shopt till ya drop

mack and i headed out to the mall today.

we first hit up our fave dollar giant where we got a few new nifty things.

i then dared to take her (no nap yet) to the mall! this is scary as she doesn't like to stay in the mall for long and usually throws a fit in the change rooms just when i get undressed. i figured she may fall asleep in the stroller so we headed in.

we did alright. i got a few things in one store after she threw her rice cake and cheese all over the floor of the change room, broke my bracelet and dialed someone on jer's cell phone..hahahaha. but we made it out alive.

we got jer a father's day gift and then rushed out to catch the dreaded bus home.

here is a pic of mack just when we got home.

i also wanted to post a pic of the rose bush in our garden that thankfully is still alive. they are gorgeous and i cannot wait for the whole bush to bloom. the people in our house have neglected them and we got some great tips from dean about where to trim them in the spring and that seemed to have helped.

some cute pics from a bbq we had at auntie cheryl & uncle doug's house the other weekend! yummy!

coming back to life

mack and i have both been sick the last few days. i haven't gone out of the house since sunday and finally felt well enough to venture down to the park with mack for a bit this afternoon.

i have been moping around the house feeling sorry for myself and for mack. she has a cough and i have had some kind of small flu bug. poor jer had to come home early yesterday from work and take care of his ladies. he's the best.

so today's been a catch up of chores....bah! i have been vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes, cleaning floors, and still have 2 giant loads of laundry to fold, ironing to do, dinner to make & a bathroom/tub to clean...and who said stay at home mom's don't work!!!! oh well, that's how it goes some days right?

i also got spoiled by my mommy & daddy today! thanks mom & dad!!!! you guys are the best! i got a nice pressie in the mail - a cute shirt (that fits over the girls, good job mom!) and some spending money. my nana & papa also sent me a card and some spending money as well as grandma judy & ken....i cannot wait to go shopping! thanks to all of you for thinking of me, the birthday wishes and for the lovely cards!!!!

i still don't know how i feel about turning 31 next week though. it feels worse than 30, but we'll see. cami is gonna watch mack for jer and i on my bday (she's the best!) and we are heading out on the water for a day filled with kayaking!!! i am super excited!

floating on a river...

we went to the esquimalt recreation centre on saturday for a day of swimming!

i finally found a bathing suit that i wasn't horrified to come out of the change rooms in so it was off to the pool for the three of us.

mack has taken two rounds of swimming lessons now and jer has always on in the water with her so i was super excited to get in the pool with our little tadpole!

what i didn't expect was how much fun this pool was!

they had a super huge baby pool that pretty much was the size of an normal pool and contained a smaller baby pool and also what i think was the most fun of all a "lazy river". (it's hard to see in the pic and the photo only shows half the pool)

we had a riot in this thing. it is essentially a river in the pool complete with currents. you swirl around in a figure eight around two islands with water sprays hitting you ever so often. it's great fun and i think the adults were loving it more than the kids were!!! mack loved it! they also had big water spray sprinklers lining the sides of the baby pool that they turn on and off for a great surprise for the kids.

we usually go to the oak bay rec centre so this was a pleasant surprise. especially since i was looking for a pool that had more to offer than the tiny pool that oak bay has. all in all it was great fun and we were all super tired and hungry from our big day at the pool.

martini & a movie

i won't drone on here on and on about how much i loved the sex and the city movie. all i will say is that it exceeded all of my expectations and it was a one kick ass movie. i don't think they could have done any better.

we cried, laughed, yelled, cried again and laughed for the whole movie. how could you not love it - there was hot, naked men in it!!!! anyways, i can't wait to get my very own copy and torture jer by making him watch it with me.

i left jer alone with mackenzie while i got to go out for a much needed drink and a movie. those two had alot of fun and got into their usual trouble when mom's not around.

we haven't been up to much else the last few days. i am very behind in my knitting. it seems every night i plan to attempt to work on the 2 projects i have on the go and i just don't make it. one is a hat for myself and the other is a summer top i am designing for the baby. i am also on the hunt for a pattern i saw one of the judge's wearing on "so you think you can dance" last week as well. mack's molars are coming in and i am just happy to get her to sleep. at that point i am so knackered i go to bed myself. i will admit that i did manage to snag season 3 & 4 of melrose place (yes, they finally released them) and have been back to my happy melrose watching...i friggin love that show!!!! jer is back doing overtime and i am back being tired and in need of a break even though i just had one...hahah.

