In the past several days I have packed no less than 40 boxes. Combine that number with the rented storage closet full of rubbermaids and two basement storage closets full of misc. boxes, plus furniture and you have an insane amount of stuff. I'm not having fun anymore. Anyone who wishes to skip reguarly scheduled gym time or the like on the 28th to haul boxes will be my hero for the next while. I can promise that it will be a worthy work out as we have calculated that we currently own over 750 lbs of books. I wish I could say that I was kidding. For the less physically inclined, I have also packed many boxes filled with stuffed animals and polly pockets. These boxes are very light, but look identical to the boxes containing 75 lbs of books. If you use a little acting, nobody will be the wiser. They all have to get moved from the uhaul (which we're hoping will actually make the trip) and I am dreading trying to get it all done with just T and I.

Today we drove up to Athabasca to finalize the purchase and shipping details on my new project(read: yearling Friesian filly). You have no idea how excited I am about this.

much happiness....i think

I hate those days when you just know that you should have stayed in bed because it's only going to get worse as the day progresses. It was one of those days. I would have stayed in bed but my suddenly less than cherubic one year old decided to herald the morning by throwing up all over the sheets. The rest of the day was pretty much the same. Lexi spend most of the day crying, only being consoled by nursing. Normally this isn't a problem, but when your digestive system has turned into Mt. Vesuvius it's not so pleasant. Then to top of the day, as I was walking into Safeway to pick up some much needed groceries some little kid (who shall henceforth be referred to as the spawn-child) pointed directly at me, turned to her brother and said "See that lady....she's ugly!!" I kid you not. WTF?? Who says things like that??!! Maybe I really should have stayed in bed.

It's finally official. We are definately moving. To be honest though, it doesn't seem like a reality as of yet. Things have been so crazy with trying to get the basment finished and keeping small fingers out of dry wall mud and rotating saw blades that I haven't really had time to think or process any of it. I'm not exactly sure when we are leaving...coming....going... but I'm thinking sometime around Thanksgiving or possibly as late as Christmas. It will all depend on Edmonton's insane real estate market. Perhaps one day real soon I will have time for a real update.

This is what happens when your husband lets your daughter pick out your birthday cake

Trent took Tatyanna and Skylar in to Dairy Queen with him with the objective of buying my birthday cake. Yanna took one look at this gem of a cake and refused to consider any others....because "mommy like bunny hops" you know....

I'm not sure what it is but I have this strange desire to cook rabbit stew. Oh, wait....maybe it's the 3 hours of Max and Ruby that I was forced to endure yesterday on the way to Lac la Biche. Yes, that must be it.

I survived. To be honest, I wasn't sure that I would. T has been gone for the last week on another one of his work holidays. He tries to tell me that it's work but I tend to disagree. In my world to be considered a holiday, the event must meet the following criteria:

1. Sleeping must be done in a bed other than your own. Setting up a tent the basement does not count.

2. Housework is not necessary and does not involve cleaning dog slime from the walls or cheerios from the vents.

3. Intelligent conversation with other adults must be had.- At this point though, I would settle for any conversation. In the last few days I have found myself saying things like "I really don't think that it's a good idea to lick the cheese grater....I understand that you like cheese, but I can't see this going well for you." and "Please stop carrying your sister around by her head....she doesn't like it" or even "Someone hand your sister the puke bucket....please!!!"

4. Any trips to the bathroom are done without an audience. Most people take this one for granted, I don't.

See, he's totally on a holiday. I am however going to look at a horse on the way home from picking T up. I realize that I could be setting myself up for some monumental disappointment but the opportunity was too good to pass up. If we move, I will have the money to put towards riding, if not, I will have to content myself with playing with yanna's collection of plastic horses. She's only a yearling at this point but seems quite promising. We'll have to see what happens I guess.

Yanna has always been a rather perceptive sort of kid. For all her outward, bull-in-a-china shopness, she can be pretty tuned in to the feelings of those around her. Yesterday, i was upset and frustrated for most of the day. I thought I was hiding it pretty well from the kids but Yanna found me, gave me a hug and asked what was wrong. After I explained to her that grown-ups have bad days too, she smiled and asked "you need penis mommy?"* and then offered me a tissue. How can you not smile after that? I think I will miss the "Yannish" once the speech therapist starts working with her.

*In Yannish, all hard c/k sounds are p's and x's are s's...thereby making the word kleenex sound...much more entertaining

Nostomania - noun; an overwhelming homesickness; a desire to return home or to a place of familiarity

I can't say that I'm homesick exactly. To be honest, there are aspects of returning home that would be extremely difficult (read: there is a distinct lack of decent sushi places) I'm not sure what it is. There seems to be a general sense of angst and unrest lately. Perhaps it's the months of living in limbo and the uncertainty of whether we are going or staying. We have done all we can to improve the situation here to no avail and while moving back seems to be the best solution, it is also proving to be impossible. Any jobs that we apply for compete with the local population....people who are available for interviews and can start immediately. Needless to say, this is making the whole process that much more difficult. I applied for 4 jobs at the hospital but can't imagine that I will hear anything. We extended our "moving deadline" to the end of the month. After that, I'm not sure what will happen.....we can't really stay here but don't really want to move the kids mid-school year. One kid wants to move, one doesn't. The younger two are too young to care. Moving would free up money we have in the house....money for T to get his education...for me to get back into riding. We even found a decent house, with enough room for a family of 6 and a mortgage that would be half of what we currently pay. It seems like the ideal solution and yet we can't seem to make it happen.

