Count down….

Only a few more days until I am home!!  I have got to quit calling it home.  I have a new home.  Here.  In Canada.  How come the kids are handling this whole “moving thing” way better then I am? 

 Anyway… Only a few more days until I leave (that’s better).  I am excited to go to Red Wing and see my book club, they are the best group of ladies.  I am excited to see Michelle (daily phone calls are just not the same).  I am excited to see my family, to see my new niece (or nephew) and I am excited to be ALONE!  I haven’t had a single minute without the kids since we moved.  The kids have no where to go…  We are ALWAYS together, it’s a great bonding experience, but there are limits.  I find my patience lacking a bit these days.  Things here are the same EVERY day.  The only varying factor is weather or not the mail box flag is up (hint, hint).  I have so much that needs to get done before I go, but the biggest thing is we are visiting the kids school tomorrow to registar them.  The kids are excited, I am too. 

Miss you All!

Busy weekend

And the adventures never do stop.  We had a full weekend, but it was lots of fun, really.  We were suposto go to a wedding on Friday, but I messed up and scheduled another dentist appointment for Sam.  Darn… (in my defence, the wedding was about 5 hours away and for a cousin Jeff hardly knows)  So Friday evening I went into town for “coffee night” it was good (could have been better if I actually liked coffee) there were about 8 other ladies there, it’s funny how women can share the most intimate details of childbirth with complete strangers, anyways…. I am now hosting another playdate, on MONDAY, which is tomorrow, which is why I am up late cleaning (and typing).  So far there are 12 kids coming (along with their moms) add my 5 into the mix, that is 17 kids.  I’m positive tomorrow night I will be drinking heavily (or I would if I could actually drink more then A wine cooler without having a hangover).  Saturday started off with Jeff and the boys mending fences, no really, mending our fences with like nails and hammers.  Then we all hopped in the new-to-us-van and headed an hour and a half south to North Bay.  On our way Thing 2 spotted a yard sale, we spent $250 bucks there, wanna see what we bought??

           

Don’t laugh, it’s a blast!  Do you see the look of pure joy on Mo’s face?  He rode that thing like a racer ALL DAY LONG (I only rode it a few times, cuz the brat didn’t want to share 8) )  Now I can check the mail 8 times in the time it would normally take to walk to the mail box once. 

Thing 1 and Thing 2 didn’t mind that Mo was selfish because the were busy in the woods.  Doing what you ask?  They were using all the old fence boards along with their advanced engineering skills to create this….

How cool is that?  Notice Buffy the big white dog, she follows the kids constantly just like a good mom would.  She protects them from the bears and wolves.  Good Dog!

Well, I must finish organizing the chaos that is my life livingroom. 

Tah-tah

PS I’ll be in MN on the 27th, only a week to go!!

It’s a party

Today is Thing 2’s birthday!  Yay!! 

Even the hamster is ready to party

(thanks to Roo)

It’s a wonderful life.

If one were to guess as to which time peroid I am currently living in based on the following photos, what would you guess?

              

This is our wood stove and our pile of wood (stored in the basement).  On cool mornings I get up early and start the fire. 

   This is my clothesline, and the beautious rusty “thing” covers our well, where all of our water comes from, maybe the clothesline is so close so that when the wet clothes drip that water goes back to the well.  Ultimate recycling.  Speaking of wells, the last two nights it has rained, so now I have no excuse to NOT do laundry, Damn.

    This is our phone, luckily it not our only phone.

Like I have whined said before, NOTHING is the same here.  Everyhing is so incredibly different, the next photos show you what is involved in simply checking the mail.

First I get my shoes and walk by Woo’s latest creation.  She uses toilet paper to wrap up the kittens.  The kittens also enjoy this activity.  It really wears them out too (the kittens, not woo)  

Then we go outside, this is exactly what Thing1 does for at least 4 hours a day.

Finally I start down the driveway, I need to make sure all kids are accounted for and safe, I never know how long I will be away.

This pic is taken from about half way down the driveway.  If you look really hard you can see the white dot of the mailbox.

This one is our house from almost the end of the driveway.

This is from the end of the driveway looking to the mailbox.  Notice how lonely it looks…

And then after ALL that work, this is the mail I get: 

Notice IT’S IN FRENCH!!!

Interesting facts about mail here:  There is no mail on Saturdays, and when you have mail the mailperson puts your red flag up.  That way you can look through your binoculars and spot the flag before you hike to the mail box.  The problem with that is, there isn’t a flag to use when there is just junk mail in your box.  So anytime there is anything in you box you HAVE to check it, because it might be mail from a friend, or packages…(hint, hint)  8)

I miss you all!!!

I know, I know…

I’ve been a bad blogger too.  I’ve just been so “stuck in a funk”.  Soon, tho, that will end, because I GET TO GO HOME!!!!  I will be in MN for a whole week!  The 27th- the 3rd.  Yes, Jeff is taking time off to watch kids.  What a Hunny!  I’m so excited (can ya tell?)

Jeff’s parents were here for the weekend.  They spent the night and everything.  Jeff’s dad brought his 4 wheeler and the kids were in heaven.  It was pretty fun.

Today I brought Thing 1, Roo, and Mo to the dentist.  Thing 1 is off the hook for the next 6 months.  Roo will need to go back once for a filling and Mo has to go back tomorrow to get his tooth pulled.  It’ll all be okay….. Really.

I hve a great post planned for tonight.  Lots of pictures and all that good stuff.  So stay tuned.

