Tales From the Minivan

Unknowingly it seems I just bought the “Gadget of the Year” according to UK’s Stuff Magazine.  I must say it’s pretty cool and I’m hoping it will keep my life a little more organized with all of the changes this fall.

So I’m sure you’re wondering what this little gadget is?  Well it’s an iPhone 3G!

I must say thus far, this thing is great!  It’s so much more than a phone.  I am amazed at all of the things it can do.  Andrew has had an iPod Touch for almost a year now, so I’ve been getting the feel for some of the features of the iPhone/Touch.  The big difference between the two, is that obviously the iPhone has an onboard phone (the Touch doesn’t) and the iPhone has web browsing capability via a data package or through Wi-Fi (touch only has Wi-Fi browsing).

The thing though that’s got me hooked is all of the great applications!  The Apps Store on iTunes lists them all there.  Most have a minimal fee of .99 cents some are a little more pricy, but MANY of them are FREE!   I’m too frugal to spend money on them , but I’ve downloaded a few of the free ones and they are a lot of fun.  Since we’ve been spending a lot of time in the van and sometimes getting to the school early, I added a few fun Apps for Ciaran to play.  One that he really likes a lot is called  Jirbo Match.  It’s a cute Memory Matching game with bright kid friendly charaters.  He started playing right away and got really excited when ever he made a match when the colouful star circles lit up the screen!

I must admit I liked playing it too!   Another App that Mackenzie and I like trying out was one called “Midomi Mobile”

So this App is great for when you got this tune stuck in your head, but you just can’t remember the lyrics or the name of the song.  or when perhaps when you’re in your car and a song comes on that you like but you’re unsure of the name or artist.  What the App will do is record a snippet of either you singing or humming the song, or record the song that’s playing on the radio and search  a database of tens of thousands of songs to find a match.  At first it didn’t really match anything that we knew, but as soon as we started singing ABBA it was bang on!

So that’s about all that’s new here.  I’ll update soon with pics from Andrew’s sister’s wedding  last weekend.  Sorry moms…I’ve been busy with my new toy, I mean Gadget!

This past weekend Andrew’s sister got married on a beautiful Saturday evening. Being the non-traditional girl that she is, her and her fiance Ben planned a small ceremony with immediate family and a few close friends to be held in the early evening outdoors at Ben’s Parents house followed by a reception dance in their barn!

It was nice to get the cousins together, earlier in the day my SIL Tracy and I got the kids together and had a group shot of them taken.  It’s always a challenge to find one photo that we both liked, my Tracy and I have similar tastes and we both settled on this one, I played around with Smilebox to liven it up!

The boys checking out the horses before the Ceremony:

The boys all wanting to sit with Nanny!

Mackenzie was one of the Flower Girls, a first for her!

Andrew’s dad giving Colleen away. Her dress was made from Hemp, and she designed it!

Colleen and Ben being Bonded.  Before rings became the norm, couples were tied together to Bond them.  It was quite humourous to see Andrew’s very staunch catholic father squirm during this one!

The Millers

Colleen and her Sister-in-Laws - left to right: Tracy, Rebecca (Bens sister) and me

The wedding cake- A Delicious Carrot Cake (yes I got the recipe, I’m making it later in the week!)

Congratulations Guys! It was a beautiful day!  We wish you guys the best of luck on your move to Montreal!

where I should have just stayed in bed!  The day started off with me waking up 30 minutes late to radio static!  I even went to bed at a somewhat decent hour, but Finn aka-Mr Terror must have been playing with the dial on my clock radio.  I’ve been meaning to get a new one for a while now.  This one is over 15 years old and was free, I won it at a work golf tournament, I think it’s served it’s usefulness (most times) and can retire happily in Ciaran’s room!  More about a new clock radio later.

Miraculously, I managed to still get the kids to school on time! I got back home did a little work, and the house got quiet for a few minutes.  Quiet in this house is not a good sign.  I walked into the kitchen and literally got stuck to the kitchen floor.  From one end to the other Finn had managed to empty an entire bottle of pancake syrup all over the kitchen.  In some ways this wasn’t so bad as I’ve been putting off mopping for a few days now so this forced my hand to do it.

