Trying to get along with the snow

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Sherry

Today ended up being quite the day in the snow for me. A little before lunch time I decided to take Winnie for a walk. After she had done her business I didn’t feel like carrying a plastic bag around with me so I headed into the park. I figured I’d throw the bag in the garbage and we could spend a bit of time running around in the snow.

Instead, I noticed Winnie became very alert and when I turned around I saw a man walking in with his Bull Mastiff. Winnie loves every dog on the planet so they started sniffing and getting tangled up in each other’s leashes. The guy said he was planning on going for a walk in the woods but wondered if I’d like to let Winnie off-leash to run around with his dog instead.

I had never done that before and was a bit nervous but he pointed out that they’d likely just play instead of trying to run off. Agreeing, I took a deep breath, leaned down, unhooked the leash… and then I spent almost half an hour watching the glory that is a Border Collie-Lab mix running full tilt through snow.

It was amazing, she had so much fun and I got to see the herding instinct in her; it was quite funny watching her try to herd a dog that big. They never once tried to bolt for the gate or the woods and what with all the snow they were so tired that we both just needed to walk up to leash them as they laid exhausted at one point. I was surprised I didn’t have to carry her tired self home.

Later that day I took the kids out again after Hayley got home from school and I brought out the two sleds. We don’t have a huge hill or anything but there is a nice one behind our building and they had a great time going down it repeatedly. I brought Winnie again but I think she had more fun yesterday when she was playing soccer. Regardless, she had a good time too and even took a quick ride on a sled down half the hill. She then tried to EAT the sled so that was the end of that.

I have some pictures but I am so tired that I just can’t bring myself to edit and upload them tonight. Maybe tomorrow after I get back from doing Breakfast Club. There’s something nice about editing photos while drinking my coffee.

The snow wore everyone out I think. Breanna and Hayley both fell asleep very quickly and Winnie was so tired that she only paid a few minutes of attention to the rawhide bone she’s been working on the past couple of days. Right now she’s passed out cold. As for me, I’m feeling particularly sleepy as well and that’s good since I have a 5:30 am wake-up for tomorrow.

On that note I should drag myself to bed and get some sleep so I can be awake enough to make breakfast tomorrow.

Winter throws down the gauntlet!

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Sherry

Well, it would appear that winter has most certainly arrived in Montreal. Yay?

Walking was a total nightmare since this city doesn’t give much of a hoot about the pedestrians who live here. They kept sending plow after plow up the street but none on the sidewalks. When I was walking out there with Hayley there came a point where I was up over my knees (and my boots; thank GOD they’re at least as high as they are!) and I was grateful that Hayley’s tall for her age because as it was she was almost hip-deep. We eventually had to venture out on to the (busy) street to get around a huge drift and I was nervous about it since you can’t count on drivers here to handle the slippery streets very well no matter how long they’ve lived here.

So that was fun. But Winnie had a blast! She was born in March so I assume that she didn’t see much snow, if any last year. We had a few little dustings recently that she enjoyed but this was probably her first real snowfall and she went pretty much ballistic out there. It’s a shame she doesn’t have a reliable recall or I would have set her loose in the field across the street just to see her go.

Later when Hayley came home she asked if we could go out to play and despite my best efforts I couldn’t think of a good enough reason to say no so out we went. The kids had fun (even though one of Breanna’s boots kept coming loose and falling off in deep patches of snow) and I took the dog out too. We found a frozen soccer ball in the middle of all the snow and apparently Winnie is quite the soccer player.

I’ve never been a fan of winter but I survived nonetheless. I’d better get used to it since Environment Canada is predicting a lot more snow than last year. Sigh.

Advent Day 5 & 6, plus a great example of giving

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Sherry

Today is the first day of Holidailies, and that means I’ll be doing my best to post daily or almost daily from now through January 5th. A lot of people start Holidailies with an introduction for new folks dropping by. I don’t normally bother but I saw that Carrie had done an intro so here’s my brief version for anyone who hasn’t been reading here before.

