Updates on the kids

i'm proud to say that at the end of march, Vivian finaly had to do away with diappers. i knew she was able, but she didn't feel the urge to do without them. until, she became severely sensitive to them. the whole part of her that was in contact with a diapper became very red and hot. there's no other option. and she's doing very good without them for the most part. a few days ago, almost a month without diapper, she had an accident or 2. we're just not sure why. but other then that, it's great to be out of diappers!!!!



tonight the kid went to bed with little pianos, and i asked owen if he'd like a bigger one, and maybe even some piano lessons, and he was affirmative. i think it would do him some good. he also loves to sing, and i cought him trying to play on the old beat up guitare and sing this afternoon. after all, musicians run in the family. but buying just one will be tricky piano will be tricky.



an other thing Owen make sure i don't forget. he's getting a camera for his birthday hehe

i hope little tikes cameras come on sales before then. because i'll have no doubts to buy 2 of them. will be interresting to see what they come up with.

The dog days

so monday, i decided to check the SPCA listing before i went to bed, just for a kick... yeah i know it's been a long time since i blogged and i'm just being lazy, don't really feel like there's much interresting to talk about most of the time. anyway, so i checked the listing, and there was this nice dog, named Misty... she's been there for 9 months, her pups are all gone but there she is, and look like a very sweet companion. the next day, i decide to check back on her, thinking, she's not in any danger to me fast as she's already been there so long right? wrong!!! she's gone before i even get my act together. so i look around on petfinder, to see a wider area of pet shelters. then i see Lexi, her description is making me melt. the sweetest dog, she's good with peoples and all kinds of animals too, loves children, what more can i ask? gotta move quick this time, so i email the shelter and inquire about how i can make her part of our home... they send the form, i fill it and send i back. the lady who answered me told me to call the day before to make sure she was still there and she'd hold her for me for the 24 hours, so i can go get her. when i call... there's someone looking her up and can't decide between her and Benny.... they couldn't hold her until they picked Benny. so i had to call later, only to find out, they picked Lexi.

like, what's going on? it's like it only take me looking at a dog for him/her to get adopted. but in the end, i leave it all up to God... it must all happen for a reason. If it's the right one, He'll make it possible. until then, i figure i'm going to keep a close eye on the listings because it could take quite a while to find an other one that seems suitable for our family... that same day, my best friend/msn buddy Nancy, message me, that there's a message on her intranet for a dog to give away!!! FREE!!!!!! almost too good to be true.

i still have some issues i'm worried about until i see the dog, but i know since it's a private adoption, she wont give him away on us. sounds like a good dog, although he hasn't had much contact with young kids. but he's young too, so he has plenty of time to learn. and not sure how he'll handle our 2 cats. at the SPCA the staff is used to see lots of dogs and they have a chance to do a descent personality assessment. a pet owner only know so much because they've only seen their dog in certain settings. i'm hopeful we'll bring him home, but i'm still holding back to the fact there might be some traits that we can't tolerate in our home at this stage.

What about Owen, he's excited and look forward to see the dog. wasn't sure if i'd see that day since at one point he was scared of them. he's looking forward to play catch and have a friend to play with.

I think even my mother in law is excited about it... she called me yesterday and want to follow us and bring the dog back to our place for us hehe

I know it's gonna be verry interresting and hectic for a while. our first cat, Daphne is absolutely not fond of having to share her turf. it took her a solid month to accept Misty, when whe adopted her last september. and funny thing is, when i went to pick up Misty, the rep at the SPCA asked me, "the cat or the dog" just to show that Misty the dog, that i firt thought about monday, would've been there for us then. but our Mistywas there for quite some time too, she was bored there, fed poor quality food, no room to play. she got fat, and no matter how good of a diet we gave her, with calculated portions, her weight didnt' budge, but i think it's starting to change, as she's taking a liking to the outdoors. i saw her twice springing up and down a tree at full speed, like wow. once you hit healthy weight, you're gonna be murder on those poor birds. so i'll have to get her a collar to attach a bell on it. i want to keep the birds, i even want to put more bird houses, so we can have more bug eating birds, there's so much mosquitoes on our soggy part of the woods.

