Oh Deer!

Today was one of those days.
First: I was called to teach a half day at a school that is 45 minutes away on a good day with nice roads.
Second: It snowed today
Third: I got lost and was late for school
Fourth: I had a flat tire when I finished teaching. The very kind principal and vice principal helped me put the doughnut on.
Fifth: The roads were really icy and my car got stuck trying to get up the hill near my house, and that is where it sits currently.
Sixth: I saw a huge mule deer buck walk across the road in front of me as I walked home from my stranded car. It is the last day of hunting season and my hunter husband was only about 1 km from me, but my phone was dead and it took me 15 mins to get to the house to tell him about the deer. By that time it was long gone.
Seventh: My hunter husband asked me to drive him to a cut line so he could try to find this monstrous deer. As I was driving back home from dropping him off in the bush, the very deer he was stalking walked across the road in front of me again. It was in the opposite place that Mike was headed!

Yep, one of those days. Oh Deer!

Grandpa Al

Adventurous
Angler
Baker
Builder
Business Man
Card Player
Crazy Driver!
Courageous
Creative
Dancer
Determined
Easy Going
Funny
Gardener
Generous
Giver
Golfer
Good Cook
Great
Gruff
Handsome
Hard Worker
Helper
Humble
Hunter
Independent
Joker
Kind
Laughs A Lot
Listener
Loves Us
Messy
Night Owl
Optimistic
Patient
Quotable
Snacker
Soldier
Spoils Us
Sports Fan
Strong
Teacher
Tinkle in His Eye
Understanding
Valuable
Warm Hearted
X-Treme Bread Maker

Today I learned...

all about how to make:

Home Made Yogurt

Cloth Pads

Sweetened Condensed Milk

Crazy! Neat site, not convinced about the pads though (eeewww).

Check it out at www.hillbillyhousewife.com

Let's Talk About Me, Let's Talk About I, Let's Talk About #1, oh My Me My

100 Things

1. I'm married, 9 years
2. I'm a mom - 1 boy, 1 girl
3. I'm a sister - 1 sister, 1 brother
4. I like my in laws
5. I have a great grandma, we call her Nana, she is 101
6. I like to talk to Nana about books, teaching, recipes, my kids
7. I like listening to my dad play guitar and tell jokes
8. I talk to my mom 2 or 3 times a week (sometimes a day) about everything under the sun
9. I love interesting stories, books and blogs
10. I'd like to write an interesting story or book someday
11. I'm easily intimidated
12. I'm a first born
13. I'm married to a first born
    
14. I grew up in a family business (grocery store)
15. my favorite job was flattening the stock boxes
16. The job I liked the least was trimming green onions
17. I have peddled an ice cream cart
18. My husband & I now own a small business selling ice cream
19. I have never gotten tired of eating ice cream
20. I once got a citizenship award
21. I also got named female athlete of the year in grade 8
22. I am now 50lbs over weight and find it difficult to keep active!
23. I'm not into hugging
24. I do smile a lot and make eye contact
25. I talk more than I intend to in every situation
26. I like human biology
27. I don't like wiggly teeth! yuck!
28. I'm a subtitute teacher (I tell the kids to wiggle their teeth at home or on the bus)
29. I started blogging in April 2008
30. I still consider myself a N00b
31. I'm quite emotional - my ups are UP, my downs are DOWN
32. I'm not a great house keeper
33. I'm good at making friends
34. I dislike chicken soup & apple juice (once I mixed them and had to eat the product of my experiment)
35. My worst subjects in highschool were Chem & Math
36. My best subjects were Biology & Accounting
37. My favorite subjects were English & Social Studies
38. I like to shop alone or with my mom
39. I hate to be rushed
40. I'm a procrastinator
41. I worry too much
42. I like to scrapbook
43. I listen to country music
44. My favorite fruit in baking is rhubarb (is rhubarb a fruit?)
45. I don't like healthy stuff unless it's in baking!
46. I try to make myself eat healthy stuff anyway
47. My favorite grown up job was working in a cubicle for a health insurance company
48. I prefer cookies to crackers
49. I like coffee with International Delight and lots of it.
50. I think my eyes are my best feature
51. My husband thinks my lips are my best feature
52. My favorite movie is Life Is Beautiful
53. I take B-12 sub-lingual vitamins to help my mood swings
54. My favorite color is red
55. I keep 4 journals & my blog
56. I try to be open to new ideas
57. Change scares me
58. I'd love to have my hand writing analyzed
59. I contemplate plastic surgery
60. The cost is way too high for me so far
61. My latest hobby is "cupcaking"
62. My favorite hymns are: It is Well, How Great Thou Art,
63. I teach 3 year olds Sunday school
64. I like reading out loud
65. I'm planning to home-school
    
