All Hallows Eve...uh...Eve

Happy Birthday, Marsha!

Yep, that's right. One more sleep 'til Halloween. I made up treat bags for Carter's class, which I hope has not grown larger than twenty-two children since the beginning of the school year. I also made a half dozen for Carter and Cooper to share with the kids at the sitter. I didn't, however, make any to give out on Halloween night. Usually I kill my back and make my knees ache on the living room floor the evening before Halloween, making roughly sixty treat bags for the nearly twenty kids that come to the door. I'm opting to just give a bag of chips and a handful of miscellaneous candy to the visitors at the door. I think Chris is going to take the kids trick-or-treating while I give out the candy at home. I hope tomorrow's weather is like today's was, because it was gorgeous out today. No jacket required.

I'm planning to deck myself out as well as the kids tomorrow. I spent a good portion of the evening searching for some fake skin to adorn my nose before painting my entire face green tomorrow for work. I won't be wearing jeans for casual Friday. Instead I'll be wearing all black, with my witch hat, a green face, a broom and hopefully an extra-accentuated proboscis, not that it needs a whole lot of help to fit the part.

Alana is taking the kids to the toy library for a Halloween party in the morning. This means I need to either put make-up and costumes on them before we leave in the morning, or make them wear those pumpkin costumes for the day and then dress them in their real costumes for the evening activities. We'll see. I'm expecting a full-on brawl with the kids in the morning, with (1) their knowledge of all the candy in the house, (2) their indecision of which costumes they wish to wear, and (3) my insistence on what I want them to wear. I'm hoping that my witch costume will terrify them into submission.

Here is a picture of the treat bags I prepared for Carter to take to school. The ones to take to the sitter say 'from Carter and Cooper'.

Credits: Miss Mint's Witches' Brew and LaWanna Desjardin's Sweetly Spooky kits.

Oh and I just uploaded pictures from the weekend when we got to meet our friends' new baby Cambel. Carter was very big-brotherly toward him and wanted to hold him, which I found odd since he's never acted like he's cared much for having Cooper around. Though, lately Carter has been asking for a sister...

2008 Halloween Costume Tryouts - Take One

Cooper the Pumpkin (OMGCYUUUTE)

Cooper with the Scary Teeth
(He wants to be a scary cat but will not let me paint his face.)

OMG this is my favourite. I bought a pirate makeup kit that came with the braids, the teeth and the make-up, with a cool sponge for making the whiskers. The costume is from Auntie Cindy and if Carter doesn't change his mind again by Friday, this is what he will be for Halloween.

Carter with the scary teeth

And my little shiner...it turned purple overnight.

Happy Birthday Dad!

SuperNanny 911

Okay, I think I might need to start watching this show. This morning I was trying really hard to put up with Cooper. He always asks me to lie down with him at night and while I don't want him to depend on it, I sometimes oblige. I ended up sleeping there the whole night, and actually had a good night's sleep. Then this morning of course he started jumping around and on me. He has this thing with my hair and has to twist his hands into it. I'm always paranoid that he's going to knock my teeth out, so any time that I'm lying down I cover my face with my arm.

He was being particularly pesky this morning so instead of constantly telling him to stop what he was doing, I walked away and went into my room. He followed and continued jumping all over the place. I went back again into the kids' room and Cooper followed, hurling his sippy cup across the room at me, whacking me right above my right eye. First of all it scared the crap out of me; second, it hurt like hell. I was so surprised, hurt and angry I burst into tears. Chris came running from the living room to see what the commotion was. I asked him to go cuddle Cooper because I needed a few moments to go assess the damage and compose myself. I had myself a big ol' cry and put some ice on my face. There is definitely a good lump there but nothing you'd notice if I didn't point it out. That and a light blue bruise right under my eyebrow. I was hoping it would turn black and blue because it hurt badly enough that I wanted to get some sympathy out of it. I'm guessing the ice helped because the damage is virtually invisible.

