Mommy's learning

I have decided that while I am working this year, I will also be taking a course to two. I am not sure what they will be right now. It may be about children or computers. I have decided to start taking time to build up my skills and knowledge again. I love to learn and some how seemed to have found time in the past but over the last 10 years, I have stopped. I totally gave everything to my family and ignored myself. Don't follow my example girls!!! We must remember to keep growing as an individual for so many reasons. To learn more and be of more use. To be interesting to other and even your family. I truly think that your family respect you in a different way as well. It puts a little excitement into my life also. I love the feeling of the" lightbulb" going on and suddenly I understand something new. Wow!! Why didn't I make time for this. Anyway, that is the start of finding and reinventing Me.

New Job

Well, today I made it official. I am going back to work. I will be working with kindergarten children after their kindergarten finishes and with the school age children after school finishes. I will also be a substitute teacher for the two kindergarten classes. I start August 31st for setting up the rooms. I am a little disappointed in some areas but happy with other opportunities that the job provides. I have met two of the staff members so far and they seem very sweet and I am sure that we will all have a blast together. My shift is from 11:30 to 5:30 when I am not substituting. I will still be home to see my own children off to school and kindergarten and get to spend some extra time with my little sweetie, Carissa. She naps for two hours in the afternoon so she won't miss me than. So she just gets a break from me for 4 hours each week day. I am very happy that I will get all school holidays off. So I will still have a great deal of time with my own kiddos. Well, ready or not here I go.

Shining Waters family Fun Park

We recently had my sister in law and her wonderful family come back home for a visit. She is living in Ottawa, so we really look forward to seeing them whenever they are able to come back home. We went to a fun little water park here, that the children just love. It was a discount day, so I loved that too. We went with my two brother in laws and their families, my other sister in law and her family, my husband's parents and my sister in laws' in laws. ( wow that is an interesting thing to write, my sister in law's in laws.) hehe!!
Anyway, the day was perfect and we all had so much fun. There were activities for all ages. The water slides were a very big hit and also a little water area for the toddlers as the weather was so warm that day. Ah... the lazy days of summer!!!

New Look

Please bear with me in finding a new look. I am a total newbie and will need some time to make the change. I am hoping for a very cute summer look when I am done. Thanks and happy blogging!!!

Sick children, Allergies and Summer

Isn't it amazing how you could possibly have sick children in the summer? I just never think of people being sick in the summer, it should be a winter thing. Well, no matter when I think it should or shouldn't be, it is now!! Poor baby Carissa Lynn is ill. She is so petite and sweet, it breaks my heart to see her ill. She had a very difficult night a few nights ago but seemed better and now has awoke with a fever and chills. The poor little thing was shaking trying to eat her cereal this morning. I know that cereal may not be the best thing for a ill child but Carissa Lynn needs her Cheerios every morning. She will have a second breakfast some morning if the family has something else. She is indeed a big cereal fan. Well Caleb is also down with a sore throat. I am not exactly sure where that came from but his allergies have been very bad lately so I thought I may be just irritated from dealing with the allergies. It is kind of funny because several of my family members wish to live in the country where there is more room to run but so many of them suffer from allergies in varying degrees that I think they would all be stuck in the house anyway. Ah.. Summer, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times........

Lazy Days of Summer

Summer is officially here. I had such a wonderful day with the children home yesterday. It was the first day with my school aged children home. We enjoyed a leisurely wake up and breakfast. Of course, our first vacation breakfast was celebrated with chocolate chip pancakes. We spent a lot of the day trying to prepare the house for summer visitors but also had time to enjoy our very warm day. Our BBQ hot dogs were served outside on the little picnic table. We also enjoyed a walk to the neighborhood park. I took the four youngest ones to the park after supper. We played and got all hot and dirty. We came home and rewarded ourselves with homemade frozen juice pops on the front porch and then one by one they found their little bodies in a nice bath. That evening as I put the last one to bed, I laid there wondering what had made such a wonderful day. I believe that I just needed a day without too much outside interference and to just enjoy my children. My children at there own level, not expecting anything from them. We just hung out like friends. Ahh... I wish every day could have been like yesterday, but then today happened but that is another story.

