Wednesday, August 24, 2011

School is coming, school is coming!

I've been off work now for three weeks.  I'm getting some great sleep, I'm getting my house organized and I'm doing a lot of cooking and reading.  It occurred to me Monday morning that I should probably create some kind of schedule for myself and the kids each day - or maybe get up before 8 am.  School is coming and we are all going to have to get up at 7 am soon and get out the door by 8:15 am.  It's going to be a shock to their little minds, and mine.  We have all of our school supplies and we are counting down the 14 days until school starts.  Since I was feeling motivated and all scheduley on Monday, I got up at 7:45, did some research on the internet, got the girls to clean their rooms and did a few loads of laundry.  The one thing we do every evening is go outside from 6:30-8pm and play with the kids on the block.  They ride bikes, go to the playground and play hide and seek while the other moms and I hang out and chat about our To Do lists. 
 Things still left on our summer fun list include - a second visit to Cedar Park Resort, a visit to Ontario Place, a bike ride at a local conservation area and camping overnight - just me and the girls - at a nearby Provincial Park.  There are a few other things I'd like to do with the girls this year - but I think I'll wait until cabin fever sets in around February to visit Science Centre, Casa Loma and the Royal Ontario Museum

We've already had a great summer but it feels like it will all be over before we know it.  Maybe getting up earlier won't be so bad - it will mean some extra time to myself and a longer day of fun.  What is your summer looking like?

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Things that I looked up on the internet this week:

What came first?
What is Missy Elliott saying backwards in her song Work It?  I’ve always wondered and when the song got stuck in my head the other morning I decided to look it up.  She is saying “I put my thing down flip
it and reverse it” backwards.  Whew, another of life’s mysteries solved!

How do you make peanut butter cookies with natural peanut butter?  I know it’s easy with regular peanut butter – add an egg and more sugar! – but I wanted to see how much more sugar I needed to add with natural peanut butter.  Turns out after checking with a few of my favorite sites, you still use the same ratio of sugar to peanut butter (1 c PB, 1 c sugar).  Using the natural peanut butter saves you the extra sugar (and whatever else) that is actually in the peanut butter but that’s all.
What is a uvula for?  My eight year old asks the most interesting questions these days.  Do you know what a uvula is for?

What came first, the chicken or the egg?  Hah!  A common back and forth in my house these days with my oldest, after puzzling about it for a while we looked it up.  My interpretation of the answer on Wikipedia - the egg.  

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Picky Eater

My 8 year old daughter, Maddy is a picky eater.  I blame myself.  I fed her jarred food (blech!) and for years I asked her what she wanted to eat and gave her options instead of just giving her what we were having.  My daughter Tee is a great eater, she'll try anything and eats everything we put in front of her.  I started her on natural foods that I made myself with a lot of variety.  This is one of the great things about having two children, that you learn from the first and try not to make the same mistakes with the second.  But I digress.  Maddy rarely branches out and tries new things and would eat hamburgers everyday if I let her.  She likes to eat cereal, vanilla yogert, plain pasta, toast, rice, chicken and some veggies.  So the other day I gave her a hamburger for lunch on a bun I bought at a bakery.  It looked a little different than the buns we usually buy but it was still white bread (not those dreadful wheat buns that Maddy doesn't like).  But when I came back with Maddy's cup of milk, this is what I found.  She had taken her dislike of crust to a whole new level - and peeled her hamburger bun.  Sigh.  Before and after. 

Monday, August 8, 2011

Who me? I've been working.

For 20 years I've been an employee, save two maternity leaves where my boss was a squalling baby.  And now I'm unemployed.  I had a great sent off from my job and am genuinely happy that I'm at home with my kids.  So now what?   I'm going to have a great summer and start writing my business plan.  I'm in no rush to get back to work but I am thinking about what I'm going to do when the kids go back to school.  I will be blogging and waiting.  And that's all I can do.  For now, I'm enjoying two weeks off with my husband and kids and not thinking too much about the future.  And it's nice, and I'm happy. :)

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