Chris had to go out and run a few errands including storing the camper for the winter and he took Cooper with him. He was kind enough to bring me a big coffee, which soothed me. I hung out with Carter and he read me a story. His reading is getting better all the time and there were only about four words I had to help with in the whole book titled, ''Hello, Red Fox.'' He even changes his inflection to emphasize certain phrases, making it even cuter. He's still obsessed with watching the Monster House movie and has watched it many times over the course of the weekend.

Last night was the school fundraiser I went to with Cindy and Kelly. It was a quarter auction. Each prize was auctioned by the kids going around giving everyone a number. Each time you bid, you get a number from the kid and write it down. When the bidding is all done, they draw a number out of a bucket and whomever had been given that number was the winner. Cindy won a cordless phone/CD player and I won a set of gel nails and a Paul Mitchell shampoo/conditioner set. I've kind of always wanted to get those gel nails but they are very expensive and I'm not sure if I'd be able to type with them on. I might just have to try them out. We had plenty of laughs and fun while we were there. The place was packed. It was a very entertaining few hours.

During the day yesterday (oh and by the way, the weather has been pure crap lately...we had some snow today) I managed to stay indoors aside from my quick jaunt to do my housesitting duty. I even squeezed in a nap before getting up to get ready to go out.

Today I did a Wal-Mart run to pick up some school snacks for Carter and go water the plants for my housesitting duties. All in all it was a pretty good weekend. I sure hope to do some scrapbooking one of these days. I've been a real slacker. ::sigh::

The Day Got Better

It didn't start well. When I got to Tim Horton's this morning, I eyeballed the drive-thru line-up and the one inside the store, weighing which would be faster. I parked the Jeep in a quick getaway spot and went inside. I ordered my coffee and chatted with a couple people and went back out to the Jeep. WITHOUT MY COFFEE. I didn't even wait for them to pour it. I paid and said goodbye. Duh! When I got to the Jeep I realized it and walked back in to get it, commenting along the way what a great start the day I had going for myself!

Work was fine today. Fairly quiet, a good catch-up day. Seija stopped in to see me and gave me a very pleasant surprise. She is going to be working in my office building when she starts her new job in a couple weeks! So that is very exciting but she is a very brave woman going back to work and starting a new job with a four-month old baby! It was great to see her and know that I'll be seeing more of her and soon!

Kelly invited me to come along for lunch with her and Gwen so I called Chris to see if he could take Carter to school so I could have the whole lunch hour. Chris was swamped at work and wasn't sure if he could get away. Then Alana called and said she was out with my boys and asked what they would eat at McDonald's. She was taking them for lunch and also offered to take Carter to school! Double YAY!!! So my lunch hour was great!

I left work a few minutes early to flex a bit of extra time I put in yesterday. I picked up the boys and took them downtown to try to get Cooper in for a haircut. We've tried three or four times this past week but the guy was very busy. So today was the day. Cooper's first haircut at the barber. He was very serious and very good sitting up in the big chair. Carter has been asking for another haircut ever since he had his done a week or two ago. So after he was done with Cooper, the barber put Carter back up in the chair for a quick trim and some gellin'.

We stopped to do my housesitting duties and to rent a couple movies on the way home. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Meet the Robinsons, and Monster House. We've seen the latter two already but the kids wanted them. Carter loved Monster House when it was on TV the other day. He made me draw it on the whiteboard. As you can see my drawing talents leave something seriously huge to be desired. Everything shown he asked me to draw.

We came home from the video store and instead of doing pizza night we ordered Chinese food. I had some baking to drop off at the church for Mom for this weekend's bazaar and bake sale, so I went to the church then to pick up the food, which was ready very quickly. It was also very delicious. Breaded shrimp (not the big puffy battered kind), the ever-present-Chinese-food-staple rice, chicken balls (the big puffy battered kind), and mixed vegetables. The kids barely ate anything. I thought they'd be all over the chicken balls. Carter had one and Cooper had two mouthfuls of rice with a small slice of carrot in the midst of it.

