Hello Mr. Sun!

Finally! A Beautiful weekend.Having a cuddle together

We watched Superman 2 on TV last night...I must be slow because I had no idea that there even was a Superman 2 created! Now I'm having a problem explaining to a 4 year old that we can't watch it again this morning because it was on TV and not a DVD, and we can't just turn it back on again! Yet if I suggest we watch a video, he is quick to correct me "no, mom, it's not a video it's a D-V-D"!

Beware! Graphic Content

Beware! This next blog comes with some pictures that may not be suitable for younger viewers! After our camping trip our car came home quite filthy, so I decided to vacuum the inside of the car and while I was at it I decided to get ambitious and bring in the car seats to wash them as well. We have two car seats, one is a booster which is quite easy to dismantle to take off the fabric part so that one has been washed a few times. The other one though is your regular car seat with the harness and whole bit and is not that easy to take apart, therefore, I hate to say this, but in the four years we have had it, I don't believe it has ever been washede! So after quite a bit of wrestling with it, I managed to take it apart completely to get the fabric part off. So in the process I realized that not only the fabric needed washing but the whole seat in itself was quite dirty. So I brought it outside to hose it down and discovered this... Yes you are seeing correctly, there is a dead bird STUCK in the car seat!! The piece where the bird is in actually folds up into the seat and then there is also a base that the car seat sits on top of as well, so how this bird managed to find it's way into that spot is beyond me! I will mention though that we do move the car seats in and out of the car quite a bit so I'm sure that this incident must have happened while the car seat was out of the car. GROSS! Now I have to figure out how in earth I am going to get this car seat all put back together, which is going to be quite the challenge!!

We did it!

So we were supposed to go camping last weekend, but we were rained out, so this weekend we went instead. All week, the weather forecast was saying nothing but good things about the weekend. Friday morning came and I checked again, yep, Sat. and Sun. sunny! So off I went getting ready and packing. Packing is no easy task either, you really need a whole day in itself to pack. It's not like going off to a hotel. You need to remember a million and one things. Last year we did this same camping trip. I was quite the novice then and figured we could just grab a few things and hit the road. Well I soon discovered when we got to the campsite, that one needs to be able to chop the wood that is there, as well it would be nice to have some sort of tool to stir your eggs, or dish soap to wash your dishes...you get the idea.

So this time was going to be different, I made a list and spent all day getting ready. Well, Friday afternoon came and I thought I would check the forecast one more time...RAIN, all weekend! How can the forecast change so quickly! Well, I did not spend all afternoon packing just to unpack, so we went anyways. Friday evening was the nicest, pretty warm and only a little clouded over. Then Saturday, after it had rained during the night, was okay in the morning. We were able to have our breakfast and hang out a bit before it started to rain. So we went back into the tent and had a little "quiet" time, (pretty much laying down while the kids ran from one side of the tent to the other jumping on Jeff). So we decided to go for a drive to a nearby town. We did a little shopping in the stores and went down to the lake and watched the wind surfers and kite surfers for a while. Then it stopped raining in time for us to go back to our site and have supper and sit around the campfire. So I consider ourselves quite lucky not having to cook supper in the rain!

So weather and all, we had a great time and the best thing about this particular campsite is that they have a playground right beside it. So the kids can spend as much time as they like playing while we can watch them at the campsite...gotta love it. And yes even with the list, there was a few things we did forget, but I have to say we didn't do too bad at all.

My ramblings.

Check out what I'm doing this week! I'm a Kids Kapers day camp leader at our church. It's in the mornings and I am in the five year old class, which has been great. It has given me a chance to see what Jonah will be like in a year from now, although it seems like recently he has just grown up so much! He asked me yesterday if he could go to the park by himself...he is so independent! So off he went to the park and came back about an hour later...psych! I can't even imagine ever letting him go off by himself. I can totally understand those parents that send their kids off to kindergarten and come home crying. That will totally be me (minus the crying, right Darla?) I was thinking to myself the other day that in the three years that we have lived in this house I have never been in here by myself without the kids. Is that weird? Although I can probably count on one hand how many times we have had a babysitter since Jonah was born! Allrighty, off I go to Kids Kapers!