66. I hope to have more children some day
67. The biggest things I need prayer for are : Self control & Self respect
68. I wear glasses, sometimes contacts
69. My hair is straight and hates to curl
70. I love, love, love going to the spa but I always feel guilty about the $$$
71. The job I disliked the most, so far, is waitressing
72. Sometimes I wear socks to bed, but I always kick them off before morning
73. My heels are like sandpaper
74. I'm not afraid of bees or wasps. Yes, I have been stung
75. I'm afraid of snakes and will move out if one ever comes into my house
76. I chew my cuticles (gross eh!)
77. I love children's literature & historical fiction
78. I'm Canadian
79. I'm a night owl
80. I want to be an early bird, but it's not happening yet
81. I talk in my sleep often
82. I have had both an epidural and a no drug delivery
83. They were both painful
84. I get blogger envy easily
85. I'm trying to learn and accept that I EM what I EM
86. My favorite flower is a hydrangea
87. I'm right handed
88. I live in the country
89. I love the city
90. I don't really like camping very much anymore
91. I have helped my hunter husband dress a black bear
92. We eat wild meat, but I don't serve it to guests
93. I have washed dishes by hand 7 out of 9 years of marriage
94. I now have a dishwasher; it is behind our shed under a tarp right now
95. I like casseroles
96. My favorite pancake topping is chokecherry syrup with heavy cream
97. I hope to travel around Europe some day
98. I'm afraid of dying, or being badly injured
99. I take my kids trick or treating even though I dislike the concept of Halloween
100. I can't hear if I'm reading or watching t.v.
     

Pictures Once Again!!

The beginning of the new floor

Performing an inspection

Demolition expert

clean up crew

the mess always has to get worse before it gets better

all furniture, meals & family activities were crammed into our bedroom while the floor was being put down.

making bread (notice the new floor! I must have a better pic somewhere... when I find it I'll post)

Outside fort: making a halloween craft to decorate the fort

colorful googly eyed egg carton spiders

break & enter perp.

sleeping in their inside fort (card board box & mattresses)

Batman & Ballerina

Trick or Treat

(our milk jug pumpkins worked better than expected for collecting treats)

Happy fall everyone

Trying to get things done

I've been working on this and that lately. Trying to get to the point where I feel alright with the world, with myself, with my life...does that ever happen?

I have a good grip on our business books and am hoping to complete them by month end.

I've been trying to follow FLY Lady's routines and have managed to bless my family somewhat, I think...

I've been trying to keep up with my bible reading, but I haven't been feeling really engaged. It's ok though, faith is not a feeling it's believing truth regardless of how I'm feeling.

I've been setting my timer during computer time to reduce the addictive power it has on me, this works sometimes.

I've been trying to say nice things to myself, this is never easy, because I always say it with a smirk, eye roll, or head shake, but I need to stop the negative inner dialogue. I'm trying to treat myself the way I treat my friends (I honestly hope I'm nicer to you guys, cause I have no idea how I could keep my friends if I talked to you the way I sometimes talk to myself) still working on this and will be for the rest of my life.

I've been trying to pray instead of worry about little stuff like bills, health, the future...

I've been reading up lifting blogs and listening to a lot of Focus on the family, in fact I'm addicted to FOTF. Is that OK? I think this is the only thing, out of all the things that I'm hooked on (caffine, blogs, sugar), that is actually good for me, so I guess I'll just go and get a fix right now....

Ok, I'm back. I still need to work on getting a homeschooling routine down, getting to bed by 10pm, getting up by 7am, making good AND healthy food (it's either good OR healthy at this point) and reading to the kids more. With that I'm on my way to blog surf for some good ideas on how to accomplish the above... first I'm setting my timer.

