Woohoo, 5 day weekend!

Wow. Things sure feel different now that a second person has been hired at work. Now suddenly I can take a day off when I'm sick...and I don't have to work on the Canada Day holiday!!! Which is fortunate, because Antonio's daycare teacher doesn't work on it either!

So yesterday I had the 24-hour flu. I don't know if it's related to what Antonio had at Cars or what Don had the whole first week we were away, but I really hope it wasn't the sushi we had on our anniversary night...that was the best sushi I've had in Ottawa, in fact it's the ONLY good sushi we've had in Ottawa and I want to be able to go back there again!!! It couldn't have been though, because Don had the exact same dish I had and he was fine.

Ironically, I had to go into work yesterday because I couldn't be replaced on such short notice, but she gave me today off just to be safe and I was fine. Figures. But it was nice to have a free morning to do laundry and mop the floor...and take a wee visit to the local scrapbook store!!!

The girl says the rumoured Gatineau LSS will hopefully be opening by early September. And apparently another lady's wanting to open up one in Hull too...this is too good to be true...but also a little scary. I'm already spending too much at the LSS when it's half an hour outta my way in either direction. Now they're plunking one down on the road to my son's daycare and now a second...that may be within WALKING DISTANCE??? Maybe I should rethink working on holidays...ummm...no. Maybe not. I somehow managed to resist the new Prima box set...the colours were totally stunning and sooooo me but I convinced myself I just don't use enough flowers in my layouts to make it worth being in debt over. As always Im sure I'll kick myself for it later. Anyway here's a page I scrapped yesterday. I've been out of it for a month, but having a broken printer is a real damper on the scrap mojo. No personally edited pictures, no handcut letters, no computer journalling...arrrrrrg. It's like trying to go back to the horse and buggy. Not that I would mind that after the traffic I got stuck in today...but let's not even go that direction!!! These are the first of my totally 80's retro pics which I spent many long hours scanning from my parents' photo albums during my holiday. My mom doesn't scrapbook, so there's nothing wrong with scrapping my own childhood photos, right?
Here's the page I made this afternoon. This was super duper fun to make. These are actually just a set of Sandylion stickers I found in the card aisle at Wal-Mart. They do have a separate line of Cars 3d Jolee-type stickers in the LSS but these were more the feel I was going for. I've actually had them since the beginning of June and have been waiting to make this page for a month. That's what a broken printer forces upon you...otherwise I'd have had it done before I even left for holiday!!!

Hoping new pictures and new stash will spark some new mojo and I'll be back in the groove again soon.

zoom zoom zoom

Just got back from my holiday in Abbotsford with The Boy. I could use that as an excuse for why I haven't been updating, but the truth is I had ample internet access out there and just don't see much point in daily updates when I can count on one hand the amount of people who I've actually told about this blog.

Anyway I won't spend paragraphs describing all the cool stuff we did on holiday. I specialize in doing a lot of nothing and making it sound like everything. Suffice it to say that I love my family very very much and have a lot to be thankful for.

I absolutely can not believe how much Cars stuff you can get in the stores these days. Die-cast Cars, remote-control Cars, radio-control Cars, ride-on toddler Cars, big Cars, small Cars, Cars bathroom products, Cars cookies, they even have Cars lip balm!!! If it's a kid's product, you can bet there's a Cars version available right now. And Antonio now possesses a whole bunch more of it. The crazy thing is we came back with 2 more bags than we arrived with, mostly Cars stuff, and he doesn't even have half of what's actually available. This was a stroke of genius for Disney. Whoever came up with the idea for this movie must have had a son.

A different day than expected

Today was a day we've been psyched about for literally 2 years. Ever since we first found the trailer for Disney's Cars back in 2004...we knew this would be the coolest thing that could ever happen to a 3-year-old boy...especially ours, who has drooled over anything with wheels since before he started teething. With help from his grandmas, he's been equipped with a Cars poster, a Cars flashlight, 2 Cars books, a Cars T-shirt & shorts set, 3 sets of Cars stickers and 9 Cars cars to play with...all BEFORE the movie was even released. He already knew all the names of the cars, and has been playing on the Cars website for weeks. I even had DH pick up the tickets yesterday to ensure our choice of time and save us the waiting.

And I was going to scrapbook it all. I bought an extra set of stickers for myself. I packed my camera to bring to the theatre. I made sure his new Cars outfit was clean for today. I've been pondering what the layout title should be for weeks...never able to come up with anything that quite accurately captures the excitement my son shows for the whole Cars phenomenon.

So what happens? He wakes up...with a FEVER!!!!!!!

He didn't even have it first thing...it kind of came on after he fell asleep the second time, before he got up for breakfast. All he wanted to do was sleep. Admittedly...my heart was broken! And we'd gone and bought all 6 tickets already, because we were going with friends and all. What to do?

