auntie again!

I got a call from my brother at lunchtime, and Zachary Montague Theodore Schneider has made his arrival.  It was very much on his own time (one week overdue) and yes, he is big enough to handle that handle.  Twelve pounds, one ounce, 21 1/2 inches long.  I hope I got the spellings right - I didn't ask.  Montague is a Schneider family name, and Theodore is a special name in Jen's family.  It will be painful to wait a whole 26 days till we get to go see them.  Mom just sent me this (yes, they were here this morning and this was taken in Winnipeg this afternoon):

We now have 15 nephews & nieces - 7 boys, 8 girls, and one little one that will make an appearance in a few weeks.  Happy birthday to Levi (the second oldest of them all) who just turned 11 on Friday!  This is him on the gyroscope at the science center when he came to visit last summer.

My grad yesterday was a nice surprise.  I do see the accomplishment we made; the future may hold more, but for now, this is something to celebrate.  It was nice to have my parents and Sean's parents here - I completely forgot that I wanted to get a good family picture, though...  Sigh.  So many cameras, and not one shot of the 3 or the 7 of us.  Speaking of cameras, Sean got me a Nikon for a grad present.  Yay!   I have  We have a great digital SLR that we got ourselves for Christmas a year and a half ago, but for a while now I've wanted a good little camera to carry around with me, since I don't usually carry the big camera case around unless I am planning on taking photos.  We've looked for a while, and he surprised me with a better one than I was hoping for.  I'm having fun with the touch screen and panorama assist and figuring out some of the other details.

Have a great Sunday - I hope you are able to take a sabbath and rest and be restored today.

Bits and Pieces

My brother and his wife are in the hospital having a baby.  I am waiting patiently for news but am very excited.  Nieces and nephews are so amazing.

When we moved the piano from one wall to the other in November, we heard a crack and it's now dreadfully out of tune.  I'm scared to call the tuner.

We are in paint mode around here.  Pictures to come when it's all done.

Sean made homemade burgers tonight for the first barbeque of the season.  Ten minutes and we'll be eating happy.

Madeline's into string figures and skipping.  So glad we've got all that fun stuff around the house.

I got a call this morning with an order for 15 magic bags.  I happened to have that many in stock & dropped them off on my way to work.  Nice to have a little sideline like that.

There is a thank you card on the phone table in the office that Madeline wrote right after Christmas that I haven't delivered yet.

I'm graduating on Saturday but I'm not really that excited about it.  It's a diploma.  I'm glad to be done, but feel like I'm quitting half way through.

I was asked to join a book club.  We're getting together on Thursday night to discuss A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, and I'm halfway done.  It's well written, but strange and sad.  I sense there's a plot in there somewhere, but it's going to have to speak up if the book is going to get a 'good' at the end.

Please leave me a comment related to any of the above snippets of my life.  Or not related to anything at all.  That's okay too.

Grapefruit?

I've got a great 'she said what?' post for you today.

We were sitting at supper eating chicken fingers and fries, and M commented on the plum sauce for some reason.  Plum in french is prune, so the jar is labeled with both words.  I asked her if she knew what a prune was, and she said, "Plum - in french prune is the word for plum."  I asked her if she knew what prune meant in English, to which she replied, "Yep.  It's a dried grapefruit."

Some days she tries hard to make us laugh, and some days they come out of nowhere.  Sometimes she gets things wrong on purpose for a laugh, but with this one she was serious.  So funny.

I put prunes on the shopping list for tomorrow.

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In other news, I bought a new bag.  My last one only cost me $10 and has lasted a decent amount of time, but is falling apart, and needing badly to be replaced.  I've been keeping my eyes out for a while now, but I'm so not a pursey person, so it's been a bit of a challenge finding something 'me.'  Yesterday after wandering through the mall with Sean and Madeline (and two t shirts and a sweater later), I was pretty certain I'd never find anything.  Then, we walked into Spare Parts.  Up to the back wall, where they had bags.  "That one," I said.  We put it on hold and went home to check the price online (Sean is no stranger to ebay.  They're pretty good friends, actually.)  But nowhere online was it cheaper than the sale price locally, so today we went back to pick it up.  So nice not to have to shop for one anymore.  Mine is more of a chocolate brown; the main body is a woven vinyl, kind of canvassy, and the leather looking straps are a man made fabric, as well.  A vegetarian purse.  And the inside is a bright pink -I can't believe I bought it anyway.  At least no one else will see it...

