The Terrible Twos

Ever since we got home from our Christmas holiday, Jack has been a handful, well more like 5 handfulls. Honestly, he is constantly causing havoc. This morning he was up and at'em at 7:30 (a rare sleeping in from his usual 6:30 wake up time). Darrel got up and went to go supervise him. I woke up at 8:30 and thought, "Well we better hurry if we are going to be to church on time". We have to leave by about 9:25, and Darrel was speaking at church today so being on time was rather important. I hear happy little pitter patter and think, "ah, husband and son playing together, nice." I get up and walk to the bathroom, and this is what I see. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

(disclaimer: Darrel is wearing boxers and a t-shirt in this photo)



Darrel had fallen asleep on Jack's bed and I was still asleep in our bed so Jack took the opportunity to do a little redecorating -of the bathroom and himself.

Despite a huge clean up job we managed to be sitting in our pew prior to the start of church.


I also have to say I'm pretty proud of the calm cool manner in which we handled this. There was no yelling at Jack nor at eachother, "YOU were supposed to be watching him!" " YOU shouldn't leave your makeup bag out on the counter!"

I'm just hoping that this is not a downhill slide that continues over the next year. The terrible twos don't officially start for another 3 weeks here and it's going to be a LONG year if this gets any worse! LOL!

Christmas

Well we are home again. It was a good trip home to Shaunavon for us, slightly marred by a sick Jack. My favourite memories of this Christmas involve watching Jack and Rylan playing together. These two are only 9 months apart in age and I think they will have lots of fun toghether in the future.



Many thanks to Anne for being such a good hostess. I really do have a fantastic mother in law. She is so helpful and takes good care of us -from making food that fits everyone's diet requirements (no dairy, no nuts, no wheat, etc. etc. etc.), watching kids so parents can sleep in, letting Jack lick the beaters after making rubber cake, always buying an extra $5 gift just in case, and having fun things for kids to do, she is simply the best.


I feel like my kids (well Jack really) now have more new toys than they know what to do with. It was kind of fun today to haul out another new one when Jack would tire of something. Man, parenting would be easy if you could afford a new toy every day. lol! I know this is not really true but it's hard not to think more stuff is the answer when your child is enamored with a new train.

We hit a nasty storm on the drive home yesterday. The #2 highway between Calgary and just north of Red Deer was a disaster. We counted 19 cars in the ditch between Airdrie and Red Deer. But we just took it steady and slow and made it home safe and sound shortly after 9pm, about 12 hours after we left.

Today was clean up and organize day. There's still some of that left to do but I feel like it's somewhat under control. Darrel's best friend, Grant, arrived today for a visit. West Ed Mall may be on tomorrow's agenda. I'm surprised as I thought I'd have to do a lot more to talk the guys into heading into the world's largest mall! I'm on the hunt for leather boots (Darrel's Christmas present to me), and I really want to ride th swings in the amusement park. I love those and when we were there in July I was 9 months pregnant and in no shape to ride anything. Darrel and Grant perked up at the sound of the amusement park and indoor go carts. Jack may enjoy the Dolphin show -hmmm, there really is something for everyone!

My Little Business

 
Betwixt diaper changes, meal prep, playing and other necessities of daily life I'm still working on my business idea. I've overcome one major hurdle recently in figuring out how to cost effectively print the books without sacrificing quality. Also found out today, that one of my favourite digital designers allows commercial use of her kits -so of course I got busy tonight and made an example using her stuff. My albums are going to be 8"x10" landscape format in hard cover bound books. (I'm quite excited about them being bound; they will look so beautiful!)
This therefore, is an example of a two page spread in the book, eight inches high and twenty inches across. The visible line down the middle is the gutter of the book. Anyway, slowly slowly I am chugging away at it. I do already have a first client though! Someone who works in Darrel's building has seen some of my work through Darrel and would like to have an album made of her wedding. I told her I would do it come January, for a discount as long as I could use her album as a promotional material on my website. So I'm excited about that...moving forward! 

What I Want...

 
Darrel asked me the other day what things I would want in the $100-$500 dollar range if money were no object. It was an interesting question because we had both agreed in the previous week that there really were no "big ticket" items that we wanted. Well, it didn't take me long to come up with a few things that I would get if we had a money tree in the back yard. LOL! So much for my zen like satisfaction! Near the top of my list was Photoshop CS2. Right now I'm using GIMP, a freeware program, to do my digitial scrapbooking. And while it is pretty good and will do a lot of things, there are some things it just doesn't do and there's little help or support for it.

