Saturday snapshot ~ Sleeping Beauty

Annika has gotten into some very weird sleeping positions before...but I have never seen her sitting up on her knees.

I'd rather have a root canal

My goodness.   Two weeks ago I had posted about my new dentist, nicknamed "Last Dentist".  I was cautiously optomistic last Thursday when I went for my first of two appointments with him.  However. 

I stopped working almost 5 years ago when Annika was born, and when that happened, I took my watch off and stopped writing the date multiple times a day.  Half of the time I have no idea what day of the week it is, let alone the day of the month.

Last Thursday at 8:30 in the morning I headed on over to see Last Dentist.  It turns out, that my appointment was actually for this Thursday.  As in, today.  I was devestated.  My teeth were aching, I wasn't sure I could handle another week of pain before things could start getting fixed.  I think the ladies behind the desk were feeling sympathetic because they went to the back and found another dentist who wasn't busy and he got me in.  I'm going to call him Super Dentist.

Let me tell you.  He did a root canal on me.  Well, first he hit my teeth with a little metal hammer to see if it hurt.  It did.  He then put a Q-tip with something cold on it on my teeth.  I was supposed to tell him when it started hurting and when it stopped hurting.  Well.  When he hit the tooth that he eventually ended up working on, the pain was excruciating.  I think it lasted for over 5 minutes.  However, before the pain had ended, he had numbed the area and put a needle in my lip, so I stopped feeling it.  Then, I got a root canal. 

This was by far the BEST root canal I've ever had.  I went home with a funny feeling in my left nostril because he numbed that as well...but after the numbness wore off, I was pain free.  I didn't need any painkillers, and I was able to resume my life.  I could drink hot and cold, eat sweets and smile when it was windy.  What a great feeling!

This Thursday I went back to see Last Dentist, since I had more work that needed to be done.  I have to admit I was disappointed.  I was in the chair for the same amount of time and had 3 fillings done this morning.  But, if I had a choice, I would rather have had a root canal with Super Dentist. 

So, I switched dentists and the next two appointments that I was supposed to have with Last Dentist are now going to be with Super Dentist.  We'll see how he does with just normal fillings. 

I felt a little bit guilty when I was switching over to Super Dentist, but the receptionist told me that I wasn't the first person to do this and I wouldn't be the last.  It makes me feel slightly better. 

The Restful Vacation: Part Two

Here's some more pictures from our vacation for you...and a story.  I'll start with the story since it's from the way up.  Clark and I differ on our opinions of this incident, so he suggested I blog about it and ask your opinion.  I even drew a picture for you!

While driving on the highway Car A started to pass Car B and a very slow moving truck (C).  While A was in the passing lane, Car B decided that they didn't want to wait for A to pass, so they also sped up and cut Car A off.  I think if A hadn't reacted quickly and slammed on their brakes, there would have been an accident.  Car A then proceeded to honk the horn to Car B.  I think that is justified because maybe they weren't paying attention and didn't see Car A in the vicinity.  However, Car A kept honking their horn for a very long time...and then when they passed Car B a couple of minutes later, they honked their horn again.  I think this was a bit excessive and could be termed road rage, Clark thinks it was justified.  What do you think?  Curious minds want to know.

Here comes the fun part of the post now, the pictures of cute children and wildlife!  Tyler all ready for a road trip.

We got to share the road with some bighorn sheep. 

This was the third bear that we saw on our trip.  The girls thought that was pretty cool!

I made the girls get out in the cold with me so I could take a picture of one of them in Alberta and the other in BC with me in the middle.  They weren't very happy with me.

Abigail was not a fan of being so high up.

Pork jerky from Costco.  It seriously is like eating cake in jerky form.  SO GOOD!

And finally, here's a video of our littlest munchkin.  He does this funny thing with his tongue where he moves it from side to side.  It is so cute!  Watch closely for it around the 30 second mark!

Saturday snapshot ~ Body Art, supposedly not permanent

Two little girls got into washable markers.  Guess what?  They don't come off of skin very well.  This picture is before the two baths they have had...but it looks the same, just a little bit paler.  Also, try to imagine the marker on the stomach, arms and face as well....

