Garage Sale

So, I have a friend (Hi Deb) who invited me over to pick through her little girl clothes as she is having her last baby....a boy. I came home with an over stuffed bag of what I am thinking is $1000.00 worth of clothing and footwear. and it is all wonderful condition and great quality. I totally scored! However, I opened my big mouth and said she should sell her clothes becuase she would make a fortune. So, we are organizing a garage sale. Yesterday I made cute little cards to invite the rest of my street to participate so we can have a big sale. Kayla and I delivered them in the grossly humid heat and then I came home and made little cards specifically to hand out to people I know that will need little girl clothes. Then I went over to Deb's last night to help her organize the clothes for sale. Holy crap does she have a lot. I'm guessing she will make $500.00 or more but I don't want to get too confident. I think we labeled them all well. T-shirts $1.00, Brandname 'special' t-shirt are $3. Childrens place jeans are $5. and she's got piles of those. Dresses are all priced individually $2-$8. Either way I am excited and I hope it turns out. I will advertise on line and make bold signs to put at the end of some streets. I haven't heard back from anyone on the street yet...I'm trying not to get nervous about that.

Grumpy Grumpy

I've found I've been extra grumpy lately. I'd like to blameit on pregnancy but I think it is the whole combintion of things. We're living at my moms with other people who make their own messes and live their own lives and it is starting to drive me nuts! I think Preston has a hard time understanding becuase he is at work all day and just chills here in the evening. I have to function...I'm used to having my own house and cleaning up after my own family, and now I have to worry about 4 single adults. It is very different. Besides that, prenancy is getting less convenient. I seem to have a lot of veins that are sticking out this time around and I don't like it! My legs get sore and everything gets tired. I don't like not bei able to function at full capacity and I get grumpy when I can't get things done. Of course, I have been trying to do some interesting things like building gardens mowing the lawn and building brick walls:)
Thats really all I have to complain about, I just find I've been loosing my temper easily and I get really annoyed by people. I hope it passes. I don't like being aggitated all the time.
Lets look for the positive...Clayton loves school, Kayla is adorable and I enjoy playing Go Fish with her everyday. She mixes up the 6 and 9 sometimes but it is so cute playing with her.
Well, I just wanted to babble while I had the time. Maybe I'll make more sense of this post later.

here's some pics from Ontario

My mom does cottoncandy and popcorn for public events. It's a major perk of living with Nana:)



Kayla loves her Salvation Army finds.


1st day of JK. We loves school and I love that he brings a new book home everynight that we read together. he is becoming such a good reader.





This is my brother Jordan playing MarioKart with Clayton. There are alot of video games played at this house.

ok....

Yes, I suck at blogging. I guess I figure no one is going to look at it now that facebook is around. Anyways, we have made some big changes, or are trying to atleast. Since my last blog, we have gotten pregnant. I keep wondering why. It's silly. Sometimes you're like 'yay baby' like I was with my first two, and this time I'm like 'ehhh, baby, o.k.' I know I will love it as much as the other two when it comes, for now I'm just kinda wierd about it. As far as we know, it is a girl and we are naming her Adeline. I always have problem-free pregnancies (besides the sugar cravings and the small bouts of crying) but this time I have vericose veins and I'm afraid they will stay. I got medical stockings but i really hate them and they aren't really painful. However, I can feel the blood rushing to the one leg when I get up in the morning.