School Trips

I have been thinking about "School Trips" a lot lately as many of my children are now taking part in these. A couple things have come to mind. The first one is how many of the students as young as 7 & 8 years old are allow to have free run of our small local amusement parks. Usually the grade ones have chaperons with them but after that, some have meeting spots and times and others are on their own for the whole day. I think that this is kind of funny because as Mothers, not many of us, would allow our young children to go there with a friend and no parents any other time of the year. Why do we okay it now. I was lucky to have had my husband there with my younger boys. I wonder why we feel some sort of safety in doing this. Any ideas?

My second thought is the amount of end of the year trips for grade sixes. Where I live grade six is the last grade in elementary school and therefore the student's last year in that school. Since the students will be moving on, the school and some parents believe that the end of the year school trip should be big. My son, who is in grade six this year is going on his trips over two days as it won't all fit into one. The first day takes him to park in the morning with all sorts of different things about Anne of Green Gables and than to Subway for lunch and than to an amusement park for the afternoon. He gets back two and a half hours after school is out. The second trip day takes him to a movie theater to watch "Up" and than to a pizza party and than for an afternoon of swimming. The cost to parents $60.00. ( I think) Now we did have an opportunity to fundraise by selling raffle tickets but since our family doesn't believe in gambling we could not take part in the fundraising.
M questions is, is this a little over board. When I take my children somewhere in the summer for a fun day, will it pale in comparision to what they have already experienced. Don't get me wrong, I like all of the places they are going, I just wonder if it is really necessary to go to all of them in one week. Ahhh... parenting, it is always full of questions and thoughts.

Relay for Life

I am always so amazed at how fast time flies. Last weekend I participated in the Relay for life with my son and his grade 8 class. It is a fundraiser for the cancer society. The class worked hard and raised $6,200.00. Wow, that is a wonderful group of 21 grade 8 students. The whole night was great other than the terrible weather we had. It poured for hours and we were all covered in mud but still no one complained. It was such a good eye opener for our community to see how some teenagers are amazing contributing citizens. Way to go guys!!!

Pandemic

Well, I just finished watching an United Nations' web cast by the World Health Organization. I was really happy to see, how the whole situation was handled. I believe they did well to express concern about people thinking that if their country had already reached the peak, that they didn't have to take notice. All countries were strongly encouraged to prepare for the first hit or a second wave of infections. Yes, that is right a second wave. This flu is expected to go around the world for the next year or two and therefore in all likelihood would find its way back to a lot of the countries that has already been visited. They also mentioned that the degree of the symtoms, of the flu could change at any point. In most cases the flu symptoms have been mild and not even needing medical attention. So, with that being said. They also did not feel the need for any trade or travel bans to be put in place. They also mentioned that there is no need to panic or think any doom and gloom. That the places that we should be most concerned about are in the developing countries where the health systems are not very advanced. Not to mention the health of the people is already compremised from poor nutrition and higene habits.

Hilary Weeks is one of my Favorite People

Okay, so my very large family has been hit with the flu hammer. It has taken five of us down in six days and now dear Hubby thinks that he is not feeling great. So you might ask what gets the mommy of this house through such an event. Well, her name is Hilary Weeks. She is not a nurse nor doctor but she sure has a way of making me feel better. Today I watched two little you tube videos of her and laughed so hard. She is so talented and truly has a sense of humor that tickles my funny bone, while she tickles the ivory. Please, if you want a treat today go and look it up on you tube. The first one is

Hilary Weeks the to do list

and the second one:

Hilary Weeks My Favorite things

Now Liz, my sweet sister in law, over at "home life"has been encouraging me to get blogging again so here is your thank you. Go watch these and let me know what you think.

Lost but I have been Found

Hi, I am sorry for anyone who has been waiting for an update on here. No, I have not fallen off the earth or even encountered something terrible. It has just been life and more life. I try to remember not to be a slave to the computer though some family members may disagree on that. With school and some activities winding down I am very hopeful that my blogging days are back. I look forward to writing again. Hope everyone has had a very pleasant spring and will have a very fun and relaxing summer.

