Plug it In, Unplug it Out

Wow it's me again. Just wow!

Here is a picture of Carter in his 100th day shirt. Surprisingly when I retrieved it from his backpack after dinner to grab this photo opportunity, all 100 robots were still stuck on it!


This morning started out a little rocky for me. I managed to get the boys up and out on time, but when I went to back out of the garage I THEN realized Chris had plugged in the Jeep. Luckily I stopped before the cord reached the breaking point. ::sigh:: I took the boys to school and brought Carter's shirt to his classroom and got Cooper settled in. I would have loooooooved a coffee this morning but I had just enough time to make it to work on time. I had a busy morning but things were going well until I got a call from Cooper's day care teacher to advise me he didn't have any ski pants to go play outside. Crap. Here's where the beauty of a small town comes in handy. I quickly drove home and picked up the ski pants. Judging from where they were near the kitchen doorway, I quite likely had to step OVER them when we originally left. ::sigh:: I dropped off the ski pants and had some quick hugs from Cooper and headed back to work. The rest of the morning went okay.

Kelly and I went for some soup at Tim Horton's and I had my dose of coffee too. The afternoon at work was busy too. I asked Chris to pick up the kids so I could go for a walk again after work. It's nice to do the indoor walking since the sidewalks are so uneven, snowy and slippery. I managed to do ten laps which equals about five kilometres. (That's about three miles for my south of the border friends... :)

I walked home then left right away to pick up Chris's Dad for supper. As I was backing out of the driveway, I heard Chris whistle so I stopped. Unbeknownst to me he had plugged in the Jeep when he got home and here I was driving away with the cord again, lucky to not have reached the cord's breaking point once again. Usually he plugs it in in the morning and lets me know so this wasn't such a good surprise. ::sigh::

I picked up Chris's Dad and he brought some ground beef he had thawing and we stopped to pick up some salad and veggies. After all that I managed to get supper on the table just before seven o'clock. I made a meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, kernel corn and salad. The boys liked the meal and ate enough that they didn't ask for a peanut butter sandwich this evening. :)

I printed Valentine cards for the boys tonight and I'm hoping to get the names of their classmates so I can do envelopes tomorrow. The kids fell asleep just after eight so I was able to get much more accomplished! Usually when I stay up working on projects I just leave the TV on whatever channel Chris was watching before he fell asleep on the couch and end up being tortured by some news program or infomercial. The past couple nights though, I've retrieved the remote from his sleepiness and tuned in to Craig Ferguson. I've always liked that guy and with that accent I could listen to him all day. Plus he's hilarious. So now I want to tune in again but after my long day I'm not sure if I'm going to make it...

100th Day of School - 2010 Edition!

Tomorrow is Carter's 100th day of school. There are plenty of things going on this week, including his first-ever trip to the ski hill today. He had a fannnnnnnnntastic time skiing and snowboarding. I wish I could have been there to see him. Each time he told someone about it (Chris and me and Grandma and Grandpa), he carefully demonstrated the correct way to grasp the tow rope. Now I really want to take him out skiing one of these days. I haven't skied for about ::cough:: twenty ::cough:: years.

Back to the 100th day of school thing, this year I asked Carter what he wanted to bring or wear for it. In JK he wore the shirt with 100 pictures of himself. In SK we stuck 100 googly eyeballs on a shirt. This year he requested 100 Roblox robots. Roblox is a game he is completely obsessed with (though currently grounded from). It took me a few hours but I have 100 of those little suckers cut out and stuck on the shirt. The image is actually his character he designed in the game. Here is the finished product: (And yes of course I'll take pictures tomorrow when he's wearing it!)


I can't wait to show it to him in the morning. He was already telling me how awesome I am when I was printing and cutting. Cooper's 100th day of school is being celebrated on the 19th; presumably since he had a later start due to the Kindergarten gentle entry. I'm sure he'll want something similar to this; perhaps pictures of him like we did the first time with Carter.