I’m Sherry, I’m 36, and I live in the Great White North. Okay, it’s just Montreal, it’s not THAT high up there, but it’s been snowing all day, so it’s definitely pretty white out there. Included in this blog you will find frequent references to George (my husband), even more frequent references to Hayley and Breanna (my 8- and 5-year-olds), and a lot of random blathering in between. We recently got a Border Collie/Black Lab mix that Breanna named Winnie, I work from home as a freelance blogger (not this blog!) and content writer, I obsess somewhat over yoga, I am highly involved in Hayley’s school (I’m the secretary for the PPO, co-chair for the Governing Board, and I volunteer for a lot of the events up there), and I can’t leave home without a camera (and the few times that I do I almost always regret it).

Until Christmas comes you’ll find me updating about our family’s Advent Activity calendar. You can read more about it over here but the basic gist of it is each day we open an envelope that contains some sort of activity either just for the kids or for the whole family. If you feel like catching up, check out the Advent category.

Yesterday was our fifth day with the calendar and our activity was really just for the kids since neither George nor I joined in this time. It involved going from this:

To this:

It was Build-Your-Own-Sundae time! I scooped out the ice cream and the kids added sliced bananas, marshmallows, broken pieces of candy cane, chocolate sauce, and of course sprinkles.

It was not surprisingly a big hit, and surprisingly the sugar rush didn’t keep them up all night.

Today was day six and I had chosen a Christmas movie (just a short one since it’s a school night) as our activity but when Breanna opened it up the kids both decided they’d like to repeat Saturday night’s family Wii challenge instead. We ended up saving the movie for the weekend instead. Alas, there was a bit of a meltdown near the end, but it’s still fun.

In other news, today was one of the best days I have ever spent up at Hayley’s school. A local restaurant (Table 51 for Montreal peeps – you should go, the food is delicious and the staff is awesome) sponsored a hot pasta lunch for all the kids at lunch time. They served pasta with tomato sauce, parmesan cheese, bread rolls, juice boxes, and even red velvet cupcakes for dessert.

More than that though, they really wanted to re-create a restaurant experience because some of the kids in our school have probably never been to a proper restaurant in their life. Since we couldn’t exactly bus them over to the restaurant because of logistical issues, they brought the restaurant to us. Several staff members – wait staff, chefs, etc. – came to the school along with all the food and it was incredible. We put tablecloths out on the tables, there were menus, and we had music playing. The kids all sat down and the staff served all the kids just like they would in a restaurant. Meanwhile, the parent volunteers just kept things moving by bringing plates up to the front table for the wait staff to grab.

The kids had a blast. Everyone was smiling and enjoying the food, and they especially loved being served. I think it made them feel really special. One anecdote had a few of us a bit teary-eyed; one of the boys who often shows up with a very sparse lunch or no lunch at all because of financial issues at home was so grateful for this experience that he sat at the table with his hand pressed together and he prayed to God, thanking Him for the delicious food and all the kind people who came in to bring it to him. It was so touching and that one moment was worth every bit of effort.

The whole thing went smoothly. I was there by 9 am, things were set up and the pre-cooked food was heated back up, and we were able to serve 350 people by the end of lunch hour. We even got to sit down to eat our own servings, clean up, and get out of there by 1:15 pm. It was a great time.

By the way, that was the first time I had ever tasted a red velvet cupcake and I now understand the hype. I am completely RUINED for any other cupcake from now on.

Thanks Table 51, you guys were amazing!

Advent: Day 3 & 4 and a whole lot of holly jolly

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Sherry

December is just flying by so far, I can’t believe it’s already the 5th of the month! On day 3 of our Advent activity calendar was a candlelit bubble bath for the kids. Most of our activities are the same as last year and they thought this one was great – adding candles makes it very different from your average bath. I figured it was a good weekend (Friday) night activity since I knew they would want to stay in for awhile and this way I didn’t have to worry about rushing them to get them to bed for 8 pm.

It just goes to show that the activities don’t have to be expensive or complicated for the kids to enjoy them!

Saturday came around and our day 4 activity was a family game night using the Wii. I do like board games too and we’ll probably bring that one around on another weekend, but I love the Wii. I suggested that we’d have more fun if we got two more remotes. Last year when we did this we had to team up and share our two remotes. It was a great idea because playing four people at once is awesome.

