Tagged: Unspectacular Quirks

Tara has tagged me to share about my 6 most unspectacular quirks, so I will play along. I know I have lots of quirks, but when put on the spot it's hard to come up with that many.

Here's the rules (for those of you who aren't familiar with memes, or if you have forgotten how to play along):

1. Link the person who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

And now for my 6 most unspectacular quirks:

1. When I am making a sandwich, I NEED the bread to come from adjoining pieces in the loaf. They also must face the same way so that they "fit together" as it is supposed to be.
2. I still bite my nails. I hate that I do it, but often I don't even realize it until it's too late. I have no idea how to stop, other than paying for gel nails...but that is just too expensive to maintain.
3. I can go to bed with a dirty kitchen. It doesn't really bother me that much (unless it's REALLY dirty). I have lots of friends who will stay up late just to clean and are almost obsessed with keeping it clean, but that's not me.
4. Until recently, I would only let my kids play with one color of Play-doh at a time. I didn't want them mixing up all the colors. Now we have a lot of "brownish" colors and it's okay. The sky didn't fall when I brought out multiple colors at a time!
5. I need lots of light. I love natural light, and if that's not available I need lots of lighting. I seriously go crazy in dark rooms. I also don't do well on cloudy days.
6. I am constantly judging people in customer service jobs. As a former CSR I highly value great customer service and if I don't get it, I won't go back to that place (if I can help it). I have written praise letters to companies when I do get good service, which also sometimes get me free stuff which is a nice bonus!

Alright now I guess I have to tag some other people. This means that if I list your name, you HAVE to play along, right?!?!?!

Kerrie

Roxanne

Niki

Seanna

Amanda

Colleen

I'm looking forward to reading about your quirks ladies!

Please Help Me!

My sweet little Ella has not been acting so darling lately.

I am about ready to rip my hair out or punch something.

I can't believe she is only 2 and yet she is getting this type of reaction from me!

AGH!!!

We have begun the battle of the wills and I fear that I am losing.

When I was a baby, I was often compared with my dad's mom because of my stubbornness. My grandma was awfully stubborn and apparently, so was am I. I have always been stubborn. It can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing.

I was hoping that my stubbornness would come in handy with raising children. I thought Brie was going to be the stubborn one.

How wrong I was!

Ella and I have had MANY battles this week. One battle lasted for a full hour of crying and punishments but she still refused to cooperate. She blatantly refuses to listen and obey. I have tried timeouts, spanks, and taking away toys. Absolutely nothing is working. She still is very disobedient and quite often she laughs when I am trying to talk to her, or punish her. This, of course, makes me even angrier.

She is going to give me more grey hairs. (Yes I already have a few, unfortunately!)

She is only 2!!

Any suggestions???

Reserved Excitement

When the Olympics begin, I am usually quite excited.

I'm not much of a sports watcher, but I love being able to cheer on our country and the athletes that are representing us.

Today I sat on the couch and watched the opening ceremonies with my girls. It was fun to have them each recognize our nation's flag and be proud to watch our team parade into the stadium.

While I still look forward to watching Canada compete against the rest of the world, these games seem tainted already. China is currently dealing with a lot of controversy over the security, the rules, the treatment of their own low-income citizens, and of course there are always concerns over the integrity of the IOC.

Strangely enough I am already quite excited about the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. John has been told (along with the rest of the RCMP) that there will be a ban on vacations from January-March 2010. The reason for this is due to security as they plan on sending a few thousand members to oversee the city during the games.

John would really like the chance to go and work there for a short while. I have no idea when they will choose members to go, but for his sake I really hope that he will be fortunate enough to get sent there. He may not even get to watch any competitions, but what an experience just to go there! If it wasn't for his work, we would probably consider attending the games. I figure it's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience either way.

I guess we will just have to wait and see.

The Story Of Us: The Beginning

Since this blog is fairly new, I thought I would start a series of posts all about US. You know, John and I, us. How it all began.

I've read similar stories on other blogs, and I find the stories so fascinating. Maybe that is the curious reformed-snoop in me, but nevertheless I am always interested in hearing about people's history.

So here's mine. From the beginning.

*****************************************************************

I remember the year that I met John. I was just finishing up grade 11 and was actually dating another guy. In fact, I wasn't even all that interested in this boyfriend of mine, truth be told. It was my way of getting over a long crush on a friend, and more likely I was hoping to make this friend jealous. It was a good self-esteem booster to know that someone else liked me. Very mature.