First Bike of the Season

Sean got out our bikes after supper, filled the tires, and off we went along the bike paths (we have to go under the tracks and across a busy road, but then we're set for quite a ways.  While we were out we saw people playing at the playground and a wailing child who did not want to leave the playground; people walking their dogs and people letting their dogs run on the fields (including a beagle Daisy who tried to chase me down); kids on bikes (in t shirts and shorts - I was wearing my winter jacket, toque and gloves); a family playing with a Frisbee ring and kites; and mamas walking pushing strollers.  And we heard birds, and of course something funny out of M's mouth.  I came up behind her and said, "I'm coming!" to which she replied, "I'm going!" as she sped up.

Yay!  Spring is here!  The other two never even came in when we got back - Sean is out in the garage and M was sweeping off the deck to get it ready for the patio furniture.  Earlier today she said that if it was out, she'd go read in the backyard.  Soon.

Worth it?

Madeline asked if I would braid her hair tonight. Two french braids. She's got a piano recital tomorrow and wanted pretty wavy hair.

After five minutes of feeling her cringe with each pull of the comb, I said to her, "You don't ask for this until you've forgotten this part."  She didn't even miss a beat, and came back with, "Yeah, it's like cinnamon buns."

I got it right away - we love eating cinnamon buns, but the kneading is a painful process.  She took it to another level: "It's worth all the pain and suffering though, for the finished product."

Such a smart kid.

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

These are yummy.  I got the recipe from my friend Candy after she brought them to one of our classes, and they've become one of our favorites.

LEMON POPPYSEED MUFFINS

2 cups biscuit / baking mix
1 pkg instant lemon pudding
1/4 cup poppy seeds
- mix all together

2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
- mix together and add to first mix just until moistened

Fill 12 muffin cups 2/3 full.
Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

Drizzle with icing made by mixing 3/4 cup icing sugar and 1 tbsp lemon juice.  (My family likes half lemon juice, half water so it's not quite so tangy.)

Classic

My new fave is CBC Radio2 on the drive to work.  They play classical in the morning, and it's so nice on the ride in...

TV and the fall of creativity

I found this great post by Seth Godin on things to do other than watch TV.  He says he never watches TV.  Ever.  There are so many other things he'd rather be doing.  This list of other things you could be doing is from that post (but I do recommend you hop over and read the whole thing):

• Run a little store on eBay
• Write a daily blog
• Write a novel
• Start an online community about your favorite passion
• Go to meetups in your town
• Volunteer to tutor a kid, in person or online
• Learn a new language, verbal or programming
• Write hand written thank you notes each evening to people who helped you out or did a good job
• Produce small films and publish them online
• Listen to the one thousand most important operas
• Read a book or two every evening
• Play a game of Scrabble with your family

For my birthday, I got the entertainment package.  On TV.  The one that has the channels that play Criminal Minds, NCIS, House, Bones, CSI... All the shows that are pulling me the other way now.  Sigh.  Oh, well - some nights I am productive and creative and some nights I am relaxed and spending time with Sean in front of the TV.  It's all about balance.

Pizza & Movies - better in 3's?

Maybe not better in threes, but that describes my week!

Pizza - We had some pie Monday night at the McCalls for birthday supper (3 of us share a birthday, so it's tradition...)  Then Friday night I was too lazy to cook a real supper so we threw in some frozen pizza before I remembered that we had already eaten pizza this week.  Then today for lunch at church we had a newcomers luncheon where the staff, deacons and new families stay and eat together... and we ate pizza.  It was the best of three, I think.

Movies - Last Sunday night the church rented a theater for a showing of the Blind Side, which was good (the movie) and strange (knowing everybody in the theater!)  Friday night we went to the cheap theater for a family night out.  We saw the Princess and the Frog, which was good as far as Disney's effects, but not so great with all the voodoo and dark side stuff.  Madeline said she wished she had picked Planet 51, which was the other option.  Then last night M had a sleepover at a friend's house, so Sean and I picked ourselves off the couches after a lazy day and went out to another show, Cop Out.  It was some laughs, but lots of language and I don't think you'd miss out if you didn't see it.

What was the last movie you saw and would you recommend it?

Lists

We went out on another 'Triple-Date' last night with our friends - we've been doing the rounds of different dessert places in the city.  It was my birthday on Monday, so they surprised me with a gift (and picked up the bill... you guys!)  The gift was a book called "List It!  Your Past Present and Future in Lists"  It's got great illustrations and quotes and every page has the title of a list.  Today we're going to tackle this topic (and you're going to play along by leaving a comment!):


Things You're Saving Up to Buy

Landscaping for our sewer-hole damaged front yard
A new fence for the back yard
New flooring in the kitchen / hall / bathroom
A new kitchen
A trip to somewhere fun

There's my list.  What's yours?

