Northward Bound

We're coming up on the Civic Holiday weekend here in Canada. And for the past many years this has been a weekend where my family (my parents, my sisters and I and our respective families) head up north to our family cottage to get a little silly and crazy and have a general good time. Unfortunately this year our youngest sister won't be able to join us but we're still looking forward to a great weekend of swimming, sunning, bonfires, games and cottage dance parties.

There's just something about the cottage. I spent most of every summer growing up there. I got engaged and married there. I've spent countless birthdays, family celebrations, corn roasts, boat rallies and Canada Days up there. I would live there if I could...

I often joke that if it weren't for the fact that I'm so obviously addicted to things like social media, digital photography and my e-reader that I should have been born in a different century. I love to do things like knit and crochet, sew, and I put up tonnes of homemade pickles and jams each year. And there's something about being up north, where our cell phones don't work and there's no Internet that just.... refreshes my soul. I usually bring my guitar and my yoga mat. And I spend a lot more time sitting, drinking tea and talking to my family members - live and in person than I normally do. Getting up early to go and do yoga on the dock as the sun burns the fog off the water, drinking tea in Adirondack chairs, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over a bonfire, and singing silly songs with my Dad and my kids while I play my guitar... those are the things that have real, honest, value in my life.

I look at this weekend away as a kind of retreat. I will miss you bloggies - but I will return to my normal, electronically filled life far too soon - but for now - I'm packing up and heading northward bound. One of the places my heart calls home.

Hope you're having a peace and rest-filled weekend too!
Talk soon.
Tea.

On Track.... ish

Wow - it's been a while blog-o-sphere - sorry about that.
Two things:
1) I'm going to start posting here more regularly - promise. HOWEVER, I may post about boring/weird/awkward/bizarre situations that are generally just, y'know LIFE. Ugh. So, consider this your fair warning. If you wish to just be amused and not challenged in any way shape or form by the internets then please click here instead: Go fun times!

2) I will not be posting What Mama Wears on Talk and Tea Leaves any longer. WMW has it's own new shiny home. And it can be found right here! What Mama Wears


SO - what's new, you ask? (Well thanks for askin!) Um, everything and nothing. Obvs. I'm still unemployed, except that my little sister and I have a totally home-based, friends of friends cake business! Yay! Actually it's super fun, we have a great time baking and creating and we want to share the love of cake (Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeee) with everyone. It's called Candy Girls Cake Co. Because we both used to have the last name Candy! And it's so sweet! And fun! And kitschy! And this is a lot of exclamation points!

Other than that. I've gained weight. Ugh. So not fun, but terribly terribly true. Which is one of the reasons I've started up WMW again because let's be honest, plus-sized clothing for tall girls with boobage is so ugh.

My kiddos are SO big now. We went on our first ever family vacation with just the 4 of us - yippee! Except that we decided to drive from Ontario to Alberta to stay in Calgary with friends. The staying in Calgary with friends part was AWESOME, the driving 40 hours there and 40 hours back with 2 kids in a jam-packed 20 year old Nissan Sentra was..... less.... awesome.

My littl'un is actually going to start school in September - all day, every day Junior Kindergarten. Which means..... Mama is going to be lookin for a job! But I need that job to have me work Mon-Fri between like 9:30am to 2:30pm... I know, right - TONNES of options. But I digress.

So now - because you've been such good little readers, I will leave you with some pictures from our family vacay - just the highlights here kids!

Talk soon!
Tea

 

My boys, hangin at the Hoodoos!

 For reals kids! That's the woodchipper from Fargo! Yeah? Yeah! Jeez!

 Just me, holdin hands with Toby Keith like it's NBD

 Dog River! Word!

 Corner Gas Baby!

 The Ruby! Hey, Kids! Get that F & E off my lawn!

 Littl'un and his buddy T-Rex at the Royal Tyrell Museum, Drumheller

 Best. Day. Ever.
Hubs? Can we move to Banff?

Corner of Moose & Squirrel in Downtown Banff

 STAMPEDE!

 Miss you so much already! Friends are the Family you choose. :)

Make it: Advent wreath

So, I'm officially fed up with the crazed commercialization of Christmas. My kids are on complete overdrive! It seems like the second that Hallowe'en was over, Christmas advertising started.

Recently, we asked our boys why we have Christmas - their responses were expected: Santa! Presents! Christmas Tree!

Boy oh boy - we have some work to do.

I asked them if they knew WHY we celebrate Christmas? Nope. I asked them if they knew what Advent was? No clue.

We decided that this year, as a family, we would work on what Advent means to us, as Christians in today's world. It's a time of preparation, of anticipation, and rejoicing. To help remember these lessons I made an advent candle wreath for our home, which we will light with the boys each Sunday evening of Advent before they go to bed. That, along with the advent calendar of books I'm preparing (another post) we're hoping to have some real, honest, open discussions with our boys about why we celebrate Christmas, what we believe, and how to make that a part of our everyday lives.


