OMG....

I cannot believe in a few hours I will be a mom to a 10 yr old...... how quickly time flies by. She is a pretty lucky girl, for at school tommorrow is their easter dance. So in a way she can celebrate her birthday with all of her friends. Then in the evening she will be going to guides and we will be sending cupcakes along for everyone to enjoy.

Things have been pretty chaotic around here. John's grandma has gotten a wee bit better, though she is still in the hospital. She is now talking eating and doing physio daily. John's mom arrived here last night to help Ab clebrate her birthday. She will stay with us till next Tuesday. On friday Ab will be having a sleepover with her 2 best friends..I am looking forward to finally doing just a simple small party. It will be just pizza, nachos, DQ cake, popcorn and movies. Then on Saturday we will be heading out to a local suger bush to partake in an easter egg hunt. Should be a blast. Our neighbours and also Ab's best friend's family will be attending. I just hope it is not too muddy. Then we will be having family and perhaps some friends over on Sunday for a big Easter dinner and birthday celebration which will include more cake. NOt too sure what Monday has in store for us...perhaps a bit more home reno stuff. Speaking of which...we finally went out last weekend and ought a pool. By the end of May we should have a 24' pool installed in our backyard...woohooo.

We are finally just getting over the nasty rotavirus...I would say it has hit our house middle of March and I was the last to be hit with it. It did not matter how much disinfecting I was doing, it just seemed to stay around. Our poor neighbours are now plagued with it. Here is hoping this is the last of it.

I have been on a bit of a creative hiatus as of late. There just seems to be too much other stuff going on right now, and to be honest I am just not feeling it. I think I just need a little break from it all.

It was a pretty good weight loss week. I went down 2.5 pounds. I am sure the running had something to do with it. I ran 5 kms one day and then almost 4 another last week. I have been lacking in the exercise department this week..this cold and snow just does not help. Who wants to run when it is cold and windy...not me. Hopefully I will get in a couple runs though by weekends end. So for the weight loss I am now within my range and I can set on becoming a lifetime member....which means no more paying...yippeee...of course I still on plan on striving to loose another 10 or so pounds.

Other changes may be happening in the life department, but I will talk about those later on sometime.

Now I must go sleep...very tired here..thank god tommorrow is the end of the week for school and work:)

been MIA...

Well I have not been around on the www much since my last post. I must say it feels really nice to take a break from it all. Last week John was home on holidays and we tackled a bit of home reno's. We(well John..lol) laid a tile floor down on our basement stir landing(that would be the sideways pic...forgot to rotate it) We still have to finish putting up the corner round and painting the one wall. We will also be carpeting each individual stair and have oak risers( I felt the carpet was needed for slip factor with all the kids that go up and down them). OUr next project to tackle was the kitchen backsplash. I choose to do it in a tumbled travertine with a travertine/marble mosaic tile to accent. I am extremely pleased as to how it turned out. I finished up the last bit of it yesterday afternoon. We have 3 out 5 of our basement doors put up(just waiting for the other 2 to come in) and they are still waiting for me to finish painting them( I have one coat done so far) I am really wanting to finish our inside projects so we can start on the outside ones. Hopefully by the end of this week we will have a pool bought so we can have it installed by end of May. We are also wanting to do interlock in the front walk and perhaps fencing and decking in back.

I have been lacking on my running as of late and I definitely have a love/hate relationship with my weight loss progress. It is definitely not going as well as I hoped.

We have been plagued with more bad news. On this past Sunday night John's Grandma has had a massive stroke(in my opinion) and as of last night she was still unresponsive. I am awaiting any news of changes as we speak. After telling Ab you could see the hurt in her. My grandma's death last month definitnely saddened her and she was not as close to her as she is to Gram. I cannot believe how incredibly strong my girls are through everything that is happening in the past month. Abigail is definitely showing maturity(at times..of course) and I can see her as the 10 year old that she will becoming next week. So now all we can do is pray and know it is within god's hands. Here is a photo of them from our last visit at christmas time.

