictures of. I was worried about not making it as I discovered over the weekend that I had a UTI and was quite uncomfortable most of the time. I've never had one before and let me tell you, don't want to have one again. A little help from the Dr, lots of cranberry juice and a prescription for antibiotics and I was on the mend.
The week was pretty uneventful until the weekend hit. We went shopping Thursday and Friday for a birthday present for Tyler and found him a sweet briefcase. Which we exchanged on Friday for an even sweeter one of his choosing. Yes, my husband is the guy who returns or exchanges almost every gift he gets. We headed to the Balzac mall and had fun there for a few hours. Fortunately they have 'distractions' for kids every few yards, so they were tolerant with our shopping.This past Friday evening, Sarah and Janeen were singing at the Lodge in Cochrane where their grandpa lives, so we decided to head there and have a listen. They did a great job, and the kids had fun dancing around and playing freeze tag. At one point Max ran up to an elderly lady using a walker (who we didn't know) and freeze tagged her. He yelled out, "Gotcha! You're freezed!" It was priceless. The kids had been fighting some weird bout of diarrhea over Thursday and Friday (which put a damper on Max's potty training), but seem to be over the worst of it now. The "ugly" I refer to in the title of this post would be having to pull over on the side of the highway so Max could have one of these said bouts of diarrhea on a dirt road while I held him up. Fun Fun.
Not much else has happened. Logan seems to be a little stuffy in the nose these days, not sure where that came from, but he's still fairly pleasant. Scott and Janie were going to a friend's 50th birthday party on Saturday evening which had a 60s theme, so we had fun seeing them in their costume and the kids enjoyed wearing Papa's wig.Now a new week has begun and I have the Monday blues. Weekends are so much better than weekdays. 4 more days till the next one I guess. And it's a big one. My boy's birthdays. No plans yet, but it should be fun. I can't believe Max is almost 3!

The Charming Peddler

I did it. I finally opened up a shop on Etsy to sell jewelry online. If you would like to check out my stock, go to www.thecharmingpeddler.etsy.com
There are only a few items listed so far but I will be adding more as I get a few minutes here and there to do so. Also, sometime in the future, look for more exciting things coming from "The Charming Peddler"
Also, if you see something you like and would like to order and you are local (ie. I see you often), then just let me know the item, rather than ordering online as the shipping won't really apply to local people.
I hope you enjoy!

T.I.R.E.D.

I feel more tired today than I have since Logan was born...I think I'm even more tired than the night I had to sleep in a hospital bed after spending 10 hours in labour and pushing out a baby...of course, it could be that I'm just in a fog of that moment and don't really remember how tired I was, but MAN...today is tired! Having 3 kids is great, because the older two can 'usually' entertain themselves while I deal with baby stuff...but it also means that the wonderful advice given to all new mothers of "sleep when the baby is sleeping" just doesn't happen, because a 4-year-old and 2-year-old don't really like the idea of mom getting some rest. Especially the 2-year-old. He has elephantitis. Which I know is a real thing, and he doesn't REALLY have it...but he can't seem to walk anywhere. He's only 24 lbs and sounds like he's closer to 200 when he walks down the hallway. Maybe it should be called 'heavy-footedness', or 'Clydesdale-hooverness'. Either way, it's noisy.

Scared

Do you ever get scared of going down a path you've been down before and worked really hard to get back from, and then suddenly that path seems like it might be before you again and it nearly seems impossibly to avoid? I do.

Cutest Thing Ever!

Seriously.
A cuddly, sleeping baby...And a little boy in big-boy unders. Nuff said.