Here's where I bet a lot of moms might shake their fingers at me. We took him anyway. He was sort of up and down throughout the day, as if he himself was torn between being tired and really wanting to see the movie. He had seemed (and said he felt) better by the time we were in the car. Then he threw up all over his Lightning McQueen shirt & shorts. Well, there are a few things we could have done here. But as his parents, we made the choice that was most US. We asked him if he still wanted to see Cars. Yep. So DH went to Walmart and got him a fresh outfit, we changed him, and we went to see Cars. And we all loved it. DS sat through the whole thing, totally absorbed, actually making comments on it! And by the time we left, he felt a good deal better.

I'm always doubting my decisions. But I will say this. I have never been the kind of person to let illness screw up my plans. If I gotta do something, I'm gonna suck it up and just do it, whether or not I feel totally "up to it". Because when given the choice, I ALWAYS regret NOT doing something, but I NEVER regret DOING something. I want my son to grow up the same. And as his mum I can tell ya he would have been seriously upset if we'd missed seeing Cars today, after we've been talking about it all week.

So that was our interesting, slightly different-than-expected day, but the bottom line is the movie ROCKED and WE ALL HAD FUN!!!

Crowds suck

I can't deal with crowds. It sucks. They make me edgy and nervous, then everyone in them gets to see how edgy and nervous I am at close proximity. Ugh. Maybe I am just a snob.

I mean, I suppose I can handle them if I EXPECT them to be there. Like last Tuesday, I took my son to the indoor playground at 10:30 a.m. and it was like totally dead there. In fact by 11 we practically had the whole park to ourselves, because the only kids that were there were babies in the toddler area. Friday morning, same time...and it's freakin' MOBBED. Yuck. I almost thought I wasn't gonna find parking...if I hadn't found that one last spot I'd have just said forget it. Which is totally lousy on my behalf, and I'd have regretted it...but crowds and parking are wayyyyyy up there on my stress list.

Anyway we got in and he had a great time with his friend, and I had a nice chat with her mom. That's the beauty of Cosmic Adventures...playtime for the kids...alone time for the adults!

I wish it wasn't raining this weekend...not that I don't like the rain, it reminds me of living in B.C....but Cars is premiering tonight, and we're planning to see it tomorrow, and having said that I don't do well with crowds, now not only are we up against everyone with a little boy but everyone else who's just going because it's rainy. Looks like we'll be buying online in advance!

Late night for all

Day 2 of blog world. I still haven't figured out how to do much with this...there was once a time when I spoke HTML, but it's coming back almost as slowly as my French...and I've been living in Quebec for more than a year now. Practice, baby, practice.

I'm in the midst of 3 weeks' holiday, trying to figure out what to do with myself (hmmm...wonder if that's how I ended up starting a blog finally!!!)...anyway, the stay-at-home mom thing does not come easily to me so I've tried to plan stuff for us to do every day so we don't both go stir-crazy and drive each other insane...I don't know who is more hyper, me or my 3-year-old son!!! He actually stayed up till midnight today! What happened was he ended up taking a late nap, then woke up at 9:30 p.m. So we let him stay up...we're on holiday, and tomorrow we have no plans till his friend comes over at noon. Could've been worse...he could've slept right through then woken up at 3 in the morning!!!

Well, it's 12:41 and I'm not at my brightest. Getting harder to listen to the TV and blog at the same time. Better post and shut up before I start babbling.

Sweet dreams!

Yet another addition to my state of constant self-distraction

Ok...I'll give it a go!

I will warn you, before I start typing away, that kids in my elementary school back in the 80's were never tested for ADHD and that sort of thing...and while I've been through all sorts of lovely titles such as "gifted" and "creative" and "fidgety"...be forewarned that my style of talking does involve a lot of straying from topic to topic as the hormones dictate. Which may suit you better, if your attention span has been shortened from all that cool 80's TV. Have fun!

I don't know how this is going to work out for me. I see the benefits of keeping a journal (though for some reason I haven't ever bothered to since I was 12, except the one I did of my pregnancy and a few pages in Korea), but to my understanding and experience, actually having someone READ your journal is supposed to be the scariest freaking moment in any kid's life. In fact, don't they make some of them with little deadbolts right on the front and all? And here we are evolved to BLOGGING...where instead of locking it up, you post it on the WWW for every freak, weirdo, and other such people like myself to snoop through!!!

So like I said, I don't know how this will work out. I don't know what the etiquette is on how often you're supposed to update or anything. I can't promise I'm always gonna have something creative to say. And I can't promise you will actually be seeing into my head...which is probably a good thing...it's way too disorganized in there!!!...but blogs are apparently public literature so my self-conscious nature probably won't let me reveal EVERYthing that I would were this a regular self-indulgent padlocked journal.

Thank you for coming. Sweet dreams.