Today was a day in my life

So today...I once again slept in. I really have to stop doing that. Sets the whole day back too far. and leaves me no time for devotions and at night I tend to be way too distractable to have them.

But that said, it was a productive day.

Did the bunnies. All are doing well. Nicky's chocolates are growing, Bella's kits are showing their colours...looks like three chestnut, one chin/blue?, and one magpie or dilute harlequin of some sort. Biscuits girls need to move out of the cage as Biscuit is wanting to be rebred...and so she's getting techy with her kits...but I've nowhere to put them except outside and I really would rather not do that...so I'm trying to have them wait until I move out some piggies. Don't think I'll manage it though....if they were all three pounds I could just cull them out in a permanent sort of way and send them to the snake guy... he takes them starting at three pounds.... here's hoping they grow quickly.

Had breakfast. The lad did cereal, I did an egg/cheese sandwich. Learned the lad does NOT like goat cheese which of course means MORE FOR ME! :)

Did some homeschooling with the boy...you can read about that here.

Then I got all the Christmas stuff cleaned up, put away even! Took a while to do this as I couldn't locate three boxes for putting my village away. Finally had the brainstorm to look under the village for what made my 'mountain'.. voila! The missing boxes.

Got the dishes done.

Therefore the house is feeling more liveable again. Hubby dear feels better internally when the house is cleaner so I am trying hard to make more of an effort. He does often pinch in with helping with the dishes so that's a good and helpful thing.

Got the lad outside for some exercise. I'll need to put the pics of what he did. He ran around the house twice. This lad of mine makes me laugh. ONE time I chose to punish him for being not so nice in the car. Made him run around the car five times. He thought it was a hoot and excellent exercise... and therefore when I tell him he needs to get out of the house and exercise he will often run around the house until he is tired. he also tried to make snow sculptures.

Fed the lad supper...we really had a horrible lunch just had liquids and some piroulines. yeah, I know NOT a good mommy today for feeding the lad..BUT supper was good! We had tortellini, cheese, and crescent rolls. Not great, but good. He was happy and full.

After supper I got three baskets of laundry folded and put away, and took out the spring/summer wear from my closet. Hopefully tomorrow I'll see about getting my winter wear upstairs. Would be about time eh? :)

And now I'm updating the blogs, and then will hopefully watch more Serenity (Firefly) on netflix with hubby and it will all be good.

OH>.. I do need to sit down and plan tomorrow's activities with the lad. but looks like my day is running down...which is a good thing...I'm getting tired of being busy. :)

Went for a walk came home with.....

A pet!

Two caterpillars to be precise.

One is a Hyphantria cunea caterpillar(fall web worm) and the other is a Pyrrharctia Isabella caterpillar (isabella tiger moth, woolly bear, banded woolly bear). The Fall web worm that we found is differently coloured than many as it's the orange/yellow version instead of the more normal yellow with Long Spikey Dense fur.

They are now safely ensconced in mouse box (aka...a bug house from the dollar store). We are going to give them lots of grass and lettuce. We will have to see how they do. We're not sure how well the web worm will do as they prefer to eat tree leaves, but we have no tree leaves for it to munch on so it will have to cope with what we have available.

Water to Wine

Jim's sermon this morning was on Jn 2:1-11 where Jesus turned the water into wine.
Justin and I did the video, the lad is learning how to control the sound. Soon enough I think he'll be running it himself! :) Anyways, I appreciated how Jim pointed out that all the stories about things that Jesus did in John are told so that we can see the eventual glory of Christ.

So how Jesus shows himself in this story as the future bridegroom who will provide everything a bridegroom is supposed to provide when the future glory comes. It was also interesting to see how the context fits into all this and explains why it was important. Middle Eastern hospitality is very important, and to not be able to be a effectual host is NOT a good thing. For Jesus to help out the bridegroom in this Miracle story was an important thing. But more importantly, it shows us more about who Christ is, so that we can more fully believe in him.

What else?
This afternoon we went tobogganing at the Pinery. We even went down the "BIG HILL" three times. I would NOT let Justin go down using his Zipfy as he's too young to control it going down such a big hill, but we had fun going down on my toboggan. But we mostly had fun on the smaller hill.

The London Home Show

The London home and lifestyle show was on today at the Western Fair. We had a good time. This was a GOOD show to attend. Lots of booths to wonder, lots of black pens and candies for a lad to collect, people to talk with, and interesting things to see.

