Random babbles

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my little boy? He is such a joy. Yes, right now I don't really appreciate the fact that he's up around 6:30, no matter what time he goes to bed or how many naps he has, but when he's up, he's so much fun. He's growing so much. In height, (he's now 34'' tall) and in his mind. He'll attempt to repeat almost any word I tell him too. My favorite one is 'delicious'. It comes out sounding like 'sisicious', but he's got all 3 syllables. When I ask him how old he is, he'll answer 'one'. And he'll count to three. Of course after that he gets bored and I can't get him to say 4. He's becoming such a little boy. Interacting with him is feeling different, as I know he is picking up on everything I'm saying. I love it.
Monday evening, I went out to throw a diaper into the garage. Well, a bird flew into our house. Freaked me out. Rob was in the shower, so I ran into the bathroom to tell him what happened. He of course told me to go watch the bird so I knew where it was. Not a chance was that going to happen. Now, I'm not afraid of birds, but when they are in such a small area, flying around, I don't want to be around. I hid in the bathroom while he managed to get the bird to fly back outside. Caden was loving the whole ordeal. Since then, he has asked for that bird over and over again. That whole night, he'd walk to the door and ask for the bird. He's so sincere about it, it almost makes me want to go and get him a bird. Its the sweetest thing.
Anyway, I'm off to a movie with the girls night girls so, enjoy your hump day evening. I'll leave you with one of my new favorite pictures of Caden.

...and welcome to the terrible 2's

They’ve hit. My sweet little boy has entered into what they call the terrible two’s. Its unbelievable. We had a little situation on Wednesday. Here it is.
Caden is only allowed to have his soothers for nap time and bed time. Well, I picked him up from the sitters and he spotted his soothers in the bag. He cried and cried cause I wouldn’t let him have them. Once we got home, I told him if he stayed in his bed, he could have his suckie. He jumped into bed and I gave it to him. I then went to the kitchen to start supper. Well, about 2 minutes later, he peeked around his door with a suckie in his mouth and hand. I sent him back to his bed and he went right away. A couple minutes later, he was back at the door with the soothers. I told him to get back to his bad. He looked at me and said a very defiant ‘NO’. I again told him to get back to his bed, which was followed by another defiant ‘NO’. Well, that did it for me. I grabbed the soothers out of his mouth and hand and put them on a shelf. He lost it. He stomped his feet repeatedly on the floor, and then he SLAMMED HIS DOOR in my face. Yup, my 20 month old sweet little boy turned into a 12 year old girl at that moment. I marched into that room, grabbed him by the arm and led him to his bed for a very deserved time out. Continuing with the defiance, he didn’t stay in time out so I put a chair in the middle of his room and made him sit on that. It took a bit, but he calmed down and sat in time out.
I’ve know since he was quite little that he would have a temper on him, because he always wanted to do everything himself, and has had attitude. But I never imagined it would switch so fast. Oh well, I guess this is where my parenting will really get tested. I’m up for the task. I mean really, how long can you stay mad at this little face.

Big boy

My baby is in a big boy bed. He’s doing really well in it too. He’s only fallen out 2 times. I still have the crib in his room just in case although I’m gonna take it down and out next week so that I can clean up Cadens room. Its so full in there, with the crib, bed, change table, ball pit, laundry hamper and shelf that it seems like we can hardly walk around in there, let alone play.

