Elisa’s Day

summer is winding down, but as illustrated above, much fun was had on our second trip to stay with my dad while the older girls did their pottery class. the weather was sub-par and the drive was a bit longer this time ( which i’ll get into more in a bit ) so the younger girls and i spent most of our mornings in town, killing time, instead of going all the way back to the cottage. which meant a lot of wandering around downtown, a lot of time spent in the park and also the library ( unfortunately the early years center up there is closed for the entire month of august, it would have been nice to have that to do ) luckily they do have this great park right downtown. molly hearts swings.

the older girls really liked pottery, and this time around the class was at the actual college as opposed to the highschool. what a neat school.  the highschool is on the edge of town on the side closer to my dad’s, but the college is through town and then several minutes out the other way. making the drive almost 25-30 min. but it was worth it to get to see the college and the girls got to use the actual pottery class room.

and even though the weather was not the best, kids just don’t care. they swam every afternoon. they even scored an extra day, as my plan to pack up friday morning while they were at class, scoop them up and drive home right from the college, was dashed down by a slow firing kiln. the pieces were not cooled off enough to unload by noon. so our options were to wait around until 4 or have them shipped. so we just waited and the kids were happy enough to have one more afternoon in the water. all in all a good week. one day we even drove to the next small town to hit it’s little ice cream spot, just for the fantastic climber my dad had spotted earlier in the week. there it is right behind the local ice cream shack…..the best climber ever, this is what we need to build in our back yard.

i came home to a lot of cleaning and organizing to do since school is only a week away now, and a truckload of beans. we over planted beans for sure. now i’m just trying to give them away as much as i can. plus birthday craziness. september is really dreadful as far as being overwhelming. first is my mom’s birthday, then hannah’s, then school starts, then ryan’s birthday and then sidney’s. and then the fair, which is a big deal around here too. just pure crazy for 4 full weeks pretty much. just typing that sentence made me a little panicky.

we had a lovely day in the city on sunday. we saw the truly amazing shop bill has put together there. we ate good food and did some crazy people watching in the market. i got a $7 cowboy hat to wear in the garden . we did some tattooing. we enjoyed the good company. we ate some more good food. the baby charmed all around with her “look how cute i am” smiles followed by “but still kind of shy” head ducks and said “hi” over and over and to as many people as she could.

really the only hard part about going to the city is time allotment. we have few good friends left in the city, so when you’re only there for the day, the very hardest part is trying to find time to see them. and when you only get to the city a couple times a year, it makes it even worse. so this time we just decided to just stay in the market for the day. because i hate clock watching while he’s tattooing, or having to say no when he asks if we want to grab food after. and because i hate rushing from one friend to another. then we end up clock watching there too. how long can we stay?….how late is too late to start the long drive home? how long will the already tired baby last at another stop? so it was a quick in and out visit. which was nice. it was nice to not always be rushing off somewhere else. so what we really need to do is start getting into the city more, so we can have a nice, dedicated visit with other friends too, not be trying to bounce between them all in one day. and now that the kids are ( baby especially ) getting older, hopefully we’ll only have more and more opportunities to sneak away for a day here and there in our future.

really, any excuse to eat in the city. according to ryan, i only go to the city to eat. i’m still thinking about how good the tacos and guacamole we had in the market were.

that’ll keep the sun off

and all caught up ( sidney took this for me, it’s not in focus but you get the gist )

hey, an update !! man, the ol’ blog updates a few and far between in the summer. i know it’s mostly because the few blogs i read are mostly “local” and people i know in real life, and the real life truth is, us crazy canadians are out sucking up as much nice weather as we can because we all know that at least 6 months of shit weather is just around the corner.

not much going on around here. well not much that seems eventful or worthy of mentioning really. just the same old routine……ashley already said it. garden.feed kids.laundry.more gardening.get your own snack please.knitting.chickens.chase baby.more laundry.no fighting.clean.give up on cleaning. more garden.chickens.baking.as always laundry.knitting.baby what are you eating off the floor?stop fighting.garden.etc.

other then that, not much. every saturday we go to the farmers market and meet up with friends. all the kids run around the park and all the parents drink fair trade coffee and eat delicious home made treats the fair trade coffee lady makes. there’s been the odd play date. and everyone under 5 feet tall saw the dentist yesterday and sees the eye doctor next week.