After supper, (well during it actually) the kids watched Monster House. A little later I had to do a quick Wal-Mart run to print some pictures. I did some baby announcements and decided to print them there instead of taking forever to do them at home. I managed to get out of Wal-Mart without spending a hundred bucks. But I made it halfway to a hundred because I couldn't resist picking up some more Bakugan toys for the kids; these ones I am saving for Christmas. Hopefully.

I had planned to go to Tim Horton's to pick up coffee for Chris and myself, but I didn't want to come home and get all comfy and go back out again just to pick up the pictures. As I was leaving the Wal-Mart parking lot, I figured I'd go grab a couple extra coffees and visit Uncle Cliff and Auntie Lurdes. As I navigated the parking lot, who should be there but Uncle Cliff, Auntie Lurdes, Uncle Bob and Auntie Josie. So instead of going through the drive-thru, I went inside and had a visit with them until it was time to pick up my pictures. I chatted with Uncle Ross for a second too before I left. I did remember to grab the coffees this time and darted over to Wal-Mart one final time for the pictures before heading home. Carter was asleep but Cooper stayed up a bit longer after I got home. We put on the Indiana Jones movie and Chris only lasted maybe half an hour, just a few minutes longer than Cooper. I watched bits and pieces of the movie; I'm sure we'll watch it together tomorrow night so I'll be able to catch the parts I missed.

Oh and last night I also did a Wal-Mart run. I needed to pick up a few amenities, but I did have some premeditated desire to purchase a new camera. Mine still works, but the battery door has gotten a bit worn from so much use removing and replacing the memory card and battery so often and it sometimes pops open if you don't hold it just right. So I got an amazing deal on a new one that is very similar. A few more megapixels and a three-inch display. Niiiiiice. Plus an image stabilizer and some new features I'll have to read about in the manual. I totally could have gotten away with pretending it is my old one. Even when I showed Chris some pictures on it today, surprisingly he didn't notice. I offered him the old one so now he's digitally armed and ready too.

Okay, that's it. I'm toast. Tomorrow I'm going out with Cindy and her girls and Kelly and some girls from the office to a school fundraiser auction. Sounds like a good time!

Itty Bitty Bingo

...but a Bingo nonetheless! Tonight I went to Bingo with Mom and Kelly. I was painfully close to winning many times, and eventually won a hundred dollar game with two other winners. So Kelly and I shared a big whopping thirty-four dollars. Still...I got to holler. I also needed one for the damn jackpot. ::sigh::

Yesterday was picture day at Carter's school. I bought him a new outfit a couple weeks ago and saved it for the day. I brought gel and hairspray and spiked him up a little before I dropped him off. It will be interesting to see if he messed with it after I left. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks when the pictures come in. Hopefully it will be a smashing success like last year's school picture. As long as he doesn't try to pull off the fake smile he uses on me once in awhile!

I'm going to be doing a little bit of housesitting for a couple weeks. Checking in, watering plants etc. Another thing to keep me running around on my lunch hour.

Cindy and I had a synchronicity moment today. I was trying to decide where to go at lunchtime before bringing Carter to school. I thought about Cindy and how I've barely seen her lately. I decided to go to Tim Horton's and bring her an ice-capp. As I was headed to Tim Horton's I saw her in her vehicle seemingly coming back from that direction. I could see she was on her cell phone but I tried calling it anyway. She wasn't answering the call-waiting beep so I kept trying and heading for Tim Horton's. I couldn't reach her by the time I got there so I grabbed her an ice-capp anyway. I drove to the school and her vehicle was there. When I reached her office, sure enough, there she was drinking an ice-capp. Her coworker didn't want it and I didn't want it so when Cindy introduced me to another teacher friend of hers, I said, ''Nice to meet you; want an ice-capp?'' I'm thinking that was a good first impression! ha.

