Ball Hockey is here!

Little J has started Ball Hockey. This is our first foray into team sports and well, we may need to adjust our expectations a tad. Band Camp really isn't that bad.....

Is it? I went to Band Camp and look at me.....perfectly phlucked up. Oh dear...

Little J has the attention span of 3.2 seconds {see Easter Post} so he spends most of the hour spinning in circles in the middle of the rink. He will take out someones eye if they stray too close.

He is the smallest player. Period. Even the girls are bigger! The division is for kids born in 2003/2004 so he is playing with 5+ year olds but still, he looks like a midget. {no offence to Little People}

He comes off the rink at least 4 times 'for a drink of water'. Ya-huh..how dumb does Mommy look?

He has no interest in chasing the ball, scoring goals or even stopping the ball when HE's in goal. Kinda defeats the purpose eh?

I'm fairly certain that the other parents are talking behind their hands about the little, un-co-ordinated, non-athletic but very cute kid on the other team. I swear I can feel the pitying stares. Fortunately, Little J doesn't seem to give a hoot that he sucks, so why do I feel bad?

I gotta learn to chill out. So he might not be some sort of athlete. It's not supposed to be about me. I need to support him no matter what he decides to do with his life. Something like becoming a drag-queen may take me some time to adjust though. :)

I just hope to god he's smart. I can't afford to send him to University on my own. I need scholarship $$$.

At least he's cute. If he learns how to use his baby-blues, he may be able to coast though life without a care in the world. {or employable skills}


Oh ya... and his team is the Delta Yellow Bananas. How freakin adorable is that??


Jock-head


In his uniform..it's so big it looks like a dress :)

Rabid Squirrels and The Easter Bunny

*WARNING* There will be lots of pictures. Deal with it. It's my Blog and I'll do what I want to. :) Sung to the tune of "It's my party (and I'll cry if I want to)



This year for Easter we were all home at the same time. Usually, Big J is off on his first fishing trip of the year, or I am working, but this year the lakes were still
frozen over {yipee} and I started vacation on Friday.

I planned to cram in as much Easter-fun as I could manage. Unfortunately, things never work out the way I plan.

Little J had his first Ball Hockey practice on Friday and um well, that will be a post all unto itself... anyways, we had a limited window of opportunity to colour Easter eggs. I had it all planned out in my head. All of us huddled around the table, taking turns dipping eggs and bonding as a family over a wholesome and fun craft. I apparently had someones elses family in my head.

There were tears, spilled dye, broken eggs, yelling and a child with the attention span of 3.2 seconds. We are not the poster family for Norman Rockwell. We managed to get some of them done before I stabbed myself in the eye with a fork.









On Sat we headed over to the Inlaws for an egg hunt and dinner at their place. Grandma had hidden plastic eggs a few hours earlier for when Cousin Em and Little J came over. Out we go to see what the Easter Bunny left us....

At first it all seemed normal then we got a closer look at the eggs...they were open and EMPTY! Some were cracked open and there were smarties scattered all over the yard. The rabid crazy squirrels had beat us to the eggs! The little bastards stole our dang chocolate!! Oh the horror! You'd think we had the Easter Bunny roasting on a spit over a roaring fire judging by the kids' reaction. Good thing the Easter Bunny had left the good stuff INSIDE the house. :) And the traditional Easter dinner at my Inlaws house in Chinese food. To which Little J asks "How can we eat Chinese food in Canada?". We told him we brought it in from China on a plane. He thought that was pretty cool.









*note the dog attempting to steal the eggs in the basket....



Sunday morning the Easter Bunny came to our house...first we had to find all 22 eggs

{the um, er, Easter Bunny dropped 2 in the hiding process}





Even Mr Fatty-Mc-Butter-Pants got into the action...