Holiday

First of all, I want to apologize to all of my regular readers, if I still have any left. I’ve been really bad at blogging lately and I’m sorry. I don’t have internet at home and therefore can only write my posts when I’m at work, or if I go to my parents house. So, lets play catch up.
We had an awesome holiday. I booked the trip on Friday….we left Monday. I would have liked to have a little more time, but this is the way it worked out. See, we booked our trip using our Mastercard points. We pay for everything, and I mean everything with our mastercard. Therefore, we have a lot of points, which then transfer into travel money. It took me all week to finally get through to them. The only trip she could find within our price range was to Carabela resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. I checked online and the resort looked good. 4 star. Works for me.
So I began preparing to leave in 2 days. My Mom said she would take Caden for the week, so that was an easy thing. She has everything but enough clothes at her house for Caden. Sunday night we dropped him off at my parents. We had to be up at 2:30am, which meant that I really didn’t sleep at all because I was so excited. Our flight left at 7:00am. We arrived at 3:40 local time.
The weather was perfect when we got there. However, when we arrived at our resort, things did not go so well. We were shown to our room, which was such a disappointment to me. It was not clean, the air conditioning didn’t work, the bathtub was dirty, and the toilet didn’t stop running. The next morning we changed rooms to one that was much better.
Our resort does not have any food available between 5:00 and 7:00. We were hungry after a day of travel and couldn’t get food anywhere. Very frustrating. I was ready to pack up and go back home.
The grounds of the resort were not kept very clean at all.
NOBODY spoke English. And when I say nobody, I mean nobody. The staff all spoke Spanish, except for a couple of them who spoke broken English. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that 98% of the people at the resort didn’t speak English. Most of them were French, with a few germans, Italians, and other foreigners. The odd time we heard someone speak English we’d whip our heads around to see who it could be. This really got to me. I was hoping we’d be able to meet some people there that we could hang out with. But no. I was not happy about that.
The food was not good. Nothing was labelled, so we had no idea what we were eating. I ended up eating mainly pineapple and bread all week long. To top it all off, we both ended up getting food poisoning. We ate at the Mexican a la carte restaurant for supper on Thursday. During the night Rob got sick. In the morning I got sick. Throwing up and…well…you can imagine the rest. It was not fun. My bottom was so sore. We didn’t leave our room all day.
Now even though all of this really sucked. We still had a really great time. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. We had rain only 1 day, and it only lasted for about 3 minutes, 2 times. Other than that, it rained at night. The ocean was beautiful. The sand was incredible. We really enjoyed our time together and had fun. I did really miss Caden though. It almost hurt how much I missed him. We picked him up from my parents at around 10:00pm. I woke him up from sleeping. He didn’t really even want to come to me. He just wanted my mom. Kind of sad for me, although I understand. But after he woke up completely, he snuggled with me. And didn’t want me to leave the room. Since then, he freaks out every time I leave, even if its just to run outside for something. Oh well. He did very well when I left him at the sitters on Wednesday and Thursday so that was great. He’ll be back to normal soon.
Now I’ll leave you with a few pictures from the trip.

and we're off

In 13 hours I will be on a plane to Punta Cana, Dominican Rebuplic. I am so excited. I will post all about it I'm home. Have a great week.

Thanks Auntie Amy

This is Cadens new way of eating things off the table. Taught to him by his Auntie Amy. (not really a big deal, I'm just kidding)

A weekend away

This past weekend we went to Grand Forks with my family. We stayed at the Lakeview Inns and Suites. Awesome hotel. I would definitely recommend it. The pool was almost bath water warm, so therefore Caden had a great time in it. The hot tub was not so hot, as it needed a replacement part, but overall it was a great hotel.
We did a lot of shopping. Came home with a new counter top, front door, tub surround and tub fixtures. I am so excited to re-do our house with all these new things. Everything is so cheap down there. I did buy myself a few shirts, although i was not in a shopping mood at all. Can't say that has happened to me very often. Caden got a bunch of new shirts, and I bought a bunch of baby gifts, as I have 2 friends expecting in the next 3 months. Its so nice to get away to a hotel for a weekend. I only wish we had spent a little more time at the hotel. You almost need to go for 3 nights to get all the shopping done, and spend time at the hotel. Maybe next year.

Caden has definitely overcome his fear of water. Although I don't think it was so much a fear of the actual water, just that its usually cold water. He jumped into the pool more times than I can count. Brave boy he is. I even put him completely under water a few times and he didn't care.

Doing Monkey ears with my brother

Rick could do this the best. Caden got some really good air.

Be Right Back

New post(s) coming soon. Been busy with New Years and a weekend in Grand Forks. Stay tuned.

Welcome Brody Reid Friesen

Congrats to Russ and Rachel on the birth of their beautiful baby boy on December 26th. He was 6lbs 4oz and 19'' long.

Its over, yet its just beginning.

