Help! I'm in the Great White North without wireless internet!

>> July 14, 2009

Just a quick shout out to say, I am still alive but relatively offline. There is internet here, but the room in which it is located is a) roughly the temperature of a meat locker and can only be survived for short periods of time, and b) very much not child-friendly and since I have a small child almost permanently attached to me, it is difficult to sit here for the time required to write an actual post. That, and, let's be honest, I'm more interested in spending my time soaking up family and friends. Not that I don't love you all, but I'll be back soon. Does anyone want to write a guestpost for me some time this week? I'll return the favor as soon as I'm back on English soil. Drop me an email if you're interested. If not, this will just give you more time to read up on all the other blogs you follow. Oh, yes, I haven't read a single blog since I've been here. I don't know if it's liberating or if I'm going through withdrawal. Somewhere in between I'm sure. But I miss you and will catch up(-ish) as soon as I get back my wireless.

PS. Oh, right! you don't actually know where I went. Part of the reason I stopped blogging for a bit was because all I wanted to talk about was my best friend back in Canada and her upcoming wedding and how hard it was to not be there and how much I desperately wanted to buy a ticket, but if I did decide to go, I wanted it to be a surprise. So we went into stealth mode. Turns out we decided that money wasn't a good enough reason to not be there for one of my oldest and dearest friends. So I bought the ticket Sunday night and left on Tuesday and surprised her at her house on Wednesday and made it to the wedding on Friday. Woot!!

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>> July 1, 2009


















*lovely animated Canadian flag courtesy of

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>> June 28, 2009



Okay, this is me with my undercut in Greece. The ramrod straight back and slightly manic smile is because I am scared to death of heights and that is a long way down. Back to the hair, I don't know that I want to go this high again, but definitely need less hair than I have right now.

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Six Word Saturday

>> June 27, 2009



So hot. I miss my undercut.


I've been really missing my undercut lately. I really wanted to get my hair dyed and cut while we were in Chicago seeing as I would pay in dollars there what I would pay in pounds here (I'll save you the math and say that sucks and is way too expensive here). Unfortunately a few things came up that cost more than we'd planned on and I didn't get to have my hair done. Boo. I've resigned myself to not having pink hair anytime soon, but I'm still hoping for some wicked red. Maybe this shade?


And if you're wondering what an undercut is, this is me on our trip to Greece in April, 2007. Okay, I'm having trouble with my external hard drive, so you don't get to see me in Greece with my undercut. I found this lovely example for you instead.

I know Saturday is over for me and approaching over for you but I got distracted by laundry. Loads of it. *hahahaha sorry I couldn't resist* Does anyone know of someone in Oxford who does hair on the side, now that I'm looking at that picture, I really miss my undercut. And is it really a 6 word Saturday if you then take so many other words to explain it?

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Have you seen this woman?

>> June 26, 2009


All Points Bulletin - Missing Woman - one strange mamma, about 5'2", dark hair, declined to give weight (be sure not to ask her, she might take a swing at you), last seen heading off to help take care of her son's god-brother. I have no idea what I she was wearing because it was way too long ago. I mean, come on, you'd think that with exciting news like that and truly awesome photo ops she'd be blogging about it by now, bugging all her readers (are there any left? not you, Mom, I know you're still there) with how cute he is and how she got to hold him for two days straight and look at this picture, and this picture, and this...you get the idea.

I wish I had a good excuse, like no internet (okay, well actually I didn't have any internet at the godparents house but that was only two days and that was OVER TWO WEEKS AGO!! This is shameful I know. There is no excuse. So instead of continuing to moan about it, let me catch you up.

Mateo is beautiful. I can't describe to you the honor it was for me to spend those two days with him and his parents. I hove how God's timing works out even the little things that we don't think to ask for. I half-jokingly offered to help out when I saw her Sunday, knowing her sisters and family would be bombarding her with wanting to come over, but as it turned out, she did need help and the others weren't free. So it was a blessing both ways. I tried my best not to gloat too much. (Did I do okay, Myrny?) I took tons of pictures but I'll leave those for their own post.

So what else happened? I got to spend some awesome time with very dear friends. We went to the Zoo with the other godparents. I got to do a lot of shopping at an awesome Carter's sale for my every growing child. I got to visit AG for my Birthday present (thanks, Mumsy). I took part in a Zumba class. (go ahead and check out that video...see the dear heart in the I heart NY t-shirt? put 75 lbs on her and that would be about what I looked like. Ya.) I actually got to go to 3 movies!! UP with Asher and Janet, Star Trek with Myrny, and Terminator with Jeff. I have to say, I'd forgotten what really good popcorn tasted like. They don't actually make their popcorn in the theatre here, they pull it out of great big plastic bags already popped. Ugh. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed all of them and have made it a priority to find a babysitter for at least one trip to the movies a month. They say date nights are important, right?

What else? There was a bridal shower for my former Worship Leader (Congrats again Jenny!!). Saturday was spent helping Myrny run errands and such (really just an excuse for us to spend the day shopping ;) and then helping set up. Asher was a bit done in by the time we got there and decided to crash while the women-folk got things set up. I didn't tell him what he was napping on. I'll save this picture for his wedding reception:

Jeff arrived Saturday night from his conference in Minnesota. We got to share our favourite Chinese food with the couple-to-be after church. Jeff got his man-date with his chocolate bear on Tuesday after a much needed day of just resting and hanging out at our friends home.