Little J mentioned that the EB didn't do a good job hiding because he found all the eggs so easily. "Mommy the Easter Bunny needs a lesson in hiding". Well geez..I had to make them easy to find. I wasn't about to lose any hard-boiled and raw eggs in my living room. It's not a pleasant smell when those babies start to rot. Don't ask me how I know :)

After finding all the eggs we could look for the 'Big Basket'

Found it!



He loved his stickers and sidewalk chalk. He didn't even notice there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of candy in it.

The Easter Bunny even left a present in Little J's room {ok ok, I forgot to put it in the basket the night before but J thought it was 'super-way-cool' that the EB snuck it in his room while he was sleeping. Why aren't kids freaked out by the thought of strangers sneaking into their bedrooms at night?}}



We headed out to my folks for Easter dinner there. We came back with one less person.
We seem to have left our child behind. :) Little J is having a sleepover for a few days so Mommy and Daddy can get some work done. Mostly so Mommy can have a mental health break. I love my child with every breath in my body and soul but dang, he drives me completely bonkers. He can drive Oma and Opa crazy for a few days and I'll head out and pick him up on Wednesday but for now, I am enjoying my kidlessness. I may even sleep in tomorrow. If the hubby lets me, he's a slave driver.

I hope everyone had a happy holiday!

HAPPY {Fill-in-the-blank}

Happy Easter!

Happy Passover!

Happy Visakhi!

Happy Easter Bunny!


Peace

Really?

I got nothin to contribute today. Too dang tired. But....

I wanted to post a pic of something I saw on the weekend.



That my friends, is a French Fry Vending machine! Have you ever heard of such a thing? How would one even think of needing a Fry Vending machine?
I can't even fathom how that would work? What kind of person actually BUYS fries out of a vending machine? How do they fry? Are there Leprechauns hanging out by a deep fryer tucked in the back just waiting for the Twoonie to clink? {note: Twoonie is a Canadian $2 coin}

I watched it for a while hoping some schmuck would come up and buy some so I could rubber-neck but alas, no one ventured up to it. And I work too damn hard for my $2 to buy some myself. So um ya, if anyone has tried it let me know!

A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

I got this fabulous award from Trace, thank you ever so much! So now I have to nominate 5 blogs to share this with. How can I pick just 5? I love all the blogs I read. I also do not want to ruin my so-far-so-good Monday morning by making decisions. {and truth be told, I have no flippin clue how to so the linky thing, you know, where you just click the word and poof! you are at the site? Ya I suck, I know}
You have no idea how long it took me to figure out how to get the pic on my post!

So, I nominate ALL of you! Go on and spread the joy to everyone!!! You can do it!!


It is a balmy 16.7C here this morning. {61F for my non-metric reader}. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and my flowers are blooming. I love spring. We have had so much rain/snow the last few weeks. I am very sensitive to air pressure changes and when we get back-to-back weather systems of high pressure/low pressure my head feels like it's going to explode. Picture a balloon inside my head inflating and deflating..not fun. Thankfully this weather system will hang out for a few days so I should be headache free to enjoy it!

Popcorn Thought.... Metric vs. Imperial. I am odd and I use both. I speak in terms of distance {kilometres} and temperature {Celsius} but use pounds, inches, feet, height in Imperial. How confusing is that? I could not tell you how far 300 metres is but I can eyeball 300 feet. I weigh 45.5 kilo's. How many Lbs is that? Pop quiz Nurse Julie!


My husband now insists that we call him "The Dog Whisperer" because he can talk to animals. According to him, Tahoe is the brightest puppy to ever walk the earth and he is just the expert to tap into her potential. I'll believe it when she stops peeing in my kitchen. Perhaps he can teach the puppy to do dishes? vacuum? The lack of opposable thumbs may make some tasks quite difficult so we'll keep it simple.
She is showing true to her Retriever heritage. If it's not heavier than her she will bring it. I have quite the assortment of um 'things' up on my deck...tree bark, pine cones, buckets, rocks, a piece of 2by4 lumber and a few balls. She is going to fit right in with this family as I also have the Retriever instinct. I bring lots of stuff INTO the house but not much LEAVES it. :)

Big J has figured out the combination of Little J and Tahoe equals Chick Magnet!
He's taken the 2 of them out together a few times and all sorts of people, including cute young girls, come up to pet the puppy and pinch the kids cheeks. Granted, the kid and dog ARE both cute and somewhat furry. Should I be suspicious now that Little J is more than happy to run errands without ME but with the Dynamic Duo? Hmmm......