Onto the project!
I started by gathering supplies:

  - Grapevine wreath (Michael's $4.99)
 - votive candles (Walmart, $1 ea)
 - White pillar candle (Walmart $2)
 - Christmas decorative sprigs (Michael's $1.69 ea)
 - side cutters
 - scissors
 - LED light pack (Michael's $7.50)
 - labels
 - twine or leather stringing

Step 1

 Cut apart the decorative sprigs using the side cutters and weave them into the top of the wreath for some colour

 Note the quality control inspector ^

Step 2

 Weave the LED light string into the wreath from the bottom

Step 3

 Using hot glue, glue the four votive candle holders evenly spaced around the wreath.
Step 4

 Create Hope, Peace, Joy & Love labels for each of the four votive candles. The Joy candle is the pink candle
Step 5

 Using leather stringing or twine place a dot of glue on the back of the candle holder to start to attach the string, wrap a couple of times around the votive, slide on the label, and then keep wrapping until the end of the string. Secure with hot glue.

Place somewhere in your house and put the white Christmas/Christ candle in the centre.

 Voila! Family advent wreath. :)

Here's a couple of resources for Advent and kids that I have been using to help me prepare for this season with my kids:

http://ministry-to-children.com/advent-lessons-nativity/
http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/Advent/preparing-children.html
http://simplekids.net/advent-2012/
http://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/holidays/making-meaningful-christmas-memories/celebrate-advent.aspx

How are you celebrating the season of Advent with your kids? Do you have any go-to resources?
Here's to the season of waiting, anticipating, and preparing.

Tea.

Sometimes Moms shout...

An Open Letter to the woman who shouted at me in the Michael's parking lot for shouting to admonish my 5 year old.

Hi there,

Thanks for shouting at me across the parking lot while I struggled to get my two boys out of the car and into the store this morning. It was especially helpful for you to berate and admonish me for shouting at my five year old after he quite literally slammed his door open into the fancy SUV we were parked beside. Especially since, just moments before, I said to him "Buddy, these parking spaces are small, make sure you open your door carefully, okay?"

Valentine.............

Ah, Valentine's Day. A day where some embrace the cheesy, lovey quality of an admittedly corporately created holiday, and some rail against the proclamations of love and hearts and flowers and chocolate and all that's sweet.

I had a friend on FB remind everyone this morning that St. Valentine is actually the patron saint of bees, epilepsy and plagues. I wished him many plagues of seizing bees. I do what I can.

Make it! Hallowe'en Costume edition

SO - this year the Big'un decided that he wanted to be a Knight for Hallowe'en. And so far, the littl'un has picked complimentary costume ideas... so HE decided he wanted to be a dragon. "Mama? You can make those costumes right?"


Uh........... right. Of course I can. Mama can make almost anything (see - I put the almost in there... Mama aint a dummy either)... and so.... I give you Hallowe'en 2012 costumes - make it!

Guilty Little Fashion Secrets...

I have a confession to make.

I love fashion blogs.

I read several, I'm always clicking through pins to one fashion blog to another. I get drawn in by pics of great causal outfits, coloured jeans, bright print scarves, funky tights, great shoes, boots - oh the boots get me every time.

I have a few faves too:

Where did we go wrong?

We had our first phone call from the school today. When I saw the school's name come up on the call display, I'll admit my first thought was "Oh, I wonder if my big'un is sick..."

yeah... not so much.

Nope, the call wasn't to let me know he wasn't feeling well, it was to let me know that my child is a problem. A serious problem. A physically-hurting-other-kids kind of problem.

I managed to get through the phone call with the teacher without breaking down - points for me. But after hanging up I will admit that I am at a complete and utter loss. I have no idea what to do. I have no idea how to move forward. I want to support the teacher, I want to work towards my big'un behaving appropriately in class and in the schoolyard - and while I was not even remotely shocked when she told me last week that he was having "listening problems" (Hi. Yeah. Welcome to my every day.) when she called to tell me about his behaviour today (even going so far as to having to make him sit completely alone at lunchtime) I was actually shocked.

Don't laugh.

Remember when they said, "Let kids be kids"? I do...

Ugh... so... dealing with some frustrations here blog-o-sphere... and I thought I'd share them with you.

First off: the big'un started school last Tuesday. He's 4, so that means that here in Ontario he goes to the "2 year Kindergarden Program"... that's school all day, every day. At 4 years old.

Now - I'm not actually complaining about him going to school everyday, because the big'un is one of those kids who really really really wanted to go to school. He loves it. Everyday he comes home and tells me he had a good day and he wants to go back tomorrow. Fantastic! He even decided after the first short week of school that he no longer wanted to come home for lunch (even though we live, literally, around the bend from the school) but that he wanted to stay all day and eat lunch at school with his class. No problem, done. He's stayed for lunch every day since then.