Well, that's about it for now. I can see why I haven't been blogging as often lately. There just isn't that much going on. Hopefully I'll have some new pictures or scrapbook pages soon.

Ripped Myself a New One

...armpit, that is. Y'know those little plastic shields on a new package of deodorant? Well I accidentally reached for the new deodorant instead of the one I have already been using. I went to put it on and the little plastic tabs scraped my armpit. Ouch.

In other news, Cooper is addicted to YouTube. Thanks to Anita over at NDISB, I checked out the Space Chimps web site. On it there is a Crazy Frog video. I'm pretty sure the kids have seen Crazy Frog before, but now Cooper is using my computer a lot to surf the net. I clicked on YouTube to find him another Crazy Frog song, and he started clicking the related video links shown on the screen. His favourite thing now is called the Gummy Bear song. I have a hard time getting it out of my head because he plays it so often. He's getting much better at using the computer, much like Carter did at the same age.

I recently altered the boys' bunk bed. It's a large wooden unit with the bottom bunk perpendicular to the top bunk. It was so rare for Cooper to make it through the whole night in his bed I finally took the bottom bed right out and put a little mattress under the loft part, so now it's kind of like a fort. I put a tension bar across the opening and hung a blanket there. It's now the popular spot to watch movies and sleep for both boys. The wooden bed frame is off to the side and the mattress is on the floor by the TV, a popular spot now for watching movies or burning off some steam jumping like little madmen.

We had a pretty good weekend...Chris and I even went out on a DATE! Saturday evening we dropped off the kids at Mom & Dad's house (OVERNIGHT!!!) Mom had supper all set for them and we went out for a couple drinks and wings before going to Kelly's house to meet up with her and her son Ben before heading to the concert. We went to a concert for a fantastic Beatles tribute band called Revolution. Here are a couple pictures:


The costumes were great and so were the voices. We had an awesome time. After the concert we went back to Kelly's house and had a drink. We weren't done having fun and I was hoping to go bowling. We opted to go to the bar (which we NEVER do). We walked to the bar and sat around having a few more drinks and amusing ourselves watching all the people that were milling about. Chris and I even danced once and I played a game of pool. Next thing we knew it was already closing time. We walked outside and it was pouring rain. On our way back to Kelly's to walk her home, we stopped to pose with these scarecrows. I don't know why; I guess we were still amusing ourselves.


We had left the Jeep at Kelly's and walked the rest of the way home. When we arrived home, there were two police cars parked across the street from our house, and someone across the street was being taken away by two officers. Guess we missed out on some excitement in the neighbourhood. We don't even know who lives there.

Sunday morning arrived quite quickly after we got home. With no kids at home to wake us we slept like logs until eight. I woke up and it felt like I had slept five minutes. I dozed on and off for another hour or so then we both got up and got ready to go get the boys. We did a Timmy's run for coffee and put some gas in the Jeep and headed for Mom and Dad's house. The kids were good for their Grandma and Grandpa, which was great. We really had a great time and it was so awesome of Mom and Dad to take them like that. I think we could count the number of dates we've had since having kids on one hand. Thanks again, Mom and Dad!

Sunday was a very sleepy day. We sort of took turns dozing off and trying to amuse and feed the kids whenever possible. I sort of half watched Desperate Housewives; it's not quite grabbing me like it used to before they flashed forward five years. Feels like the writers cheated. They really should have consulted me first before making such a rash script decision.

Well the weather is turning colder every day. Each morning the windshield is frostier and it's requiring more and more windshield fluid to clear it. Next thing I know I'll be digging out the scraper. ::sigh::

Oh and one last tidbit...Chris bought a truck yesterday. He bought a truck sometime last year after selling his Bronco...but it wasn't a full-size truck. Whenever I was gone somewhere with the Jeep, he wasn't able to put both kids in his little truck. We were hoping for an extended cab or a four-door truck, but we found a good deal on a half-ton 4x4 in good shape with low mileage and a few upgrades since his last truck like air conditioning, and power windows and door locks. He and Carter spent some time after work today cleaning it up all purty. Now he just needs to sell the other one. Any takers?