From the "They Really Do Pay Attention" Dept... heading out to drop off Little J at school this morning, I stopped to show him the flowers that were starting to bloom.
He sort of nodded and started running at the mouth with his random bits of conversation that I usually tune out as it makes no sense to me but all of a sudden I heard...."Then the bees will come and polnate the flowers to make honey to go to all the little boys who like peanut butter and honey sandwiches" Can you spot the smart part of that sentence? The kid knows about pollination and bees n' shit. I asked him how he knew about bees/flowers making honey and he looked at me like I was stupid, sighed dramatically and said 'Mommy, I watched Bee Movie, weren't you listening when they said how to make honey?" Oh.....! Moral of this story is, parking your kid in front of the TV watching DVD's is educational not neglectful, lazy parenting. :)

The downside to TV is the commercials. I used to hear "Oh Mommy that xyz is sooo cool! I want that! Can I have it?". I think I've managed to convince the child that most of the stuff he sees on TV is only available in the US. "Oh honey, I don't think we can get that here in Canada..let me check the website....Nope, only in the US. Sorry Dude". Will I go to hell for this? Do I care?


We went to a school {daycare} friends party yesterday. It was held at a local playplace we had not been to before and we will never be going back again! It was in an old casino and was, I don't even know how to describe it, um...dirty? cheap? old? creepy? It was dark and dingy. They had about 10 or so ancient arcade games they must have picked up off Free-cycle, bumper cars {which were ok}, lazer tag {cheap} and a bouncy slide. Everything was so freakin expensive. I think it was $15 per kid for 10 tokens {and most games took 2 tokens} and greasy pizza. The guys who worked the bumper cars and lazer tag looked like they were out on parole or hiding out from the law. I didn't take my eyes off the kid and was Mama Bear all over his arse. And of course, Little J LOVED it and we were the last ones to leave after 3 hours. UGH!

Popcorn Thought......kids bday parties. We are going to see the same group of kids/parents over the next few years as 8 of the daycare group are the same age and will be going to the same elementary school and will most likely be in the same classes. What the hell do you do for their Birthday party without breaking the bank?
I don't want to go to Chuck-E-Cheese or other stupidly expensive playplace. I want to do it at our house. We can rent a HUGE bounce house from a buddy for cheap. We set up some games in the backyard like horseshoes/ring toss, badminton etc and the parents can sit and hang out on the deck. This would be perfect if the weather is nice. I can fit 40 people in the backyard/deck. I can fit about 10 IN my house. No way we could have the party inside. See my dilemma? Little J's birthday is in June and we have been rained out 3 out of the last 4 years! But, we only had family parties so it was ok. The adults had beer, the kids ran amok in my house.
Am I crazy for stressing out about this 3 months in advance??

I am off to nap. I am working graveyards this week to finish inventory prep for work.
Inventory happens once a year and it is a BITCH! We have millions of $$ in inventory and every.single pen, file folder, ink cartridge, software, chair, pack of paper etc. must be counted.
Guess who lucked out and booked vacation during inventory week? ME!! SCORE!!
But I have to spend this week making sure my side of the store is clean, tagged and organized for counting. Ask me how happy I am to not have to deal with people this week? So a week of graveyards, then a week of vacation and then I fly out of town for 4 days for a training symposium.
I am off the floor at work for almost 3 glorious weeks. It just may be long enough for the bitterness I feel when dealing with insane customers to subside. Maybe.