But then last night was "Meet the Teacher" night. We've met the teacher a couple of times already, spoke to her briefly on a few occasions of pick ups and drop offs, but yesterday afternoon she met the Hubs when he picked up the big'un and told him that they were having some "listening problems" and, even worse, that when she told him to listen to her and look at her when she was speaking that he "made a gun with his fingers and pretended to shoot at her.".

Fabulous.

OMG... I'm 30.

I've been thinking about writing this post for some time now. I'll readily admit - I'm not one of those women who wants to stay forever at 29. I am embracing 30 wholeheartedly. Honest. And it's not turning 30 and getting older that's weighing on my mind, it's looking back over the last 30 years of my life, and wondering -like the great Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime - How did I get here?!

When I was a kid, and someone asked me about my  future, I probably would have said something really kind of trite (I was sort of an obnoxious, sarcastic kid) like that I was going to "Be a lawyer, but not a criminal lawyer, a business lawyer, so I won't have to represent real criminals".  Shows what I knew then, huh?

Later on, I would have said that I was going to be a teacher (nope, don't like kids that much), a musician (who really makes it in the music business anyway? not me!), a youth minister (well that lasted about 2 years), a writer (well.... maybe....), and hey - I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. ;) But I don't think, when growing up, I ever - EVER - mentioned being married, having kids, volunteering at my church in many forms, driving a school bus, being a crafts person, an artist. I didn't know what it meant to "grow up".

Grieving and Moving forward.

It may sound silly, but I feel like writing this post is necessary for my current grieving process. Sometimes, the best thing about a blog is that you get a chance to get everything out at once. It's not a conversation with someone (though those are often awesome as well), you can cry and keep on typing, you can edit how you say things (without your readers ever knowing that you aren't so clever the first go-round all. the. time.) and you can blog about difficult things, and move that little bit forward in a tough situation without having to sound calm, and collected, and any other manner of emotions that you're not.

Dear readers, some of you may know, many will not, that I have had a "tough go of it" (as my Grandmother would say) lately. And I know that there will be parts of this story that get left out, there will be parts that aren't chronological, and to be perfectly honest, no matter who ends up reading this, the reality is, it may not be for you. The reality is that this blog post is for me.

As I sit here to write this, I am almost 2 weeks post-op for an emergency surgery for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Layman's terms: I had surgery because I had a pregnancy that implanted in the tube instead of in the womb, and it burst, and bled. A lot. It was dangerous. It was potentially fatal. It was scary.

Whoa whoa, back up the truck, you might be saying. Or perhaps you're just staring at the screen. Don't worry, I'm not going to use a lot of medical terms, and I'll try not to give out too many "gory details", because I don't actually want to talk about the physical surgery here much. Believe it or not, that's not the hard part.

Easter - and the things kids say

I'm certain I've posted previously about the *ahem* wonderful things that my almost-4-year-old "big'un" says from time to time - like the time he condescendingly told another child at the playgroup
"You know, SOME people don't know how to share... and THAT'S sad."
Me - praying that the other child's mother didn't hear MY words just come out of my kid's mouth - eep!

And this year around Easter - my kiddos had some real gems - so I thought I'd share them with you. Laugh at my socially-awkward-child-induced horror if you will.

A couple of weeks before Easter, Big'un tells me he "needs to go to the library and get a book". Fair enough, so off we go to the library. We head over to the kid book section and he's looking around and I ask him "What kind of book are you looking for buddy?"

"An Easter Book"

Meanwhile, the kid's been sorting through the 40-odd Easter books that are right. there. on the shelf in front of him.

So I say
"Well, there's a whole bunch right there, so why don't you just pick one?"

He eyes me, as if to say - duh, Mom, OBVIOUSLY the book I'M looking for ISN'T here - and says

"I'm gonna ask the Lady" (he means the Librarian).

Kids are nuts! Well... mine are...

So, I don't blog about my kids very often... it's not that I don't have things to say about them, but often I start writing about something that I think is hilarious and halfway through I start thinking "Is this funny to anyone else? Or does it just make me look crazy? Or my kids crazy? Maybe we are crazy?!" etc etc etc. And then I delete it and write about crafts instead. Which is cool - but let's be honest, it makes it seem like I have a LOT of time for crafts... I don't.

Here's the deal. I've got two kiddos: Big'un is going to be 4 at the end of June, and Littl'un is going to be 2 on Friday. 2? TWO?! Two. Ugh.

And they're funny. Well, WE (the hubs and I) think they're funny. They say funny things - they make jokes that make no sense. And sometimes, when they're MOST funny - is when they're TOTALLY serious.