Fall Falling Fallen - Edited to Add Video!

I'm a summer girl. I love summer. I love a white Christmas but I could deal with summer the whole rest of the year. However living smack in the middle of Canada does not provide such a delight. So I have to rely on my children for these delights to get me through the colder times.

This was fun:


After supper Chris and I both went to do our civic duty and vote. We've been studying the signs on all the neighbours' lawns lately and both came to a consensus that we would vote for the ReMax candidate. (stolen joke...hahaha)

I also took some video of the kidlets but I'm going to spend the next half hour or so shrinking it to make it bearable to load up on the blog. Stay tuned for an updated post.

We don't have a lot of leafy trees in our yard, but Chris managed to rake a pile fit to entertain the boys. I ADORE how Cooper speeds up the counting...Carter didn't even have a second to do up his jacket!



I had already gone back in the house when this was happening (because I was FREEZING). Chris tapped on the window and I came running out again with the camera. I couldn't help but giggle my way through it.

Happy Turkey Day!

(Prepare for a jumbled post...I waited wayyyy too long to blog again. Ugh.)

Ahhhhhhh. Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for so many things. Family, friends, and FOOD. We had a monstrous Thanksgiving dinner at Mom and Dad's yesterday. I brought perogies with bacon and onions. It took me forever to make 8.75 dozen. I boiled then fried them and put them in the slow cooker to keep them warm. I also brought an oriental salad and was toasting almonds and ichiban noodles until the last minute before we needed to leave.

There was a monster turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, mashed yams, stuffing, meatballs, ham, three broccoli salads, three wild rice casseroles (apparently there was no precollaboration on the items everyone was bringing!) I'm pretty sure there was mass consumption of all the items brought anyway!

It was a rainy weekend from start to finish, including the extra day since today was a holiday. Chris spent part of the weekend working on Saturday, and part of it trying to help a friend find a wounded deer.

We went to Mom and Dad's house again this evening for leftovers. Mom made an AWESOME turkey soup that I devoured two bowls of. The kids ate some too, of course less than I'd like to see them eat as usual. After supper Dad was trying to get his slide viewer to work. It was toast, so he went out to the garage to unearth the projector and screen. He had some slides he discovered plus all the old slides of his and mom's from many yesteryears. We ended up watching about six or seven reels of slides. Which was AWESOME! There were so many pictures from when Cindy and I were little. I cannot WAIT to get my hands on a slide scanner so I can get the pictures on my computer. And my mom the hottie in all her handcrafted outfits? Awesome! It was a very fun trip down memory lane.

On Saturday morning while Chris was at work I took the kids to Tim Horton's. Mom was craving an ice-capp, so we took a drive out for a visit. We came back home after about an hour (seems to be the limit before the kids start to go squirrelly.)

We watched a couple movies this weekend. Iron Man, which was great, even for the kids, despite the violence. Robert Downey Jr. did a good job and the special effects were cool. Today we watched You Don't Mess With The Zohan. Adam Sandler's usual silliness, with a slightly better physique than usual, and he really revealed it in this one. It was pretty funny, though quite a few interruptions from the kids made me miss a few parts. I might watch it again.

Now going back to before the weekend...I had started trimming Carter's hair a little because he was getting shaggy. I trimmed above his ears and at the back of his neck. It was alright, but remembering that picture day was coming, I decided to take him downtown to the barber. On my lunch hour on Thursday I took him. He sat up on the chair (OMG no I didn't take pictures) and was so proud and sat so well. The barber talked to him just like a grown-up. He particularly liked having gel put in his hair. We had seen Mom and Dad across the street, and when Dad didn't hear the 'signature whistle' that I did, I figured out where they were going. So Carter and I walked down to the restaurant down the block and sure enough they were there. We showed off Carter's new 'do and I took him to school. I'm hoping to take Cooper in this week too. So far I've done a pretty good job of cutting the boys' hair but it is nice to get someone else to do it too.