Our original plans for the day had been to go the Central Library first for an event they had on from 10-2, but that just didn't happen. We had a lad get up late, and he was quite tired acting, so we gave him time to eat breakfast and wake up a bit first. I'm glad we took that time though it did make our day a bit later than planned. Oh, the other reason for the delay was my desparate search for a library book that I wanted to return if we made it there. Took a good bit to find it but... I did! (so that was a pleasing thing).

It was a good day, I had four does kindle (have their babies). All good sized litters for their breeds/sizes. I did foster one kit over from a doe (Slip) who had seven to a doe (Gayle) who had three. This will help Gayle's kits stay warm better and will make it easier on my older girl Slip.

Got the newsletter for church done today and distributed as well AND I'm not my normal one week late. Folks may be surprised tomorrow in Church. :)

Anyways, that's all I got, I'm tired and will be going to bed on time tonight. :)

Nice day with Hubby

Did you ever have just a nice day with your hubby bumming around?

Well I did.

We didn't do anything special, just bummed around this afternoon. Ran errands and what not. Talked, laughed, frowned and moved on, mostly just talked and spent time just being together.

Had one hard time with a rabbit situation, but Jim is a solid guy who let me talk out my angst at the situation.

Then had fun watching our son do his gymnastics in the evening.

Snow shoeing and skiing

This afternoon we headed out to the field behind the church. I wanted... no....I NEEDED to get out of the house.. so I decided to test out my new snowshoes.

I like 'em. :)

Jim broke trail for Justin, and I kept Justin company by snowshoeing beside him. MUCH easier to help a boy get up again if you aren't on skis yourself. :)

Justin skied way better this week than last week. I was quite impressed. he actually skied really well without using the poles. I carried those. It gave him less to have to think about I think.

The pics are from last week skiing. I didn't want to bring my camera in case I tripped over two much bigger feet. :)

Pinery and Skiing

Took the lad skiing today at the Pinery.

It was our first time out together, and the lad's first time out on skis.

He found it fun, but hard. He fell on purpose a few times, and then fell a few times without it being on purpose. He got a bit discouraged, but still had fun. He called it quits shortly after his boots came off at one point because his skis got all twisted.

I would like to take him to the field behind the church a few times. Get him a bit more confident about being on skis. Be good exercise for us as well.

Slow day, good day

Today was a good day overall.

Started off SLOW. I got up late, which meant I did the bunnies late, which meant that everything was held up.

First thing I heard out of Justin's mouth this morning "daddy! Can I play angry birds? DADDY!" he played it while I was out with the bunnies, he played it while I folded laundry, and then I played it. Before we knew it, it was 1100 a.m.

Time to do some schooling, so we did. :)

After all that we went shopping. I had a cheque to deposit so I took care of that and then bought some groceries. Watched a movie with the lad "the spy that lived next door" it's a jackie chan movie and it's fairly decent.

Put the lad to bed. Read three books and told one story before bedtime.

The books were
Dewey: there's a cat in the library




Dewey's Christmas at the library


and a houseful of Christmas



Then I had six rabbits to butcher, three for one order, one for me, and two for a different order. All were growers that stalled on me. Got to 3.4 pounds and said NOPE, not growing any more. I said no sense throwing feed at you if you aren't going to grow. Turned out for the best as I needed the cage space and the smallest of the bunch turned into "I"M GOING TO KILL YOU ALL!" Nasty little thing. Had everyone terrorized. Nice with me, just not nice with his brothers.

Got some work done on the computer and now it is time for me to go to bed.

Cheers! :)

hmmm.. today...blustery snow

Had to see Justin's ENT specialist.
had about 20 minutes of decent driving...then had 30 minutes or so of scary driving. We got on the news! :) Our van drove past the channel A news team just as they were filming. :)

ENT said... excellent hearing. One ear is good, the other ear has the tube out of it now just a matter of seeing if it heals up okay. Follow up appointment in six months. If doesn't heal by the time he is 10ish he'll have surgery to repair it.