Provincial Gymnastic Championchip

This past weekend was the provincial gymnastic championships. It was held in Kensington, Pei.
Inorder to be invited to participate in this event you needed to have done well in your school and school zone meets. Still there were many students there ready to compete. This was for pre novice, novice and bantam. Wow, we were really treated, some of these students were amazing. This year again we were there to cheer on two of our boys. Caleb came in 6th in the vault and 8th over all. Wow, great job Caleb. Benjamin was 1st on vault and 1st over all. Wow, great job to you to. I am very proud of my boys, they work really hard at this and really enjoy it so much.
But the real thanks and appreciation needs to go to Chris Meuse. He is an amazing gym teacher. Well, to tell you the truth, he is much more than that. He truely cares for his students and takes every opportunity to build them in skill and character. He is one teacher that I would love to be able to put threw the photocopier. HAha! No, really I am very thankful for his work with my kids. Thanks for a great gymnastic year again.

Jack Frost Children's Winter Festival

Wow! Can you say amazing? This was a great winter escape for a weekend. I am sorry that I am posting so late but I just could not let this pass by. The Jack Frost festival is held each winter in Charlottetown, PEI and is a child's paradise, that is a winter paradise. The festival opens on Friday night and goes threw until Sunday afternoon. We just attended on Friday and Saturday and we had our money's worth, no problem. Jack Frost is spread over three different venues and caters to children from baby to age 10 in my opinion. The venues were all pretty close together but there were free shuttle buses making a continuous loop over the weekend. The first venue I will discuss was the outside one. This area was decorated in a storybook theme, kinda. There were ice and snow sculptures everywhere. There was a facade of a castle welcoming you at the front. Inside we saw a dragon and an icehouse village and at night some of these had different coloured lights shining on them. We saw lots of different ice/snow sculptures that were being judged I think. It was all very beautiful; however, the childrens' favorite parts were the ice slides. There were three of them. One of the slides were a little smaller, than bigger and the largest, actually carried the rider down on a tube. Man, did those riders fly. There was also a show with past, present and future olimpians of tramopline, skiing and snowboarding that did a show to music. There was also nightly fireworks and tons of storybook characters around to greet the children. One end also included a basketball area and an outdoor playground with climbing wall. Imagaine all that fun, just at one venue.
The second venue was at a near by mall. The mall enclosed a science show, children's musican, a dance room, a princess dress up room and a super hero training camp. Wow, my fingers are getting tired.
The last venue was at a civic center. This venue had several live shows going on several times each day. The shows were: the backyardagins and some enviromental super heros. There was also a indoor playground. This area was huge and resembled a small fair. There were several rides, games and consession stands. They even had a place for the kids to play guitar hero. The younger kids really enjoyed the petting zoo and pony rides. Yep, I even said pony rides. We could have spent the weekend in this place alone.
It was a little cold on Friday night but Saturday was perfect. The tickets were bought with Christmas money from dear old Grammie. Thanks so much Grammie for an amazing and memorable weekend.

Thank you Santa

I am writing to share and not brag! Really, I am. This past Christmas, Santa brought me a Kitchen Aid. The one just like this picture. I was so thrilled and excited. I knew that we would become great friends. I had wanted one for many years. My family loves homemade bread and other homemade bake goods. As the family has grown in numbers over the years, they have also grown in appetites. I am soon learning that when your family is this size, that some higher quality tools need to be used. We seem to be able to break or wear out a lot of stuff as it is used more in our house than in most. Like for today for example. I made five loaves of homemade bread, a pan of rolls, four dozen peanut butter cookies and two dozen sugar cookies. I won't even tell you how fast that will go. I am very grateful that Santa knew just what I needed. Boy, he is a know all and see all kind of guy.