Our restful vacation

Since we've been married, Clark and I have been to two different places for our vacation.  I like to call them our "restful vacation" and our "fun vacation" destinations.  Our fun vacation is Disneyland. Clark would go to Disneyland with his family every summer growing up.   Usually we need a little vacation after we're done that one because it is one non-stop ball of fun.  We love it though.  Maybe that's why we keep going back year after year.

Anyway, our restful vacation destination is Radium Hot Springs in British Columbia.  This was my family's summer vacation growing up.  The first time we went to Radium was two summers ago.  It was Clark's first time, and he was hooked.  There's just something about a laid back village that has pretty much nothing to do except go sit in a hot pool that forces you to unwind.  We have noticed though that the majority of people that go to Radium are older.  This time, I think there were maybe three or four other families but the rest were my parent's age.  I think one of the reasons for this is because people want to be entertained all of the time and there is literally nothing to do in Radium.  It's their loss.  We love having to spend time with our kids without being distracted...and making them spend time with us! 

The view from our motel.

Waiting to go swimming.  I finally got around to sewing towel cover-ups for my girls.  I found these really cute Canada towels at Wal-Mart...so I decided we should be shameless Canadian tourists.  They got a lot of smiles and comments, they're just so cute.

My three joys.  They make me so happy.

Taking pictures before we go in the pool.  This one makes me laugh, because as you can see, Abigail is not cooperating. 

Aah, that's better!

Clark insisted on getting me in there too, so there I am!

One can't go to Radium without having a family picture in the pool.  It appears to now be tradition!  Look at how freakishly huge Clark's legs look!

The whole family with my Mom and Dad.

 I leave you now with a cute tidbit from Annika.  She was getting tired from swimming by herself, so she asked me to tow her to the other side of the pool where her Moogie (my mom) was.  So, while towing her, we passed Morfar (my dad).  Annika went very stiff, and out of the side of her mouth mumbled, "I'm a lunchbox.  Don't tell Morfar."

Happy Birthday! Happy Father's Day!

Clark gets a double whammy today.  It's Father's Day, but also his birthday.  He's turning 36.  Boy, he's old! 

We started the festivities a day early.  I usually have a birthday week...so I guess Clark can have a birthday weekend! 

I had the flu this past week, so Clark took the girls to Redcliff Days Saturday afternoon so I could get some rest.  I think he had just as much fun as they did. 

After supper, we had my parents over for cake and presents.  I had bought a book at Costco the other day called Fun Stuff Party Cakes.  It has tutorials on all sorts of different cakes.  Most look relatively simple to make, so I let Annika go through the book and pick out the cake she wanted us to make for Clark's birthday.  She picked a cake that was supposed to look like strawberry pancakes.  It's a pretty cool cake.

This is what we ended up with.

It doesn't look quite the same.  The most obvious difference is the color of the cake, because Annika insisted that we bake a chocolate cake.  I also couldn't get my icing to look like the icing in the book.  They didn't give very good instructions on whether or not you put icing in the middle or just on the outside of the cake.  Oh well.  It tasted yummy, that's all that matters.

The girls picked out their present for Clark all by themselves.  Originally, we were going to buy him a build it yourself Angry Birds game (Clark is obsessed with that game), but when we went to purchase it, the store didn't carry it any longer.  Annika was a little upset about this, but then we found Angry Bird stuffies and so she got over it.  She picked the black bird.  

We also got the kids pictures taken with the letters to spell out DAD.  You can see it here.  It turned out so well, I was really pleased with it.  My friend Melissa helped me out with my part of the present.  (She says she helped me out, I think it was the other way around.  I provided the idea and models, but she took the pictures and did the editing which probably took more work.  Either way, I'm very grateful to her.)  We got the picture printed into an 8 X 10 and then framed.  He was THRILLED to get it.  Clark told me that this picture was the best present that he has ever gotten by anyone.  Ever.  That makes me happy.  It's a cute picture. 

After church this afternoon, we will be continuing the party by taking Clark and my Dad out for lunch.  I'm excited about that, I'm already hungry!  