So with all that is happening, I think I will be MIA for a while longer. Emotions are just everywhere right now, and both scrapping nor computer is on my mind as of late. I am hoping to go out for a run tonight just to help me put everything in check.

Day 2, and a layout.....

Well I did my second run yesterday. It was an absolutely beautiful day to go do it also. I started with a brisk warm up walk for 5 minutes, I then would jog for 1 minute and then walk for 1 1/2 minutes for a total of 20 minutes and then just did another cool down walk around the block. I ran for a total of just a little bit over 2.5 kms. This is amazing for me. I have never liked running, and pretty much sucked as it..lol...but yesterday even though it was tough at times, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and cannot wait to go out and run again. Found this cool website mapmyrun after seeing Donna Downey write about it on her blog. It is the coolest site ever. I can map out my runs and it will tell me the distance of them, I can also see other maps of people in town who have mapped theirs. It keeps track of all my workouts, calories burned, weight...etc... I am very determined to stick with this, in hopes of maybe doing a run sometime in the future. I have finally decided I am going to do myself right. Sure weight loss is great but my body needs to be stronger. So my next run will be tommorrow. I am going to sit down soon and try to make up a training schedule....I picked up a book today to help me with easing into the running and all the ins and outs of it.

Now onto the layout. I actually had this finished the other day, just did not get around to taking a picture of it. Nothing special, but it is a page done.

I started playing around with something that I wanted to do as a home decor project, but it is not working out as well as I hoped, perhaps I will gain some patience to do it today.

KISS ME, I'm Irish....

......er .....well....I have a little bit of Irish somewhere in me. My ancestors did start off in Ireland before they planted their roots in Scotland. Heck...are'nt we all Irish on this festive day;)

May the Irish hills caress you.

May her lakes and rivers bless you.

May the luck of the Irish enfold you.

May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.

~Irish Blessing

So here is a little funny for the morning. I was trying to explain st. patty's to Hadley this morning and why we were going to wear green and such. As we make our way downstairs she says when is Sponge Bob day since today was Patrick's day..LOL...my daughter watches way too much spongebob!!

So update on my weight loss journey..last night I was not firends with the scale...it said I went up 1.5 pounds. It deinitely did not help that hormones kicked in about 2 hours before I was to go and be weighed and I bloated up like a big balloon...ughhh...so now I am super determined to have a nice loss by next week. Today will be day 2 to my jogging routine, and I am very happy to see that it will be an absolute gorgeous day for it. I cannot wait for John to get home so I can go out and have my time. I am still a wee bit sore, but I love feeling it...it makes me know I have done something good for my body. Plus ...I will also not feel any guilt as I indulge in one or two of these this evening;)

On a creative note..I am almost finished my layout I was putzing with, and I think I am going to try and do up a little mixed media type project today....I have be wanting to do it for a while now, so hopefully today I will be successful.

Well must get dressed so I can take Abigail to her course today..it is either cpr or first aid...so glad to see her taking these...

Day 1 and a beautiful day .......

Today is the first day to a newer stronger and healthier me. I have taken the plunge and started on a new adventure. What adventure may that be.....the joys of jogging. Mind you I see no joy in this activity yet..lol. This is how I hope to look sometime in the future as I run my way through the neighbourhood streets.....the graceful, this isn't so hard look....

Yet today I believe I may have looked a little like this....I have come to the quick realization that this will be definite baby steps to get to doing any type of distance running. My lungs are in need of some serious training. I was able to run down one street and a bit of the bikepath before I was going to die. Thank god for my mp3 to help push me along my way. One thing I know for sure is I will definitely be investing in a good pair of shoes..so if anyone has any recommendations of some..let me know.

Today I have also decided to put in my contacts and start getting use to wearing them once again. Now that the sun is shining, I really want the ease of just putting on any ol' pair of sunglasses. I hate having to change out my glasses for my prescription sunglasses and then back again once I venture inside. I do not remember it being so odd to wear them in my younger years. Pregnancy over the years definitely changes things. I think baby steps will be involved in this process also.

