Flat Stanley's Canadian Adventure

We had a visitor arrive from across the seas today(Wednesday, January 22)!  Flat Stanley has come to us from Ireland! Sadly he arrived freezing cold as he was slightly under dressed for our freezing temperatures. We got to work right away making him some proper clothing. A winter jacket, snow pants, a toque, boots and mittens. Now he's ready to go out and play in the snow. Welcome to Milk River Alberta Canada!

We had to put pink snow pants on him, that's all we had, after all we are a house full of mostly girls.

Kathryn had a basketball game, so we thought Flat Stanley might like to come and watch. We all had a great time. Kathryn's team won 50-8.

On Thursday Flat Stanley went with Kymberly to school. He spent the day with her Grade 1 class learning all kinds of interesting things. The kids were excited to have a Flat Stanley visit because they had just finished reading one of his books. Mrs Takagi tells me that he was very well behaved and welcome to come again another day. 

Journaling to quiet the children and a 100 day challenge.

Oh yes, this is definitely going to be a new Sunday routine. It is so wonderfully quiet right now. The kids were just getting at each other and the decibels were rising quickly. So I called all the kids together and told them that we needed to start doing more "Sunday" like thing on Sunday. For instance, writing in their journals. So they all got out their journals and started writing. Oh how lovely. And since they are writing in theirs, I thought I'd better write in mine...or make a blog post as the case may be. I've actually been writing every day on my other blog...the blog that I don't tell any one about, the blog that I've kinda been keeping off and on for the past couple of years, the blog that is extremely personal and extremely hard to even admit that I have, the blog I'm not even sure I want anyone I actually know to read. But a blog that recently I've been thinking I need to share to really get the most out of it, and not knowing how best to share it. This blog is about my weight loss journey. If you are going to go over and visit it, start with this blog post.

Eleven days ago I started a new challenge, a 100 day Challenge. If you want all the details, I lay it out in this post. The idea is that I will follow my laid out exercise plan for 100 days and document it every day on my other blog. You can follow along if you want. For the most part, it isn't really exciting. There will be at times some really insightful posts, but mostly it is just a place for me to record my efforts each day, with the hope that at some point I'll see results.

Four days ago, I decided to add a new 100 day challenge to my life. My sis-in-law posted the following quote on Facebook the other day and it got me thinking...

I may have a problem.

I was so excited with idea of getting rid of baby things now that I feel certain that our family has reached its proper size. And for the most part I've been great at just getting rid of things when Ella no longer needs them. It's made especially easy when I have people that I know and care about that I can pass the stuff on to. However, I have come to realize that I may have attachment issues when it comes to baby clothes. In particular clothes that all 4 of my girls have worn. There are so many memories attached to each piece of clothing, memories for each of the girls. Memories that I may or may not be afraid will disappear if I don't have those clothes to remind me of them. And so every time I go through clothes that Ella has out grown, it takes forever. I have to talk myself into putting them into a give away box. And then there are some, that I just can't part with. The biggest culprit are things that I have created. I once posted about my obsession with fabric. It seems as though that obsession extends to the things that I create from that fabric. These things that I have made for my baby girls, I just can't put in a box to give away, they are far to precious. I might be OK if I gave them to a family member and then they always stayed in the family so that I could see my lovely nieces wearing clothes that I have created...but I'm not even sure that I am ready for that. I have this tote, it.s a fairly large tote, that I have designated as my baby keep sake box. I told myself that once it was full, I'd just have to give the rest away. Do you know how many dresses and things I have created over the past 11 years? Neither do I, but I know it's more than a few. The box is full, and Ella isn't yet one. I'm going to have to get another one...maybe just a temporary one, until the day comes that I can part with some of my obsessions.

A New Year Adventure

For New Years Daniel and I decided to do something different, something adventurous, something spontaneous. All we needed was someone to watch our kids. My sister was just crazy enough to say yes, even though she would also be watching my brothers four kids in addition to her own five. So at my sisters house for three days were 2 adults (my sis and her husband),  3 teenagers (ages; 17, 15, 13) and then eleven kids under the age of twelve(ages; 11,9,9,8,7,6,6,5,3,2,<1). I mention this only to illustrate that my sister is the real Super Woman. I shall also mention, that Ella cut two molars while staying with my sister....and she doesn't cut teeth gracefully.

Meanwhile, Daniel and I headed down to Greatfalls to catch a 10am flight on Dec 30th to Phoenix. When we arrived we were informed that our flight was canceled because the pilot had called in sick and was not rescheduled until 3:45pm on the following day. This was not going to work for us, as we were planning on going to the Coyotes VS Oilers hockey game on New Years Eve and coming back home on the afternoon of New Years Day. Lucky for us, there was a flight out of Missoula that night. All we needed to do was rent a car and drive across Montana two and a half hours to catch that flight. So instead of spending the afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona we spent an entire day in Montana.

Beautiful as it is, I have spent most of my life enjoying adventures in this part of the country and would have really rather been enjoying an adventure in a place I had never yet been. We did arrive in Phoenix late that night, on our way to the hotel, we took a detour and drove past the Mesa, Arizona Temple. I was looking forward to visiting it the following day.