Three for Saturday

ONE - We spent the day at Mission Ridge with the youth from the church.  I'm grateful that Byron takes them every year, because there are not many other times that M gets on skis or a snowboard!  She skied today, but said she'd ride next year.  Sean and I spent lots of our time hitting jumps and boxes.  Man we'd be good if we did this more!  (Meaning that in reality, a jump of a couple of inches without falling makes me happy.)

TWO - I joined zoo world on facebook.  Tonight I got levels 7, 8, 9 and 10.  I just bred an eagle.  Silly game.  :)

THREE - Three is the number of shops that are now selling my magic bags.  Yipee!  They were in two to start with, and the hospital gift shop down the street took some at first sight yesterday.  I took them to two places last week and three this week and am hoping to hear back from at least a couple that seemed pretty interested.    Wish me luck with the other places!  If they all say yes, I could be in 7 shops!

(I intended this to be "Six for Saturday," but ran out of things to say...)

It's in you to give.

I was rejected this morning.

My hemoglobin level was too low to donate blood today.  And you know what I learned?  You STILL have to wait 56 days before you can donate again.

Boy, you try to do a good thing...

Monthly Menu

The last day of February!!  That means March starts tomorrow and then my birthday is in one week!  I noticed looking at my fridge today that it also means I need to make a new menu.  For the first few years that Sean and I were married, I used a four week rotating menu; every Monday I'd pull out the next one and make my grocery list based on those meals.  I've gotten off that specific plan, but I'll still make a menu for the week every Monday, and look at the last few weeks to make sure I'm not repeating too many meals.  In February, because I was tired of making a menu every week, I sat down and made one for the whole month.  It's been nice to have that chore looked after; maybe I'll just re-use it for this next month...

Here is a copy of my menu for the month (click on it to enlarge); I hope some of you out there find this is helpful or maybe get some new meal ideas.  Of course, since I've scanned this instead of writing it out for you, you'll see that this is including all our nights out, too, and you'll notice that I made more and more switches as the month went on.  It's harder to project what things come up in a week when you're four weeks ahead.  When making my menus, I have to take in to consideration that I don't always get my groceries on Monday, so something I've already got on hand is safest.  Then Tuesdays, because of piano lessons (and often Wednesdays because of staff meetings), I have to plan something that doesn't need to bake for an hour.  These will be the quicker meals or the crock pot meals. 

Have a great last few hours of February!!  (And GO CANADA GO for one more Gold!)

Layouts

I forgot to post these last week!  

 

On this one I made a screen shot of a post which you can read here,

and then printed it out to use as my journalling.

And this one came from a little picture I had printed out of a on-the-road shot.  I noticed that we were all wearing colors that matched our eyes, and it made them all stand out.  I've had it around for a while, but got playing with my latte glimmer mist and some big Heidi Swapp ghost letters that I used as masks and found a home for the shot.  I stamped 'dressed to match' and outlined the letters in green / blue / brown using artist markers I got for Christmas over a year ago and haven't started playing with yet.  They worked for this!

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And on another note, I came across this site a couple of days ago called The One-Minute Writer.  I forget where I saw it - probably a button on someone else's blog...  I just purged a bunch of stuff out of the house and have a new-again (half gone) notebook on the shelf, so I decided to jump in.  Today's writing prompt was this: "What is the biggest question in your life that you'd like to have answered?"

This is what I wrote:

The biggest question in my life is "Do you love me?"  I already know the answer; I am confident in the answer.  But I still like to hear the answer over and over .  Without the question even being asked. 

(Wow.  Two lines.  In my notebook it was 5 1/2.)

Have a great night!!

something to try

There are lots of blogs out there that have a narrower focus on scrapbooking or recipes or crafty stuff, but I've chosen to make mine an extension of who I am, and so you'll find stories here from our lives, funny stuff that M says (like this morning when I woke her up: "Is it Saturday yet?"), my scrapbooking layouts, spiritual stuff, and creative stuff.

That said, I like to try to keep this worth reading, so I was browsing on StumbleUpon yesterday to find something cool to post for you, and found this:



I made one and didn't show M, but sent it out the door with her to play with on the bus...  A fun start to both our days.  The longest part is drawing it out on the paper and cutting - the taping is simple, and in just a few minutes you've got this fun crazy paper thing that you made yourself!  (Let me know if you make one, too!)

PS - Jess and Dave got home safely from Israel - I'm looking forward to hearing all about their trip.

A New Favorite Cookie!

Wow.  My friend Christine made these cookies (I think she said she got the recipe from Jennifer...)  I was there Tuesday and sampled one, got the recipe, and made them that night.

The rush was partly because M needed a dozen goodies for a thing at school the next day and 2 dozen things for Guides the next night, and partly because I just wanted to eat more of them!