We survived another Christmas. And had so much fun. I'm always so surprised at how fast it goes by. You wait for it, and wait for it and wait for it to come, and then its gone before you can even blink.
Caden was so much fun this year. It makes a big difference to be a year and 7 months, instead of just 7 months at Christmas. He enjoyed helping everyone else open their presents, as well as his own. And boy did he get awesome new toys. Mostly tractors and trucks which he's big into. Not to mention a gator, from my parents. He doesn't know about that one yet. Its technically not meant for just him, but for all the grandchildren, but since NO ONE ELSE is having kids....ahem...its Cadens. Can't wait for summer to put it together and go cruisin. Now, I just have to lose some weight so I'm not over the 130lb weight restriction...lol.
I got most things that I asked for. And when I got home and unpacked it all, I realized that all of it stayed in the kitchen. Except for the brown coat. I got cutlery, a 4 slice toaster, a mixer, cookie sheets, a calendar, and some other smaller things. Oh and a rabbit hat, which I need to exchange for a smaller size. So excited to have warm ears this winter.
With 4 gatherings down, and only 1 to go (on New years day) I'm feeling a little less overwhelmed. Oh wait, did I mention that tomorrow I'm going to the city to hopefully get my passport so that in a few weeks Rob and I can go away on a holiday. Oh and when we get back, I have to start working 3 days a week because the other woman at work is on holidays for 6 weeks. And on top of that, my parents are gone for 2 weeks during that time as well, which means its only me in the office at work....ahhhh. When will it end. I hope February is a little less stressful month.

Merry Christmas

Although I don't have a lot of time, I just had to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. We are spending the day at my in laws today and Rob, Caden and Papa left to do some shopping. That leaves me with some free time.
We'll open presents later this afternoon when Robs sister Marcy gets here with her hubby and 4 boys.
Then tonight, off to my parents for night, where we'll open presents tomorrow morning and basically spend the day in our p.j.s, eating, playing games and enjoying new toys and presents.
I do love Christmas.

Happy Birthday Rick

To an awesome uncle and brother on his magic 23rd birthday. Oh, and check out his awesome birthday cake over at Amandas.

Its darker

I finally succeeded in getting my hair to be a darker color. I guess I’m always a little scared, so I buy dye’s that are not too dark. Then after I do them, they don’t really look any different than the color I had before. Well, this time I bought a dark brown with no red in it at all. Here’s the before.

This is the color that my gloves turned while I was applying the color, and the water ran this color too, when I was rinsing. I was a little concerned I’d have purple hair.

And the after

Christmas cards

Well, now that I’m sure all these people have handed out all their cards, I thought I’d post for you, all the cards I made for Christmas this year. I had so much fun designing them. I’m kinda disappointed that I have to wait another whole year to do them again.Oh well. I hope you like em.

Happy birthday to me

Well, like every other year, I was sadly disappointed on my birthday. For some reason, I always let myself get excited that maybe, just maybe Rob will have planned something.
This year was no different. I was home for the day, which means that I usually stay in my ‘comfy’ clothes all day with no makeup and hair a mess. But, because I was hoping that Rob would come home, say he had a sitter coming, and we would be going out for supper and to a movie, I got ready. 5:20 comes around and Rob calls. ‘Should I pick something up for supper?’. Well, instantly I knew that he had once again planned nothing. And naturally, I was instantly upset. He asked what was wrong, and I told him I was mad that yet again, he had planned jack $#%* for my birthday. Then I hung up on him.
I ended up calling him at 6:10 because he still wasn’t home and Caden was getting hungry. He hadn’t even left work yet. I told him to forget about supper cause I had to feed Caden something now.
When he finally did get home, we of course had a fight about why he doesn’t plan anything for my birthday.
He did get a few points because he bought me a pedicure for my birthday. Well, I ended up sitting on the couch all evening watching t.v. Some birthday. I should have just gone to girls night and sat in the hot tub with my friends.
I’ve already told all my friends that next year on my birthday, we’ll be having a party. I have several years of crappy birthdays to make up for.

