Day 359

I needed to find a spot in the kitchen for my new Kitchen Aid mixer. I found one spot but I needed to move a few things into a little used cabinet by the stove. I tried to clear it out but the guy who built this kitchen (my husband) did all kinds of weird things. There was a some kind of separator inside that I couldn't get out because a screw driver wouldn't fit, so I actually had to take the whole counter apart. What a mess. This was supposed to be a 5 minute job, instead it took 3 hours!

Day 320

I made this construction sign and stuck it up on the window of the bathroom door. Ryan's party is next Saturday and we still have a bunch of stuff to do in order to make the house look descent by then. I should have just printed out another huge sign and stuck it on our front door. This house is always going under some fix-it or repair job.

Day 312

Today we dropped Alex off at daycare because we wanted to do a big cleaning upstairs before winter came. In the span of about 2 hours in the morning Alex had ripped one of his favourite books into a million pieces, peed on the kitchen floor, pulled the door stop off the wall and then clogged the toilet. We knew we would get nothing done if he was around so I put him in the car and dropped him off at our trusty baby sitters house.

Wally and I spent 4 HOURS cleaning the bedroom alone, getting rid of stuff, and packing other stuff up. The amount of dust was crazy. I don't think our room has ever been so clean so I took a picture of it. We didn't even get a chance to get to some other stuff we wanted to clean out such as the closets and coat rack down stairs. Oh well, next week!

Day 285

This farmer was spreading what I'm assuming was fertilizer. I don't know how much of it he actually got on his field though. It made such a mess that from far it looked like there was a bad fire going on.

Day 280

Ryan didn't have any school today so we went into town to visit my parents. The kids were quite happy sweeping up Oma and Opa's drive way and playing with the leaves.

Day 257

I am so freaking sick today and Alex is being a terror. All I want to do is veg in front of the computer or go to bed but this kid is really working me. Check out wheat he did to my sink and toothpaste. All the kleenex was his attempt to clean it before I caught him. Don't mind the rust stains from the water, we're getting rid of this sink soon anyways.

Day 212

If a kid is bored, just shove him in a sandbox with a hose. It's messy but effective.

Day 172

Cupcake?

Day 146

Alex has figured out how to get into our drawers, and how to open the lock on our oven. We didn't figure this out until I was pre-heating the oven and came back into the kitchen to find smoke pouring out of it. This is all that is left of my spatula...thanks Alex.

Day 141

Today was the big garage sale day, and it was a bust :(  The minute 9am rolled around, the skies opened up and started raining on us. We had to scramble to cover up all our stuff, all my tags got smudged, and of course it kept the people away. At one point my parents came by and they let me know that our big sign by the main highway road was down. This was the sign I was counting on bringing in most of the people, so I had to hop in the car and try to pound it back into the ground. By the time my parents left and got back home, they had let me know that the sign was back down again. I had to make up a huge contraption held down by a big patio slab. Another highlight was seeing a skunk run across the yard, and ending up sun burnt again even though I was under an umbrella almost the whole time.

Look at all this crap we're trying to get rid of! LOL

Day 130

We're planning on having a garage sale on the 22nd, so we're starting to clean out our camper (which had been turned into our shed) and all the stuff we have stored in the barn. I can't believe how much crap we have. All the stuff in the picture below was pulled out of just the camper. I can't believe all of that fit in there! There were at least 5 bags of out grown clothes from the boys and 9 strollers. I seemed to have had some kind of weird stroller obsession when the boys were younger. LOL

This little red squirrel chirped at us most of the time we were out there. Calm down little dude, we aren't gonna steel your food stash.

For supper I made pork chops coated in crushed crackers with a lemon honey garlic sauce, curry glazed carrots and some of the new Uncle Ben's curry basmati rice. I wasn't crazy about the rice, I found it pretty sticky, and the peas in it were all wrinkly and gross looking.

Day 117

Wally's mom stopped by for a visit today. The boys don't see their Nanny too often, so whenever she comes, she brings lots of gifts. It always looks like Christmas in here after she leaves, wrapping paper and toys everywhere.

One of my favourite summer birds, the male purple finch, has also started making an appearance at the feeders today.

I made Wally some cheesy garlic and pepper shrimp pasta for his lunch tomorrow. I'm having a great time cooking and improvising recipes lately.

Day 109

I had a hippopotamus for lunch!

No, actually it was for supper because when I went to clean and cut up my chicken, it looked like this:

It didn't smell bad, but those brown parts were a real appetite suppressant and I wasn't in the mood to risk food poisoning.

I also spent 3 hours grooming Murphy today. This dog has the thickest fur ever and she has tonnes of it. By the time I was done, it had looked like a dog had exploded in the kitchen.

I think the end result looks good though, and she really seems to like the way it feels...She keeps running around the yard like a maniac. I guess the breeze feels nice.

Day 100!

I had noticed lately that my pond wasn't looking as deep as I thought it was, and that after I turned off my waterfall I was losing over an inch of water a day. Wally and I decided to give it a thorough cleaning to see if there was a leak in the liner or something. Well we ended up spending hours pulling up bucket fulls of gravel, rocks that Ryan has thrown in over the years, and nasty goop. I have an awesome pair of pond gloves that go up to my armpits that made the job a lot easier. After adjusting a few rocks on the falls and turning down the water flow, we got it all running again only to find out a few hours later that the water line was still going down. This might mean that I have to disassemble my whole waterfall, which is going to be a huge job that I'm not looking forward to.

We then took another hike in the woods where I came across these gorgeous little flowers, one are of the woods was covered in them.

When it was time to head home Alex had a spaz and didn't want to leave. We kept walking and said "Ok, bye Alex!" Hoping he would come running when he saw we were serious, but he wouldn't budge. So I kept walking and said "Ok Alex, we'll leave you here in the woods and maybe a wolf or bear will want to raise you" Then Ryan stopped and said "Oh no, my poor baby brother is going to be all alone in the woods!" So he runs over to him, gives him a hug and says..."Bye, I'll miss you." LOL!

Day 84

This morning we turned on the dishwasher and it protested. Loudly. Looks like it's hand washing until wally can take a look at it on his day off. One thing I hate more than anything in the world is hand washing dishes. Blech! I hate putting my hands in that murky water full of food chunks. Not expecting a dishwasher breakdown, I didn't have any gloves around, so I had to put on my big girl panties and deal with it.

Day 80

Today the kids were bugging me for a snack, and I had a sweet tooth, so I made up cheater S'mores. I just stacked some mini marshmallows and chocolate chips on a graham cracker, then baked it a 350 oven for about 5 mins, stacked another cracker on top and tah-dah! Sticky goodness!

Sticky

Gooey

Kissy...awwww