We moved the coffee table over to one side of the living room and started with some carnival games which were good but ended up moving on quickly to the newest game that we had, Mario Party 8. THAT was fun. It’s like a board game with little mini-game challenges in between turns and it was a blast. It took about 45 minutes for us to play a ten-turn game but we had such a good time that this morning George suggested that we play again before lunch.

Today’s day five but our activity won’t be until after supper so I’ll save that for another post. Holidailies starts tomorrow with participants posting (almost) daily from December 6th until (I believe) January 5th, so there will be no shortage of blog posts for the next month.

In other news, our Christmas decorations are all up and it looks like Christmas threw up all over our living room. I love it! Our friends gave us a spare tree that has pre-strung lights and let me tell you something, I hope to never have to string a tree with lights ever again. It was fantastic to just need to plug everything in. The best part though is that it’s so much bigger than our old tree. We’ve had a 4-foot tree for the past 12 years (I bought it when I moved in with George and found out his decorations amounted to a 12-inch tree that sits on a desk. Um, hell no.) and I’ve always wanted to have a bigger one. This new one is 6 1/2 feet high and looks amazing in front of our living room patio doors.

I put the tree up on Friday evening so that Winnie could get used to having it around in the hopes that she wouldn’t start trying to pull the decorations off later. On Saturday afternoon George was out for a few hours and since he isn’t super interested in decorating (see aforementioned 12-inch tree) I figured that was a good time for the three of us to go ahead and go nuts. I blasted Christmas music on iTunes, made myself some minty tea, and we set about dressing up our tree.

I love our tree.

And apropos of, you know, nothing…

Now for supper so I can get ready for today’s activity!

Advent: Day 2, plus I poured my coffee in my camera lens!

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Sherry

Day two of our Advent Calendar brought about a much-loved activity. Today we were to sit down and write letters to Santa!

I know that writing to tell someone what you want as a gift is just adding to the consumerism of Christmas, but hey. It’s Santa. He has elf labour, that’s not consumerism right? Err. Anyway!

I always tell the kids they can ask Santa for ONE gift and then they also get stockings from Santa so there’s no need to go bananas and list 25 things. With a bit of harrrumphing over the reminder of this rule, the kids sat at the coffee table and got started.

Of course Breanna can’t write whole sentences yet, so she dictated her letter to me and I dutifully wrote it out, smiling to myself at times – especially when she promised to be “super-good for Christmas”. That’s mostly in the hopes of getting the gift she wants, I think.

She did sign her own letter though.

I’m very proud of Hayley’s writing; she writes stories regularly in a notebook so naturally she’s got the whole write-to-Santa thing under control. It’s a bit bittersweet though since I remember when I used to have to write her letters too. Sigh.

My favorite part of her letter was when she asked how Rudolph was and then explained she was asking because she’s learning to play “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in her guitar lessons.

I hope Santa doesn’t wake her up on Christmas Eve to hear her play it.

They both added a drawing to their letters as well.

Hayley and Breanna are both requesting the same gift from Santa which makes it very easy for the elves involved in packaging. They both want the Go Go My Walking Pup thing. I guess it’s because although they have a dog of their own – a real live dog! – she’s too big and strong for either of them to walk her. That’s okay. I just hope they remember not to leave their toy dogs alone with their real dog lest we end up with an unfortunate crime scene.

We’ll mail the letters tomorrow so that we can hopefully get the replies back before Christmas.

*******

In other news, this morning I poured my coffee into my camera lens. My very expensive 24-105mm lens. Horrors!

Okay, so it’s not a real 24-105mm lens. Considering I priced one for fun at almost $1600. This lens mug only cost me $25 plus shipping from Photojojo. I love it! It’s very realistic and appeals to my goofy dork self.

Also, Photojojo apparently includes a random tiny dinosaur figure in all of their shipments just for fun. I can’t even explain why this makes me giddy, it just does.

Alas, that coffee was many hours ago and bed beckons.

Advent calendar day 1, plus zombies!

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Sherry

Last year I got a great idea from Andrea over at A Peek Inside the Fishbowl. While kids enjoy those one-chocolate-a-day Advent calendars, they aren’t exactly what memories are made of. Instead she suggested a homemade Advent calendar with fun family activities inside to help create fun memories over the holiday period. I really liked the idea because the weeks leading up to Christmas go so quickly what with the rushing around and everything else.