After lunch I will be running to the sotre to quickly pick up some well needed items and then I will be doing a little bit of this.......................................................but my paint will be white.

John was successful enough to hang 3 of the doors in the basement yesterday, so I will be painting them today so that we can put on the hardware for them. He will also be putting up the trim around the windows and doors, but first he needs to go out and buy it. Then all will be left are the 2 doors to the office and a storage area to go up...they should be ready to pick up in a week and some...we needed to special order these. Then it will be onto flooring.

Nothing creative to show today, but I may have another layout to show by tommorrow if I get a chance to finish it off.

bits and pieces.....

Well it took about 3 days of sneaking in little creative breaks(otherwise meaning sneaking a moment away from Hadley..lol) to get this layout done. I absolutely loved this photo of Hadley, so I printed it out to 8 1/2 x 12 so that I could scrap it. My first thoughts were to do a single page, but I am really happy with the double page I did instead. I rarely do double page layouts...I really should do more of them. I have another page that I would like to get done, yet I am sure it will take me a few days to get it done also. Unfortunately by the time Hadley is gone to bed and I have no distractions, I am just too tired to work on anything.

So tommorrow I will be attending another wake. One of my great Uncle's died from a massive heart attack on Monday morning. It definitely took everyone by suprise. He was only 63 years old. I do hope this is one of the last wakes I have to attend for some time.

March break is almost apon us. It really will not feel like the normal break though. I have signed Abigail up for a weeks worth of courses which run from 9-3:30. She will be taking a home alone, first aid, cpr, babysitting and a conflict resolution one. I am really excited to see what she takes from these courses. She is really excited also, so that is a bonus. Besides that, not too much going on during the week. John took off the next week and we plan on doing some home renovations during that time.

Thank goodness for crazy hair/pj day.......

Well, it has definitely been one of those hurried mornings. Let's start from last night. First off one woohoo moment, I had my weigh in last night and dropped 4lbs in my first week. Doubt I will ever see that again, but definitely made me want to get up and do more. I would be very happy if this week will be a 2 lb one. Anyways I got home and John and I played a few rounds of tennis on the wii, then moved to a a game of golf(since I got a littel to over zealous and hit John as I was swinging for the ball...who knew you did not have to run to the ball..lol). After that I had to stop and go to bed for this spring ahead is just killing me....I would never thought it would, I mean I have kids and use to do shift work...it is not foreign to me to have any type of sleep routine..lol. Anyways I go up stairs to check on the girls and shut off their lights. As I walk into Hadley's room I am hit with this awful stench. I am going around the room smelling everything wondering what it is. Well thinking maybe she did something in her pull up, I get closer to her, and I go to move her blanket and what do I see......PUKE...everywhere. It looked like she did it several times. The kicker is she is sound asleep all the while covered from head to toe in it. This is the first time she has ever puked in her life...I am quite suprised she made it in life for 3 1/2 years without doing it....and to be not bothered with it. So I quickly get her out of bed and into the bathtub to have a quick bubble bath to wash some of it off of her. The poor thing was shaking like a leaf, and had no idea as to what all went wrong. So instead of going to bed we were bathing, changing sheets, cleaning walls and vacumming Hadley's room. We finally got her back into a clean bed and fast asleep were we all. So asleeep that I did not wake up till a bit after 8 this morning. Ab must be out of the house by 8:30 to get the bus. This is where I am so thankful that she had pj/crazy hair day today. All I had to do was get her out of bed, pack a quick lunch, feed her some breakfast and mess up her hair a bit more and off she went. She was in heaven:) Thankfully Hadley seems to be okay this morning, not a huge appetite, yet there is no fever and signs of tummy aches. Hopefully it will be a quiet day, and I can get some scrapbooking done. I have 2 layout ideas in my head that I want to try and get done. Crossing fingers I can do it.