I may not be posting as much this week but I'll be reading ya'll at 3am to stay awake on my breaks. I'll be drinking A LOT of RedBull, here's hoping it really does give me wings and not a heart attack. :0

How does your garden grow?

After reading this post most of you will wonder how in heck I managed to raise a live human being without causing lasting and permanent damage {the jury is still out on that one..}

Little J saw a commercial for Chia Pets just before Christmas and begged me every.dang.day to ask Santa to bring him one. I figured I could use this as a learning opportunity to teach Little J responsibility for caring for something living. Watering, putting in light etc.

I am full of ideas that sound fabulous in theory and make me sound like an intelligent involved creative mom. Dazzle them with Bullshit. :) If only real life worked out as well.....

Chia did very well at first, we kept him watered, moved him around the house to the best windowsill and left the radio on so he wouldn't get lonely. As Chia began to grow we noticed something was terribly wrong. The 'stuff' was growing off it's head. It looked nothing like the full, succulent, happy Chias we saw on TV. I felt ripped off. Could we have screwed it up? A chia pet? Easier than freakin Sea Monkeys?

I dug out the instructions that I had tossed oh so nonchalantly on the table assuming that they were not needed. Come on people, what kind of moron needs directions for a Chia pet? But I digress....
Imagine my surprise to read that there are 3 applications included.

We had shmushed ALL of the seeds onto poor chia's head at once. There was of course no cure or 'fix' for our error and we could only wait and watch.

I tried to fix Chia, pulling off excess seeds, stretching delicate strands of green to even it out {similar to an old man comb-over} but I couldn't fix him.

This is how Chia turned out before all his 'hair' pulled off his head and plopped on the counter.




..................... it's ok, I wait here until you stop laughing............I've got nowhere to be...........did you need some water?............ready?..............

Shortly after this picture was taken, he shriveled up and he got recycled as a planter in my real garden.

Then last week Auntie Bones stops by for a visit and brings a Grass-head. Auntie Bones brings Little J a present every time she visits {Auntie Bones is my BFF} She laughed so hard when she heard about the Chia pet that she just about peed herself {she also birthed a 10lb child with no drugs!} So to torture me, she brings this stupid grass-head. I fear we may be in for another disappointment but so far so good....we have kept Mr.Grass head alive and well for a week now :)





He looks kinda creepy now that I think about it, maybe I'll put him outside tonight.

Lost and Found

I have become one of 'those' people. You know the ones. The crazy people who drop big bucks on their........animal. The people you silently pity and openly mock.

I actually bought the damn dog freakin reindeer antlers and a jingle collar for Christmas. Ya, the holiday that happens in oh, about 8 months. In my defence, it was 70% off so it was a bargain. Petcetera is going bankrupt so we headed over to pick over the leftovers like rabid vultures. The dog got MORE chewy toys {anything to save my slippers}, and the kitties got catnip and food.

If the puppy would stop peeing on my kitchen floor I would be so happy. There always seemed to be a puddle of pee right in front of the stove, even though the dog was outside and the floors had been mopped and dried. It would just appear. Big J was convinced it was a vision, a sign of Divine Intention like a weeping Madonna or the image of the Virgin Mary burned into a piece of toast.

I burst that bubble pretty quickly when I pulled out the broiler drawer to peek under the stove. Oh sweet mother of pearl.....there were things under there I didn't even know we lost!

2 matchbox cars
1 tennis ball
3 balls of unknown origin
6 pieces of lego
2 fridge magnets
The letters D, X and Q
1 water bottle
2 beercan tabs
Dust Bunnies the size of Okla-by-god-homa.
$4.92 in coins
5 pens
1 broken salt shaker

So I guess the dog would pee and it would run under the stove and then seep back out. The sad part is it took dog pee for me to discover {or care} that the broiler drawer pulled out. :)

And just to prove how crazy my family is, here is a video of Little J dancing and Tahoe in the tub.







Cheers!