A Day At Home

We have been away for soccer every weekend since the end of March (except for Easter weekend). This weekend we get to stay home and rest…..

Actually the day started pretty early with a little white dog insisting she needed to go out at 4:00am. I blame my husband for that since he suggested she would be getting me up at 4:00 when we went to bed last night….the power of suggestion. When Emma starts her whining in the morning you might as well get up with her because you can’t go back to sleep until she has been out anyway, so at 4:00am I let her out in the backyard to…..eat grass? Yes, that is what she did, nothing else, just ate grass. The little rascal got me up for that? Or maybe she knew the moon was worth taking a picture of and that’s what she got me up for. It definitely was a bright moon early this morning.

The moon at 4:00am this morning.

After we enjoyed, spent some time together admiring the moon we went back to bed for a few more hours of sleep.

It was 7:00 am when we officially got up to start our day, I took the dogs out walking while my husband took himself for a drive to Tim Horton’s. I took a few pictures on our walk, as I sometimes, almost always do.

My house has been kind of neglected for the past month since we haven’t really been home to do anything so we had a lot of work to do. While my husband mowed the front yard, I vacuumed the very furry carpets, cleaned the dog art off our windows, and washed the living room and dining room curtains. I then helped my husband who was ready to mow the backyard (by helping I mean I picked up the dog poo so he could do the mowing). Our back yard was way past needing its first cut of the season.

The over grown back yard.

Back yard dandelions gone to seed.

My big mistake today was washing the curtains…..once they came out of the dryer I realized they needed to be ironed. I am not a fan of ironing, I’m not a fan of a lot of housework but I especially do not enjoy ironing. It took a while but, task accomplished, we had supper and then my husband thought we should go watch a movie.

The movie of choice was The Avengers, problem was we had two show times to choose from….6:40pm or 10:00pm. I’m pretty sure I would have fallen asleep during a 10:00 movie but we were going to have to rush to catch the 6:40 show. We got there just before they were sold out and ended up third row from the front. I have to say I have never watched a movie so close to the screen before, and would prefer not to again. The movie was definitely worth seeing though, even close up.

So today was an enjoyable day and I feel like I got a lot accomplished but staying home didn’t equal resting, however resting is what I’m about to do now.

Goodnight moon!

The full moon tonight

Living Alone…..

What would it be like to live alone? I sometimes think about this when I think about people who do live alone. Every once in a while I think how nice it would be to just be responsible for myself….but what would I actually do with no family and no pets around?

I realized today, because I was thinking about it, that I have actually never lived alone. When I was born I lived in the hospital for the first few days with all the other little babies, then I came home and lived with my parents and siblings and pets….obviously. When I went to College I lived with my sister and roommate, and then with my Aunt and Uncle and their children and their dog. After College I moved back home and lived with my parents again until I got married and then my husband and I lived together. It wasn’t long until the kids and pets came along and even after we separated I still had my children and my pets to live with. After our divorce I got remarried so today I live with my husband and two of my children and two dogs. I have never lived alone. 🙂

So I gave this living alone thing some thought because I often hear people who have families say they just wish they could be alone…..I’m not sure they really mean it. I think living alone would get boring fast at least for me. I would probably adjust but in the beginning I think it would be a bit like this…..

If I lived alone I would get up in the morning to my alarm clock and not to my husband waking me or my dogs whining to go out…..it would be very quiet. I would get up and start getting ready for the day. I would probably listen to music instead of the news while getting ready for work which means I would no longer know what’s going on in the world around me. Once I was ready for work, I would walk out of my house alone and say good-bye to nobody, no kids and no dogs to wish a good day to (and have to remember to lock the door). The drive to work would be quiet as the only conversation would be me talking to the radio….and I would hope nobody in the lane beside me noticed me talking out loud to nobody else in the car.

After work I would drive home alone (and have to dig out my own house key and not wait for my husband to unlock the door for me) and walk into an empty quiet house to be greeted by no one…..not even a wagging tail. The house of course would not be any messier than it was when I left because there would be no kids there to dirty dishes or leave their coats and back packs lying around, and no dog fur all over the carpet to have to vacuum up. I’m sure I would turn on the TV to make some sound in the quiet house and then I would decide what to have for dinner, alone. I could have whatever I wanted because I would only have to please myself  but how much fun would it be to cook for myself everyday and eat alone, most likely in front of the TV. I think I would probably become a couch potato and watch whatever was on TV whether I liked it or not because not only would I have control of the remote (once I figured out how to use it) but I would have no motivation to get up and do anything. No kids needing to go to their sports, no pups needing to be walked, no piles of laundry to do since it would be just my clothes. It would be just me and my TV in my too quiet house. I’m pretty sure I would go to bed early….yes even earlier than the 10:00pm I go to bed at now, and I would become a sleeper. I’m a pretty sleepy person now so with no reason to stay up or get up early I imagine my bed and I would become very close friends.

I’m sure that people that do live alone are adjusted to it and are not couch potatoes like I assume I would become. I’m sure they fill their days and evenings, but I have decided that living alone is not for me so I hope I never have to…an hour or two here and there would be fine but I appreciate sharing my space with my husband, my kids and my pets.

