Fun in the Sun

Today has been a special treat. Chris was home from work today (and tomorrow) AND he didn't sleep in until noon (as he usually does on his days off.) We went for a bike ride and did all sorts of things outside. It was an awesome day. I love my family!

Here's Chris and Chelsea (and Maggie) playing under the pool canopy, on the driveway.


Chelsea played with the mop on the driveway for a long time. I kinda felt like the evil stepmother while Cinderella worked, but whatever makes C happy, makes me happy!



Chelsea "walking" the dog. Maggie HATES going with her and will sit down and dig in her heels. Chelsea will pull as hard as she can until Maggie walks. It's fun to watch!


And of course, Chris and I. This is about the 4th picture we took. First one, Chris's smile was dorky, second one, his eyes were squinty, third one, he wanted to show his teeth - so this one, he's trying not to squint his eyes AND show his teeth... lol. He looks a little scared!

Free.. free at last!

Well, things should slow down now. It's been CRAZY busy and the past few weeks have just flown by! I've been teaching and making cakes and now, I'm just down to making cakes. I love that summer is here and I don't have to work, but am already dreading going back full-time in September. The thought of going full time for a whole year is too much right now.

So I won't think about it. Instead, I'll think about this summer. Chelsea and I have already been enjoying the sun and the warm weather.

I always have a lot to blog about, but when it comes time, my mind goes blank.

Busy busy me

I'm still here. I've been busy with cakes. I've started a blog just for cakes. It's here: http://amandascreativecakes.blogspot.com/

I've got three cakes to do this week, and I'm looking forward to them. I love cakes!


I'm also busy with wrapping up the school year. Gah. So much to do, so little time! But then it's summer! Yay!

He-ey, it's my birthday!

I'm wearing pink flip-flops to work today. (My mom would call them thongs, but rest assured, I am not wearing a pink thong.)

They are obnoxiously loud. Louder than any flip-flops I've ever owned. It's not just the slapping on the floor, but it's also this weird squeaky noise. I've very aware of myself as I walk anywhere today.

squeak, slap, squeak, slap.

Latest Cake....

This cake uses the long loaf pan from Wilton. This is the picture on the Wilton website that I was copying. I knew I wanted to use brighter colors. This was my first attempt at using royal icing (that's the really hard icing on the cookies.)


This one took a while. One day to make the cookies. One day to ice the cookies, bake the cake and make the chocolate icing. One day to ice the cake and add the flowers. The cake itself didn't bake as well as I would have liked, because I was short one egg and I improvised, but then the cake didn't rise as it should have, so I learned a valuable lesson. Even if it is pouring rain, I need to go get the egg!

I'm really pumped with how this turned out!

Should be sleeping...

I'm in bed and thoughts are just swirling around, so I thought I'd post. Maybe releasing these thoughts will allow me to sleep. This post will be fairly random, that's for sure.

I am really mad at my ear. Nothing seems to be working, and the hearing still hasn't returned. This proves irritating throughout the day as I constantly have to make sure I'm standing to the right of someone to hear them. I need to bend over and cup my ear to hear some of my little grade ones speak. I constantly hear the wrong thing and then make a butt of myself when I answer someone completely different than what they asked. I told my step-dad that I'm pretty much making up about 30% of what I hear... I am also pretty sure that I'm appearing snobby to people because I either don't answer them, or leave the room to be alone. The issue is that I'm having a really hard time blocking out irrelevant background noise and I really have to concentrate to hear someone speaking. This means that in restaurants or rooms with lots of background noises, I can't hear anything besides the background. It's like my brain's filter has shut off, so I just leave to give myself a break.

An example of this was at a family gathering we had in my inlaws garage on Sunday. We were all sitting around with lawnchairs, eating some food and talking. Well the echoing was so loud to me that I couldn't hear when people were speaking and I was just getting exhausted (and embarrassed) having to ask people to repeat themselves 2 or 3 times. We left after just 2 hours, but that was fine by me.

Sometimes, people just rub me the wrong way and then I can't get past it. A few of those people were at the gathering on Sunday. There were so many times I wanted to respond to some dumb comments, but I sat there like a good little woman, and didn't say anything... until now.

Okay, so I was telling my mother-in-law the story about Chelsea how she had brought me her shoes and I told her that she needed socks if she wanted to wear shoes, so Chelsea went into her room, grabbed her tub with socks in it, and brought it out to me in the kitchen, proud as could be. It was a cute story! I ended it with, "Babies are a lot smarter than we give them credit for, I think."

Well, Aunt #1, pipes up, "Yeah, my daughter was the smartest baby ever too, when she was little."

I said, "Pardon me?"