Ahh, Christmas is almost here. The tree is up. I've added lights to different areas of our house, and I even did some Christmas baking today. I'm ready for it. I just need to buy a couple more gifts, which will be easy cause I know what they will be. Oh I'm so excited. And because I'm so crazy busy in the next 2 weeks, its gonna be here before I know it.
We just finished catering another Christmas banquet tonight. Only 2 more functions to go. The last being on Dec. 20th. This Friday is my work banquet. I'm looking forward to that. D.J.s caters, so my mom and I get the night off.
I'm finally finished all Christmas cards for this year. Unless someone else asks for them. I do have a couple of really nice designs that would be great for someones cards. I'm not quite done handing out my cards yet either.
Next week Wednesday is my birthday, so of course I'm hoping Rob will plan something. Although I know its not gonna happen. If only he would take hints.
Next Sunday (21st) we have Christmas at my Grandpas. 22nd is my brother Ricks birthday so we'll be heading over to their house for the evening. The 23rd we leave for Emerson where we stay for night and do Christmas with Robs family on the 24th. Then back to Winkler to my parents for Christmas day. Whew, its gonna be a crazy couple of weeks.

For Sale

Piano works good, just needs to be tuned. I don't ever use it and it just takes up space in my entrance. One day I want to have a piano in my living room. Once I have a new house and a little more room.

Dishes set. Used once. Got some of it as a wedding present. Bought the rest myself. Not my style. Used it once when the person who bought it for me came over for supper:-)
If you're interested in either of these things, let me know. I really wanna get rid of both of them.

Have you ever...

The ones I've done are in green

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars - on the trampoline. Can't wait till Caden wants to do that.
3. Played in a band - from Grade 5 till Grade 11
4. Visited Hawaii-oh someday please
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland-does Disney World count? Its better anyway
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo-yup, in an elementary school Christmas concert.
11. Bungee jumped-hopefully someday
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France-really not that exciting
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked-in Europe…twice.
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill-even though my mom always knew I wasn't sick
24. Built a snow fort - heck yeah.
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping-several times. Always with the same person.
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice-still mad at myself that we didn't splurge and do this. Next time
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise-hopefully someday
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language-someday I want to learn Italian and Spanish
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied-who's gonna say yes to this
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing-does it count if it was at Winkler Bible Camp?
40. Seen Michelangelos David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt-on Rick and Amy's pictures.
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight-in Jamaica baby
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person-also a disappointment
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris-twice
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to the drive in - many long weekend Sunday nights were spent at the triple in Morden
55. Been in a movie-home video ;-)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business - T.A.C. Auto Sales
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving-someday I hope
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp-I actually want to. But only with my brother Randy, cause he knows all about that stuff
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy-I still have all my dolls, and barbies. Hopefully one day I'll have a girl to share them with
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt-I helped my grandma do it once
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job-I've only ever had 2 jobs and 1 I'm still at
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London-boring
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle - Unfortuanately yes thanks to my husband who was then my boyfriend
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car/truck-my 1999 Pontiac Sunfire GT. I still miss that car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating-I don't kill it, but I do help cut up and package the meat from a deer.
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life-not that I know of
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous-Sylvia Kuzick in the Winnipeg airport. Oh and the Premier of Manitoba
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day - I love to read

Okay everyone who reads my blog...do this and let me know that you did it so that I can come and read yours. I tag you all :-)

Mary Kay Christmas Sale

If you are needing anything from Mary Kay, I am having a 30% off sale for Christmas. Anything and everything that Mary Kay has is on sale for you. I will be placing my order next week Tuesday in order to get things in by Christmas so let me know before then if you would like anything. If you need a Christmas gift made up, let me know the dollar amount you want to spend and I'll make up a gift basket for you. I can deliver books to anyone in the Winkler area if you need, or just go to the website.
www.marykay.ca

Whats so good about black Friday??

What an amazing weekend. I have amazing friends. We had so much fun.
However, black Friday shopping left something to be desired. We did only get there around 11am. But the sales were no different than any other day. The only difference was that the line up wrapped half way around the store. I suppose the sales would have been better had we been there at 4am when the stores opened. But, because I was only looking for clothes and small items, the deals were not superb.
But, wow did we shop. We all came home with more than our limit. Our hotel was great. The food was amazing. If you get the chance, eat at TGI Fridays and Texas roadhouse. So super good.
I am almost done Christmas shopping now also. Feels so good. Only about 3 more items to pick up. Now i'm excited for Christmas