Gnarly Dude

Today we made surf boards/wake boards/snow boards/skate boards they can be whatever you want them to be.

All Dade can talk about lately is skate boarding. It's hard to explain to him that skateboards don't like gravel roads! Pavement is a little scarce in our neck of the woods (literally), so we got creative today. We made the boards out of underlay foam that we had sitting around from our flooring project and decorated them with dollar store stickers. Cheap and Fun for the whole family. I hope this will satisfy his desire to skate board for now.

Dade even performed some rad moves. He's been watching Backyardigan's Surf's Up and had fun showing us his killer moves. Sorry I don't have any to post, they happened to fast for this camera toting mama. Maybe I'll catch some another day and post.

Strategies

OK. Here are my strategies to deal with my previous post's concerns:

• Return to FLY Lady: I went back to FLY Lady's website and wrote down her basic routines on sticky note that I put on my fridge. Hopefully this will help me to take the house keeping in stride and not get over whelmed.
• Set my timer: you notice that I wrote down FLY Lady's routines. This is so I won't be tempted to sit at the computer and put off the small jobs that build up and make me crazy. I'm also committing to setting my timer when I'm at the computer so I don't succumb to the procrastination sickness and languish in front of the computer ignoring my husband, children and home.
• Bedtime: is improving if I bribe my kids with candy. Does this seem wrong to anyone? No? Good. Well that's settled then. Thank goodness for my Halloween stash. I should have taken the kids to more houses! Dang!
• Focus on the Family: to improve my disposition toward house work I've started downloading FOTF podcasts and listening to some good parenting & marriage advice while I wash dishes or fold laundry. It really helps to improve my attitude. I'm sad to hear the Dr. Dobson will not be hosting the interviews after Feb 22nd. He's been giving me good advice since my high school Sunday school days. I'm sure the Focus on the Family team will continue to provide quality insight for Christian living, but Dr. Dobson will be missed by me.
• Daily Devotions: I'm trying to stick to my once a day bible. It has OT, NT, a Psalm and a Proverb. Sometimes I find it hard to slog through the OT, but other times there are some great messages that stand out to me. It is worth it and it helps, but it takes commitment and discipline, two things I have in very small quantities. Still, I am trying to listen to that small voice prompting me to spend time in the word, and it really is worth it.
  

7 & 10

I've learned that I can get up early (to me 7am is early), or I can stay up late (to me after 10pm is late), but I can't do both!
So after a few days of trying to do both I've decided it is in my best interest and everyone's around me to be in bed by 10 pm, no matter what!! I can't depend on sleeping in in the morning to help me catch up on rest, since I don't know when I'll be called to sub. A nap in the middle of the day, if I happen to be at home, doesn't happen even if I have the opportunity. There are just too many things yelling at me to get done.
Last night I went to bed at 9:30! It was heaven. At 7:03 when my son came into my room testifying of his hunger I didn't feel like getting up yet. When I did, however, I felt better than usual. I guess I need to make a habit and stick to it.
Things that keep me up past my bedtime include:

• Chores: I just want to get them all done so I can have that off my mind when I try to sleep, but they NEVER end!!! Everywhere I look, there they are. There is no escape. I need to build a strategy to deal with them in a more methodical way, rather than a huge cleaning spree.
• Children: Sometimes the bed time routine drags on and on and on! I'm getting a bit frustrated with my 2 year old who has to go to the bathroom 4 times in an hour and then insists that she needs a drink and that her water bottle has to be full! Irony!! I want to take time to tuck them in at bed time, read books, have a nice routine and then have them sleep. It always starts out that way, but by the 3rd potty parade I'm rolling my eyes, saying sarcastic things and generally being a grouch to the children I kissed and cuddled 30 minutes earlier. Sigh.
• Computer/shows/blogs: When all is finally quiet I feel like I should be rewarded with a nice long zone out in front of the computer. It is easy to stay up late, hooked to these time wasters when you have the entire series of LOST to catch up on! Technology is a procrastinator enabler, and boy does it help me to put off all kinds of stuff, including sleep.

Today I'm going to try to think of some good strategies to combat these pit falls. If anyone out there has any good been there done that advice please feel free to share.