Then home....went over London. Trip home was easier but not great.

we mucked around in the afternoon just resting from all that driving stress... justin played in the backyard while I took care of the rabbits and packed up two for a trip to get a Christmas tree in London. Trip there went great. No issues at all. Sold BOTH bunnies. :) Had supper at Boston Pizza, got our tree and then headed home. left at 830, arrived home 1000 p.m. Normally takes us 40 minutes. That last 10 k were a driving nightmare. Justin got well scared. I was tense. Jim was quiet and very focused. We got home okay.

It was interesting. Justin was still very tense when we got in the house. His whole body language was tight. He put on some music and within a minute you could just see him go "whoo". And the stress was ALL gone.
"How are you doing buddy"? I asked?
"Oh.. I'm not scared mommy. I'm home and the house doesn't drive". :)

I hugged him and said okay...Time for bed. :) That lad makes me smile you know.

Well...Christmas Cards are mostly sent

Yesterday I was feeling restless at bed time so I figured I'd might as well get the Christmas cards done. and yes....I do a Christmas letter. :)

Other than USA and Foreign, most are sent. I've three or four I'm awaiting confirmation on addresses before I send them.

For most of those who live within a two hour drive I also included an invitation to our mostly Annual Open House. It's held on December 11 this year from 2-4, 7-9. hopefully folks will show up.

Today Justin and I are going to finish up the trains unit study/lap book that we started yesterday. We are going to play in the snow, do some shopping, go to the library and volunteer with the local bureau for donating Christmas gifts to the needy. Makes one wonder.... do people REALLY need gifts? Gifts are fun, but I don't classify them as a need they are more of a want (as in I want to bring a smile to the face of a child who otherwise might not smile). But being a helpful servant of the Lord...this is a needful thing.. so Justin and I will go and help.

IF we have time today we'll make some Christmas rice krispy squares, and possibly some puffed wheat or cheerio squares as well. I am hopeful that tomorrow we can make it out to London. But might have to wait until Thursday when we're going out there anyways. :) We'll be taking Justin to see a school production of the nutcracker. Hopefully it will be done well. Costs us less than $20 as a family so makes it worthwhile to me.

Think that's all I got today. Cheers!

Yesterday's activities

1. I learned how to make a box out of 2 x 4's. made it too big, but it does the job. :) I made two boxes, connected them with 2x4's and then put wood on the sides. I now have a mostly done entrance for the rabbitry. 6 feet tall. It will be better than the four foot hole I crawled in through last year, and better than the 2 foot hole I have between tarps this year. :) hopefully the way I have it set up will work better this year. Time will tell. NOW... if it all blows away in the first big storm we get in the year, I'll be rather unimpressed....

2. Jim painted one half of the living room, and then we moved furniture around. The colour is like a very light orangey-brown. It's very subtle. We like it. :) The TV, big couch, Jim's chair, the exercise bike, coffee table and the DVD racks are in the far end of the living room, and my computer and all the homeschool stuff and the love seat are in the road side of the living room. A quite different set up. will be less cosy in some ways if company visits, but it will be quite manageable I think. Hopefully easier to keep tidy whilst homeschooling. :)

AND this morning.....

Justin got us all up because he was very upset that I set up his private house without him. NOT a good start to the day. :) But ah well...it's all a learning experience right?

Today was a good day

Sold some bunnies, bought some new ones.

Visited the dutch relations who were visiting at Mom and Dad's for their anniversary.

Went home, unpacked bunnies, saw how REALLY fuzzy my new buck was and said wow...that's fuzzier than I expected. go figure that one!

Then home to do experiments with the lad.

We did a fair number of them. The biggest hit being experimenting with different ways to put out a fire.

Then tonight I did my download n go review.

Homeschool cleaning

I'm a bit fed up with having things here, there and yon so today said to myself...enough with this, let's tidy and clean and see what we can figure out for making things a bit better.

WE have a clean floor...the rest of the house... well..isn't. :) but things are indeed a bit better. found a ton of lost pens, crayons, pencils etc...and they are organized. Brought some stuff upstairs and brought some of the same stuff back downstairs... it feels right now like it's a lost cause.. BUT I do know I want to do homeschool on the MAIN floor of the house, and not upstairs.

Jim wants to rearrange the living room/dining room so some of the reorganizing will simply have to wait, I just want to make things a bit more doable.