yesterday we re-arranged the girls bedroom. we’re having some sleep issues right now. with two bedrooms and four kids. one of whom is not yet sleeping through the night on any kind of regular basis. so for a while now we’ve had molly in a room by herself and the three older girls in the other room ( they are huge rooms ) but much hi-jinx was ensuing after bed time. which doesn’t matter much now, but in a few short weeks, when we’re back to 6 am wake ups it’s going to be a problem. so first we tried olivia in the babies room, which she wanted to try. but it involved waiting until molly was asleep, then sneaking in. and then molly started getting up more in the night. which may or may not be related i guess, but last night with her room back to herself she slept through so…….but then i had to remove the instigator. which is, duh, hannah. if you know 3 yr olds, you know hannah is the instigator. so we have this crazy “hallway” between the two bedrooms. it’s really something else. a sitting room, or something. it’s too big to be a hallway. it’s where my MIL sleeps when she’s here. it has a huge dresser and a day bed in it. as well as this big recessed area with built in shelving where i keep all the kids books and some toy overflow. so yesterday i put hannah’s little toddler bed in there. which ryan and i have been jokingly referring to as “the hole” in all my theoretical plans for this sleeping arrangement. so now hannah is “doing time in the hole” hee hee. i mean, her bed fits perfectly with just enough room to walk beside it, and if it works out, i’ll paint it and let her put all her stuff on the shelves. and that will be hannah’s space until molly is ready for a room mate. which i predict to be 6-8 months from now. not ideal, but hey, what can you do.

we also hit the big thrift store in hopes of finding a bookshelf or something for the girls room yesterday, which i did not find. but found quite a few good dresses for miss hannah who wants to only wear dresses. and this is the one downfall of hand me downs. if your “thing” doesn’t mesh with your big sisters “thing” when she was that size then you’re kind of screwed. and then the cashier let me know that today was a big half off furniture sale and they would be opening up the back area ( this location is a sorting station, so it’s 80% warehouse to it’s 20% retail space ) so while i write this i must remember that we have to be dressed and out the door by 8:45 to get there for opening. and speaking of thrift stores ( of which i am queen btw, i can spot a quality garment from 20 paces no matter how much crap it’s crammed onto the rack with ) there is a CRAZY on where my dad lives. one day while the girls were in their art class hannah and molly and i checked it out. and once i learned that the pricing structure is as follows “unless otherwise marked, shirts are 25c and pants are 50c”…..well…….i cleaned them out of every decent thing in any size my girls are or could wear ( gap,old navy, childrens place….some like brand new, hello cottage country…..i guess if you own a half a millon dollar cottage you don’t wear through your clothes so much ) it was ridiculous !! i told me dad i was running into town to hit that place every single time we visit now. i saw a women on tv who tried to not buy anything new for a whole year. i have been thinking about this a lot lately and wondering if i could pull that off. anyway…….

we’re back up there in a week and a half for the pottery class too. i am kind of in denial about having to pack again for another week away. though i did leave a lot of stuff up there, anything i could manage without.

okay, must get moving, it’s 7:45, and getting everyone ready and out of the house takes about an hour best case scenario.

in a few short days we’re off to stay at my dad’s for a whole week ( well, almost, 6 days which is long enough ) and i have spent this whole week, trying to plan and mostly dreading getting ready for that. today when he’s done work, my dad is going to stop by and pick up a bunch of stuff that i wouldn’t have room for in my van, so i have to have that all ready today. and i have two more loads of laundry before we can start packing clothes. packing for many children, including a baby for 6 days, not fun stuff. but hey, art camp, pretty fun stuff. up first, picasso pizzaz. and hannah and the baby and i will just have to amuse ourselves sitting on the beach, shopping and even possibly a trip to the local early years center.

poor ryan is on his own. well, him and the cats. that’s right. cats. i adopted some cats off kijiji. we were having some rodent issues. now we have cat issues. but man the kids are excited. one is questionable. i think the women may have mislead me there. she seems nervous, possibly blind. but the other one is perfect. laid back, loves all the attention the kids can give her, a generally cool cat. they came as a set, so we’ll see if the nervous one settles in or not. in other cat related news, molly loves to chase them around. she’s a crawling master now thanks to the cats. and ryan swears she says kitty. which i guess makes up for the fact that no matter how often i vacuum she now always has copious amounts of cat hair stuck to her sweaty little baby palms and in her little baby pigs.