The rest of the morning went well, Finn really seems to be getting into a routine and went down for his nap right on schedule, however he’s been napping a lot longer than he used to and I have to wake him most days to go pick up Liam at 1:45.  We picked Liam up and he wanted to stay and play with my friend Joanne’s daughter so she watched him for the next hour while the two ‘lil redheads came with me.  It never fails when I’m in a hurry this is when I constantly get stopped by the sweet little old ladies that adore the two ‘lil redheads and have to tell me all about how their cousin twice removed had a redhead and they thought they were going to have one…well you get my drift.  Normally I always love to chat, but I was in a rush.  I got through my list and even had 15 minutes to spare, so I thought I would go into the electronic section of the grocery store as I saw they had a clock radio with an iPod docking station on sale this week.  I found it right away and went straight to the cash to pay for it.  Well it seems that there was only one customer service rep working, and he was busy with the self-serve digital photo machines.  I waited almost 10 minutes and was never acknowledged!  I then asked him if I could purchase it over in the Self-Serve Check outs (I love those things!).  NOPE!  Had to be rung in there!  Well, another 5 minutes pass and I realize I can’t wait any longer and leave it on the counter as I had to get to the school to get both Liam and Kenz.  Better go make sure CBC is programmed in for the morning, I guess I won’t be listening to my iPod just yet!

We get home and I’m excited as I had a nicely seasoned Prime Rib Roast ready to go into the oven for it’s initial 15 minutes of searing at 450 F.  A little something that I wasn’t aware of, I guess those glass casseroles don’t do so well at high temperatures.  The roast seared beautifully, but here’s where things started going downhill.  I wanted to put a little broth in the casserole and a few vidalia onions for flavor.  I poured about 3 cups of room temperature broth into the casserole, then added the onions. The next thing I know (and sorry Sarah for screaming in your ear on the phone), I hear this snapping and popping noise!  The entire 9 X 13 casserole dish shattered into a zillion pieces!!!

Yup this was just one of “Those Days”!  Off to scrub the floors again!

Here’s some shots of my stupidity:

This evening I got to meet up with a co-worker from 1992!  That’s over 16 years ago, I honestly don’t feel old enough to have worked there over 16 years ago, and most people most likely don’t recall who they worked with that long ago.  Disney was different especially my co-workers and fellow Disney Cast Members at the Canadian Pavilion at EPCOT Center.

Almost two years ago I joined a social networking site I’m sure most of you are aware of- Facebook.   Immediately I was drawn to the fact that I could look up people I had lost touch with and started finding some of my co-workers from Walt Disney World.  There are Facebook groups dedicated to former Disney Cast Members, and it’s been great to catch up with so many that I’d lost touch with.  One of these friends was Bea!  The last time I saw Bea was 3 years after we left Disney in 1995 when we had a reunion in Halifax and a Pub Crawl.  Bea knew I was back in NB and was coming to Fredericton for work, so I decided to drive up and get together with her. Let’s just say she looks exactly the same!  It was so great reminiscing and seeing where each of our After-Disney lives took us!

Thanks for the invite to Fredericton Bea!

Here’s a shot of us 16 years ago in 1992 when  we worked for the Mouse:

Here we are now in 2008 16 years later!

I think I need to change the title of my Blog!  I honestly felt like I lived in the van this first week back at school!  We’re not sure if we’re going to be able to get transportation for the kids as this is not our area school.  I knew this was one of the drawbacks, but the other benefits outweighed this.  Just before we went on vacation I spoke to a reporter with our newspaper, I was very unhappy with how the Dept of Education handled the Elimination of the Early French Immersion program, especially the kids who were enrolled to start this fall.  Here’s the Full Story and the photo that appeared in the paper.  Oh and did I mention it was on the FRONT PAGE in colour!!!!!
Kids caught in game of musical schools by French immersion program changes

In the end we got Liam and Mackenzie into a school that offers French Immersion, so he wont have to attend 3 schools in the first 4 years of his schooling.  So I’m officially the mother to a Toddler, a Preschooler, a Grade Schooler and a Tween!  Liam started Grade 1 and has a really sweet teacher.  I did however notice that she’s expecting, so it looks like he may lose her at some point this year.

Day one was chaotic as the kids were not on any class lists and we had to get that all sorted out.  Thank goodness Andrew came with me, or I would have been stressing a lot more than I already was. Liam was really nervous and the extra waiting did not help matters, but once he met his teacher and got settled into his classroom he seemed to do fine.

Mackenzie also was a little nervous and I had to stick around to quickly speak to her teacher to let her know I was picking her up early for an orthodontist appointment.  I know bad timing on my part, but this was the second time I had to reschedule this appointment.  We met her teacher and found out that in her class she has 4 kids from her other school!  We found this really funny, as her old class only had 17 students!  Their numbers must be really low this year!

