Friday, January 29, 2016

25 Things To Do Before My Next Birthday: An Update

I wanted to give an update on my Week 4 writing challenge list. I've only included items where I have finished them, or made significant progress.

4) Find a red accented necklace which I LOVE. When we were in The States at the end of August I checked Target, Wal-Mart, and Nordstorm. I looked at Kendra Scott online. I checked Wal-Mart and Old Navy here in Canada. I finally found a red necklace at Old Navy. I didn't love it, however, so I kept looking. And finally, in December, I found this one at Wal-Mart. And this goal was accomplished.
Please ignore the fact that I look ridiculous
and just focus on the pretty red necklace.
I can't wait to wear it with t-shirts in the spring and summer.

5) Learn to embrace my cell phone! If you send me a text you can now count on me responding within a few days. It would help if I could remember to keep my battery charged but I would say I make, or receive, about three phone calls a week so I'm getting there.

6) Get rid of the two potties in our house. I am thrilled to report that this goal was accomplished as of August 27!!! After almost five years of having a potty in our house, we are completely potty-free. It is as awesome as I imagined it would be :) And Miss Rachel is about this close to being night trained so we are almost pull up free too.

9) Reduce the "To Be Read" stack of books on my dresser. I've read about three books of that stack but added four more so that's a bit of a problem :)

13) Clean off the table in the basement. The table was totally cleared of all the random junk, was filled with my work stuff, and then we turned half our basement into a guest room. So that table has undergone a few changes but it's pretty useful now. And not just as a place to store junk. Ha! 

14) Learn to make flossing a (daily) habit. I've flossed a few times. I even bought my own dental floss so we're getting somewhere.

15) Finish our New Zealand photo book. We finished this in October and ordered it a few weeks ago. Now we just need to wait until someone goes to visit our American mailbox :)

17) Move Rachel to a big girl bed. Done and done :)
Miss Rachel LOVES her big girl bed.

18) Buy a queen bed for us! Again, this is done. And we only need to buy one more set of cotton sheets and then all our bedding is updated too. And both Dave and I are sleeping much better than we were so I'm very excited about this.
19) Get rid of the crib in our basement. And possibly the change table too. The crib exited our house on July 28. Whoo hoo!!!We've turned the change table into extra food storage in our basement which is handy.
Check out our change table food pantry!

22) Write some letters to my grandma, possibly with pictures of the kids enclosed. I've sent a few envelopes of pictures to my grandma and have more ready to send her on Monday.

24) Run The Resolution Run again. We walked it this year, rather than running, but the whole family did it so I'm counting this one as done.
So with basically three months to go, I've accomplished about half my goals. I better get cracking on the rest of them now. Yikes.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

In The Middle Of A Frozen Lake

So as I mentioned in my post on Tuesday, Dave and I had a fun, slightly stereotypical, Canadian winter date on the weekend. At the winter retreat, someone had a couple of pairs of snowshoes which they said anyone could borrow. So Dave and I went snowshoeing. I had never been before and I had so much fun! We went out onto the lake and took some fun pictures with Dave's Blackberry.
 Snowshoe selfie
 Dave gets some air!
 There's nothing around me.
 No one else has even been out here since it last snowed.
 I got some air too!
Our attempt at making a heart, 
which I think looks a little more like an owl.

And that was our fun Saturday afternoon date.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Project 366: Days 16 Through 22

January 16, 2016 -- Sam and Rachel always fight over sitting by the heating grate so they can get warm. Sometimes, though, they cuddle nicely.
January 17, 2016 -- We wanted to get to the theatre in plenty of time to get good seats. I think we succeeded :) (Can you see Dave in this picture?)
January 18, 2016 -- We had a lot of snow this day and so I pulled Rachel and Sam on the sled to get some pasta. Then Rachel decided she could do the pulling!
January 19, 2016 -- I was trying to get a good picture of Sam in his room at bedtime. I was struggling to get a good lighting setting here :)
January 20, 2016 -- Rachel and Dave did a workout video with me.
January 21, 2016 -- My birthday gift to Dave was only four days late. I got our piano tuned and fixed for him.
January 22, 2016 -- Rachel and Dave were excited to get to our church's winter retreat!

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

The Winter Retreat Weekend What

We went to our church's Winter Retreat this past weekend. We all had a lot of fun. We hadn't been able to go for the past two years so we were all really looking forward to it. The retreat is held at a camp about two hours north of where we live. The woods were gorgeous and snowy, but the weather wasn't too cold so it was really nice to be outside.
Dave took all these pictures on a winter walk.

I enjoyed that someone else did the cooking and the clean up. I only had to help set the table for one meal. I also enjoyed spending a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon reading by the fire and having good conversations with people.
Rachel enjoyed playing life size Dutch Blitz (Go Team Sunshine!!!), going on a sled ride, and looking at pictures on Tim's phone. She also like hanging out with Anya and Tessa :)
Sam enjoyed playing Risk for about ten hours on Saturday (I wish I were joking about the amount of time) and sleeping in a room with two of his friends.
Dave and I also enjoyed a typical Canadian winter date but you will get to read more about that on Thursday :) Oooooo... the suspense.

We're so glad we got to spend this fun weekend with people from our church and we're already looking forward to next year.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Week 30: Daily Routine

This the last post I'm writing for the 30 Week Writing Challenge. I've really enjoyed doing it. I'm copying Amanda a little bit here and posting approximately a photo an hour. I've also decided that sometime in February I will likely do a photo an hour for a day I work at home, just so you can see the difference! :)

These are all photos from yesterday.

5:19 am -- I had water boiling for tea and then I headed downstairs to work.
6:09 am -- I had both the washer and the dryer going while I worked.
Yes, I use my dryer sometimes :)
7:40 am -- This is what my work space in the basement looks like: a blanket to keep me warm and Lego exploding out of the bin. Sadly, I don't get to work with Lego.
8:24 am -- I grabbed a bit of breakfast and tried to write a partial blog post.
8:46 am -- I walked the kids to school.
9:13 am -- Before I could go to work I had to brush all the snow off the car.
10:19 am -- I enjoyed my first cup of tea at work. I used the mug Janice bought me at the very first Starbucks when they were in Seattle this past summer. Notice how much the logo has changed :)
11:57 am -- I was excited to box up some of the files from last year.
12:42 pm -- I walked to the mailbox to send some letters.
12:50 pm -- I grabbed some lunch and perused blogs for a few minutes. Since I like to minimize my time at work I don't really take a lunch break.
2:27 pm -- I said good-bye to my work pen and headed home. Yes, this is a lame picture but I LOVE my work pens. Also, as Amanda said I don't want to take pictures of all the interesting work things :)
3:20 pm -- I got a snack ready for the kids and grabbed one for me too!
4:37 pm -- I worked on addressing some Christmas cards while Rachel was in her dance class. Sam played iPad and Dave sent a few work e-mails.
5:20 pm -- Rachel was done her dance class.
5:50 pm -- We ate supper at Harvey's and picked up a few things at Costco.
7:25 pm -- While Dave gave the kids a bath, I changed sheets, tidied bed
rooms, and made sure the kids had clothes for the next few days.

8:10 pm -- I sat in Sam's room and blogged while he fell asleep.

 8:55 pm -- I folded a lot of laundry.

10:05 pm -- It was finally time for me to go to bed. I have become an old lady and like my comfort bag wrapped around my feet for extra warmth. Confession: I was so exhausted, I didn't actually get any reading done.