I borrowed a Photoshop book from the library and have been trying some of the techniques. This requires me to translate the Photoshop tutorial into its GIMP equivalent as the menues are different and some of the functions are called different things. So it takes me a bit longer to figure out effects because I'm looking all over for stuff. Anyway, I made the title on this photo last night. Had fun learning how to do it. Doesn't it feel good to learn something new? This effect is not that big a thing but it's been something I've wondered "how do they do that"? And now I know how!

Oh, and while I'm on it...Looking through the photos of our Vancouver island trip in 2003 has made me realize I really want to go back there! Always another want isn't there! 

So Tired!

 I went into Jack's room to see if he was sleeping, (sometimes he tends to play through nap hour), and I found him crashed out like this. It's one of those books that makes sounds/plays music, so goodness knows how he actually fell asleep. 

A celebrity in our house

 
Darrel captured this photo of Eric today. I went to the Ellen website to see if she was still taking submissions for the baby / celebrity look alike segment but alas I don't see it on there anymore! Don't you think Eric looks like John Goodman, it's rather uncanny! We had a pretty good laugh about it around here.

Laughter was good because later Darrel got quite ill. Eariler this year when he learned that he was allergic to dairy and eggs his natropath recommended abstaining from them for about six months and then trying them again to see how his body reacted. Apparently sometimes once they've been out of your system the intolerance will go away. So yesterday we had dairy dairy dairy, it was dairy binging at it's best! Bagels and cream cheese, smoked gouda on sandwiches, quesadillas, raspberry milk shakes. Yumm! Weeeeeell, apparently Darrel is not one of those lucky people who have outgrown it in six months. After dairy again for breakfast and lunch today he started feeling naseous, got a violent headache and had to lay down in a dark room. Sigh, no more milk shakes for supper around here! :( Oh well, probably all the better for Darrel and my waist line.

Big house cleaning plans for around here tomorrow. The bathroom never quite made it to the top of the list this weekend. I find bathrooms are not really my favourite chore, I'd rather do a million other things. On Saturday afternoon I actually ended up pulling out the stove and washing the floor underneath it rather than clean the bathroom. That's saying a lot about how much I dislike cleaning bathrooms. At any rate, the bathroom has achieved a level of griminess that requires me to cease the procrastination. Other than that I want to do some Christmas baking. And of course, the requisite one or two loads of laundry. 

Christmas II

 I really enjoy Christmas decorations, they make me feel all warm and fuzzy. They need not be fancy or all coordinated, I just like that they are special and you don't see them that often but yet they are familiar. I think too, I pull them out and a flood of happy feelings from previous Christmas celebrations comes to my heart and I bask in that warm glow of Christmas past. 

Santa's Little Helper

  

Haircut

Ohhh, as an update on Saturday's haircut. Yes, the hairdresser is good, hooray! And for a cut and style it was $24.99, a steal of a deal compared to my past three hairdressers, I love small town prices! (If I was even cheaper I wouldn't have her style it and only pay $17!) However she is just as abrupt in person as on the phone...almost to the point of it being funny. But she can cut hair and is six blocks from my house so I don't care. I really am tickled pink about having a hair dresser here in town. Hooray hooray!

Christmas is here!

 Jack and I decorated the tree this afternoon. We bought an artificial tree this year. I've always been anti artificial tree but after 10 minutes I'm all for them. They hold the heaviest of ornaments, no bare spots and pre-lit means no light stringing, hooray!
  
I'm quite happy to be in some pictures for once. I find I end up taking most of the pictures and then being upset that I'm not in any pictures. Hmmm, I'll have to make a habit of being more proactive about asking Darrel to take some with me. Also, discovered today that there are still things I don't know about my camera. I can 'turn down' the flash on it. Go figure! Not exactly sure how much to do it in different lighting situations but I can! hahaha When we were in Lethbridge a few weekends ago (sniff sniff has that much time passed already) Strater and I were talking about cameras. And yes I do covet a digital SLR which in many ways is ridiculous. I haven't even figured out all of the features on my semi-adjustable point and shoot. If I haven't topped out all the bells and whistles on this camera what makes me think I could take better pictures with an SLR? But there's that part of me that says, but you'd learn, it would great all the "stuff" you could do...umm hmmm, sure. But I have vowed to dig out my camera manual tomorrow and figure out about adjusting the flash strength. I'd like to take pictures of us by the tree with the flash (so they don't end up blurry) but have it not so strong that it kills that nice warm glow of the Christmas lights. tricky tricky, or not so tricky if you actually read the manual and remember it!

  

Withdrawl

 
Wow this felt good. Between Christmas preparations, housecleaning, and just life I haven't really done much scrapping in the last few weeks so I sat down tonight to get my fix. Haaaaa, happy sigh. :)