So, besides baby, we are in Ontario right now attemping to live out here. We just decided that unless there is a really good reason to be in Calgary, it's kind of an undesirable place to be. We loved the friends and family we have there but it is so big and busy and expensive and it was really feeling like a rat race. Partially our fault because we got a little caught up in it too. So, we are trying to sell our house and simplify. We don't need a big, beautiful new house in a brand new area that we are paying too much for. I was always overwhelmed by our mortgage. Anyways, if we can get it sold, we will be in a modest home with a tiny mortgage and no car payments or anything, which I think is much simplified. There is something to be said about the feeling of being free of debt rather that being riddled with it. We are staying at my moms house right now and I LOVE it. Not so much the part where I am living with my brothers and sisters, but the house and the area. We walk to school, mall, community centre, park and live on a quiet, safe culdesac. More worry free living! We would love to buy out this house and it looks like we may have the opportunity in a year or two. For now, we are going to move into the back part of the house (it has a granny suite) and see where life takes us. We have actually just considered renting out our house in Calgary becuase the market is so tough right now we are afraid it may not sell. So many things to think about.
Anyways, since we've been here, Clayton has started JK (they have Junior Kindergarten everday out here in the school system) and they are both in Gymnastics and a craft class. When you're not in your own place, it's nice to keep a little busy outside the house:)
We've all been getting along really well, whcih I am surprised about becuase Preston always feared his ability to get along with my mom but he hasn't said a thing and is pretty happy. So, we will see what the future brings...

Hawaii

So we went to Hawaii for 2 weeks...without the kdis. It just about killed me. I was fine the first 10 days but the last 3 I really just wanted to go home. We went to the Polynesian Culture Centre which I loved! We went there twice so we could see all the pavillions. The neatest place ever. We went to the North Shore and watched Surfing and that was cool but the waves were too big for us to even attempt to go into the water...we were scared. The best thing for shrimp lovers are the shrimp trucks. They are ugly rustly old busses that serve the best shrimp. I hate shrimp and I even found it slightly tollerable so it had to be good. Preston made us go back for round two. With our lazy days we spent it on our balcony watching season 1 of heros. ti was nice just to lounge sometimes. We stayed on the west side of the island which is not very touristy and there were many people loving on the beach. I found that interesting becuas eyou could tell that these people had been there so long becuase their 'residences' were so built up. I'm sure that is a huge tension with the tax payers, but it's a small, very expensive island....
We also got to watch a brush fire on the mountain beside our resort one night. It was neat to watch but days of wrok for the firemen trying to keep it away from us and the nearby condos. All in all, I would recommend Hawaii and I basically told you the best parts about it.

Picture perfect Hawaii.




We spent a lot of time at the resort pool. It was really nice and never to busy. Except the last day when a big group of Narcotic recovery people came for a conference at our resort...that was an interesting crowd.



Beating the waves on the north shore. We didn't even go in the water, that's how afraid of the waves we were.

Hair

So, I cut my hair short for the first time ever. I love it! Preston hates it. Sure you can't see all my beautiful ( I call them tangles and frizz) curls but I like maintenance free mom hair. That means no scraggly hair in my face while I'm bending over a poopy bum...my kids poopy bum. We'll see how long I keep it around. I find it hard not to want to have a hair cut my hubby likes...isn't that sad?
My new hair

August

Here are our exchange students, Hiromi and Satomi and Kayla all ready for a party.

Lets see, it's been 3 months since August actually happened so this'll be tough. We did have a couple more exchange students. They were so much harder than the other ones becuase they were 11 yr. old girls and spoke zero english. So, I would tell them something, they would nod their heads and then do the exact opposite. They loved my kids and were very friendly, but I was happy to see them go. Preston and I took a very short trip to Ontario for 2 days to check out some houses. At that point we were thinking of moving to Ontario becuase housing was much cheaper out there and we thought we could live mortgage free and have less financial strain. However, Calgarys market wouldn't allow us to sell our house and we took it off the market the next month. It seems we are going to stick around a while and just learn to budget. We also started trying for baby number 3 this month...we are still not pregnant. I think we took for granted that the first 2 were conceived so quickly and we haven't been trying hard enough this time around:)
We took a trip to Edmonton at the end of the month and had a blast. We stayed at the Fantasy Land Hotel in The West Ed. mall. Fun, but we spent WAY too much money becuase we were in the mall. We went on rides, bought late night icecream...all things we wouldn't have done if we were in a normal hotel NOT attached to a mall.
That was August.