thunderstorm warnings, with possible hail. i really hope it’s not going to happen ( though it’s looking pretty ominous right now ) because i would hate for hail to pummel the garden, it’s going so well. though it looks like the beans are going to be ready to start picking while i’m gone of course!! few things i love more then fresh beans. ( maybe fresh corn….. ) we had the first “new” potatoes the other day too. delish. always so exciting to eat food you grew. really it’s unfortunate that more people don’t/won’t experience that feeling.

okay, off the computer, on to laundry and packing.

well hopefully we’re done with sickness for awhile. olivia just finished her second round of Rx in a month, as did sidney ( olivia did in fact have a nasty ear infection, and surprise, sidney had tonsillitis ) in light of these two facts, we wrapped up our school year a few days early. i mean, don’t get me started on the absurdity of making the kids go right until the 30th even though marks for report cards go in the second week of june. so with both kids sick again last weekend, i decided to call it a year and told the school as much. and so, with that, our summer begins. thank goodness. looking forward to some sleeping in and some lack of schedule.

busy weekend last weekend, ryan’s mom was here and it was another rainy day at the market. so when my usual veggie guy pleaded with me to take some strawberries off his hands because he was never going to get rid of them in the rain, what could i do? $10 later i have a flat of strawberries ( that he continued to pour pints on top of as i picked veggies ) that i need to do something with. normally i only make raspberry jam, i’m not a big fan of strawberry, but the kids like it, so i kinda thought i might make some anyway. so we did. lots of jam, and one delicious strawberry pie. then sunday we blew through our egg surplus with a ridiculously huge pound cake recipe ( it takes 24 eggs ) and muffins and cookies. at least it solved my end of year gift dilemma for the kids teachers. so wednesday i dropped by the school to grab any last bits of stuff ( and report cards ) and drop off a pound cake for the office, and mini pound cakes plus jam for the teachers.

we had some birthdays too. someone turned one, which is hard to believe.

and finally started crawling, which means i can’t turn my back on her for a second or she’s into the kids book shelf, trying to stick her finger in a light socket, chewing on the kids dirty shoes……general ‘baby on the go’ mischief. i’m definitely in that same bittersweet place i’m sure all mom’s go with the last baby, glad it’s all coming to an end but sad to see it go. i’m finding myself very undedicated to trying to get her on bottles, i am both so ready to be done nursing and so aware this is my last time. even when i felt like maybe we wouldn’t have more before, i always knew there was a [good]chance we’d have more. but with this, the very last baby, it’s so much harder to let that go, even though i want to. and there has been sleeping through the night. which i hope means sooner then later i can split the girls back up two and two, because if i have to listen to hannah and the older girls spend many more early mornings arguing in bed, i may just loose my shit. don’t ask how i plan to split them i haven’t decided yet. the obvious, older two, younger two maybe, but  maybe i mix it up a little too? who knows.

and someone turned six. also hard to believe.

our traditional birthday pancakes, which you get on your actual birthday since you get a cake at your party and two cakes was too many. olivia decided to ask for money for her birthday this year, because she really wanted to take gymnastics, and the only money in our budget for extra curricular right now goes to swimming lessons ( no body needs to know how to walk a balance beam to save their own life so….. ) so that is what she got from all the grandparents and aunties. and she is very excitedly waiting for the fall session to start up now. my mom also gave her a leotard to wear ( which she desperately wanted as well ) and a new book, that she estimates to be about a 4th grade reading level ( based on the vocabulary ) that olivia is already half way through. i am definitely glad she’s in the french, i could see her being much less challenged in a regular class.

and this weekend, i think we’ll have to forgo any going away to spend the entire weekend trying to catch up on all the outside stuff we fell behind on due to the last three weeks of rain. i heard this was the most rain to ever fall in june. and i’d believe it if all the standing water everywhere is any gauge. i just really hope that our garlic and potatoes don’t get rot.

well, one more coffe and then time to get moving. my step dad is away and so his morning chores fall to me, which means there are birds waiting for me to start their day.

my final thought today is, you know the only good part about having to wake a baby up from a nap? getting to snap the elusive ‘cute sleeping baby’ photo without any concern that it might wake them up.

well, change of plans for the weekend. instead of bday parties and a trip to my dad’s, it was chicken pox. sigh. that would be sidney. with the chicken pox. so lets re-cap shall we ( for anyone keeping track ) from novemeber when we all got H1N1. then came strep throat for me. then came the stomach flu for most of us. then olivia got strep. then hannah got pink eye. then sidney got strep. and now she has chicken pox. and olivia has what i was hoping was only a nasty cold, until this morning when she told me her ear hurts. sigh again. seriously.