She laughs and says, "You're just bragging that your daughter is the smartest baby ever and I'm just telling you that all moms think that. My daughter was the smartest ever, too."

Okay, listen up. I did NOT say Chelsea was the smartest ever. In fact, I EVEN said "ALL BABIES" are smarter than we give them credit for.

Secondly, I was talking to Chelsea's grandma, telling her a cute story. Mind your own beeswax!

Gah. There. I feel better. There were more stories too, but we left after that because my head was going to explode.

I've decided I'll have the surgery, if they think it'll work. This will be time #6, doing the same surgery but maybe I'll be able to hear again for a while. I've also decided I will get a hearing aid if it will help. I'm past all the selfconscious, high school attitude of "what will people think?" and have moved onto the "hearing what people will say" kind of mentality.

The saddest part about my ears is that because of all the meds I'm on, I've had to start really weaning Chelsea. I've only nursed her 2 times in the past 5 days, and that was more to make myself more comfortable. Nursing means sooo much to me and I'm having a really hard time emotionally accepting the fact that my baby is no longer my baby. She's almost 14 months already... not much of a baby anymore! I love her so much - it's impossible to describe. When I pick her up, I am constantly squeezing and kissing and hugging her until she goes to bed. I'm sure it annoys her but I just can't get enough of her lately.

Her latest trick is shaking her head no. It really helps to figure out what she wants. Snack? no. Sippy? no. Bath? no. Night, night? (no head shaking) yes?? Woo hoo! We go to bed - she's a happy girl. I love it.

and I realize she's not the smartest baby ever, but she's the smartest baby I have!

Frustrations.

Sigh. Ear infections suck.

The doctor said the "s" word today. That's right. The "s" word. It's a swear word in my dictionary.

Surgery.

Sigh. I hate it. (For those who don't know, I have a long history with my ears, ear infections, and I've had 5 sets of tubes surgically put in my ears.)

It all started on Friday morning at 4:30 when I woke to feed Chelsea and realized that I had intense pain in my left ear. Then I discovered the blood. My ear drum had ruptured and I didn't even realize I had an infection. I went to the doctor who said I had a severe inner and outer ear infection. Grrr.

Fast forward until today. I'm done the antibiotics and I still have NO hearing in my left ear. NONE. I go to the walkin and the doctor takes a look in my ear and says, "Wow." That's not generally a good thing.

He says my ear drum is bulging and my inner ear is filled with fluid. The chances of it rupturing again are high. He says it won't clear up until the tube from my ear to my throat clears. He talks to me about allergies and asks how long I have been stuffed up for. I tell him that I'm not stuffed up and I'm feeling great other than not being able to hear.

He looks up my nose and says that he can't believe I'm breathing at all. He says my nasal passages are so swollen and inflamed and he can't believe I'm not light headed (which I have been for a few weeks, but I won't get into that.) He starts talking about tubes and an ear/nose/throat specialist and inside I start to wilt. I do NOT want another surgery on my ear.

I keep insisting that I am fine - which is how I feel - and he says, "Famous last words. No seriously, you were clutching a bleeding ear this week and you say you are fine. Famous last words." I thought it was kind of doomsday-ish. But I'm really not exaggerating. I do feel fine!

So for now, he's prescribed a nose spray (which happens to NOT be covered by my insurance) and I'm supposed to take Advil Cold and Sinus three times a day and I'm supposed to go see my regular doctor for 2 week checkups. He will not rule out sending me to a specialist and still thinks I need to get a tube put in to relieve the pressure. Oh and taking all this medicine will probably keep C up at night so it's probably time to wean her (which is true and this is a great reason to I guess, but I'm not sure I'm emotionally ready for that yet either!)

Grrr. I don't want surgery. I want healing. Does my opinion count on this issue?

No time!

I know it's time to update. It's been time for quite some time. But I really just don't have time!

I'm sitting here eating the same breakfast I always do, enjoying a few minutes of peaceful surfing before the chaos starts. Once I start getting ready, C will wake up. Then I will wake Chris up. Then we will all just be running around trying to get ready in too short a time. There's never enough time in the morning.

Last night, my head would not shut off. We looked at a different house - an old house - that would need insane amounts of fixing up, but the potential is incredible and exciting... but do we really want to take that on? Do we really want to live in a construction zone of a house? But the potential, oh the potential. It's such a draw... We love taking the ugly and making it beautiful. But for now, we wait and see what kind of magic numbers my father-in-law can draw. It would need to be a magic number too, because we would need $25,000 - $50,000 to fix this baby up. We're not talking surface changes like in the past. We're talking complete overhaul, gutting bathrooms and the kitchen, removing ugly carpet (from the WALLS!), and taking down sheet after sheet of faux wood panellling.