Bring on the chaos, the mess, the disorganization, the planning and preparing meals, and the running the roads, because I think it’s gotta be better than the alternative. 🙂

A Great Start to 2012…..

Today is the first day of 2012!!

Where did 2011 go and how did it disappear so quickly? I will probably be saying the same thing on January 1, 2013. People always say the older you get the faster time goes……they are correct.

If today is any kind of indication I think 2012 will be a good year. 🙂

I saw the New Year in while watching TV with my husband. I don’t normally stay up past midnight regardless of it marking the beginning of a new year but my youngest daughter was at her friends New Years Eve party and she didn’t take her key with her. We didn’t want to go to bed and leave the door unlocked and we didn’t want to lock it and go to bed only to have her ring the doorbell and wake us when she got home so we opted for staying up and waiting for her until shortly after 1:00am.

Thanks to my husband getting up to let the dogs out this morning I slept in until 9:30am and then spent the rest of the day lounging around in my pyjamas. Ok, that’s not quite true, I did get dressed to take the dogs for their walk and then changed into my pyjamas when I got back home, and then sat around watching TV and playing on my laptop for the rest of the day.

We would normally cook a ham for New Years Day dinner but my husband and I searched every grocery store in this city and there wasn’t a ham to be found anywhere, so we “settled” for turkey again. I am certainly not complaining, I love turkey.

Tiny Tom ready to become dinner.

We popped “Tiny Tom” into the oven shortly after 1:00pm and while he was cooking my husband made dessert. That’s right, my husband made banana cream pie for us to have with our dinner today. Yesterday we couldn’t decide what we might want for dessert with our dinner but my husband thought he might like to have banana cream pie like his mom used to make. I have never made banana cream pie so we bought the necessary ingredients and he put his cooking skills to work and made us a scrumptious pie.

Adding the banana slices to the top of the pie.

The finished product.

Hehehe now that we know he can make banana cream pie he’ll be on the hook for it more often. 🙂

Cooked to perfection.

Tom was good and ready to eat by 4:30 so we had an early dinner and then the girls and I did the dishes, of which there were many. After clean up I took a little nap and then spent the rest of the evening just relaxing with my husband and watching “The Mentalist – Red John Marathon”.

This has been my idea of a great start to the New Year!

Fathers Day…..

Today is Fathers Day…..a day to celebrate Dads!!

My husband is not the biological father of my four kids, but in every other way, he is their Dad and has been for the last 11 years.

In July of 2000 I packed up all of our personal belongings (what could be shipped in boxes, I sold or gave away most of our furniture), packed up my kids who were 15, 12, 8  and 5 at the time, said teary good byes to my parents, boarded a plane with crying kids,  and flew to Ontario to start a new life with the man who is today my husband and their dad.

My husband took on the responsibility of being a Dad to my kids right away, even though he had no personal experience being one, as he had no children of his own, and his dad had passed away when he was only 8 years old.

Becoming a new dad for the first time generally involves fathering an infant and maybe in the case of multiple births…..more than one infant at a time, which I am sure is difficult and tiring.  But becoming the dad of four mostly grown children who have left behind everything and everyone that they have ever known is a challenge in itself.

My kids accepted their new dad’s authority right away…..I like to take a little credit for that in teaching them to accept the authority of others…..

The kids never called Chris “Dad”, they always did and still do call him by his name when they are speaking to him, however it was always fun to hear them speaking with their friends on the phone or in person and refer to him as their dad. The first time we heard one of them say it was quite heart warming, Ryan told his friend on the phone that his dad could drop him off at his friends place. One of the first moments we knew they had accepted him as their dad.

My husband thought it was important that the kids continue playing sports, so Ryan was registered for hockey and baseball, Shana for soccer, Nick for hockey, baseball and soccer, Erika for baseball, soccer, track, cross-country and hockey for as long as they wanted to play. With 4 kids in different sports all at the same time, some days were tough trying to figure out how to get each child to the field or arena they needed to be at, especially when they all needed to be somewhere different all at the same time.  My husband always figured out a way to get it done and managed to see a bit of everyone’s game when possible. He has always been the ultimate “cheerer” for his kids no matter what sport it was, whether they were playing house league or travel sports, and he has always taken great pride in their accomplishments.

My husband was always and still is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure the kids get their homework done, even if they aren’t as caring about it as he is…..late night trips to the store to get the bristol board, for a project…..running out to buy ink for the printer when something just had to be printed off for the next day, spending hours on the phone with teachers trying to come up with ways to help when they were having problems. These situations generally came with a lecture for each of them on the importance of being responsible and planning ahead, which more than likely fell on deaf ears most of the time….but he has taken his parenting responsibilities seriously and loves these children as his own.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been clashes over the years, like there are in most families where you actually parent your kids, but over the past 11 years there have been some great family times, mixed with tears, hugs and kisses. The kids may not even realize it yet but they couldn’t have been loved more by any other Dad.

Chris....proud dad of his kids.......2008

Happy Fathers Day to my wonderful husband and the DAD to our 4 kids!!