Elisa’s Day

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.

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.

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.

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.

even though sept.has had the most consistently nice weather of the whole summer, it is still feeling very much like winter prep around here. the fair has passed for another year, and much much fun was had. we did some math and figured that the price of the wrist band was equal to enough tickets for (approx) ten rides, and i’m pretty sure my kids went on every single ride at least ten times…….so yeah……we ate so very much junk food, threw darts to win junky prizes, marveled at the fancy chickens and perused the crafts and other entries. i really love the fair and the family tradition it’s becoming. molly was so good as well, a trouper considering we were there for about 7 hours.

and today was spent on the above mentioned winter prep. ryan stacked the last two cords of wood. i spent the day sorting clothes. out with the summer, in with the winter. sort the still good for next season from the too smalls to be packed away for the next in line. getting through it all is a good, 2 or 3 day job in all i’d say. a job i loath.

and today i also unpacked all the 3-6 and 6-9 month clothes too. and i started sorting out the teeny tiny clothes. the best ones for consignment, the rest for the thrift store. it made me a little sad. the clothes not so much, but the bassinet……. this week we’ll put the crib together and the bassinet will also go to consignment. the little white bassinet that all the babies slept in. until they couldn’t fit anymore. i’ve always hated packing away the bassinet because it meant the babies were getting big. and now it isn’t just getting packed in the basement for the next baby, but it’s going. sigh.

at least our bedroom here is huge. lots of room for the crib. it was a tight fit in our old place.  then some much needed cleaning out and organization of the upstairs as well. some shuffling of furniture, i think we’ll need a dresser in our room for baby clothes, so very many baby cothes. and hannah has two dressers in her room right now. and i think i’ll start painting the bathroom next week maybe. we’ll see. it’s fall cleaning, since i was too pregnant to be bothered with spring cleaning.

we have about one more month before the snow flies.

on my way to get the mail yesterday i ate an apple of the tree in the driveway. delicious. last year the apples weren’t much, there are several trees around. but this year for whatever reason, the one in the driveway is full of good sized apples. now the lowest and most ripe ones are wormy, but the ones that aren’t are pretty darn good. so we need to get out there with a ladder and start picking. i also need to go pick the pears as well, there is a good lot of them, and i learned last year, they are better small and still kind of red/hard. i don’t know why, but once they turned fully green, they were kind of yucky. and i’m not sure if i spy a few green apples on the tree out the window just this minute, supposedly some kind of heritage apple tree according to the previous owners, but last year it didn’t have any apples at all, i’m definitely going to check it out this morning though.

our poor garden is much neglected and completely overtaken with weeds. this was just not a good year for us. ryan working so much at a new job, me pregnant and miserable or busy with an infant ( and so far from miserable about it ) but even in it’s completely neglected state, we still had some peas, beans, beets, and a lot of amazing potatoes. and of course the crazy garlic, all 150 of them or something like that. i think tomorrow if i can leave molly in grandma’s charge for a bit i’ll forage for anything else that managed to survive, who knows, i may find some squash or something.

but not today, because today is supposed to be the only hot day this week and we’re going to the cottage. when you only get one nice day every 10 or 15, you gotta take advantage of it ( aside from the fluke heat wave while we had our company of course, a whopping 6 days of hot weather in a row !! )

and then it’s sept. wow. sept is always a nutty month for us. with 4 birthdays, school starting and the fair which has become a bit of a family event. but this year we also have a wedding. crazy.

last weekend was my grandma’s 75th birthday. so we all got together and had professional portraits taken, which was hectic but cool. i wonder what the final head count was? i’ll have to find out, probably around 30……lots of good fun and good food. my girls had a blast dressing up fancy, getting their nails painted, and then changing back into their regular clothes to play basketball and football with all my teenage cousins. that’s some good balance ! and grandma laid out a whole table of random china and other bits and pieces she wanted us to all take. i took two tea cups for myself and one for each girl. apparently it was popular to collect single teacups so grandma had a lot of them, all different. i also took a cut glass pickle plate and creamer/sugar set and a china platter that was a wedding present. the only one i got a story on was the platter from her wedding, so next time she’s here i’ll have to see if any of the cups i took has it’s own story.