Time will tell what we figure out I suppose. I'm feeling a bit "ack" right now though as I've tons of things unfinished and I don't know where to put it all and AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank goodness the lad is five and homeschooling is doing kindergarten and he can learn and play and help his mommy and that even counts. :) Today he did three pages in one of his books and learned "STOP DROP and ROLL" as well as "STAY LOW and GO (away from the fire)" and we talked about fire safety. He got all worried that we'd get a fire and Tagu would lose his tail and that Mr.O would get lost so we had to work through all that (aka....we'd get Tagu a new tail and we'd fix Mr. O if we could.)

Overall.... a decent day

have to admit, could have done without the sore back, but overall...a good day.

This morning we worked on the letter A lapbook after finishing up his big picture he painted yesterday. When it was dry (after lunch) we hung it up in his bedroom. He looks forward to showing it to Gramma on Sunday.

After lunch we went to the library where we read books and played with the train table. We took home almost all the books we went with, and then took home almost as many again. :) LOTS of reading we can do again this week. It's rather interesting...Justin is trying hard to read books along with me...but only if he thinks I'm not really noticing. :) He's a silly lad at times.

After the library we came home where he played and I worked on dishes and finishing up the laundry. Talked with my mom on the phone for a while.

Had a good supper and watched America's funniest videos together for a while.

In the evening Jim had a bible study, so I put the lad to bed and then played some kingdoms of camelot and then got materials ready for tomorrow.

Overall a good day.

Rainy Day Plans get changed

Our original plans...go to the ilderton fall fair and parade.

It was raining this morning when I got up.
Took me FOREVER to get the bunnies done... and by the time I was done I was chilled through and through.

NO desire whatsoever to stand outside in the rain for a parade, as fun as the ilderton parade always is. so our plans to leave at 930 to drop off critters at Robin's for her to take to the sale tomorrow and then go to the parade changed.

We instead left at 1100ish, dropped them off, went to gramma's for a short visit. The lad stayed behind as Jim and I headed out to run some errands and just spend some together time.

We had a lovely day, got a lot done, talked a fair bit about this that and whatever. The lad had a lovely time at grammas and a rainy day didn't seem so overbearing afterall. :)

Our day today....

Focus...Cleaning the back bathroom and the kitchen and clearing out some of the stuff in the gardens.

We got her done! :)

we also picked a whack of ground cherries, hot peppers, carrots, beets and jalapenos.

Also took time to practice what we learned that tigers do...
We took cat classes.

Little cat learned to stalk prey.
Little cat learned to pounce on prey AFTER running really really fast after it.
Little cat remembered what big cats eat.. buffalo, deer, leopards,etc. and that little cats eat grasshoppers and mice. :)
Little cat learned to play with mommy cat.
Little cat learned to defend himself.. and the importance of protecting his tummy.
Little cat had a WHOLE lot of fun.

Today's Activities

Got to bed late on Monday, so got up a bit later this morning.

before I went out to take care of the bunnies, the lad got up, so I got handy manny on for him and went to do the bunnies, where I discovered one of my kits died overnight...total bummer that. back into the house to see that my hubby was up, tired from lack of sleep.

Threw some sort of breakfast together and talked with mom on the phone for a minute.

Worked through day one of the Terrific Tigers unit study from Download N Go. We had fun doing this. Watched loads of videos and did a bunch of stuff on-line including this cool tiger puzzle that Justin did twice. :)

Did laundry, taught the boy how to pull a fitted cover down over a mattress, and he also learned how to clean a bathtub! :) He had the fun part of bathing the tub clean and then having a bunch of hair bottles end up in the water with him to scrub, and then rinsed it out really well for me. What an excellent young helper he can be.

We had planned to drive the library, but decided it was such a nice day so we walked instead. Good exercise. Got out one tiger book from the library and then played trains for 45 minutes. We had hoped to visit one of the seniors on the way home but we forgot and went to the dollar store for a drink instead. We enjoyed our drink sitting out back of the dollar store and reading books. Very nice to do that with a lad.

Home to work on more laundry and to make supper. I did sausage with potatoes and corn, and the lad did potatoes, corn, tomatoes and cheese since he is not real up on sausage yet. I only did sausage because I'm emptying the freezer of all meat products before I start buying more. They need to be used up! soon I'll be doing the same with the veggie and fruit freezer. I want it empty by spring. Pt the lad to bed and then vegged on the computer for a while since Jim was at a meeting. he came back in good spirits. :) we talked a while and then watched NCIS: Los Angelos together. As Justin would say "this has been a good day, I liked all of it."

