Alas, bedtime is not going well.

Dear Breanna,
Please go to frickin’ sleep. Mommy needs to blog every half hour and this is not working out for me at all. SLEEP!
Love,
Mommy

Time to take one of the questions that was left for me to answer in a previous post. Heather asked “what would you do with a day to yourself and a guilt-free $500?”

Assuming I could only use the money on myself and not for my family as a whole, I would put it and some of my own money into buying myself an entry-level digital SLR camera. I love taking pictures and I love the camera that I have now (hi, Sueellen!) but I would love to be able to play even more with photography. I have no interest in going professional but I would love to make it an even more intensive hobby.

Then I would spend that day to myself reading the manual and trying my new camera out!

Okay, bed time for the kids (oops, and must brush their teeth) so let’s hope it goes smoothly so I don’t have to run out and post in the middle of wrestling them to sleep.

What with all the rushing around at this time of day, I don’t have much time to feel tired right now. As soon as I start preparing supper, the evening rush is on because I cook supper, clean up, get the kids in a bath, put them in pajamas, dole out bedtime snacks, read stories, and then put them to bed. It’s pretty much non-stop during this phase of our day. Because of that, I’m hanging in there.

However, I know that after they go to bed I usually feel a bit slump-ish and tonight will be no different. Except for the fact that I have to stay up until 9 am tomorrow. I think that once they’re in bed and sleeping, I’ll make myself that second cup of coffee that I never had (though drinking all that water plus one juice was probably better for me in general anyway) and eat one of my chocolate bars. Or maybe some of those dark chocolate coated lady finger cookies that George got for me. Or maybe both.

Combined, the caffeine should give me a little boost for at least a few hours. I hope.

Half an hour until they go to bed and it will be peaceful and quiet in here! I love them very much. I still look forward to the silence of the late evening every day though.

It never ceases to amaze me how much water two young children can displace from the bathtub to the floor. It’s insane. On the bright side, I don’t need to mop my floor now that I’ve wiped up all the water with some towels.

Supper was so good.

Now. How many hours is it until bedtime?!

No, not mine, I’m not falling asleep yet, though I’m tired from cooking, eating, washing the dishes, and sweeping & spot cleaning the kitchen floor.

No, I’m counting down the hours until the kids go to bed. Sheesh. Luckily, bedtime is about an hour or so away!

While it seemed like a good idea at the time, perhaps the truth is that four tacos were a wee bit of overkill.

*burp*

Damn good though!

I would make a really interesting and meaningful post (shut up, I would so!) but right now I am stuffing tacos into my mouth. See you after supper!

Even though I’m Canadian, I’m so used to American culture that sometimes I’m a little taken aback when confronted with our own metric system. I’m making supper right now and the taco kit is made by a Canadian company so the instructions call for 454 grams of beef and 125 ml of water. I was confused until I realized they mean a pound of meat and half a cup of water.

Duh. I am Canadian, eh?

(In related cooking talk, why in the hell have I never gotten a salad spinner? Drying lettuce by hand is a pain in the arse.)

Every year, the UNHCR helps countless refugees who have lost their families and their homes – even their home countries – to war and disease. The money that I am raising today through your pledges helps those same people, many of them children. Where does your money go?

This is what can be purchased by the UNHCR depending on funds vs. needs:

• $50 helps register 150 exhausted refugees to assess their needs and trace their families
• $80 provides tents to shelter a family of five
• $100 gives a family a survival kit including blankets plus a cooking/heating stove
• $200 pays for emergency health for a community
• $500 creates two wells to provide clean water to a community of refugees
• $1000 gives a feeding kit that will feed 100 children

The people helped by these donations come from all over the world – Darfur to Afghanistan to Iraq.

Later, when the kids are down and I have a bit more time to concentrate, I’ll post more about refugees. But now you know, if you have sponsored me, what amazing good deeds you are doing around the world.

Here’s me today, Blogathon-ing away. I still can’t believe how quickly these half hour segments pass when you’re doing things. After this, I have to bring my laptop over to the table so that I can start prepping supper (shredding cheese, chopping tomatoes and lettuce, etc) without worrying that I’ll miss a post time.

What do you look like today?