Summer Blog Challenge Day3

15 Interesting Facts about ME:

1. I am secretly terrified of spiders, but we have 2 pet Tarantulas (and if they escape, I am exterminating the house to kill anything that moves!).

2. I am a full blown, fully certified Journeyman Welder.  I make metal for a living and LOVE it!  (When not on maternity leave that is.)

3. According to my DH, I am almost as beautiful inside as I am out.  He would know because he saw my guts when he was watching my c-section with our first daughter.  And this doesn't bother me at all.

4. I have stretch marks!  Yes, I admit it, after 2 pregnancies, I have earned my stripes.

5. I speak French and English fluently, and enough Spanish to get by.

6. I am addicted to knitting and spinning fibers.  I love making my own variations of patterns.

7. I love being outdoors... don't care what the weather is doing, I love nature and everything about it.

8. I love playing sports, but can't stand watching them (unless it is row 1 of WHL hockey with DH and a beer!).

9. I try to convince (sometimes even bribe) my 2 year old to sidewalk chalk the back walkway with me every nice day we have because I LOVE CHALKING! That and drawing with oil pastels.  I let the chalk decide what we will be creating and just go with it. 

10. I own ONE, yes only one small thing of eye shadow.  It is a very pale shimmery neutral colour.  And that is the entire contents of my make up bag.  Aside from my essential Burt's Beeswax Mint Lip Balm that is usually in my pocket or in my purse.  I'm the wake up, pull my hair into a pony tail or bun and go for the day type of girl. 

11. I have a HUGE girl crush on Lori Petty, I wanted to be her growing up and can quote word for word the entire movie, Tank Girl. (Okay, so this is weird, but true.  I was the girl that followed the rules, well most of them anyways and secretly always wanted to be bad and do crazy wild stuff.)

12. I am an orphan.  My parents both died when I was younger.  I was 13 when my dad died and 20 when my mum died.  I do still have 2 awesome sisters with whom I am really close but I wish we were geographically closer.

13. My favourite foods are Fruits (in season) and anything DILL. Especially peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches (even when not pregnant).

14. I have a vast knowledge of fishing and anything to do with Pacific fish.  My dad's family were all commercial fishermen (and women) and I grew up with a love for the water.  Now I live in the land of murky rivers that I am kinda leary of, but learning to love ice fishing on the lakes in winter.

15. And for the piece de résistance:  I saw Johnny Depp (or at least I think it was him) Naked on a boat in Southern France.  I was swimming in the Mediterranean Sea while he was on a yacht. 


* Sorry if I make being pregnant sound like a 10 year bit (as DH puts it) but we have our 2 girls, Anomantia is almost 2.5 years old and Furia is almost 5 months old and I really miss being pregnant.  I am still on maternity leave (thank you Canada for the huge leave time) but I will be returning to work sometime this summer :( boo hiss! 

Summer Blog Challenge Day 2

Today's challenge is to post a picture of yourself smiling.  Well this is a picture of a picture, one of my favourites.  It was taken January 7th 2000.  I am on the left and my mum is on the right.  I have carried this photo around with me since my friend Suzanne mailed to me while I was living in France.  This photo was taken two days before I left for France in her kitchen.  Every time I look at this picture, I think of my lovely mum who died two years, eight months and seventeen days after it was taken.  I miss her everyday but I love the smiles in this photo.

June has arrived!

June has arrived and so has the rain here in Gurneyland.  Yesterday was an awesome start to the month.  Furia's first tooth broke the surface, she got her first mosquito bite and Anomantia used her first SIX (6) word sentence!  Since that, she has now astounded us with 8 word+ sentences and saying the funniest stuff.  Including copying her dad's expression of ummm hmmmm at a cute girl walking past the truck while I was picking up a computer for his work.  Hilarious and I am bummed that I missed it! Anyhow, I have decided to unofficially try the Summer Blog Challenge and partake in 90 days of blogging... we will see if I can do it.  The purpose of the challenge is to post one blog post each day from June 1st to August 31st (Yes, I know that I am starting this a day late).  It seems like a fun challenge and allows me to keep better tabs on my blog.  So with that, I have to go post for day 2.

May Craziness

this is the story of my knitting projects lately :( I need to start spinning again and give my needles some time to cool off.

The first two images are ones that have been circulating on social media sites that I deemed worthy to repost.  

 For Mother's day, we went out for breakfast and at the restaurant, I discovered that the cutlery is magnetic.  We spent the whole time after ordering our meals playing with them and seeing how many we could link together.

Mid month, the temperatures spiked and it was too hot to do anything else but enjoy daily walks to the playground with Anomantia.  Squirbo is definitely a toddler in every essence of the word.  She fights everything from diaper changes to eating and going to bed to getting in her car seat.  Getting dressed in the mornings is a challenge, I have given up fighting her clothing choice and just make sure she has extra clothes in a bag when we go out.