Cooper has been staying up uber-late lately. I just got him to finally crash only about fifteen minutes ago, around the time I started this blog post. It doesn't seem to matter what time or length of time that he naps either. And he whines and whines when he's tired and wants me to lie down with him until he falls asleep. Usually I tell him I have to go to the bathroom and he either falls asleep without me or comes looking for me after about ten minutes.

Well, that's my jumbled up past five or so days. Let's see if I can scrounge up a picture or two...

A view of the gang at the dinner table (23 of us, and this isn't even the whole gang!)

Cindy, Monique and Me

Carter requested that I take his picture.
This outside at the babysitter's house.
He loves to climb in and around the trees.

Another one of Carter, hamming it up for the camera this time. He made sure I took another picture!

Remote Keyless Entry

I need that. For the house.

Yesterday morning I was up early and decided to make my hair last one more day. I had a quick shower with a shower cap on and was ready and out the door, with both kids fed, bathed and dressed. I buckled them in the Jeep, got in and reached over to my purse. No keys. I dug deeper in my purse. I looked under my purse and laptop bag, and even in the laptop bag even though I never keep the keys in there.

I couldn't go back in the house because I had locked it. ::sigh:: So much for having a bunch of extra time. Luckily I had the cell phone so I called Chris at work to come and bail me again. Within a few minutes he was home to let me in the house to look for my keys. They were not in any of the usual places I would have left them. By this time I was very frustrated. Chris lent me his Jeep keys and I ventured off to take the kids to the sitter and then to work. Tina was an angel and had brought me a coffee. I pulled into Tim Horton's and there she was in the drive-thru waving me away because she had already ordered for me.

I went to work. Later in the morning I needed to come home and print something. I had made some thank you cards for our office to send to our honchos for last week's conference. Unfortunately there was a typo on one of them. And unfortunately I had forgotten I had no house keys. I ran to Chris's work to get the rest of his keys and came home. This time I took a quick peek in the kids' room and sure enough there were my keys. The boys had sort of alluded to the fact that they (well, Cooper anyway) had my keys. They were right beside the bunk bed on the floor. So I quickly did my print job and bolted out, with two fistfuls of keys. I did my bank deposit for work and headed back to the office.

At lunchtime I took Carter to school. I've really been enjoying reading with him lately, but it's hard to keep Cooper from getting his nose in there and having a fight ensue. It's really cool to see how much he can already read though. We read Rumpelstiltskin the other night and I remember that one from waaaaaaayyyyy back.

Chris stayed late after work and I brought the boys home. We had hotdogs for supper. I didn't even touch the computer; not even to check email and I fell asleep quite early with the boys watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

This morning I got up and did shower and wash my gross hair. I wasn't ahead of schedule by any means, but we did make it to the sitter with time enough for me to do a Timmy's run. Then I realized I forgot to leave the kids' breakfast at the sitter's house, so I did one more pitstop there to bring them their peanut butter sandwich.

Work has been busy this week, particularly with catching up on things with being closed for three days last week and missing all my month-end duties. Tonight Mom and I went to Bingo. I was hoping for the big jackpot, which is very near twenty-nine thousand dollars, since Chris has his heart set on a truck that he is currently test driving much to my chagrin. No such luck.

On the way home I stopped at Tim Horton's and picked up my morning coffee. I'll nuke it just before I leave in the morning and save myself a trip.

