What a wonderful day!

We had our first free Saturday in what seems like forever and we enjoyed every minute of it. It started with Nathan letting us sleep in until 7:15! His usual wake-up time is 6:00 or before, so this was very luxurious.

After lounging around until 9 (it was so weird not to have to be up and out on the weekend!) Peter went and borrowed our neighbour's lawn mower and mowed our lawn for the first time ever!!! He moved really quickly and got it finished in just over 90 minutes. Here's a picture of the finished product :) It's still rather patchy but we're hoping it fills in over the summer.

What a wonderful place for Nathan to toddle around ... after the mosquitoes leave of course. And ... after he starts walking. lol.

After Peter finished mowing the lawn, we took a drive in town for a walk (no walking outside around here - I'm not joking about the crazy mosquitoes - it's awful just getting to the car). We walked down by the river and Nathan had his first encounter with the grass this year. He seemed to enjoy our time outside and I got some great pictures. Here are two of them :)



I'm going to put the rest of the pictures on flickr for anyone who's interested.

This afternoon Peter and I worked on the house, which hasn't happened in way too long. Peter caulked the rest of the windows in the living room (yay!) while I painted the two doors in the back hallway, caulked the trim in the back entryway, and painted the baseboards.

Here's a look at the hallway and the closet door (the closet is to the left of the first picture). The door straight ahead is our most-used entrance (back of the house) and the door in the right of the picture is to a half-bath.



And ... that was our day. It feels like we had time to do so much stuff with just one free day. I wonder what we'll do with a bunch more of these this summer! lol.

Quick update

Just a quick post so no one thinks I've gone MIA!

The past week was really busy with all our youth events finishing up (except a pool party once it's a bit warmer) until fall. Everything went really well and Peter and I are now looking forward to a relaxing and refreshing summer before everything starts up again in the fall. I feel we really need the few months 'off' to allow us to re-fuel for the new year.

Amazingly, other than a stitchy night at Eleni's on Monday night I don't have any other evening commitments this week. I'm still working Tuesdays / Thursdays, and am really enjoying that schedule. Nathan has a doctor's appointment next Thursday, so that will mess things up a bit, but I'll just have to make up a few hours.

We're in the middle of mosquito season in our neck of the woods. I have honestly never seen them as thick as what they are in our area. It is absolutely disgusting. The last three nights I have been dragged out of sleep with that obnoxious 'bzzzzzzzzzzzzz' sound. My new solution - go finish the night in the guest room. Since it's usually only an hour before the alarm goes off they can't find me that quickly ;) I can't wait for them to go away so I can enjoy the outdoors again!

I took a video last night that I'd like to post, but I have to get it off the video camera ... I'll come back later with that if I get it figured out.

Home alone

Ahhhh ... the beauty of an evening home alone. Well, Nathan's here, but he's sleeping peacefully in his crib. Peter is out chasing down some information he needs for a possible future project (more details will follow if anything comes of it ...).

I'm sure everyone is dying to know what our plans for the weekend are. Errr .. maybe not. Oh well, I'm going to tell you anyway :)

Tomorrow is 20x the points day at Shoppers, so if I spend my $50 I'll be eligible to get $150 in free stuff the next time I go in. Yay! I always need stuff like diapers and razors, so I'm sure $50 won't be difficult to reach.

Tomorrow afternoon we're celebrating my Mom's, my brother's and my birthdays in SJ. Our birthdays all fall within two weeks of each other, and with all the other celebrations in May we've decided to group them the past few years. It makes for fewer trips up and down the highway. With the price of gas, that is a very good thing!

Sunday is a super-busy day at our house. We have church as we usually do in the morning. Then our small group Bible study is having a double session on Sunday afternoon / evening with a potluck barbecue in the middle. We'll have about 14 people here for supper that evening as well as facilitating the Bible study sessions. Should be fun!

That's our weekend in a nutshell. I really missed having my Friday off today and the state of my house is definitely worse for the wear! I did manage to finish cleaning up from Nathan's birthday party (although there are still balloons all over the house) tonight.

Hope everyone has a wonderful relaxing weekend!

SYTYCD!!

My absolute favourite show of the summer returns tonight - So You Think You Can Dance. I don't know why I enjoy it so much, but I think it's because I'm completely clueless when it comes to dance. I rely on my friend Sue to tell me who's the best dancer ;)

So ... in the midst of a crazy busy week I'm sitting here enjoying my guilty pleasure of SYTYCD. It's not a good stitching show, though, because watching the screen is kind of important. It is really helping me to unwind!

I've been back on the flylady wagon (I know, there's no wagon!) for about a month or so. It's been going well - Fridays are generally my cleaning day. I spend an hour in the morning doing my weekly home blessing. It consists of: change beds, clean bathrooms, vacuum furniture, dust, and sweep. I spend an hour in the afternoon in the current zone doing whatever I think needs to be done. So far, so good!

Short post tonight, but I'm keeping my streak alive! I'll add on a couple of recent pictures of Nathan for good measure.

He loves his truck :)

Concentration

Playing catch-up

As was evident from my last post, I'm back to work. Thankfully finances allow us to have me work only a couple of days a week, which is just fine with me. I don't mind my job, but I really would rather be home with Nathan.

I have chosen Tuesdays and Thursdays as my regular work days. As a friend mentioned, by choosing those days I can always say (when I'm at work), "At least I'll be home tomorrow!" lol My boss has been very flexible with letting me change my schedule when required, which is amazingly wonderful.

Hmmm ... what else is new?? I'm still stitching away and recently finished Celtic Christmas. I don't have a picture of mine, but it looks similar to the one on Eleni's blog. I also finally framed and hung my Guardian Angels picture for Nathan's room. Peter made the frame, I finished it, cut the mat, and put it all together.


I just ordered some soap from my friend Sherrie. She's making a trip to NB to deliver some on the weekend. I can't wait to try it out!! Her descriptions sound so scrumptious I'm afraid I might eat it instead of use it to wash with. I'm going to use most of the bars I ordered as gifts, but I think I'll keep one for myself :)

It's my party ...

After a long break, I'm going to try my hand at this blogging thing one last time.

I can't believe Nathan is one year old today. It seems like only yesterday we were rushing to the hospital because my water had broken and yet so much has happened since then. It's hard to imagine what life was like without him as a part of our family.

We had a great birthday with Nathan. I switched my work day so I would be off, and Peter took a vacation day. Around noon we took Nathan for his first hair cut. He was really curious about the whole thing, but wasn't nervous or upset at all. I didn't realize how long parts of his hair were until the barber got clipping!

Tonight we had the whole family in for supper. Nathan really enjoyed his birthday cake!


In other news, I've recently started doing some digital scrapbooking. Paper scrapbooking was something I had done because I wanted to preserve the memories captured in photos. However, I hated the process. I did not enjoy my time spent scrapbooking. I had thought of digital scrapbooking before but I didn't realize you could have the pages printed. Once I realized it was possible to get them printed and even printed in bound books, I was hooked. Here's a sample of a page I've done recently.


Well, that's about it for now. I'm working Thursday and Friday this week, which kind of messes up my regular schedule of Tuesday / Thursday, but that's what long weekends are for!