 Furia being incredibly cute sitting on the couch in the living room.  She loves watching Anomantia play and be silly.  Then she will try to mimic what she does. She is teething and a little more irritable than usual but she still so much fun when she is awake. 

Furia with her drooly lip curl. 

Anomantia trying out her new garden tools.  We decided that we would share the love of gardening with her now seeing as she loves planting things.  For now her favourite thing to plant is rocks (we gave her a bucket full of sand to plant her rocks). 

More dirt play.

It's a BUG! (sounds like bock)

This is the Squirbo's idea of being dressed to go out.  No PANTS!  Getting her to wear her boots is a new progression, she refused for quite awhile but finally she will wear them when we go out or even at home.  She is very stubborn when it comes to clothes, she has acquired a sense of style and when she refuses to wear something, she really isn't going to wear it.

Anomantia playing in the toy bin.

Squirbo and Dad at the restaurant for Dad's Birthday Dinner.

Dad and Girl cuddles after dinner.

Furia sporting her stylish Babiators.  I love her little sunglasses and thank you to The Simcoes for the gifts.  Anomantia loves her books and is constantly trying to steal Furia's "cool shades" as she calls them.

Now Introducing the newest members of the family:

This is Whitey our Albino Leopard Gecko.  At the moment, she has only a stump of a tail because she was so malnourished before she came to us, she dropped it because her body couldn't sustain it anymore.  I am happy to say that she has recovered, fattened up and her tail is coming back nicely.  Along with her, we have her sister (from the same hatching) we named Blindey (she is still not recovered from the neglect she suffered before we rescued her).  Blindey is blind and only has one eye the other eye was so damaged that it doesn't even open.  She is still really skinny and has to be hand fed to get her to eat.  I refer to her as the special needs leo.  And then there is Bitch Face (aka Fat Bastard) a full grown leopard gecko with awesome yellow and purple colouring that basically runs the tank.  She is an effective hunter and will attack the other Leos if they get within her hunting space.  I may have to separate them in the future but for now, they are sharing a 30gallon terrarium. 

This is the Costa Rican Striped Knee (also known as Zebra Striped Knee) Tarantula.  She hasn't really got a name yet, but out of all the species of Tarantulas, this one is known as the escape artist.  She is rather shy and skittish but is a very nice creature.

This is Sir our African Fat Tailed Gecko.  He has fattened up quite a bit since I took this photo, he is old and we will probably get only a few more years with him now that he is healthy again.

The lady has emerged.  This is our Theraphosa Spider.  We are still unsure if she is a T. Stirmi or T. Blondi but she is only a year old and still has lots of growing to do.  By the time she is four, she will be full grown.  Full size on a Theraphosa is between 10 and 12 inches in leg span. She has been hiding in her den for the past two weeks but emerged tonight bigger than she was.  We suspect a moult but she barricaded her den and we didn't see her at all until tonight after dinner, I was bringing dessert to Laurence in the office when I saw movement in the tank and there she was crawling out of the den.  It is a relief to have her surface again, she was stressed from the move and the tank cleaning, it could have been hazardous to her health to moult but we took all the precautions to help her shed the outter layer and grow.  She went in to the den with approximately a four inch leg span and emerged closer to a five inch leg span. 

Our month of May has been a real busy one and the plans for the summer are filling up fast.  For now we are enjoying our spring and getting our expanded garden growing.  We are enjoying the moments we have with our girls and creatures. 

End of April...Beginning of May!

 Last night I finally quit procrastinating and figured out what the nasty chemical smell at the top of our stairs... I needed light to figure out what might be the source, so I started by changing the bulb that had been not working for a few weeks.  This is what I found.  It was an 18Watt compact florescent bulb by GREENLITE.  The smell was absolutely toxic once I took the cover off the actual bulb.  The thing that bothers me the most is that there is no where to properly dispose of this bulb.  It has mercury in it and therefore cannot be just thrown into the garbage and Canada has yet to come up with proper disposal methods for them.  (Hence the reason the incandescent bulbs are still on the market after them saying they would be gone.) And to make matters worse... this bulb was only a year old (supposed to last 5 years).  There is however a loop hole to this whole compact florescent fiasco:  Keep your packaging and receipt and when it burns out, return it to the store where you bought it and get new ones (so long as it has not exceeded its life expectancy as usually posted on the packaging).  *Sorry for the environmental rant but it is really beyond concerning how toxic these things really are.