I also feel that there's a chance Misty might eventualy try cuddling wih our new dog. she seems that kind of cat. if it's that kind of dog we end up with hehe Daphne? don't even think about it, we'll be happy when she learn to tolerate. might take all summer.

should make for a bit more action to talk about. and the fun of trying to find beaches where we can bring our dog too.

will post pics once everything is official

I'm still alive

despite the fact i haven't bloged since sometime last year, i'm still here. either not much to say or too much procrastination. maybe a mix of both is to blame for the lack of updates.

my computer also been used a lot more for passive entertainment lately. i've officialy became a big fan of The Biggest Loser and the kids have been requesting to view Ratatouille many many times. so much so that now i have this obsession with finding stuff i can cook all sliced up. or just trying to be more creative with what i cook or how i present it. here are my last 2 exemples

i found out that the combination of potato, sweet potato and onion taste fantastic. almost look like cheddar cheese too.

my pre Christmas hunch came back to bite me in the rear end. i was looking at the little tyke's digital camera and was thinking it would be a nice gift for Owen, but in the end, we didn't get it. about a day after Chistmas, he started to say that my camera was his and that he wanted to take pictures with it. and he's been insisting ever since that he wants to take pictures and that i give him HIS(my) camera at once! i've tried to make him understand that if he stop having tantrums about it, we will consider it for his birthday. i'm thinking it will be a long 8 months for us all and i might just break down to surprise him earlier, earlier. i'm still thinking he should wait a few months and keep an eye for a sale. now, the only other question about this whole camera deal is, should we buy one for Vivian also?

speaking of camera, mine decided to be fussy on Christmas day, and we came close to not have any captured memories of that day. not that it was a very extravagant reception. it was just our little family and my mother. very quiet day in perspective. my mother also had her camera but it decided to take a power fuss at the same time as ours. it's a relief that it finally accepted to function so we could have a family picture after probably 2 years where there were some kids pics and some of us but not all in the same frame.

after 3 snow storms in 5 days, we are hoping to have a rest from shoveling. i'm not sure the windows in the bathroom will take an more. it was making some sound that had me scared it could break at any moments. yesterday was fairly mild and before supper, Andy was breaking off icecicles from under the glass roof of the sunroom, with a hammer and after clearing up enough of it, water started drainning. he wasn't able to give the same treatment to the bathroom section and it's probably all that water freezing again that was working the structure so much last night. it's now 20 below zero degree Celcius. (-4 degree F) and i'm some glad we finaly replaced the insulation that was removed last summer. we had a hard time maintaining acceptable temperature at minus 10-15 degree C (+5-14 F) and in the process burned a lot of wood. by the look of it, we won't have enough to last till the warmer days. we had ordered twice the amount of wood we ordered the year before, but we got a fair bit of crooked logs and hollow ones too. once cut, it almost look like we got just as much as the year before. that is not good. we will probably look into finding an other supplier for next year. hopefully one day we'll be able to pull the wood from our own land, but as long as all we have to transport the wood is a wheelbarrow, it's not a realistic option.

that's about all i can think for now. I don't have a new year's resolution list, it's just business as usual

Pancakes in a can?

my hubby got into the habit of making pancakes every week on his swingshift. and since 75% of the family is gluten free, he has taken to make them with buckwheat. they taste a bit more gritty and nutty, but overall, still very palatable, not like the time i tried to make buckwheat soba... that was terrible. the kids didn't seem to mind but i did. now i would be totally rolling my eyes at this idea of pancakes in a can, as one more over processed, chemical cocktail of die and preservatives... but it's organic! my jaw nearly dropped.

of course, it's still a product i wouldn't go for, because a. there's soy, and i think of it being healthy is a big deception and b. there is wheat and wheat has gluten :( but if they believed in health enough to care to select organic ingredients, and if it become popular enough, maybe they'll come up with other healthy varieties.

i so miss pizzaaaaaaaaa! dairy is an other big no no here. even more so then gluten. *sigh*

Hey Little Lulu

do you remember the little Lulu? she had her own TV show when i was a kid, but apparently she's much older then that

Little Lulu first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on February 23, 1935 in a single panel comic strip, appearing in her debut as a flower girl at a wedding, strewing the aisle with banana peels. ~ Wikipedia

so she was already stirring controversy back then.

