Michele’s Musings

I picked our portrait package out!  I decided on #12 to send out to family and friends, but I also ordered 11 5×7’s of others.  I think I’ll put 3 of the B&W’s together in a frame for the livingroom, and 3 of the coloured pictures together to hang in our bedroom.  We highly recommend Tammy from Smiley Eyes Photography, we had a fun time taking the pictures and she is so very nice to work with!  We’ll definitely be booking another session with the kids for a family portrait.

Well I survived day 2 of the deep freeze by not leaving the house (unlike yesterday when I had to shovel….)  I was up sick 1/2 the night and got no sleep, so I called in sick to work so I could get some sleep…. unfortunately when I tried to nap my eyes wouldn’t stay shut, so I got up, ate a handful of chocolate covered coffee beans, sucked back a few cups of coffee and managed to make it through the day.

Since the windchill this morning was -45C or something ridiculous like that, we decided to keep the kids home from school today.  Silly me forgot to ask Arran if he had any tests today….. yup he missed 2 midterm exams although he claims there will be a make up test on Thurs, he better hope so!  Our streets have still not been shovelled by the complex, so even if James had driven them this morning, they would have had a horrible time trying to walk home through the snow drifts.  Here is what they looked like this afternoon.

That is along the side of our house, the sidewalk in the front is even worse because of drifting snow, but I wasn’t going OUT in it to get a good shot!

Here is our yard, you can see the depth of the snow from this angle.  Our deck is under there somewhere….

And a little perspective, to see how much snow fell in one day, here is our old Little Tykes table stored in the yard…. there was maybe an inch or so of snow on it before the storm.

So glad the forcast doesn’t call for any more snow, only bone chilling cold.   So the kids will go back to school tomorrow bundled up really well!

We had a nice snow day at home though, Arran got some learning in by watching a 2 hour program about the history of the Great Wall of China that he TiVo’d on the weekend.  Rowan baked cookies with Fun Dough from the cookie dough fundraiser, and we played board games in the afternoon.  And amazingly, James made it to and from work with no problems…. just very slow going.  His car started and he didn’t even plug it in!

First of all thanks for the compliments on the photos! We are still deciding which ones we want lol

So the weather forecast is not looking good….. we are forecast to get into the -30 to -40’s C with windchill over the next few days. It is supposed to hit us tomorrow so I stopped at the grocery store for a few things tonight so I won’t have to go out in it! Keely wants to go Webkins shopping tomorrow but I kyboshed the idea, told her maybe NEXT weekend *shiver*

We got this Saturday off soccer because of a tournament using the fields so James slept in till 11 lol Then we went to a flooring place in Sherwood Park to order new lino for our bathrooms. My former supervisor works at a flooring store now and let us know they were have a 50% off sale on some of their lino, which doesn’t happen often! We aren’t planning on doing the bathroom’s before the summer, but we couldn’t pass up the sale. We ordered lino for both bathrooms for $250 total! cha ching! It’s a stone look in neutral colours.

After the flooring store we hit Ikea because my friend Stacey wanted to borrow our van to transport a big mirror she wanted to buy that won’t fit in her car, the three of us wandered Ikea for a couple hours picking up this and that, but no mirror cause they were out of stock lol When we dropped her off at home we picked up her two girls for an impromtu sleepover at our house, the kids are all thrilled

Tomorrow James is going to finally build the last cabinet for the kitchen and install it. It will be nice to put away the plastic dishes in a big drawer, I ordered a bunch more Tupperware at my friends party last weekend….. I need to organize the new kitchen ya know Speaking of the kitchen… We went to Home Outfitters Thurs night to use the GC my mom sent us at Christmas. We wanted new dishes because we have too many that are chipped and cracked, but we are really picky about the shape of the bowls and mugs, they didn’t have a whole lot to choose from, I was expecting more open stock…. We found a few that we liked, but to get as many settings as we wanted it would be about $200-300…. Then just as we gave up we came across a HUGE box with a 12 piece place setting with a few extra pieces for $80! It is white, so will go with anything, and the bowls and mugs are the right shape. We picked up a few more things to clean out the GC, including a dark wood scratch repair thing because I’ve already damaged the new bookshelves in the livingroom! We have discovered 2 of the bowls are cracked so I’m hoping they will exchange them…… if not we still have 10 bowls! And in the spirit of recycling our old dishes already have a new home, Stacey has the same ones so we are giving them to her so she can complete her sets that are missing pieces that got cracked and chipped lol

Check out the link!