I found this little questionnaire that your kids fill out with questions of their dad, so Annika and I had an interview the other day.  Her answers are in blue.

1. My dad is  13 years old.
2. His hair is black and his eyes are blue.
3. My dad likes to wear a Spiderman shirt and shorts.
4. He loves to eat hamburgers.
5. He is smart because he knows everything.
6. My dad works hard at Wal-Mart.
7. Daddy always tells me go to bed and eat my supper and then I eat it.
8. If he could go on a trip, he would go to the movie theatre and he would take Abigail and Annika.
9. It makes my dad happy when I clean up my toys.
10. I really love it when my dad cooks me the good meals.
11. If I could give my daddy anything, it would be an angry bird.
12. My favorite thing about my dad is he cooks the greatest meals.

Annika told Clark that he was the "bestest smart Dad I ever had".  Yep, that about sums it up.  Happy birthday/Happy Fathers Day to our favorite man in the world!  We love you!

Saturday Snapshot ~ Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to the best Dad we know!

*Special thanks to my uber talented friend Melissa for helping  me out!

At least I have a beautiful smile

Source

I have had pretty bad luck regarding dentists lately.  Our first dentist that we saw once moved to Ontario, so we switched to another dentist in the same practice.  He was very nice.  I saw him once, he did some work on my teeth...and he's no longer working for the office.  My mouth has been bothering me for some time, so I went into the dentist today to get checked out and met dentist #3.  He's pretty nice I think...it's hard to tell.  I'm a little leery about trusting dentists, since the last dentist was supposed to be really good. 

It turns out that the work I had done a couple of months ago wasn't done correctly, so I have to get it redone.  I also have three other cavities that showed up in my x-rays but weren't caught by the previous dentist.  I'm not quite sure how that happens, although in defense of the last dentist...my current dentist was showing me the x-rays and said "Do you see this spot, that is ..., that spot is ..."  What I saw was grey, light grey, dark grey, white.  It meant nothing to me.  Maybe my last dentist was color blind.  Just a thought. 

I am cautiously optimistic about this new guy for a couple of reasons. 

1. He has a really firm handshake.
2. He said that he would like to be my last dentist and for that to happen we have to develop a relationship, so he took the time and told me a little bit about himself. 
3. He graduated from Yale.  He must be smart then right?  Come to think of it...maybe this reason should be #1.
4. He told me I had nice teeth for Medicine Hat.  I'm not quite sure what that means about the dental hygiene of most Hatters, but I will take the compliment and pass it on to my parents, since they're the ones that paid for my smile.

Here's something funny that happened...the Dr. took a piece of gauze and asked me to stick my tongue out.  He then took the gauze and wrapped it around my tongue so that he could move it around to get a better look at my teeth.  While he was doing this, he stopped to let me know that my tongue is the longest he's ever seen.  He even pulled his assistant over so she could see my tongue as well.  I know that's something you've always wanted to know about me right?

While I was meeting my "last" dentist (I think that is how I will address him, Last Dentist), my friend Ashley came over and watched the kidlets for me.  When I told Abigail she was getting company, she said "I don't like the babysitter."  I told her that she did, because it was Mrs. Ashley, and then she said, "Oh, I do like Ashley."  She drew a picture of Ashley while she was there.  Supposedly she's sad.  Would you like it to put on your fridge Ashley?  :)

The resemblance is uncanny.

I go back to see Last Dentist next Thursday for my first of two appointments to fix all of my teeth.  They told me it was probably going to be about a 2 hour appointment both times...so they booked me in for 8:30 in the morning!  I seriously don't know what I was thinking.  Clark is home next Thursday so that won't be a problem, but poor Ashley has said she'll watch the kids again for the 2nd appointment, so I feel bad that she'll have to get up early as well. 

I'm hoping that Last Dentist won't hurt too much, maybe I'll be able to take a nap.

Cute Things Annika Says (Part Ten)

Annika:  "Mom, did you know that dragons are impervious to magic?"
Me:  "No I didn't.  Do you know what impervious means?"
Annika:  "No...."