I’ve been tagged by Nancy!
Here are the rules:Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to 8 other people, visit their sites, and leave a comment letting them know they’ve been tagged.
Wow 8 people? you gotta be kidding me Nancy, i don't even know that many bloggers at all, i'm not even sure what random stuff would be worth blogging about me here. anyway, here are 8 random things about me :

1. i don't like my toes toutching each other.
2. i will probably stare at the monitor for the next 20 minutes trying to think of something else to write. sometime it takes me very long to write a short e-mail or what ever else.
3. as a child i used to have dreams where i'm flying in the sky, seems that i lost that ability and i miss it.
4. i have a terribly hard time remembering people's name
5. my first pet was an iguana i named Akea
6. I can't play first person shooter games, i can't coordinate in it, i have this tendency to get stuck in walls. i tried to play unreal tournament once, for 20 minutes and had to lay down for 2 hours because i was too motionsick.
7. *random blank*
8. i used to enjoy watching little Lulu as a kid, and jumped on the dvds when i saw them in a discount bin, after watching a few episodes back, i changed my mind about her and the show... it's violent and sexist : i didn't remember her being that way, do you?

sorry i dont' have 8 peoples to tag back, but you're welcome to take it at random and leave a note in the comments to say you did :D

The New Cat in the House

Already 4 days since Misty arrived from the SPCA and we're very happy to have her. our first impression had made her our first choice and it look like we did good in listening to our gut feeling. she is gentle, playful, calm, affectionate. i still think she's not overdominating so that Daphne will not fell she's gonna loser her title of first cat of the house. and her play style is the one i think will lead to a good mouser. that was a lot of trait we had in mind considering the whole family and our needs and the new cat's wellbeing as a new member of our family.

i'm still amazed how we could find all of it in one single cat. Now we have to be patient and hope Daphne will adjust. for normal cats, it can take up to 2 weeks before they can interact together in a civil manner. let's hope Daphne is normal hehe

i'm some glad i found these video tips for cats.

Mice inc.

this morning, i found evidence that our family cat found the mouse she lost the night before. we had quite a few guests entertaining our kitty cat last year and from what i hear, there is a lot more mice populating the fields this year. in a store where they used to sell 7 traps a year, they now find them leaving the shelves 7 a week. if that's any indication... Daphne will have plenty to share in the fun.

so we're waiting to be aproved for adoption. that could take up to 48 hours. and then hope the cat we felt would have the best personality for our family will still be there.

Bread Machine is History

a while back, i don't remember if i blogged about this, but i got myself a bread machine that had a gluten free cycle. since that's what we need to eat and we save over $1 a loaf if i make it myself (it tastes better too).

for many weeks it did make good breads and i got in a groove of mesuring several loafs at once so on lazy days, i only need to dump a bag and the wet ingredients together and it goes fast. the machine does most of the job and i only need to make 2 quick check up on it.

the last 3 loafs turned out differently, they were not as dark... the last one, i even felt it needed to have an extra 10 minutes added at the end and still i think it wasn't quite well baked. so my guess is that the convection fan gave up

so i dug for my receit, get my info together to figure out what course of action i would take. and it just happened that there was about 7 days left to the store's exchange/refund policy... i figured i'd exchange it for a new one... would be quicker then sending it to the repair shop. but there was none in stock. they gave me my money back. and that's not that bad either, because if i decide to get an other one... i'll have a new warranty to go with it. i can't complain with that hehe

the only thing is now, i got to get used to do it the old fashion way... in the oven. we'll see what catastrophe i mannage to wip up this time hehe

then again, if it turns out well enough, i might just save the counter space and forget about the machine. get a few bigger bread pans and use the rest of the money for something else

The Urge to Paint

so now that the kids both have their own room, and Owen's room has been on the primer eversince we moved in. i feel the urge to paint it before it get too cold to be able to ventilate apropriately while getting messy. there's also the entrance that is on the primer and should be painted soon because i dont think it could endure an other wash. even though it would be very nice to be able to paint the whole house, it's really not in the budget. and there's some room that will need some renovation done before going near the paint bucket.

so i'm trying to find ideas to paint the room in a creative way, not just one solid color. i had a picture in my mind of a girl's bedroom decore idea i saw a while back, it was pink and green. then i saw these things last night...

and also this sweet artic flower garden toutch you can find here

now, i'm not gonna spend hours trying to find what i have in mind for Owen's because it apear to be even more difficult to find boy's bedroom decore images. but i had a few ideas:

- the beach/sea, nice blue sky, some clouds, a plain, birds...

- a night sky with the planets, a rocket, the moon...

- or, 2 tone blue with this kind of effect. maybe some fireflies and wild life/nature accents.

i like the glow in the dark stars idea so much, i'd put it in every bedrooms, cause i'm sure Vivian would like it too and so would I *grin*

i just have to figure out how to make the night sky as acurate as possible with all the constelation and what not.