I came across this site the other day. By the time T and I got to the bottom of the page we were both laughing so hard that our sides hurt and we couldn't breathe. Interestingly, we had just found out that our child tax credit monthly amount was decreased by $500 (very not good!!!) and still we laughed. Good times.

I always find it funny when people make comments like "Wow, you handled that so well. My hat's off to you!" Yesterday I was the recipient of comments like that on 4 separate occasions. What they don't know is that after all the kids were in bed I hit the wall hard enough to put a big dent in it and cried. I never cry.If yesterday is any indication of how the week is going to progress, it's going to be a very long week! It was one of those parenting nightmare kind of days. In the morning I dropped T off for his yearly week long work "holiday". He calls it work but anything that involves having time to oneself, the ability to sleep uninterrupted as well as staying in a hotel, eating food that someone else cooks and not having to clean anything is a holiday in my books. The day itself was not so bad, and left me feeling optimistic about the rest of the week but around 4:00 it all went drastically downhill. Yanna has had a rash for the last several weeks. I have tried every natural treatment that I can think of with no success. She was getting to the point where she was scratching her skin raw. I, feeling good about the day, decided that enough was enough and perhaps it was time to consider seeing a regular doctor (blech) I called health link to determine if there was anyone close taking new patients and was given a list of names to chose from. Dr. Adams. I figured that it sounded like a pronounceable sort of name and was optimistic that perhaps he spoke English and drove the 30 minutes to the west end to see him. 2 hours. I waited in a crowded waiting room with 4 kids for 2 hours. It was NOT fun. Yanna kept trying to take her clothes off (because they were itchy) and make "snow angels" on the floor. We read every book in the waiting room, played eye spy with the older two, pretended she was a bear in a cave under the chair and counted everything we could think of. I used all of the usual tricks and then some but after two hours nothing works. By the time we got to enter phase two, aka known as waiting in the actual office, I was peeling her off the walls. At this point I was thinking that the change of scenery was nice and kept Yanna busy looking at the bone charts and things on the walls. Then Lex, who never spits up, puked all over my foot. I was wearing sandals. Once the doctor came in, it was obvious that English was not his first language (the name Moufasa on the wall gave me the heads up)....or even his second. He barely understood me and didn't understand Yanna at all. I still felt ok about the whole thing...until he started sporadically saying "help me!" and pretending to cry throughout the conversation. Apparently he got a kick out of the baby's horrified expression. After a bizarre checkup, he announced that it was either ringworm or eczema. Excuse me what??!! As someone who grew up on a farm, I'm pretty familiar with ringworm...and as someone who also suffers from eczema, I'm pretty familiar with that too. I felt that given the fact that we currently live in a city and have not been near any animals other than the dog in a very long time, that the latter diagnosis was probably more correct. I suggested that too him and he agreed. A prescription for cortisone cream (which may or may not get used) and a few more rounds of "help me" and we were out of there. Once at the medication counter, Yanna decides that she's had enough and starts alternately trying to bite me and scratch Lex. I put her down and ask K and S to watch her. She bolts, forcing me to leave my place in line and chase her down. Fortunately she is predictable and we find her in toys. Once home, the older two kids decide that they no longer like each other and resume their regularly scheduled routine of incessant bickering. I finally got them in bed and had to try for another several hours to get the the younger two to settle down for the night . It was a very late night. T called to see how we were doing and told me how he had spent his evening watching TV and practicing his kanji. I was very happy for him.I did however buy a new book that I hope to actually read. It's called The Birth House and I am optimistic that it will be as good as I think it is. It doesn't have any pictures so that's a good start. I'm hoping that today will go somewhat more smoothly. There is an attachment parent discussion group that I plan on going to and I am way to excite about the prospect of adult conversation with like minded people.

You know it's time to cut the husband off when:

a) he starts talking with an Irish accent...and we've never been to Ireland...nor is there any Irish in his gene pool

b)he asks "how'd the baby get in the living room?" when he had put her there 2 minutes earlier. At this point I took up 100% of the kid duties

c) something to do with pirouetting across the kitchen floor and talking about pickles....neither of these things are remotely normal.Yup, time to hide the whiskey.

This was way more fun in days gone by when we had friends to have a good time with. Although, I am finding tormenting him highly amusing.

"I was the perfect mother...until I had kids"

Last night T and I managed to completely traumatize 2 out of 4 kids. Apparently we don't know them nearly as well as we had thought, or, perhaps it was simply the inherently flaky nature of kids. What was intended to be a fun and harmless practical joke completely backfired. Yanna ran crying out of the room asking us to put the "puter to bed" and K stormed out yelling the usual angsty pre-adolescent stuff - "I hate you...you guys are horrible!!!!" You know the the stuff that makes parents feel really good about themselves.? I have to admit though, normally I would have felt guilty at this point, but I was trying way too hard not to keep on laughing as that would have made the situation much worse. What was the joke you ask? We went to www.buzzme.ca and made videos using pics of the kids...and had a good time doing it I might add. In our, don't-get-out-much world it was really quite humorous. In the kids world....notsomuch. Normally they would get a kick out of that sort of thing but not this time...perhaps it was the eggplant casserole that I made for dinner.*sigh* I guess I'd better go toss another loonie in the kids therapy fund.