Purses, Who knew?

I read this and found it quite interesting...thought I would pass it along.

Its' something just about every woman carries with them. While we may know what's inside our purses, do you have any idea what's on the outside? Shauna Lake put purses to the test - for bacteria - with surprising results. You may think twice about where you put your purse. Women carry purses everywhere from the office to public restrooms to the floor of the car. Most women won't be caught without their purses, but did you ever stop to think about where your purse goes during the day? "I drive a school bus, so my purse has been on the floor of the bus a lot," says one woman. "On the floor of my car, probably in restrooms." "I put my purse in grocery shopping carts, on the floor of bathroom stalls while changing a diaper," says another woman. "And of course in my home which should be clean." We decided to find out if purses harbor a lot of bacteria. We learned how to test them at Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake, then we set out to test the average woman's purse. Most women told us they didn't stop to think about what was on the bottom of their purse. Most said they usually set their purses on top of kitchen tables and counters where food is prepared. Most of the ladies we talked to told us they wouldn't be surprised if their purses were at least a little bit dirty. It turns out purses are so surprisingly dirty, even the microbiologist who tested them was shocked. Microbiologist Amy Karren of Nelson Labs says nearly all of the purses tested were not only high in bacteria, but high in harmful kinds of bacteria. Pseudomonas can cause eye infections, staphylococcus aurous can cause serious skin infections, and salmonella and e-coli found on the purses could make people very sick. In one sampling, four of five purses tested positive for salmonella, and that's not the worst of it. "There is fecal contamination on the purses," says Amy. Leather or vinyl purses tended to be cleaner than cloth purses, and lifestyle seemed to play a role. People with kids tended to have dirtier purses than those without, with one exception. The purse of one single woman who frequented nightclubs had one of the worst contaminations of all. "Some type of feces, or even possibly vomit or something like that," says Amy. So the moral of this story - your purse won't kill you, but it does has the potential to make you very sick if you keep it on places where you eat. Use hooks to hang your purse at home and in restrooms, and don't put it on your desk, on a restaurant table, or on your kitchen countertop. Experts say you should think of your purse the same way you would a pair of shoes. "If you think about putting a pair of shoes onto your countertops, that's the same thing you're doing when you put your purse on the countertops," says Amy. The microbiologists at Nelson also said cleaning a purse will help. Wash cloth purses and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather purses.

Meet Fuzz head 1 and Fuzz Head 2

This is what happens when you've been rained in all weekend having all your camping plans dashed to pieces!

Friday night: It's about 10:00 and we're sitting watching a movie (Bee Season) when all of a sudden the power goes off. How bizarre that the fact that you have no power all of a sudden opens up this whole new world! We sat there for about five minutes saying "okay, now what do we do" and then we lit up the living room with all my fantastic PartyLite candles that I've had since I was in high school if you can believe that, Jeff grabbed his guitar and I grabbed some knitting and we spent the next 1/2 hour having a lovely time. Then Jeff decides to grab the walkie-talkies and go for a walk around the block when all of a sudden the power came back on. So...we put the walkie-talkies away, I turned my movie back on and Jeff went onto the computer.

Power Failure=the ability to bring lives together!

My new tent

Remember all that Canadian Tire money I was saving? Well, check out the new tent! It has the option for two rooms and sleeps 6! We're planning on doing lots of camping this summer.

My Birthday

It was supposed to be a surprise birthday party but the night before while we were grocery shopping I started to wonder why we would be buying 40 burgers, two watermelons, tons of pop and chips (what should I give him...a B for effort?). Well, I had a lot of fun...I absolutely love having barbeques.

We had a huge plate of watermelon which was gone in about five seconds from the hords of children...Ben obviously didn't get enough, here he's starting to go through the leftovers scrounging for scraps!