Several guy friends of mine had decided in their last semester of high school to join quizzing. Quizzing is a bible verse memory competition between churches. It runs from grade 7-12. So obviously these guys would join in their very last semester. Their reason for joining? Certainly not to memorize scripture. Nope! They just wanted to meet girls. Very noble reasons. It made me so mad at the time. They set out to go to a competition in Regina for a weekend. It was the last conference for the year.

I was never in quizzing. I hate memorizing stuff and it just wasn't for me. Yet now I am so thankful that these guys joined at the very last opportune moment. If it wasn't for that last Quiz Meet, I would never have met John.

During the course of that weekend, these guys did in fact meet up with some girls from Saskatoon. One began a dating relationship shortly after. He began to invite this new girlfriend and her friends to one of our youth group events. She did show up on night and brought several friends with her. Their youth group at church was pretty small and they decided to give ours a try. I'm sure I met John that night, but I don't remember hearing wedding bells or anything. This night doesn't even really stand out in my memory. I just know that this was the first time I saw him.

They continued coming to hang out with our group for the remainder of the school year. One incident that I remember quite clearly was one evening John had a chocolate bar. He offered to share it with me. Yes of all the things I could possibly remember....it is him sharing his chocolate!! But as a chocolate lover, this truly stands out to me. If this guy was willing to share his chocolate with me, a virtually unknown girl, he couldn't be all bad.

The summer began and I continued to date this boyfriend of mine. He was truly starting to annoy me, with comments of "I love you" that didn't mean anything to either one of us. I was very angry with those comments and vowed that I would never say that to anyone until I had felt that way for a very long time.

A large group of us from youth would often hang out together. One night we all planned to go see a drive-in movie. So we piled in to the cars and drove out there. It ended up that John and I shared the back seat of a small car.

I still remember watching Braveheart that night. (Braveheart music was what I walked down the aisle to, by the way) I still remember having to lean into the middle of the seat and strain to see past the rear view mirror to watch the movie. I still remember this odd sensation I had knowing how close I was to John. Throughout the whole movie I questioned what these new feelings were for the guy that I barely knew. (I found out later on when we were dating that John also felt those same things that night)

I went home that night and started some serious thinking. I must not have been very good at concealing my thoughts because I remember my mom saying something to the effect of "it's okay to like someone else, and you don't have to keep dating your boyfriend if you don't want to". Obviously not her exact words, but that is the gist of what she said.

Our youth group was going away for 2 weeks to Montreal on a missions trips which gave me lots of time to process my thoughts. I decided to break up with the boyfriend and just be friends with John for a while. So I did just that. I broke up with the boyfriend. I can't remember if it was the very same night later on that John and I talked, or if it was a couple of days later, but regardless we did talk. He was driving me home one night and one of us decided to open up the can of worms. Where was this going?

I said very clearly that I just ended a relationship and I wasn't wanting to get into anything else at that point. I told John that I liked him, but I wanted to get to know him as a friend first.

Our big group of friends continued to get together on a regular basis and I remember going for a long walk with just John one night. I'm amazed that I didn't scare him off as I think I talked non-stop for the entire time. He's a quiet guy by nature, and I guess the silence was too intimidating for me so I just kept on talking. We walked and I talked. A lot.

The next week (after the breakup) we were starting VBS in the innercity. This was our second year at this location and things were running very smoothly. John and I had made plans to go see a movie one Thursday evening. It was going to be a casual outing for us, but the day leading up to that night made it otherwise.

Thursday's VBS was a blast! We had arranged to bring in snow shavings from one of the skating rinks in town. We had an entire truckload of snow to play with on a hot summer's day. I do know that the kids loved it, but mostly I just remember John that day.

It's one of those moments where time seems to go slower and I can watch things in slow-motion in my memory. We had a snowball fight in August. He would chase me, I would chase him, etc. It went on for a long time that afternoon. I don't remember anything else about VBS that year. Just the snowfight between us.

That night we went and saw Apollo 13. Afterwards we went to the trainbridge, which became "our spot" for a long time. That night we began our dating adventure!

***I believe that 4 marriages (of my friends and us) resulted from that one weekend from the Quiz Meet and you can read about a similar version at my friend Colin's blog***

I Have Officially Begun Christmas Shopping

Okay with my title, some of you are going to think I'm nuts.

But I'm not.

Well, not entirely anyways.

Today I have started Christmas shopping!

I used to be one of those people who was frantically searching for any gift in December, working through the crowds, being grumpy and miserable along with everyone else around me.