Kitchen brilliance

While making supper last month, the recipe called for me to brush my fish with lemon juice.  I don't own a pastry brush, and all of the paintbrushes we have in our house have been used to paint with, and I'm not quite sure how good paint is to ingest.  I started wracking my brain for an idea on how to get a little bit of juice on my fish without drowning the poor things when my eyes alighted on this little gadget.

I have several of these syringes.  The pharmacy gives them to me every time one of the kids has antibiotics.  And because I like to not throw anything away, I have several lying around.  Why I keep them in my Tupperware cupboard is beyond me, but there they were.  Lying there innocently.  So, I used them to "brush" my fish with lemon juice.  It worked great!  A couple of weeks ago, I used them again to "brush" my zucchini with olive oil.  You definitely don't need a pastry brush for jobs like that if you have one of these lying around.

Operation Playroom Organization

The following picture isn't pretty.  However, I don't think I'm the only one in the world that has a room in their house that looks like this, so there you have it.  I'm going to be brave and show you what our playroom looks like most of the time.  Usually Clark is the one that cleans it up.  He has a unique way of cleaning.  He grabs our snow shovel from outside and shovels all of the toys into the corner.  It gets stuff out of the middle of the room.  However, it's kind hard for the kids to find anything to play with. 

We have a monstrosity.  It came with the house.  I think it was at one time a dry bar, but I'm not sure.  All I know is it's big, ugly, and very heavy.  It does have a purpose though.  It stores the toys (when they're not heaped in the corner).

I bought plastic totes from Ikea to store the toys in, but as you can see from the picture, that isn't working very well.

Last week, my bestie Chantal came down for a visit and brought her sister with her.  Celeste is an organizer and would like to do this for a job, so in exchange for a very good grilled cheese sandwich, she helped me organize my playroom.  Chantal (I've mentioned before how smart she is) thought it would be a good idea if we separated our very big room into two ~ one part for TV watching, the other part for playing.  Before, the toys would be in front of the couch and in the middle of the TV watching area, so it was hard for it to be a dual purpose room.  So far, things have been going pretty good.  We have managed to maintain some level of cleanliness down there.  Yay!

The toys and the monstrosity have been moved to the other end of the room.

Aah, gotta love organization!

Saturday snapshot ~ new shoes

Source

I saw this floating around Pinterest the other day and had to laugh.  I have a pair of crocs that people would probably say are not very nice looking.  However, these came in the mail the other day.

Let the compliments begin.

Cute Things Abigail Says (Part Three)

Abigail loves dolls.  She loves playing with things that aren't dolls and pretending they are dolls.  We have nesting dolls.  I think there are four.  So, the other day she introduced me to her dolls.  The tiniest was Tyler, then Gail, then Ka, then Mommy.  I asked where Daddy was.  She went and found a soother and said, "Here's the daddy!"

Her new thing for the past couple of days, if she can't find a doll or a doll substitute, is to ask me for peoples.  "Mommy, I need peoples!"  And, it never fails.  It reminds me of this scene from The Muppets Take Manhattan with Pete and Kermit.  Enjoy!

DIY birthday presents

I don't know about you, but I am dreading Annika going to school for one reason.  Birthday parties.  I am going to assume that she will be invited to some.  That part is fine, I'm glad she'll have friends, it's just the cost of going to multiple birthday parties.  It adds up.  We usually have an approximate $20.00 gift limit on presents, so if you add that on to our gift budget after cousins, it starts to grow quite a bit. 

Annika was invited to a birthday party last weekend for a church friend of hers.  Bree is such a sweetie.  Watching the two of them together is so cute, they have a love/hate relationship.  I think that's probably because they're 4 and 5.

Annika decided that we should make Bree a present.  I'm all for that.  Sometimes the handmade presents are more memorable. 

I saw this tutorial on Pinterest (where else?) and was originally planning on making it for my girls.  Then, while shopping at Wal-Mart, I found the cutest towel that looked like a watermelon.  Since there was only one, I changed my mind and decided to make my first one for Bree. 