All-Staff Conference

Well, the main focus of the past two weeks or so for me has been the all-staff conference we had last week. Before Wednesday last week, many nights were spent staying up waayyyyyy late trying to complete a project I wandered into very willingly...nametags for everyone. Our organization is made up of fourteen offices with a staff base of about a hundred and fifty staff, and a board of eleven members. I started out making the nametags unique, working myself through alphabetically by last name.

I could have separated everyone into departments or job classifications and made a set of matching tags for each group, but nooooooo...something inside me just kept doing something new as I made my way through the list. And of course, the geek in me was having a blast, even with the late hours I put in at my own expense. I managed to get everything complete and printed and cut and inserted into those little plastic sleeves before I had to travel to do the trial run for my presentation on Tuesday. There were very few duplicates aside from the matching nametags I made for the board.

So on Tuesday I made the trip to the main office and did a run-through with the head of the IT department that I was presenting with. By the time I left we had an outline of what we would be presenting to the group.

On Wednesday, I traveled with two other coworkers to the conference. The construction on the TransCanada highway is currently ATROCIOUS. I guess you could say we have two seasons in this part of the country. Winter and construction.

When we arrived at the hotel where the conference took place, our hotel room wasn't ready yet so I carted my laptop, a projector, a suitcase bag, a carry-on bag and a cooler bag into the hotel and to the conference room where I would be helping with the presentation. We did a bit of a practice run before lunch started. After lunch was the presentation. I followed along with the presentation, helping give demonstrations to the group on Outlook and Office. Then it was my turn to do my PowerPoint presentation of Office and Outlook tips and tricks. Oddly I wasn't nervous at all. I got through my portion and continued helping demonstrate for the rest of the presentation time. That rocked. It was so positive for me. A great learning and sharing experience.

After the session ended for the day, we had a union meeting then a bunch of us planned to go out for supper. We convened in one hotel room for a few drinks then walked to the bar/grill. We had some yummy munchies; my choice was the chicken quesadilla, and a few drinks of coconut rum with pineapple juice. We played a few games of pool, and oddly returned to the hotel pretty early at ten-thirty. There were plenty of open doors in the hotel hall and many people visited. It was great to meet people from our other offices. We had a great time.

After a short nap (yawwwwwwwwwwwn), it was time to get up for another day of presentations. But not done by me this time. I sat in on two different sessions throughout the day. The food was great; I haven't eaten that healthy that often in ages. Thursday night was our staff appreciation dinner. The food was fantastic and I received my ten-year service award pin. After dinner we were entertained by comedian Tom Liske. By the time the awards night was finished there weren't very many who wanted to go out again from our original group...just others who missed out on the fun and wanted to go with us! :)

A bunch of us gathered again and played some silly games and chatted until late. There were still a few renegades left who wanted to go out but my roommate and I crashed 'early' at about one-thirty, leaving the others to go seeking Chinese food.

Friday morning was a fantastic session on our respectful workplace policy. There was a great facilitator that put us in groups (with assigned seating to mix up the groups a bit). We did some individual and group exercises and it was a very interesting presentation. There was a final lunch then they wrapped up the conference. We traveled back and when I checked in at the office there were forty-seven voicemails for me to wade through and a pile of faxes, since we were closed for three full days. All in all it was a fantastic conference and I hope it's an annual event!

Much of the weekend was spent catching up on sleep every chance I could get. Plus I'm suspecting ol' Mother Nature will be stopping by to bring me her lovely gift this week, so I was pretty tired. Tonight after work Kelly and I took the boys to the blood donor clinic. This time it was my turn to donate and Kelly's turn to sit out...dang those low iron counts! Last time I was the reject, and the time before it was her too. It will be interesting to see if we both get to donate next time!

Tonight after supper I made some thank you cards for the conference. Carter crashed pretty early, and Cooper was going strong still just a little while ago.

Fantaaaaaaaaastic Week!

So much to blog about...starting with LAST weekend.

Three-day conference this week for work...awesome.

More later. I have some serious typing to do to catch up here!