On Friday both boys' classes are celebrating Valentine's Day. I have Valentine cards prepared for both of them; I just need to print them. It feels good to do something creative for me; I'm used to working on projects for other people so it's nice to have a break to do something for myself.

Well, that felt good to blog again; I really do want to keep this up; I've missed it so much and have a much easier time keeping track of what we're up to and remembering where we've been when I actually take the time to write it down!

Hide and No Seek!

Last night we played an awesome round of hide and go seek. It started out with the kids and me, taking turns hiding. Cooper doesn't quite have a grasp on things...he still calls out to say ''here we are'' or he just incessantly giggles and gives away their location. Carter is getting pretty good at it, despite his brother's blowing his cover.

Next I started hiding Carter and having Chris and Cooper look for him. We got really creative with our hiding spots in our little house. Once I got Carter to stand on a low shelf in front of the coat rack facing the wall, and I hung his coat on his head. Chris and Cooper walked past him about five times before Chris noticed the little feet at the bottom. Cooper really delighted in spotting the feet once we helped point them out.

The best spot was on the shelf above the boys' closet. Of course I had to hoist him up there but he loved it and it took awhile for Chris to spot him this time. Later when we were finished playing I went to the basement to switch over some laundry and the boys, still in hiding mode, took turns hiding in the cupboards in the laundry area. I was pleased that they even wanted to close the doors, meaning they weren't afraid. They had a blast. If either boy ever disappears on me, I'll be sure to look there first.

I figured the kids would go to sleep really late because of the time change, but surprisingly they were asleep at a decent hour. This morning though, I had to wake up Cooper just moments before we left the house. The cinnamon toast breakfast was 'to go' and I was dressing Cooper in his sleep at first. I delivered the boys and went off to work.

The morning flew by, as most Monday mornings do. At lunchtime I came home and tried out the butternut squash soup I picked up the other day at the Safeway deli. It wasn't too great. Kind of sweet, with bits of red pepper in it, which didn't seem to jive with the flavour of the soup. I had about a cup or so of it and bolted off to pick up Carter for school. I delivered Carter to school and went to Tim Horton's to pick up a box of green tea bags since I had just run out this morning. I also picked up a coffee for about the third time this year that I've gone there to get one for myself.

After work I picked up the kids and went to do my housesitting job. I picked up Chris's Dad, since he had called earlier to see what we were up to for supper. I'd planned to make either meatloaf or spaghetti, and decided on spaghetti. We stopped at the grocery store and he picked up salad and some buns so I could make garlic toast. The boys ate all their spaghetti and sauce...largely due to the fact that Chris's Dad had also brought some big cookies with M&Ms in them. Regardless, I was thrilled they ate supper, a noticeable amount!

Cindy stopped by to visit while one of her girls went to volleyball. I haven't seen her in ages, and she and her family are going on their wedding vacation next week! I'm very excited, even though I'll be missing out on all the fun and festivities! Mom and Dad have been thinking about going along.

We watched the first episode of Dancing With the Stars. I've watched bits and pieces over the years but had no idea they were already on season eight! Now we're watching the premiere of Castle. I liked Nathan Fillion on Desperate Housewives, and the previews for this new show look good, so hopefully it will be a good one. I'm off to watch it now, hopefully to return later to post the scrapbook pages I completed last night.

Re: 100th Day of School Shirt

To Heather,
In reply to your blog comment about the 100th day of school shirt, I printed the pictures about 1" x 1" and fastened each with a two-sided foam pop-dot. If you would like me to email more information, please let me know and I'd be glad to help out!
Cheers!
Link to original post is here.

Fantastic Friday - 100th Day of School 2009!!!