Crispies Cookies

1c butter
1c brown sugar
1c sugar
2 eggs
1t vanilla
1 3/4 c flour
1t baking powder
1t baking soda
2c oatmeal
1c coconut
2c Rice Krispies
chocolate chips (optional)

350* 10-12 min
makes 3 doz large

I made 4 doz med sized cookies with the choc chips.  SO GOOD!!!  Enjoy!

Self - Punishment

The night before last, Sean and I woke up at 1:30 AM to an alarm - I go in to Madeline's room to turn off her alarm, since it wasn't either of ours, and of course can't do that in the dark, so I pull the plug.  The wrong one, then the right one, and the alarm is still going off.  

"It's her watch," Sean calls.  

"Where the heck is it?" I ask, blind in the dark.

"Try by my hair stuff," Madeline says, awakened by the alarm or me, I'm not sure which.  I find it, and by now it has stopped, but I take it down two floors in case it goes off again.

Back to bed, and Sean says, "It took me SO long to fall asleep..."  Oops - somebody's going to be in big trouble.  He's off to work before she comes down in the mornings, so he was going to deal with it at supper.  He goes easy on her, just saying that she can have her watch back ONLY IF SHE DOESN'T TOUCH ANY BUTTONS.

So this morning I go in to wake up Madeline, and see that her clock is wrong.  "I'd better change that," I say, "so you're not late for breakfast."

"What time is it?" she asks, and when she finds out that it's actually 7:20, not 7:40 like her clock says, she does the math incredibly fast and realizes that she was in bed with the lights out 20 minutes before she had to be last night.

That's pretty funny, I think.

Snow Fort Making

 

We've got a huge pile of snow at the church from the parking lots being cleared, and Darren and Byron had the great idea to have a snow fort making day today since it was family day - there were over a dozen families there, and we stayed for 3 hours!  The whether was perfect; -10 with no wind.  Warm enough to not get chased inside, but cold enough that you didn't overheat when you were going hard at it with the shovels.  There were lots of caves built, one three part tunnel, and some snow block forts, too.  What a great day.

news.

Sad news - Dick Francis died.  One of my favorite authors.

Happy news - My first cousin once removed (we pride ourselves in running an accurate blog here) had a baby boy today.  Congrats Sherri and Anson and welcome baby Darian!

Informative news - thanks to Megan Fox and body double rumors surrounding her Superbowl ad, I now know that my short stubby thumb is called Brachydactyly type D (BDD).  I still prefer "Grandma Brown Thumb."  My great grandmother had thumbs like that, two of my aunts also did, and one cousin and I each got one.  I admit, I used to hide it in junior high, but in junior high doesn't everyone want to be completely normal?  And think that everyone else notices everything about you? 

Valentine news - We dropped Madeline off at KBK for winter camp on Friday night, (and when we got back to town we checked out the new Walmart Supercenter and stocked up on munchies for Saturday.)  Saturday we drove to Manitoba to go snowboarding at Asessippi for the day.  It was a very good day.  We stopped at the farm and had supper with Sean's parents on the way back, which was also good.  This morning church was good (because church is what you bring to it, not what you get out of it, right?), and now Sean is off golfing.  I'm sitting here writing and enjoying the sun and in about 5 minutes will head off to pick up Madeline.  Then we'll all head out to have dessert with our small group.  A good weekend all around so far, and because tomorrow is the Family Day holiday here, there is lots more good to come, I'm sure!

Please leave a comment with some happy, sad, informative, Valentine or random news of your own.

20/15

This was our day today:

Breakfast (me)
Treadmill (45 minutes walking and reading)
Breakfast (Madeline)
Out for groceries
Back home to make sandwiches
Out to Sean's work to take him a sandwich (we found better things to do last night than me getting lunch food)
Then to the Bible bookstore to put something from work on the bulletin board
Then to the Girl Guides store to get M a new uniform because she outgrew the old one
Then to the Legislative building to check out the gift shop (to see my wares up for sale and to check out their purses) - but we didn't go in because there was no parking and a demonstration in progress on the front steps.  We'll try again later.
Then to Fabricland
Then to the hospital to visit the Grandma
Then to the car wash
Then to the library (you can only take magazines out for one week now!)
Then to the eye doctors for M's appointment.  She has 20/15 vision, which is better than perfect.
And now we're home.

If I knew when I made her appointment that she had no school today, I wouldn't have made it for 3:45 and made us stay out all day.  Half of those things would have gotten cut! 
Supper is in the oven and I'm crashing relaxing.
She's done piano and is packing her overnight bag to stay at Grandpa's while we go out for dessert with our friends.  And next she'll do the dishes.

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My sister and her husband left today for Israel.  I hope they have an AMAZING trip.