Alot of the changes would not happen overnight. But I said that right away we would need to tear down and rebuild a safe, not rotted, deck, replace the shingles, replace all the windows and doors, and change the banisters for the stairs. (They gaps are so big in the railing, Chels could easily fall through. This alone almost gave me a heart attack while we were looking at the house.)

I'm trying not to get my hopes up. As I said, the numbers would have to be magical. God would truly have to intervene for our number to be accepted, but last night, my mind was racing with changes that we could make.

But, my breakfast is done, so I can no longer waste time sitting here blogging. Have a great day!

A quick trip to Superstore.

Who would have thought I'd find inspiration to blog at Superstore?

It just made me laugh because I just needed to buy a quick three things (I don't even remember what they were), but the lady behind me in line also needed to buy a quick few things.

In her cart was:
- a large box of instant white rice
- a huge bag of white flour
- a huge bag of brown sugar
- a huge bag of white sugar
- a 10 pound bag of potatoes
- a box of Coke

Now, it's not that there's anything wrong with any of these items. It just made me laugh because every single item in her cart is banned from my diet forever. Oh, how things change.

I hit a big milestone the other day. I have officially lost over 40 pounds. It did reach 44 pounds this week with me having the flu, but now I'm back to 41.5 pounds. I'm happy with that. I still have a ways to go, but I'm really happy so far with how I feel (and look!)

With losing weight, I've really held off on buying new clothes, because I know they won't fit nicely for long. Sure, I've bought a few things here and there, but nothing really. I've dug out some older clothes from like 6-7 years ago that I had shoved up into my closet, and I've done some altering of clothes that I own.

However, I was still wearing my pregnancy underwear. It was so big and baggy and saggy, it was embarrassing. I'm proud to say I've thrown all of it out and have bought new underwear! Hooray for me and my butt.

The wheels on the bus.

I'm dedicating a separate post just to this cake. I love this cake. It turned out great! It's actually 3 cakes baked in loaf pans, smooshed together with icing and then carved with a knife. The stop sign is red marshmallow fondant on a skewer. The road is graham cracker crumbs and the grass is icing. I love it!

Cupcakes.

I made lemon cupcakes with a lemony cream cheese filling.

Love is in the air...

The zoo. Good times were had by all.

Ari and Chelsea hit it off.

I do, however, think that Dave and Heather could have just saved the gas money and shown their kids a puddle. They loved the water more than the animals!

Chelsea is getting so big. This isn't the greatest picture, but she looks so old.

So tired.

Had a busy week. I think I'm adjusting to working full time. It's crazy busy though. Crazy. But it seems to be working out.

This weekend we went to the zoo with Dave and Heather and the boys. It was a blast. I'll post some pics soon - I promise!

On Monday, I hit a major milestone. I've lost 40 pounds in 111 days. Woo hoo!

Last night, I spent sleeping in Chelsea's rocking chair, holding a feverish baby, knowing dang well she has an ear infection. This is #3. I am sad because I've tried to do everything to avoid it. I even took her to the chiropractor. Now, I know the next step is to eliminate dairy and that makes me sad because Chelsea loves cheese.

Gotta go to work. This is another thing I don't like about working full time. I'm exhausted and had a terrible night and now I have to go teach with lots of energy. Fun!

Exhausted beyond belief.

I am so stinkin' busy. Last week was crazy with subbing, helping with a garage sale and baking cakes. This week, I've been teaching grade 1 full time, then Monday night I had cake class in Winnipeg and Tuesday night I went to a movie with some friends.

I feel like I'm so tired, I don't even know where to start. Chelsea isn't sleeping through the night anymore, so I'm not getting good night rests. I feel like a horrible mom for going back to work - horrible. The guilt can be overwhelming. I see her for a few rushed minutes in the morning, and then for about 3 hours before she goes to sleep. The idea of missing her days makes me sick to my stomach. The past two days she's gone to bed super early and so that cuts into my time even more. I hate it. hate hate hate.

I should clarify that it's not the job I hate. I'm actually enjoying grade 1. I hate being away from Chels. If I ignore that, the job is going great. I love my students. Grade 1 is pretty good. I get more hugs a day then I have in my whole life I think. I've got some really amazing support people around me and I think I could easily fall in love with this school. It's definitely going to be hard returning to my old school.

But, I think that's it for now. I should go plan a bit for tomorrow, and mop my floor or clean a little.


I really want to bake some cupcakes though... I think this cake decorating thing has become an obsession.

Duck Cake

Close ups of the duck cake I made for Chelsea's birthday. I really want to make another duck cake so I can do some things a little differently.