Yeah, looks like I missed a day. I couldn't think of an adjective for yesterday for how I was feeling. Very yucky. I've been sort of fighting a cold this week. A bit of a sore throat and some icky sinus activity. It was worse in the evenings but oddly I felt better each morning. By yesterday I was just beat when I got home. I just wanted to go to sleep. I had a headache that felt like someone was driving an ice pick down through the top of my head through my frontal lobe and my right eye. Chris sent me to my room and I rested for a bit while he made Kraft Dinner for himself and the kids. I got up and felt half human and stayed up for a little while until the kids were ready to go to sleep.

I went back to bed and stayed there. This morning my headache was luckily gone but I was still a bit achy. I managed to get us all fed and dressed and out of here. I brought Carter's 100th day of school t-shirt with me to the office as I planned to just have him put it on when we got to school. I set it on my desk and noticed one of the eyeballs had fallen off! A couple of the nursing students at our office grabbed a glue gun and re-stuck every one of those eyeballs. That was sweet.

I had a good and busy morning at work. I had arranged to take the afternoon off and have lunch with my friend Tracy. We haven't been in touch in AGES upon AGES. We bumped into each other on Facebook earlier this week and decided to meet up. I took Carter to school and he was pleased to put on his shirt. Here is a picture of him in his classroom...
Tracy and I opted for the East Indian buffet and had a great visit. I hope we do that again soon since we ran out of time so quickly. After lunch I came home to tidy up a little since we were having Deidre & Greg over for supper. We tried for Tuesday but her little guy was sick so today was the rescheduled date. I set the table and prepared a couple things for supper then it was already time to pick up Carter from school. I decided to pick Cooper up early and just bring the boys home. We came home and I relaxed for a bit before getting everything ready for supper.

We had the identical meal we would have had on Tuesday, the one we had with Mom and Dad. Nice and simple, and hopefully palatable to the four little boys. They came over by six and we ate shortly after. The boys played together nicely. I was impressed that my boys didn't cause any injuries to each other or our company!

We visited for awhile after supper and eventually managed to squeeze in some ice cream for dessert. After they went home Carter and Cooper played some long-awaited games on the computer before going to bed. They're seemingly starting to get the concept of bedtime, which is making life easier around here at nighttime. Speaking of bedtime, it's mine now.

Carter's 100th Day of School

For Carter's 100th day of school tomorrow, each student is to bring a shirt or hat decorated with 100 things on it to wear to class. So being the geek that I am, I opted for a quasi-scrapbooking project. I had taken a picture of Carter at school today, and all afternoon I tossed around ideas for what to choose for his 100 things. Paperclips? Stickers? Nah. How about a hundred pictures of himself!!!

Here is the picture I took of him: (I looooooove it!)

Below are the pictures of the project in the making. I put two-sided-sticky-pop-dots on the backs of the pictures and Carter started sticking them on the shirt. It was getting really close to his bedtime but he kept helping put them on the shirt, or at least helping clean up the little backings from the pop dot stickers. He used the little Shark vacuum I got Chris for Christmas. Once all the dots were on we did a test fitting and didn't lose a single picture.

So I'll bring the shirt to his class tomorrow and put it on him there. Then if the pictures fall off after that it's okay. They also each have to bring 100 of something to eat, such as marshmallows or chocolate chips or something to make a "100-Day Trail Mix". Fortunately I had a bag of chocolate chips in the freezer and I donned my vinyl gloves and counted out a hundred. By this time Carter was done counting. But it is SOOOOOO cool to see my little dude count all the way to a hundred! Oh, and by the way, one hundred chocolate chips in a snack-size Ziploc bag I could eat in about two bites. I was tempted to bring at least six more bags but I'll adhere to the original plan.

Here are the pictures of the project in the making and the test fitting:
It was a fun project; it will be fun to see Carter wear his shirt into the classroom tomorrow. They're supposed to be having a sliding party this week but the weather is still so dang cold. They've already postponed it once. We'll see.

Well, I'm about toast too, so I'm going to wrap this up and head for bed. Oh yeah...we sort of watched the lunar eclipse tonight. Fortunately we could watch the whole thing from our bedroom window. Cooper was really keeping tabs on its progress.