When we moved to a small town 3 years ago, shopping became more difficult. There are only a few small stores here, of course a Sears catalogue center, among a few other locally owned stores. So not much selection, and the prices are outrageous.

When we go to the city for a day trip, we make our usual stops; Costco and Walmart, along with any other pressing issues we need to address, and then we visit with friends or family for the remainder of the time. It doesn't leave much time to browse stores or find good deals around town.

So that is when I discovered the joys of online shopping! It is so easy, there are no lines, no grumpy people, I don't have to drag my children around with me and I can find some fantastic deals!! I now shop throughout the year to find great deals (and then it looks like I'm spending more than I actually do!!) for friends and family.

Last year I actually started Christmas shopping in March. It disgusted even me, a little bit, because, seriously? Who starts in March? But I guess I did. The deal was really too good to pass up. I'm not crazy, honestly!

Today I discovered the great finds at the Toys R Us clearance section. I didn't realize until today (maybe you are smarter than I am!) that anything with the notation "Save an additional 50% on clearance items", means that it is 50% off the last price! I am kicking myself for not understanding this in the past, but I'm thrilled for today! So stuff that was normally $39.99 and is marked down to $29.99 will actually be $14.98 if it says that it is 50% off. Isn't that awesome?

I bought some stuff to give away as gifts for birthday parties, Christmas presents, and some stocking stuffers too! Yippee!!

I should also mention that if you too, want to get some great deals from TRU, you can first go through Air Miles Shops with your collector number and collect Air Miles at the same time. I am all about the deals!! There are lots of stores that participate with Air Miles online and I always go through here first. We don't collect a lot of miles, but every little bit helps.

So I wanted to share my great finds with you today...maybe you will find something that you like too.

Sleep

I love sleep.

I love that sleep usually comes quite easily to me now that I am a mom.

It used to be that sleep would take an average of 45 minutes to arrive once my head hit the pillow.

Not anymore.

10-15 minutes is probably the norm for me now.

Which I greatly appreciate!

I love getting my 8-10 hours of sleep per night, but that doesn't always happen.

Take the last 2 nights for example.

Picture me, sound asleep for approximately 3 hours. Enter groggy Ella at 2 am. She tries to climb into bed with me (John is still at work) and I silently protest the rude awakening. I manage to half-sleepwalk her back to her room to tuck her in, and crawl back into my bed and reenter my peaceful sleep.

Fast forward 20 minutes.

Enter slightly less groggy Ella. Since I was just able to fall back asleep I am really not fond of this second visit. I walk her back to her room again.

Fast forward 30 minutes. I still haven't fallen back asleep. Enter Ella again. My patience is starting to wear thin so I take her to the bathroom and give her a sip of water, before tucking her back into bed.

Fast forward 10 minutes. John has just gotten home and he crawls into bed. I try to ignore him, since I've been awake for close to an hour and would rather be sleeping.

Fast forward 5 minutes. Enter Ella. (Are you kidding me?!?) John, who thinks I'm sleeping at this point, gets up to deal with her. He is back in bed shortly.

Fast forward 10 minutes. (Agh!!) I get up, again, and rather rudely protest the frequency of Ella's late-night visits (aka yelling in a whisper voice). I climb back into bed.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Well okay, there was no lather at 3:30 am, or rinsing either for that matter. But this pattern did repeat several times.

Finally John said, why don't you let her stay in bed with us? I won't mind.

Yeah, because she never sleeps on your side and only clings to me anyways, and you can sleep through just about anything.

I replied with a "no, it just makes my neck sore when she sleeps in our bed."

I got up a few more times with Ella and finally at 4:20 I gave in and let her stay in our bed.

There is John, sleeping away and enjoying his half of the bed all to himself. And then, there is Ella in the "middle", squished up against me while I cling to the edge of the bed so that I don't fall off. Obviously I wasn't going to be able to sleep while in that precarious position.

Finally around 5 am, when I knew that Ella was sleeping soundly, I carried her back to her room for the last time.

Fortunately it didn't take me too long to fall asleep after those few hours of frustrating alertness.

Last night began similarly but it worked out well that John was home due to an earlier shift as he gets ready for the day shift today. We each were up with Ella a few times last night.

Finally John threatened a spank if she got out of bed any more.

Yeah, that's right!

We didn't see her again until 8:30 this morning. She cautiously got out of bed to see John, who was already up getting ready for work. Her very first words were "aren't you going to spank me?"

Ah, poor girl.

Even with all the frustration of lack of sleep....I love her dearly.

I love having her tiny little body curled up next to mine.