Door's Open London

For more on what Justin learned go here.

We had a really good time going out for the day to Doors Open London. We got off to be bit of later start then anticipated, but we managed to cover four of the five that I thought we could do.

We went to the agricultural center, the train club, the HMCS Provost and the Secrets of Radar Museum.

The agriculture center it was fascinating learning about what they are doing in their search to find better ways of handling pests and disease in crops. I learned that was TWO of my potatoes had this year was potato scab which is found quite literally all over the world and they are working on figuring out what causes it to be a problem at times and when it isn't. Justin touched a horn worm. Boy..they are big, and I've never seen one on my tomatoes (yeah!) The making steam was just sheer fun AND we got to listen to bugs eating...sounded just like Justin eating an apple. (that made him giggle). :)

The train club was just huge. Absolutely fascinating seeing all those trains zooming around.

HMCS Provost was for the most part a bit boring for the lad but he found it a hoot running around the upper deck. It was so big and open. I learned how to make a figure 8 knot. Justin and I got a mirror for trying the monkey fist rope toss into a kisby ring. And here's a video on how to make a monkey's Fist knot.


Secrets of Radar Museum. Just a small museum it was interesting walking through it. We found radar points on a big board, and Justin matched pictures to old planes. But what he enjoyed the most was when we looked at various voltmeters and parts that belong to radar stations and I told him what they all were. Rather fun that.

Sept 13, 2010

Today we took J to Gymnastics for the first time. It was a bit of a rush to get out of the house on time (sleeping in doesn't help). Took some mice along with me. There is a guy in London who will take my mice whenever I have some so that makes it nice. :) Anyways, the lad had fun at Gymnastics despite being very uncertain about the whole deal. He said he'd like to go again. :)

Afterwards we went took the lad for lunch as he was apparently starving. :) And then off to gramma's. After gramma's Jim and I went to Costco where I had a hotdog and we did a spot of shopping. Off to the western fair afterwards. We had fun.

- watched versatility in western riding. That was fun...especially when the calf got away from the cowboys.
- the raptor show put on by the canadian raptor conservatory. We had a great horned owl fly just 2 inches from our heads. :)
- Double Vision. a magician act done by twins. it was a bit goofy oddball...but had some excellent magic as well.
- Horse racing. :) Ah, I love watching the ponies run AND I haven't lost my touch at picking the winners.
- and then we browsed. Really enjoyed watching the potter at work. I hope to do that with the lad sometime.

Then home, put lad to bed, check on bunnies (totally freaked them out - silly things) and do some computer stuff. A good day.

NGBTS picnic and other stuff

Today we attended the NGBTS picnic hosted by KLC and A Different Drum from London. NGBTS stands for Not Going Back to School, it's a picnic for homeschoolers.

We had a scavenger hunt which our lad thoroughly enjoyed. :) I really liked how they had this one set up. It went beyond the normal find this find that and bring in all this stuff. It worked with all the five senses... can you hear, can you smell, can you see, can you touch, can you read, can you find. Justin had a lot of fun with it too. He even tried to catch a squirrel to put in his pocket. :)

We picked up some new books. Okay...these were "new to us" book. Most were on science experiments or teaching books. There was a lady there who had five cases of books and apparently has another 90 cases in her home yet. In one of the books the lad found an experiment that he desperately wanted to do IMMEDIATELY! To read how that went, go here. oh the book was this one (101 great science experiments):

After having a picnic lunch and chatting with a lady we met at the HOPE picnic and a couple other people we ended up not going the play area for a play time, but instead ran some errands and went home.

The lad experimented, we had supper and the two of us went to pick grass for the bunnies and had fun with the "pink cats" that like to sneak up a body (and then one needs to hide in the corn field). Only the mommy pink cats are dangerous. The baby ones are fun and like to follow you like friendly cats, and the old ones with purple around their eyes are safe and like to say hi, and be petted. (active imaginations the lad and I have). :)

Then time for bed and book reading and conversation.
Overall a good day.

Discovered when we got home that hubby dear expected we'd be in London late today, whereas I expected to get home by 5/530. So I was delighted with how the day went whereas Jim wasn't quite so. Shoot... what can a person do but learn to communicate these things more clearly......It's always a learning process. :)