Michele & James Proof Album

Now I get to decide which one to make the portrait package from!

On another note, I am deeply saddened at the death of Heath Ledger this week.  I feel so badly for his family, especially his little girl.  I am also angered at the speculation surrounding his cause of death, just wat for the official toxicology report for pete’s sake!  Don’t make stuff up just to have a sound bite on TV!

Happy New Year everyone!  We had a very fun New Year’s Eve, we had our friends Stacey and Sheldon and their girls over for the night, stayed up till 4 am playing cards!  Stacey collects wooden board games that she buys at the Butterdome Craft Sale in Edmonton every Christmas so she brought two with her.  We played Rummoli until midnight, I had never played it before but it was fun.  Then we switched to Sequence, the guys were all psyched to beat us (we play girls against guys) but after Stacey and I won 7 games in a row James said “I don’t want to play this anymore”  LOL  So we switched back to Rummoli and played until I was too exhausted to continue.  The kids played games, played online with Webkins and watched movies all night.

In the morning the guys made brunch and we hung out all day, playing more games, then I made a big turkey dinner.  YUMMY!  Then I had leftovers for a turkey pot pie……

turkey sandwiches and a yummy turkey soup that Stacey whipped up for us on Friday.  That’s what I missed from having Christmas dinner at my SIL’s, leftovers!

On the renovation front, James and I went to Ikea the weekend before NY’s to buy another cabinet for the kitchen, as well as the trim we were short on.  We have decided to forego the desk area and put in the extra drawers!  Now that we have decided that, I am looking forward to it.  I need more drawers to put away tea towels and Tupperware!   While we were there…… we bought a new bedroom!  Frame, mattresses, night stands, bedding and curtains.  We also picked up an area rug and some Markor pieces for the livingroom, a new TV stand, bookshelves, side tables and coffee table.  We brought some home with us, but the majoity we had delivered, it arrived yesterday so we spent the day building our bed, hanging curtains etc.  Once we get the room straightened out we’ll deside on a dresser.  It was SO comfy to sleep on last night!  And high off the ground!  Our last bed was only knee high, this one is at my hip!  James says we need a bench for the foot of the bed so he can sit to put on his socks in the morning lol  We will work on building the rest of the livingroom pieces in the evenings this week, so far we have the TV stand, one side table and the coffee table built. It’s a nice big square one that we can play board games on with the kids, which was our main criteria.  We found the coffee table and decided to do the rest of the livingroom to match!

We had a productive weekend, Rowan played his first soccer game of the year Saturday morning, James and I got our portrait’s taken Saturday afternoon by Tammy of Smiley Eyes Photography it was a lot of fun.  James and I haven’t had a portrait of US taken since we got married almost 17 year ago!  I’ll post the link to the proofs webpage when it’s ready.  Keely has decided she doesn’t want to play soccer anymore, so we pulled her out of it.  She is smaller than all the other kids and hasn’t played in a couple years, so she was finding it frustrating to keep up, so it stopped bing fun for her.  I will probably sign her up for swimming lessons for something else to do. 

Kids are back to school today!  Ye haw!  They were suffering from too much togetherness, they are excited about seeing their friends again.  And James and I are back to the usual work week…..  No more holiday’s.  He went back Jan 2nd, but was taking one of the kids to work with him each day last week.  My work will start new extended hours in a few weeks so I will eventually have to work a late Thurs/Fri and Saturday *sigh*  I’m told it will only be every 7th week….. that I can live with I guess.

Busy busy reading….. I finished 3 of the 4 books I got for Christmas already!  Bones to Ashes by Kathy Riechs, really enjoyed it   Blood Brothers by Nora Roberts, first in a new trilogy, it’s about demons  now I have to wait till May for the next installment!  And A Highlander For Christmas by Sandy Blair, I will give it a  because the story was fun to read, but the editing left a bit to be desired, there were parts I wasn’t sure what was going on.  I am now reading High Noon by Nora Roberts, so far so good, but I’m only just started.