Example: The big'un got new rubber boots this year. Spiderman boots. Now - we KNEW that we had fire-man rubber boots SOMEWHERE in our house, so when little'un got to pick out his raincoat, he picked out a fireman coat because we had (foolishly) told him about the boots. Well, we couldn't find 'em. And he kept trying to wear the big'uns boots. Fights ensued, and last night, miracle of miracles - we found the fireman boots.

Unplanned hiatus

Hello blog-o-sphere,

So - I've been on a bit of an unplanned hiatus. For a few reasons. The main/first reason was that I was planning/organizing a super-amazing worship night at our church. We do them a couple of times a year, and I'm usually PART of the organizing type group, but for a few different reasons I felt like it kind of ALL came down to me this time. For that reason I was out of my head busy with song lists, order of service, powerpoint, interactive worship planning/prep, videos, dance prep, timing,  etc etc etc. Plus I had 3 practices a week being in the worship band and the liturgical dance group. So all of that, plus my regular stupidly busy life made me a little bit... ca-razy. But it's done now, it was a fantastic night, everything went fairly smoothly (one little powerpoint hiccup and the wrong music at the start of one of the dance offerings, but nothing's perfect).

KTP Sabotage!

SO - Saturday evening just past we had a HUGE party at our house for the hubs' 30th birthday. It was a "surprise" and by that I mean - he pretty much figured it out, but was def. surprised at the fact that we fit about 50 people in our little house. Frankly - I was surprised at that. There was some cheeky talk about whether or not the floor would hold... but it turned out to be a pretty great night.

The house was immaculate (for like the first time since we moved there I think), the food was great (done up right by me, my Mom, and the Moms-in-law), the people were awesome (all our friends are, obvs.) and the party was generally considered a success.

And then I had to clean up. Again. Ugh.

It wasn't so bad, really, I mean, it was cleaning up the plates and cups, and the absolute MOUNTAIN of dishes that comes after a party like that, but otherwise, not bad at all. And Monday started the official first day of KTP.

Day 2 - Raging Meltdowns...

Whew - Day 2 of Mommy only m-f is almost over. Thank goodness. Today was the day of the raging meltdown. Our big'un is almost 3 1/2 and boy oh boy is he ever testing his limits these days. Sometimes we can have a good laugh, when we get things like "Mommy - I have to talk you some questions." "Uh... okay buddy, what?" "Um, I don't want to (eat dinner, be nice to my brother, wear pants, etc)" "Babe - that's not really a question..." but when it comes to things like a raging, screaming, limb flailing, dish throwing super-sonic meltdown because HE wanted the RED cup (which has been his brother's cup ALL. DAY." NOT the GREEN cup (which he just asked for)... then it becomes a little tough.

Now, generally, we just try and reason with him, tell him WHY he can't have the red cup, and him know that his real option is the green cup or nothing... but tonight that resulted in him body-checking the dog (good thing the dog is good natured) and then practically throwing himself down the stairs while screaming "NO green cup, NO nothing, NO bed, NO dinner, NO (little'un) having the RED cup, NO!" Yeah... that's when I decided to sit down on the kitchen floor. It wasn't very effective. He's not really moved by silent protest.

So I just picked up Captain Meltdown, carried him up to his bed, and left him there to scream himself hoarse.

The I want Daddy...s

It starts... hubby's gone, left this morning at around 5:45 am. We've been trying to explain to the boys for a few days now just how long Daddy's going to be gone (5 days, 1 work week, Monday until Friday, etc etc etc) and this morning I was thinking that our big'un (3 years old) was finally getting it. Nope... not so much. The I want Daddy's have already started.

This morning on the bus:
Big'un: Mommy, the kids wouldn't give me a high five and now I'm sad...
Me: Oh, I'm sorry Buddy! What would make you feel better, a hug?
*(nope)
Me: A glass of milk?
*(nope)
Me: A muffin?
*(nope)
Me: Well, what then? Anything you want.

Mommy Only Week

SO.......... hubby's leaving for a week on business. And I'm looking at 5 whole days of "Mommy only". I'll be perfectly honest - I've beed DREADING this week ever since I knew it was coming. It's not that I don't love my boys - I love them to bits, it's not even that I really doubt my parenting skills - I'd say - so far I'm doing alright... I mean, I'm relatively confident that we can make it Monday to Friday without any major injuries and both kids being fed, clean, and slept... not necessarily in that order.

What I'm NOT confident about - my ability to get ME through the week, fed, clean and slept. To not completely lose my mind when the littlest one says "Daddy... are you?" for the ten thousandth time (he does it already when one of us leaves for about 1/2 an hour... by day 3, it'll be painful....dread). To not go completely bonkers when there's absolutely NO ONE else to change that dirty diaper, clean up soap/shaving cream/etc from the bathroom counters/walls/floor... and who knows what else they'll get into.