The front

The back

 Annika wanted to make something for Bree herself, so she suggested making play dough.  We picked pink (Bree's favourite color) and then Annika added sparkles to make it more fun. 

Both presents were a hit, so we might have to make them part of our repertoire.

The Cleaning Challenge

I think I disappoint my mother.  I am not a cleaner.  In fact, I border on extreme messiness.  I don't necessarily like it, but it's my life.  Part of it is 3 children and a husband that's gone LONG hours and I don't want/feel like being a maid.  Part of it is laziness.  I'll admit it.  But, I want to change. 

The new fad seems to be weight loss challenges where you get a bunch of friends together and all lose weight together.  I think it's good.  You are held accountable for doing something and you just might stick with it longer then if you tried to do it yourself.  I got to thinking, if people can do it to lose weight, why can't we do it to keep our houses clean? 

I found this cleaning calendar on pinterest and thought "that's something that doesn't look too hard".

But, I have to admit, I have several cleaning calendars that I have pinned and then never done anything with.  I've made up my own.  Nothing has helped.  So, I enlisted the help of some friends who also want to have clean houses.  We have decided that to keep everyone accountable, we ALL have to clean on the same day in order to make it count.  Once we get 30 days of clean, we're going to do something fun, a manicure or pedicure, or maybe lunch, something to reward us for our hard work.  I'm excited, because maybe this time it will actually work!  Let me know if you want to get in on the cleaning action, we'd love for you to join us!  We're going to start next Monday (June 11th), so let me know!

Cute Things Annika Says (Part Nine)

We have wild bunnies.  I think a couple of them live in our backyard.  The girls LOVE them.  They think that they can catch them.  Our neighbours have a bush in their front yard, and the other day I think they chased that bunny around the bush about 10 times.  It was too funny.  I don't think it was a very smart bunny.  I told the girls that the best way to catch a bunny (as learnt from a teacher, Mr. Ulriksen) was to put salt on its tail.  Annika asked if it worked with cinnamon as well.  That's cute, but not THE cute thing she said to make this post!

Last night, there were two bunnies eating our grass in the front yard.  Abigail asked if they could go outside and catch them.   I said sure.  They rushed outside without bothering to put their shoes on.  The bunnies were smart tonight and ran onto the road.  Well, maybe not too smart because they almost got hit by a car, but smart that they know my girls aren't allowed on the road, thus they (the bunnies) are safe.  Annika and Abigail come back inside.
Fast forward to about 15 minutes later, when Annika starts sobbing.  She walks into the room and says "Mom, look at my foot!" 
I look at her foot and see that she has a leaf stuck to the bottom.  I take it off and say "It's just a leaf."
She inspects the bottom of her foot (while still sobbing) and says "Not that part, the part where the skin is coming off and there's a hole!"
So, I look again.  There's a piece of sap on her foot.  I pick it off (it is a little bit sticky) while she is still sobbing and flinching and acting every bit the part of a drama queen.  *I am SO looking forward to her becoming a teenager.*
While she is complaining about the pain I am inflicting, I show her the piece of sap and tell her what it actually is.  The crying instantly stops and she says, "Oh.  I knew that."  That girl.

And the winner is....Part Two

Well.  What a busy week we just had at our house!  Friends of ours came down from Edmonton on Tuesday, along with a mother-in-law and a sister, so we had a full house until Saturday!  Lots of fun was had by all...but I sure was tired when they all left! 

Lots of things happened this past week.  The play room got organized (post to come), seersucker was purchased (post to come), and some new things were being created for a birthday (post to come).  See the pattern?   Oh, and I came up with a new way to do something in the kitchen ~ new to me anyway, so guess what?  There's a post to come!

On to business though.  FYI for future readers, when you enter a giveaway, one must check back to see if they won or not.  If you don't do that, you miss out.  Our winner from last week never contacted Chantal sooooooo....that means that I picked a new winner.  Drumroll please.......

Our new winner is Melissa H!  She has been informed of the good news.  Melissa, if you could just send Chantal a message through her facebook page, she'll talk logistics with you, thanks! 

Well, check back here soon for a whole wackload of posts.  I promise my fingers will start dancing over the keys!