Gaining and Losing

I was just over at Jen and Barb's Mom life, http://www.jenandbarbmomlife.com/ and watched a great little video clip. It was entitled, " Can't seem to get your act together?" What a great little piece. The life coach that they had on seemed to have the right personal experience to speak on the issue. I love the advise that she gave at the end of the segment. First, the segment was on being a new mom and finding it difficult to get out of the mommy rut. Man, I sure could have used a hour on the shrink couch for this one, I enjoyed the last comment. She said to remember that this is temporary. I know that she is right. My oldest now 19 years old has shown me how quickly they move out of that dependent stage. My youngest is only 15 months, I know there is a huge span, but don't forget that there is six more children in between those two, has already seemed to be developing so fast. I look forward to the day that I will have more time to take care of other things but I am also enjoying my time with my two little ones still at home. I agree that we all need to be careful as it is so easy to fall in the mommy rut but we can do little things that will help this:
1. Spend some time we other adults, even with your children there too.
2. Set a time, even if it is short for a hobby, this time will continue to grow as your children grow.
3. Take time to organize and beautify your home while your there.
4. Take good care of your health; sleeping, eating, and exercising.
5. Remember this is temporary.
I hope that these tips can help you to get yourself out of the mommy rut when you happen to fall in. Remember also, that you are not alone. There are many other mothers out there right now in the same situation, that is why it is so good to get together.

Flu Boo Whoo!

My family has taken a direct hit by the flu bug. It all started with DH, last Saturday. I should have known we were in trouble when it knocked a pretty healthy guy out flat. So he went down on Saturday. Monday morning at about 1am, number 7 was taken down and a hour or so later,yep, number 8 was joining in the night time activity. She follows number 7 doing everything else, so why not this. On Tuesday we lost number number 4 in the typical night time thrill. Number 3 not to be out done joined the ever increasing group on Wednesday evening. At what point do we declare an epidemic? So, if your counting that leave number1, who is currently out of the province, numbers 2,5,6 and of course the all powerful super mom. I don't know what the kids are doing to warn off the flu bug but super mom here is washing and disinfecting her hands so much that they are red and sore at present, but no illness yet. Wish us luck and nice weather that we may be able to open a window or something.

News from the mission

Well, in November when I was ignoring my blog completely,sorry. My oldest son left to sever a two year mission for The Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is the picture of us at the airport seeing him off. We look pretty bad but considering that it was at 5:00 am and we were saying good bye to Cory for two years, I think we look beautiful. He is now serving in Montreal, Canada and is doing fantastic. He loves to sever but is finding the weather very chilly. So if you happen to get missionaries at your door, please let them in. You don't have to join the church, but remember that they are some ones children. Listen to what they have to say and most importantly be NICE. Some parents are really missing them and praying that they will be taken care of and will not be used as someone's "anger vent".

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry,

I am so sorry that I have neglected my blog so badly. I have a serious problem neglecting things that are only important to me. I really want to change this about me. Maybe this will be the year to take better care of me. I know that I would be happier and have more energy and happiness to share with others and mainly my family. I always get so excited about a new year. A new year is clean and full of great possibilities but than so is a new month, week or day. I can get so motivated by thinking in such a way. Now only if I can get motivated to clean and paint my house. LOL. So for what it is worth, I am BACK!!!

"Bride Wars"

Last night two friends of mine and one of their daughters and myself went to see "Bride Wars". Thanks girls, I always love your company!! What a funny show. I really enjoyed it and hope that others do to. There was one part that was a bit sketchy( a bachelorette party) but other than that it was a clean and funny movie. My favorite kind. There is something I love in watching a good chick flick. I can always see myself in one of the characters and sometimes can even see things I need to change about myself. I mean really, how does one relate to a sci fi or a horror movie ( sure hope not). I really like to be able to see myself in it all. I love to imagine me as one of the characters and wonder how I would handle the issues at hand. I have to say, that this one is going to be right up there with my top picks.
While I am on the topic of movies. I would like to save you some time and money and warn you not to see "Benjamin Button". Cute name but a serious waste of time and time. In my opinion of course. I mean, there was lots of trash and such an unlikely event, why bother. I could have watched "Bride Wars" twice almost in that time. LoL. I hope to be able to take my sweet 16 daughter out to watch it with me on Saturday. Hey, I am so excited maybe I will throw in some supper too.