 Over the past few years, we have had several Jack Rabbits that like to frolic, eat, play in our front yard.  This year the little ones are out earlier than usual (we don't usually see them this young).  I know it is a crappy photo but that is dusk with an arm load full of baby and groceries on my way in the door for you.

 The latest update for Anomantia... she is a TODDLER and a 2 year old at once!  She hates having a diaper change, she refuses to use the toilet (most of the time), she doesn't want to wear pants and if she decides to put a shirt on, it has to be pink or purple or have an animal or a butterfly on it.  She is developing her own opinions and is very vocal about it.  She likes to be a part of everything and do everything herself (bring her cereal with milk on the side so she can pour it on herself).  She LOVES bubbles!  And playing in the bubbles in the sink.  The above photo, she was helping wash her bowls in the sink, while wearing the only disposable Pull-Up in the house and because she was refusing to wear anything else (I had to go out and Laurence was in the office... she was watching cartoons and playing on her tablet on the carpet and some days it just isn't worth the fight to get a diaper on her.  And other days it is just a huge fight).

 My Squirbo's hair is getting pretty long.  She is getting a hair cut soon as she is refusing to have it brushed or washed or anything, so there are days where it looks like she is growing dread locks (sp?) and I am not okay with that right now. 

 She is full of opinions and attitude too.

 The girls cuddling on the couch before bed the other night.  Anomantia barged in on Furia's nursing session and decided that she needed to be cuddled in on the couch too.  Furia wasn't too impressed but she thinks Anomantia's quirks are funny.  She smiles and laughs at everyone right now.

Our latest fun times are consisting of sidewalk chalking.  Anomantia love chalk and drawing on the walkway from the house to the garage.  It is lots of fun and the kids across the street love having her come and chalk their driveway with them too.  It is nice to see her finally interactively "playing" with other kids (even though they are older and younger... none within a year of her) but at least she isn't just sitting at home all day.  Anomantia has no desire to go out, she has everything she wants at home and to go out without advance warning her, ruins the entire day.  She stresses out about getting shoes on and getting out of the house.  I find I have to let her know what we are doing and what the end result will be so that I can try to get her out.  Some days it is more trouble than it is worth.

Sounds about right!

And then there was...

Rain!  It has finally :decided to start raining.  The soil and ground has been very dry lately since there was a lack of snow pack this year, I have been squishing every spider I can find and teaching my girls to rain dance because we are in dire need of the moisture.  I am really hoping that this year won't be as bad of a drought as predicted.  The Squirbo, the Nomer and I went for a walk up and down our street in the rainy and windy weather.  We got to the top of the street close to the park and Squirbo looks at me and says home- House (her word for Clubhouse) in translation, she wanted to go back to our home and watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  Lately we have had to translate what she has been saying.  It is pretty jumbled up.  I am glad that her assessment is coming up in a couple of weeks.  The Nomer thinks everything is funny right now and is totally in love with her Jolly Jumper and everything she can put in her mouth.  Right now it is an Owl Rattle that she was gifted by my cousin and her family.  Speaking of the Nomer, she just woke up from her nap and is talking at the window upstairs.  She is so cute and I took her out for the second time in the Ergo this afternoon.  Now that she is bigger and chubbier, it is starting to fit better.  With her in the Ergo, I have to carry her with the straps higher up because the weather isn't warm enough for us to venture out without the Peekaru vest.  I guess I have the gadgets for a successful baby wearing venture with my kidlets now.  I wore the Squirbo as much as I could (mostly as a toddler) but loved every moment of having her so close.  She isn't much of a cuddle bug but when she wants to she is really good at it.  Last night, we were watching a movie together as a family and she fell asleep in her dad's arms.  I wish I had of taken a photo of the moment but my battery was dead in my camera.  The Nomer is a pretty cuddly baby, but she doesn't like the bouncy seat or the swing.  She has figured out how to escape them both so I am contemplating putting them back into storage to clear up some room in the living room.  The Nomer is all about the Tummy Time, Squirbo hated it, mostly because of her hip issues (IMO). 

So I walked away from the computer to speak with Laurence and make some dinner for the littles, I am just now returning (19:47) to find about a half a page of letters, numbers and characters had been typed all over this blog post courtesy of Squirbo.  So finally after about 5 minutes of backspacing I am going to finally get to finish up. 

Tonight will consist of working on conquering Mount Washmore and doing up dishes I was hoping to catch a Yoga class at the gym, but Daddy-O is out at the moment and I am needed by the littles who at this very moment have both decided to have meltdowns.  Yikes, I hope this blows over soon, I really don't need any major tantrums while on my own.  Crazy reigns supreme in my universe and I sure don't need a whole lot more of it around here.  I am working on getting a little bit less of crazy and a little more fun to hang around the home front, and hopefully things will sail a little more smoothly.