Day 2 went much smoother and I managed to grab a couple of pics as well.  Mackenzie wasn’t overly happy about it, but I made her anyway!  That afternoon I ran into the kids bus driver from last year who was wondering why we were at this school and asked if we moved.  He also informed me that his run has him driving right by our house, and he’d be happy to drop them off!  Now I need to find out if the District will OK this.  If I can get transportation at least one way that will be great!  Maybe I’ll use the whole save the environment argument.  If there’s already a huge diesel guzzling bus going right by my house why should I have to take out my minivan everyday too?

Liam in his class

Thursday I spent the afternoon at the Mazda Dealership getting a brake light bulb replaced.  It was kind of fun, as I was checking out the new Mazda 5.  The boys loved it, as it was a lot easier to get into than our van.  It seats 6, has 4 car seat tether anchors and UAS/Latch in the 2 middle row seats. The other cool feature is that it has sliding doors just like a minivan.  To me this is a great bonus, as I just don’t trust these gusts of wind we get and heavy doors and little boys just don’t mix.  There was only a couple of negatives that I could see.  One was that it didn’t have a lot of cargo room  this would be a problem for us when we travel, I guess we could alwas buy one of those cargo boxes for the top?  The other negative was that only the late 2008 and 2009 models have rear A/C.  This was on my must have list, as our van doesn’t have it and I promised that the next vehicle will.  I refuse to buy a brand new vehicle so we may have to wait a couple of years to get one of these used with the rear air.  It would be nice to go back to a smaller car, but I think our reality will be a minivan.  So there you have it, another new blog title:  My Life Sentence- The Minivan!

The boys in the RX-8- they thought they were so cool!

After some pleading and begging last week, I finally got the kids transferred to be at the same school this year.  The good news they’re in and Liam won’t have to switch schools again for French Immersion, the bad news, is that I will most likely have to provide transportation for the next few years.  There is a possibility that there could be transportation, but I was not going to push it with the school administration.  It was bad enough that I drug myself out of bed to try and get a meeting with the principal (I had been trying all week without success).

We’re looking forward to this change, it’s going to be good for Mackenzie going into Grade 7 after all of the turmoil at the end of the year at her old school.  A fresh start is going to be a good thing!

This morning we set our alarms, got up and dressed, had some breakfast and all piled into the mini van, and headed out to the school for our “dry-run”.  I like doing this the day before so there’s no surprises on the first day.  We timed our drive out (although I sure it will be longer tomorrow with it being Labour Day today and traffic was light).  It took 12.5 minutes and we got all red lights too, so I’m going to give myself a 15 minute window with a 10-15 minute load time.  I think that’s the most challenging thing, getting everyone into the van!

Once we got out to the school, we decided to show our thanks and do a little playground cleanup.  Andrew picked up trash and some broken glass, and I did some sweeping.  Whoa!  It was a lot bigger of a job that I suspected!  It’s a great playground that has the rubbery soft ground that surrounds the largest piece of playground equipment.  The other structures have pea stones surrounding them.  Unfortunately I think someone may have been a little over zealous with the pea stones, and they are no covering the entire yard and make it very slippery as there is pavement underneath.  Finn slipped a few times just walking.  My goal was to try and atleast sweep the rocks off of the rubbery area around the equipment.  Here’s a couple of before pics:

Here’s some of the after pics, we didn’t get it finsihed as it started to rain and after being there over 2 hours Finn was getting tired.  I think we did a pretty good job, and I may try and finish it at some point.

We came home for lunch and tried out a few options that I was hoping Liam would take in his lunch.  He fell in love with this product we got in the US called Smuckers Uncrustables.   Basically it’s a peanut butter and jam sandwich with the crusts crimped off.  I actually have a tool that I bought at Pampered Chef last year that does the same thing.  The only problem, is that there is a peanut butter ban at Liam’s school.   Earlier in the week, I got my mother to look for a peanut free “peanut”butter or pea butter.  Ciaran loves it! Liam, not so much, well, not at all!

I guess I’ll have to keep trying!  Andrew is testing out a new Wii game, and the boys enjoyed playing that for a bit this afternoon it’s called :

Pajama Sam- Don’t Fear the Dark

“Pajama Sam journeys into the land of darkness (his closet) to face his fears. Help Pajama Sam figure out who or what is behind the darkness and realize that there is no need to hide when it’s dark outside!”

It was really cute and the boys loved it, it was very age appropriate for them.

Well I better get to bed, it’s going to be a hectic day!