Asher loves his Manny and Max. When I played this video he perked up and went running into our kitchen to see if they'd somehow materialized. Asher and I got treated to some Baker's Square as well that evening. Wednesday was organizing our suitcases and packing up so that we would be free to visit with the godparents and Mateo who came to visit us before heading to the airport.

Mary doesn't realize she's not actually tall enough to do that to Jeff.

For the most part, that was Chicago. Greatly condensed, but we're just playing catchup, right? The flight home was not bad, Asher slept most of the way, Jeff and I didn't sleep at all. We very much needed the weekend to recover from the jetlag. Monday, at our Toddle In, Asher fell of the back of a little plastic mini-slide. Very traumatic, but no damage done. Tuesday went into our local drop in play group and had a very interesting conversation with some of the ladies there, but that really needs its own post. Wednesday missed my Women's Group in favour of a nap since I'd been awake since 4:30. Woke up from the nap to find Asher covered in some mysterious blisters. If you followed me on Twitter, you heard about the whole miserable saga of finding out he had hives. Hives! Still don't know what caused them or why they hung on for 3 days. You notice how I'm talking of it the past tense right? Because today, he had a 3 hour nap and woke up almost completely hive free and in the course of writing this post, the last few marks have faded and nothing new has shown up. I'm tentatively calling it a win. If you want to see all the traumatic pictures you can go here. I'm just happy to be breathing again.

And if you're still with me, a comment on the post I wrote a few weeks back. Something else you probably didn't know about me, I went through psychoanalysis for almost 4 years. Honestly, I think everyone should do it. Incredible. Anyway, I always did this in my sessions. Right before either I went on a holiday or my Doctor did, I would get down to the nitty-gritty, the meat of things, those deep, inner angsts. And then my half hour would be up, we'd go our merry ways for a couple weeks and I'd come back and just play catch up for a few sessions. I knew this was my pattern and yet I couldn't stop. I had no idea that I still did it. So I'm making sure my catch-up is all done. I may expound on some things just cause they were fun and I have lots of pictures, but I won't feel like I can't write about anything else in the meantime. Like I said, I don't know where I will go from here, but I don't want to lose whatever was going on when I wrote that blog. I really appreciated your comments. Let's see if we can't get to know each other even better in the future. Which, uh, means, I should maybe stop lurking on all your blogs and actually commenting I guess. :)

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Live from Chicago!

>> June 9, 2009

Well, it's 6:45 am, I've been awake for longer than I want to think about. Mostly because as I lay in bed awake, thinking it was quickly approaching 7 and I'd had a nice little sleep in and so had Asher, I was wholly unaware of the fact that it was actually quickly approaching 5:30 and there had been no special sleep in and I would actually be waking up ridiculously early and feeling pretty good about it in a mere half hour. But the good news is, is that Asher did sleep through the night, no fever or coughing or whining or crying. Which means I also slept through the night. Even if that night for me was only about 5 and a half hours long. It's a longer night than I've had for while so I'll take it.

In case you were wondering, there won't be any Monday Meals while we're here. No way I'll be that organized. As you can see. What with it being Tuesday already. And yes, me being happy that Asher had no fever or coughing and all the rest of it is because the night before I got very little sleep thanks to all that going on. I had thought it was a cold, ther was some cloudy snot involved, but now I'm thinking more the snot was just all the recycled air of the plane and the wind and new pollen of Chicago upon our arrival and the fever was from his last molar. Either that or the shortest cold in history as this morning there's no sign of any of those ailments...except of course the molar.

Anyway, I'm very excited today as we are going to go help out Asher's godmamma with her brand new bambino. It all happened so suddenly she didn't have time to hand off her projects at work and so has a lot due this week (happily though she works from home). Then she'll be off on six weeks maternity leave and her husband is a school teacher and is finished as of Thursday. So in the meantime I get the wonderful job of hanging out and helping with the baby. Yay!

So for now, I'm off to pack up for the day, get some breakfast and go pick up the rental car. Will catch up on blogs as soon as I can.

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Off to Chi-town

>> June 6, 2009

We are off to Chicago in a few hours. I was looking forward to it before, but now I am completely over the moon. Two of our dear friends and Asher's godparents have been travelling a very long road and on Monday the will meet their new little baby boy. I am so unbelievably ecstatic for them right now. I'm sure they would be picking him up earlier, but she also happens to be walking the Avon 2-day walk for breast cancer starting tomorrow at 7am. I'm sure she'll have a spring in her step for all of those 39? miles.




We love you guys!!
does this make Asher a god-brother?

*Edit: This is not actually a picture of their new baby. Sorry. This is a picture of them as they visited Asher and I in the hospital like the great godparents they are. I'll have pics of them with their baby soon.

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About This Blog

I love this adventure I'm on with my Rocket Scientist. The most recent addition to our expedition has me in awe daily. I can't wait to see My Little Man as a big brother. We started off by moving from Western Canada to Chicago and now we're in the UK. Will this Strange Mamma ever not feel like a stranger in the land?

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