we’re not a germaphobe family. we don’t believe in hand sanitizer or antibacterial soap or any of those other fear mongering type things. i think into each child’s life a few germs must come. but man. i’m getting a little beat down this year. when i took sidney to the clinic to confirm her chicken pox, her health card came up our old address. which means it hasn’t been scanned since we lived there 3 years ago. so yeah, we get the odd colds and flus, but antibiotics are rare around here usually.

the only good thing out of all this is so far the baby has had nothing ( knocking wood here ) yay for breastfeeding and all it’s crazy immunities.

speaking of the baby, she turns one today, which is crazy. sidney didn’t start crawling until the week before she turned one, and i thought that was a record never to be broken. but here we are, turning one today and no crawling. she can cover some real distance scooching around on her butt, but no crawling. it’s funny when we go to the early years center and there are little nine month olds crawling circles around her.

olivia’s party was called on account of chicken pox, so we’re going to send out new invitations this week and hope some kids can come out on the 10th of july. it’s harder once summer has started, but what can you do? we’ll see.

now i better get everyone dressed for yet another trip into town to “drop in” at my doctors office and hope she can fit us in ( i’m sure she just loves it when people do that……but she always fits us in so……. )

happy birthday molly jane.

now i just can’t wait until there are raspberries and veggies to add to the bowl too.  man real strawberries are good. the very first one eaten made all the work worth while.

i have written, had to abandon half way through, and then never returned to, several updates. june is just a crazy month of work outside and end of school stuff and birthday parties……..so yeah.

today is bake the cake for olivia’s party tomorrow. ( which i will ice tomorrow morning while ryan is doing the swimming lessons/farmers market/pick up ballons run ) then i must try and clean my house to a semi-presentable level for tomorrow. and run into town when ryan gets home for the food for the party ( picnic outside, olivia’s choice ) and any other last minute stuff i need. oh and finally plant the last tomato seedlings which have been sitting outside on the deck in pots for weeks now. oh and take some pictures of the baby…..today one of my goals is to take some pictures of the baby. ryan was always the big picture taker around here. but now he’s not here so much and the pictures are much fewer and far between for it.

time to get the girls up for school.

to say thanks for the suggestions everybody, keep ‘em coming too. even though i’m not commenting, i’m reading them when i can, which right now is not too often. our laptop died on wed. and is in now, hopefully being diagnosed and fixed soon. until then i probably won’t be online, just dropped in on a friend to check my email.

spent most of the long weekend in the gardens, both of the vegetable and flower variety. i’ve learned to embrace the gardening ( not that i had any choice really ) but once i realized i could overcome my minor bug phobia by just wearing gloves all the time ( it literally makes my skin crawl when a bug touches me……in a completely illogical way, which is what makes it a phobia i guess ) it all got much much easier. so with my MIL’s help we got it 90% of the veggies planted and made some real headway on the ridiculously huge flower gardens. all that is left for the veg garden is a second planting of some things to stagger it a bit, and to put the tomato seedlings in after they spend another week or so hardening off.  this year, after two failed attempts at tomatoes on our own, ryan found a local woman that sells heirloom seedlings. so he went at got some and they look great, i really hope we get some tomatoes this year. now if it could just rain, that would be great. until we get some rain to fill the shiny new rain barrel, situated conveniently off the garden shed roof, right in the garden, it’s several trips back and forth to the house with watering cans each time we water, which in this heat is also, several times a day.

this morning before it got too hot, i dug out all the “soil” around our front walkway. which was really less soil, and more this weird gravel of busted up clay pots. see, the previous owners seemed to want as much garden with as little work as they could possible have. so instead of actual weeding, they instead employed every wacky gimmick and trick they could think of to keep the weeds down, which in the end, is just making the lives of those of us who don’t want they crazy, scrubby, invasive ground cover heavy, type garden going on, well…..hellish. everywhere you dig there are buried tarps and rocks, bricks and anything else they could “put down” to keep weeds from coming through. including copious amounts of busted up clay pots. each time we get rid of some ridiculous invasive thing ( first year, lambs ear, last year brown eyed susan, this year i don’t know, a bunch of other crap ) we uncover all this stuff that was getting choked out, including several lovely variegated hostas. which i can’t transplant to beside my walkway until i dig out the clay pot gravel. oh well…..small steps.