I love the sound of her warm breath in my ear.

I love the peacefulness she gets when she can just stay near me.

Will I enjoy it when these sleepness nights are over? Absolutely!

Will I miss the closeness we enjoy even at 4 am? Definitely.

Will I always be there to hold her in the middle of the night?

I think of the book "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch. It is one of my favorite books to read, and I always get a little choked up when I read it. The mother has this unconditional love for her child, even when she feels like nothing is going the way she wants it to. Every night, after her son goes to sleep, she watches him and all the bad stuff is forgotten and forgiven.

This is the way I want to parent. Even on days when my girls drive me crazy, or I can't seem to get sleep in the middle of the night. In the midst of all of that, I love them!

So the answer is yes. I will always be there for her. Even if I have to sacrifice my valued sleep. It's worth it!

Everyone is Exhausted

Yesterday we arrived at home with TOO MANY things on the "to-do" list.

The girls and I spent 4 fun-filled days in the city. Seeing family, going to the zoo, playing at the water parks, etc. Most of it was great, but the girls were getting quite tired and so it led to lots of frustration, tears, timeouts and spanks. As I was the sole caregiver all week, and I was dealing with headaches most days, I was worn out and grumpy by the end.

I did manage to take a couple of good pictures at the zoo where we had a supper picnic with my mom.

John was off fishing with his grandpa and they had a wonderful time away from society. I am truly glad that they were able to have that time together, just the two of them. They have already been talking about a trip next year, God willing that his grandpa's health still permits. Fishing is one of John's fondest childhood memories. I just bought him lot of new supplies for his birthday this spring since he hadn't been fishing since before I knew him.

Today, by the way, marks 13 years of togetherness for us. We started dating on August 1st in 1995. We actually have a great story of how that day progressed, but I will save that for another post.

Before we left for Saskatoon, I had a busy week with VBS and making a baby quilt. I completely forgot to get stuff ready to mail for my sister Kerrie's birthday, which was yesterday. So upon arriving home, I quickly whipped up a card for her (now that I am in a Stampin Up group, I really cannot buy a $4.00 one at the store anymore!) and got it mailed off after lunch today.

Coming home yesterday we brought with us 2 large Rubbermaid bins full of crab apples. I really wasn't expecting them yet, but the apples on my in-laws tree were falling off very rapidly and I hate to have them go to waste. So we had to cut all 3000 (or some other outrageous number) of them into halves. About 78 Liters (and yes I know that isn't the correct measuring unit but that's how I measured the equal amounts of water we added) of apples. I made juice with apples last year and the girls loved it, so how we are making it again. Can't beat spending less than $10 on 70 Liters of juice! We both have blisters on our hand from cutting the apples in half. My index finger is very sore from holding a knife for so long. A small price to pay for all the great juice though, I guess. Tomorrow begins the straining, boiling and canning. I'm thinking that the air conditioning will be on to help keep us cool!

Here is what the apples look like almost 24 hours into the process.

This will be the finished product:

We also have many pails of Saskatoon berries, also from the in-laws, that John decided to try making into wine. He loves making the wine kits but this time it will be from scratch. He got this started yesterday so we should be able to taste it in November. I love sweet fruity wines, so hopefully this will be a good one! Also cheap to make if we get the free berries. I am looking forward to trying this one out, and I think it will also make some excellent gifts too.

This is the berries (you can see the nylon bag holding the berry skins) and additives in the primary fermenter.

Yesterday I went outside for a brief rest on the deck in the sun and I saw my first hummingbird of the year! I was very thrilled! I don't know why they take so long so show up in my yard every year but I guess part of the thrill is the chase. Hummingbirds are such tiny yet beautiful creatures and I love the challenge of attracting them to my yard. They absolutely love a flower I have called Bee Balm, which just started blooming last week. So my feeders are full again, after a few weeks of neglect, and I will be obsessively checking the backyard for signs of those precious birds from now on.


The girls are very exhausted after a tiring week and a trip to the paddling pool this afternoon. Both of them were fighting almost non-stop tonight which resulted in a very short bath for Ella. She is in a very disobedient stage right now and is getting herself into a lot of trouble lately. She ended up going to bed very early due to the mass quantities of tears she produced.



I am so glad that God's mercies are new every day! I need it for the lack of patience I show, and I need to show his mercies to my own children too in their disobedience.



I am looking forward to a quiet evening by myself. John is working and/or on-call all weekend so I just have to enjoy some peace tonight before the fun begins all over again tomorrow.