I made the envelopes up out of scrapbooking paper and other odds and ends, and I created a master list of activities. Like Andrea, I only put the activity in the night before so that I can pick the right thing at the right time. For example, one activity is to decorate the tree. I’d rather not do that on a busy week day so we’ll save that for the weekend. Another activity is to make a snowman but I’ll keep that one for a day when I know we’re supposed to get snow.

It was a hit last year so it’s up again; in fact it was the first decoration I had put up. I figured that since I’m doing Holidailies – the blogging project where you blog daily (or almost daily) throughout the holiday period, it would be fun to keep a record of our activities.

I’m still not feeling 100% (far from it) so it wasn’t the day for a brisk hike in the woods or anything strenuous. As a result the first activity from our calendar was to paint fingernails and toenails. That’s always a success with my girls (I decided not to do mine today and George refused).

I went with a pearly white on their fingernails (which I didn’t get on camera) and then I used a neon pink nail pen to draw swirls on top. For their toes I went a little wilder and put a festive green then drew a pink flower on each big toe.

One down, 24 fun activities to go!

*******

Being a big fan of zombies lately, I found this site that offers ecards to send to other zombie fans. Giggling, I sent this one to George:

Since we’re both geeks we have a habit of using Skype to chat from, you know, down the hall. This was our exchange after he received the card.

[9:07:22 PM] George Carter: Thanks for the ecard it is really cute. I hope you don’t become more of a zombie than you already are.
[9:07:38 PM] Sherry Osborne: oh go fuck yourself 🙂
[9:07:52 PM] George Carter: see what I mean
[9:08:13 PM] Sherry Osborne: if i was a zombie i wouldn’t say that, i would just rip your throat out and eat your brains
[9:08:39 PM] George Carter: since you are not a zombie, eat my ass
[9:08:58 PM] Sherry Osborne: alrighty then.

Yes, this really IS what it’s like in our home. All the time.

But at least he sent me this one in return. I think it’s a compliment.

It IS a compliment, right? RIGHT?

Oh hell, where’s my zombie survival manual…

The end

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Sherry

And so I come to the end of NaNoWriMo, the post-a-day month. It found me trying to take it quite easy since I still have some pain going on. At least it isn’t as bad as yesterday.

However, I am a glutton for insanity so if you’ve enjoyed all the posts lately, fear not – as always, I signed up for Holidailies as well which brings about near-daily posts through December. I have a bit of a theme idea as well so stay tuned.

In the meantime I must sleep.

Nine hours of my life

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Sherry

As this fine Monday* draws to a close, I will list for you a handful of things that are Totally Awesome**.

Feeling relatively fine*** only to suddenly find myself in so much excruciating abdominal pain that I can barely walk or move.
Trying to wait out the pain while simultaneously thinking about how I’m probably about to die at any second.
Picking up a very worried Hayley from school**** at lunch time so that she and Breanna could go over to George’s parents’ house.
Driving to the hospital in far more traffic than you would expect at lunch time on a Monday.
Walking in to find the E.R. packed.
Waiting an hour and a half just to see the triage nurse. In MASSIV PAIN.
Waiting about three more hours in the E.R. waiting room (in MASSIVE PAIN) while trying not to breathe too much so I could avoid catching someone else’s problem.
Finally making it into a room with a bed and seeing a doctor who chose several different tests to check things out (which was actually awesome) including a “girl exam” (which is never EVER awesome).
The “girl exam”. My happy place is hard to bring into focus during those.
Getting to have a blood draw, filling up some urine sample cups, and going for x-rays.
Getting an I.V. with a morphine-gravol cocktail, only to find myself freaking out (which was admittedly more likely a panic attack over the thought of morphine than the actual effects of the morphine itself) and having to get them to shut it off after ten minutes.
Getting an ultrasound which is only fun when you’re seeing a baby, and not fun at all when you’re worried about what they might see.
Being told that they aren’t really sure what’s wrong, only that my stomach was distended even though there were no other associated problems.