okay, must go pack for the cottage.

well it just wouldn’t be february in canada without the few days of faux melt off. you can almost taste the spring. the sun is shining, and for the first time in months you can feel the heat off it. and there are birds singing. and everything is melting away at an alarming rate. but alas, it is canada, and it’s only february, so unless you’re new around here you know that it’s all an illusion of spring,  just to make then next 6 weeks of winter in your future seem all that more hellish.

this is never a good time of year for me anyway, under the very best of circumstances, and, well,  raging hormones, a poorly heated house and cluster flies, even in the depths of winter, let alone the ever multiplying numbers the false spring has brought……well, those are so far from “the very best of circumstances” i can barely wrap my head around it. my point being, that i expect to be a more pleasant person again, once spring comes around, i just have to survive until that point.

and the february tease isn’t helping any. i mean i am basking slightly. how could you not. for the first time in months, it’s possible to go outside without being physically uncomfortable. because lets face it, no matter how well clothed you are, there is still some part of you exposed to the minus 30, and even if it’s only your face, it just doesn’t feel good. but i know it’s all going to fade back into minus 30 soon enough and that is so sad. plus i also know that there will be more snow. likely into april. depressing.

if canada had a warm place to call it’s own, i would live there ( and i said warm not slightly less cold and extra rainy, so please don’t suggest moving to the west coast )

next update will be about babies, i promise. but for now i’d really like some book recommendations ( hi lara ) because reading Twilight made me realize that i can and will find time to read, if the book is enjoyable enough, which i think the last few i read before that weren’t, so i just didn’t instead. ( not that they were bad books really, just not captivating enough to make me find the time when the time is so hard to find )

i just finished Water for Elephants too, from my mom.

i mean i could bore you with more details of my boring day, filing, stop, get olivia, take her to doctors appointment, return her to school, go back to filing, take more filing home to make 3pm appointment at bank, get home to make dinner and get the play by play of hannah and daddies day of fun.

but, instead, for my dear friend carrie, a true urbanite, lets talk about the cluster flies.

i don’t actually know much about them research wise, and being out here, where we surf the web likes it’s 1994 and all, i’m not about to start looking things up on the interweb. so lets just talk about my first hand experience with them. i’m actually sure carrie has heard me lament about them before, since we also had them the other time we lived in the country. ahhh tweed. tweed was fun. in fact most of the fatal flaws with residing in tweed, had little to do with rural living and everything to do with that place…….everything that is except for the cluster flies. living in the country i loved, but tweed, alas, too far from town….solved, too far from my mom, definitely solved….but oh oh how i hated those flies and oh oh how i wished to never ever live somewhere ever again that had them. and here we sit, right now actually, while a few of them buzz frantically around in the glass shade of lamp beside my desk….a sound that has come to grate on my very last nerve.

cluster flies, i believe come from freshly turned soil, so live next to a framers field and you probably have them. then they swarm your house by the hundreds and get in every crack and cranny of windows and doors possible, so there are now hundreds of flies in your house, buzzing around in the windows. dropping dead everywhere. flies in the potty, flies in kitchen aid bowl, flies in the dishwater. when there is no more light in the windows to attract them they search out your house lights, buzzing around and bonking into them endlessly and frantically. they are erratic ( makes them hard to swat ) yet dopey all at the same time. some times one will fall out of the air, end up on it’s back and be stuck there, buzzing loudly around in a crazy circle unable to get itself righted, and i have to search it out, listening, following the buzzing, so i can put it out of it’s misery. i have found the best way to keep them at bay in the windows is the duster buster, not particularly pleasant, but better then fly strips or any other number of solutions.

it seems to go on forever too, starting late in summer, and going all through fall, well into the cold. even after days of cold weather, i still have them ( in lesser numbers ) and one bright sunny day will bring them back in swarms.

they really, truly,  make me insane, and if anyone has any suggestions as to what to do about them, i would love to hear it.

even though i don’t really like the idea, i will likely have the house sprayed next year ( i believe, at least , they only have to spray the outside of the house ). i can’t handle it. i know some people can “just live with it” but i don’t think i can.

so there, carrie, is the saga of the cluster flies, it beats your sad, squirrel i didn’t even see story, hands down i’m afraid !