Bad momma

So, I got to spend about two hours listening to why I am a bad mother today.  I was also told how to fix my bad momma tendancies.  By the freakin dentist, that is reason number 1 why I hate dentists.  Reason number 2 is the countless number of times I heard “juice is bad” you can only say that in so many ways before it becomes completely pointless.  Like Duh!   I finally was able to take Mo to the dentist (after waiting weeks to get insurance issues sorted out)  The poor boy had a toothache, a bad one, so bad they are just going to pull the tooth bad.  I feel bad.  He also has 3 other cavities.  I am bad.  So what did we do after the dentist??  We went to the candy store.  That made both me and Mo feel better.  See I am a good mommy.  August 14th all the kids go to the dentist and Mo gets his tooth pulled.  My kids managed to fill all their morning time slots (what an honor)  You’d think with all these appointments the dentist would be nice to me….but I doubt it, on the 14th I’ll be told what a bad momma I am for 6 hours.   Then we’ll go get more candy, and then back to the dentist, and then more candy.  I’m detecting a disturbing pattern here, maybe I am a bad momma?!?!?  Shit, where’s my chocolate…….

Horsing around

Woo hanging out with the horses, I just love those tippy-toes!

Yesterday we spent time annoying training the horses.  Roo managed to bridle Spider all by herself.  Roo, Woo and I all practiced leading him (or he led us).  It was fun.  It’s interesting how sometimes the horses can be so cooperative and other times they can be soo naughty.  Hmm…just like kids.  Strange.

                           

See I really don’t comb my hair

But….

Notice spider’s nice, soft mane.  I spent a good half a day combing it out and then trimming it.  Ain’t he purty.

Woo just lost her bug, in the couch no less,

Mommy to the Rescue!

We miss you!  Bye for now.

Canadian Vocab

Living in Canada is like living in a foreign country.  You wouldn’t think so, being so close to Minnesota an all, but, french people aside, Canadians have a special language all their own.

See if you can figure out what these words mean before you read the answer.

Hydro:  You’d think “hydro” would mean water.  Wrong.  It’s electric.

Petro:  Is gas (the kind you fill your gas tank with, not the kind your boys are so proud of)

Kraft Dinner:  Is mac&cheese; generic Kraft dinner is frowned upon.

Clicks:  Has nothing to do with your mouse, it’s kilometers

Homo milk:  is whole milk (get your minds outta the gutters)

Timmy’s:  Is either coffee or donuts at Tim Hortons.  Timbits are donuts holes.  People actually say that they need some timmy’s.

But I am adjusting, and my vocab is growing.  Now if I could only speak french without getting laughed at by giggly 7yr old girls then my life would be “bon”.

Speaking of speaking french.  We were at a baseball game today, it was an adult league that was totally different then what the boys played, instead of watching the game and trying to learn something the boys decided to do fashion commentary on all the players.  It was absolutely peeing-your-pants funny.  It was so hard to tell them to be nice when I was laughing so hard.  I’m sure everyone sitting around us was horrified at what my “lovely” children were saying, but I wouldn’t know because they were all speaking FRENCH.  It’s really hard to eavesdrop on people when they are speaking a different language. Ahh Well!

Miss you all!!!

So, I’m not sure why, or what it is, that makes it so hard for me to just simply do something, but I always feel this need to make things 12x more difficult, and 14x more work. 

For instance, yesterday, I kick all the little monsters outside for an hour so I could watch Days clean the family room.  I started cleaning, but then was distracted when I blew a fuse because you can’t have both the vacuum and the AC on at the same time.  I went down to the dungeon to fix that problem and then got the stupid ass idea in my head to rearrange the family room.  We’ve only been living here 3 weeks, mind you.  I moved all the furnature, all of the accessories, rugs and clutter and started pushing stuff into different corners.  It was great fun until I got to the entertainment center and tv (which I had to disconnect to move, so Days was put on hold)  Took the tv out of the entertainment center and moved more furnature into the fam room, therefore creating more of a mess.  I discovered our fam room only has 2 stinking power outlets.  By the time I got the tv reconnected Days was over and I totally lost interest in the fam room project.  Shit, now what do I do?  I shoved all the furnature into various corners and threw the rugs back on the floor.  I concidered it done even tho I hadn’t dusted, vacuumed or removed any stay toys, and to add to the fun, I now had furnature that didn’t fit back in the room (and is still sitting in the hallway) namely the huge entertainment center (which will soon be a buffet in the dining room as soon as I get my lazy butt motivated).  I just hate it when I do stuff like that, but I keep doing it over and over and over.  I did manage to get a whole 1 box unpacked yesterday.  So now today I have to clean the fam room, get the stray furniture out of the hallway and unpack boxes.  Any bets on what I’ll actually get done?

There are always new adventures at the zoo…..

on the otherside of the coin

The kids are doing great, they have been helpful, kind and considerate of eachother.  Well, they try to be, sometimes.  I was worried about what would happen with them only having siblings to “hang” with.  I am happy to report there has been no hanging (except in the hay loft where it is allowed). 

The older boys have taken Mo under their wings, and have been teaching him all kinds of lovely stuff, like how to shoot (both on video games and the bb guns), how to drive (bikes over jumps and cousin’s dirt bike and on video games), how to cuss like a sailor/teenager, and the best ways to piss off your mom.  Everything you want your 5 year old to know.  The disturbing part is how much Mo LOVES it.  And in general the big boys don’t mind having Mo tag along.  Roo, on the other hand, will not have anything to do with her little sissy.  She simply runs up those stairs and slams the door in Sissy’s face, which equals crying, screaming, and yelling.  It’s a good thing we live in the sticks.  No matter how much I threaten beg her to be nice to her sis, she still won’t.  I think today I have hit the magic cooperation button.  Yucky jobs.  The only thing Roo dislikes more then her sister right now is work so the misterious Yucky Jobs appears to be working… mmmwahahaha!!

Wish me luck. 

I REALLY HAVE to work on unpacking today….Oh yay