Ah well. After a whopping nine hours at the Jewish General Hospital, I was free to go home. The pain was much more manageable, either because of whatever morphine I got or because of time. Now I’m just sore in general but nothing like earlier. I told the doctor I had never experienced pain like that in my life. It felt like someone reached through my belly, grabbed everything, and just twisted and scrunched it all up as hard as possible. Fun stuff.

Although they don’t know what’s wrong they were able to rule out obvious things (like a UTI, etc) and they also ruled out scary things (like kidney or liver problems) so at least it doesn’t seem to be anything too serious. I thought it might be an ulcer since I’ve had that problem once before but there were no signs nor were there any perforations. I was just happy to get to come home and eat since I hadn’t had anything much; I ate a piece of toast this morning at 9:30 and I had a small bag of chips in the waiting room because I was starving. I finally ate some supper at 10:40 pm!

*By “fine Monday” I really mean “this day is totally fired.”
**By “Totally Awesome” I really mean “Not Awesome in ANY WAY.”
***I went through a cold, sinus thing, and gastro in a week-and-a-half period and had just thought this morning that maybe I was all done being sick for the whole winter. Murphy’s Law laughed.
****She was really worried but also kind of happy to not have to go back to French class.

And finally, an important lesson I learned today: If you think, “nahh, I won’t shave my legs this time” you really should because if you don’t, that’s when you’ll be walking around a hospital without any pants.

And now I’m going to go rest my sore stomach.

Please excuse the screaming

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Sherry

At 6:30 tonight I tried to find the channel that was broadcasting the Grey Cup, Canada’s answer to the Superbowl, so I could watch the final CFL game since it featured the Montreal Alouettes (yay!) versus the Saskatchewan Roughriders (boo!). Much to my distress and mounting tension, it was only airing on the English and French sports networks, neither of which is in our current cable package.

After some serious gnashing of teeth and wondering if I was going to have to get George to call our cable company to switch out one of our bonus channels for TSN, I discovered I could watch the game as it was being streamed live on TSN’s website.

I missed the half-time show since it was bedtime but I watched the rest of the game right here on my laptop (and wow, have streaming shows come a long way because it was just as crisp and clear as a TV).

I hope I didn’t wake any of you up or disturb your day-to-day stuff as I screamed, moaned, hollered, and screamed some more while watching the game. At one point I was watching through my fingers while wondering if someone could peel me and my nerves off my living room ceiling.

Poor George. If there’s anything in life that interests him less than Facebook, it’s sports and every year he has to put up with me screeching over the Grey Cup, the Superbowl, and the Stanley Cup. Hockey usually finds me standing on my couch, but football will do as well.

In the end we won. Montreal beat Saskatchewan 21-18 and it was so close that I may have to go and have my blood pressure checked tomorrow, but dammit WE WON. What a game. That’s two years in a row!

Whew. I still haven’t calmed down. Maybe by tomorrow?

Hello there winter

Posted on November 27, 2010 by Sherry

Winter has made a low-key arrival here. We got freezing rain yesterday which made everything quite icy. Because of that I actually didn’t mind when I woke up to snow this morning. I am not winter’s biggest fan but I figure that snow is the lesser of two evils; at least I can walk in it without landing on my head.

Hayley went to a birthday party (we caught up after supper and joined her) so I decided to take Breanna out to play in the little bit of accumulation we had. It wasn’t a ton or anything. You could still see the grass through the snow. As far as she was concerned though, it was perfect and so with the sun shining through the window we set about getting ready.

In the time it took to make sure she peed, followed by getting all the winter gear out of the closet and onto our bodies, the sun completely disappeared and a ridiculously cold wind kicked up, blowing snow in every which direction. There was nowhere to stand without getting wind in your face.

Tell a five-year-old that it’s cold though. They don’t feel it. I managed to stay out with her for 40 minutes before I lured her back inside with the promise of a cup of hot chocolate and a nice bubble bath. Whew.

Joy!

Snow angels

Crazy wind blowing snow off the roof

——-

After supper George, Breanna, and I went out to the birthday party and that was a lot of fun but it’s rather late and I’m quite tired so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

——-

Apropos of nothing else, it saddens me to know that one day Breanna will realize that your heart BEATS, so in the meantime I refuse to correct her so that she keeps telling me about how her heart is beeping.