and now, can anyone offer any advice as to what to do about small kids and bugs, mosquitoes mostly, but other biting/stinging ones as well? for myself i cover up completely and use spray when i’m out in the early morning before the heat chases them away. but trying to get them to cover up when it’s already 20 degrees at 7am is pretty much impossible, and i am very reluctant to use bug spray on kids and they have all inherited their mothers crazy histamine reaction to being bit unfortunately. hannah was outside this morning for about 3 minutes before she had 4 HUGE mosquito bites and was stung by something worse. i didn’t see it, but she yelped and there was a chunk missing in the center and clear liquid oozing out so i’m thinking bee or more likely deer fly. then it took about 45 seconds for her whole leg to swell up so i dosed her with some benadryl which took the swelling down but now she’s zonked on the couch. i know some people just react worse then others. if i get a tiny spider bite, it is excruciatingly itchy and will last for weeks. my step father rarely gets bit by anything, and when he does it doesn’t bother him and is gone in a couple days. but the girls are like me. they seem to attract them and then react to them.

last year there were countless incidents of majour swelling and many itchy nights spent treating tired kids with multiple bites and last year we weren’t even gardening like we will be this year or had the weather i think we’re going to have this year…….so since i see a lot, a lot of time outside in our future, especially in mosquito heavy places like the garden, i would really like to know what anyone else does for their kids to keep bites to a minimum

i had a bunch of pictures to go with this entry, of the gardens, what we’ve got done, what still needs to be done……but they are just loading way too slow, so i give up. stupid dial up.

miss molly had me up at 5am this morning. but since that was the first time she had me since going to bed around 10 last night, i’ll take it !! man. there are no words that can describe with any justice how good it feels to get a solid 7 hours sleep. lets leave it at that.

so here i sit, house quiet, kids still in bed, drinking my coffee, staring out the window behind the laptop. reminds me of last spring. baby wasn’t here yet, ryan and i were sharing the van, and on days i needed to have it, i’d get up at 5 and drive him to work ( before you call social services, don’t forget grandma and grandpa are here too, nice that there is pretty much always someone in the house for just such occasions ). those mornings were so much nicer then the rushed mornings when my alarm goes off at 630 and it’s straight into the morning routine. though clearly, not nice enough for me to just set my alarm earlier and get up earlier every day …….haha……

the calm is nice. because the rest of my days are feeling a little…..well, insane. it’s just that time of year. so much to do outside,  on top of the so much there always is to do inside. it’s hard to keep on top of it all. today i definitely have to do a big clean, since we have ryan’s mom and stepdad coming for the long weekend. there going to help out, ryan’s mom will be helping us get the garden in and his stepdad will be doing some odd jobs. and the last week or so, since the weather turned nice again, we have just been outside every free second, in the flower gardens, and keeping on top of the berrys we planted last fall so they don’t get choked out by grass….add in the odd play date and that’s it. something had to give. the house is the only logical thing. someday, my kids will be older and my house will be clean again. this is what i keep telling myself anyway.

hannah went with a friend to his gymnastics class this week. it’s a ploy, “bring a friend day” obviously, to get new kids signed up. and it may have worked for us. hannah just really loved it a lot. and we stopped doing kindergym a couple years ago because it was just too expensive to have three kids signed up all the time. but i could put just hannah in the last 6 weeks of class for a pretty decent price. of course the other girls will be upset. but ryan pointed out that they are going to art classes this summer, and hannah is not ( too young ) so maybe that evens things out. maybe also, it just can’t always be all fair all across the board. i think i will sign her up.

the art classes…..so excited. one of the employees at the early years center, heard me talking about staying at my dad’s on the march break and started talking about how much she loved it up there. how every summer she would rent a cottage and sign her kids up for these amazing art classes put on by the art college up there. the classes took up the morning and then then afternoon was spent on the beach. and i thought to myself, well that does sound pretty awesome. so i asked me dad to get me a brochure and found two classes i wanted to sign them up for. he even offered to pick up the tab for one, which was great (even though the prices were really very good too ) so it’s all set. in july we’ll be staying for 4 days and they’ll be taking “picasso pizazz” and in august it’s “pottery for kids” which, wow, how fun is that going to be? i thought about taking a pottery class too, but alas, they had no adult beginner classes. and the age group is 5-7 so they go in the same class which is nice for them, some sister fun time. and the littler girls and i will chill at grandpa’s on the beach for the am and the older girls have all afternoon on the beach as well. i am really looking forward to it ( though we will all miss ryan )

well, both older girls have wandered down, looking for breakfast, so i guess i better get moving, so i can get them off to school……. lots to do today.