convertible

mackie and i got to ride in a convertible last week!

my friend corinna and her husband chris were in town and we got to go for a nice ride in the mustang convertible they rented.

it was great to see them and alot of fun to watch mackenzie feel the wind in her face.

here comes the sun....

whooeee! sunshine!

we had a wonderful weekend. the sun was shining, we had no real errands to run and we were able to just relax and enjoy ourselves. we took mackie out for a yummy breakfast at Floyd's Diner and then to the beach on saturday. she loved it and of course loved the sand so much she ate it...haha.

sunday we went out to finally go explore the govenor's house here in victoria. it was gorgeous there and alot of fun. it's so close to our house and now we feel silly for not having been there before. we didn't get to explore all of the grounds as it is quite large, but did explore all of the upper area. mack loved all the flowers, gardens, gazebos, mazes and the baby ducks at the pond. http://www.ltgov.bc.ca/ the view from the grounds is breathtaking and next time we go we will bring the hiking pack and we can walk through the trail down the cliff area.

sex and the city here we come!!!

i am now counting down the days till the sex and the city movie opens.

i cannot wait!!!!!

in honour of my fave ladies of nyc i have started to whip out the martinis early. yummy.

fabricland here i come

i finally got to fabricland this weekend. finally.

it has taken me over 6 months to get to this place. having busy weekends jam packed with errands didn't help, but now that we have the car our pace is a bit more relaxed and we finally made it.

my poor couch has sat barren for so long, i don't think it even knew what a throw pillow was.

she is all decked out now. i scored and hit a huge 50% off sale. i intended to go in and get fabric to make a whack load of pillows but got lured in by some covers alreay made on sale. once i found those i still got a bit of material to make a few more.

i am kicking myself though. i fell in love with the grey center pillow, but also really wanted to make 2 out of the material i found so i put 1 of the grey ones back. once i got home i realized i loved the grey one way more than all the others and wish i had listened to my gut instinct and bought more. oh well, at least i got there. now to see if i can actually remember how to use my sewing machine..hahaha.

the return of the crow

after the incident the other day with the spider/snake/crow we decided to brave the outdoors anyways and head off for a picnic at the park.

we stopped at starbucks to get a nice, cold drink and then walked to our fave park. unfortunately this is the same park that we first met the "evil crow".

mack and i were enjoying a nice snack and a cold drink when out of the corner of my eye i spotted him. the crow. fearless and inching his way towards us. this time mack was quicker than i was.

she jumped up and grabbed her sticks and whoosh! she chased down the crow. my brave baby girl was not gonna lose anymore food to this mean old bird. she most definitely is my child. anyone who knows me knows that nobody messes with my food and gets away with it.

two heads are better than one

we had a great long weekend.

it was nice to have jeremy home for so many days in a row. we got alot of rest, played tennis, went to a farmer's market and just enjoyed ourselves.

we are borrowing miranda's car for the summer and decided it was time to upgrade mack into the "big girl" car seat.

who knew this thing was so hard to install??? holy cow. it took us a long time to figure out all the attachments, straps and rules to put this thing in the car. at one point we waited an extra day just so we could ponder the set up and go at installing it with a fresh outlook on it. sad isn't it? hahaha. but we managed to figure it out and mackenzie LOVES it! she loves it so much she passed out in it. too cute.

yogurt, yogurt

mackie loves yogurt.

she loves to spread it everywhere and basically bathe herself in it's yumminess. she even tries to drink the bits left in the container when she can't figure out how to get her spoon in to get the last dregs out.

i thought these pics were to cute of her to pass up posting on here.

wishing i was still in a highrise....

i have lived in a big city in an apartment for about 9 years of my life. before we moved to the island we were in a high rise right smack dab in the middle of the busiest part of vancouver. it was concrete and involved no maintenance on our part.

now we are in a ground level suite of a 3 floor character house and we have a patch of garden and an area where our landlord dumps his shit..haha. the tenants who live on the very top floor have redone the backyard and it is now looking great. the only part of the house that is crappy now is the side our our suite. hopefully he comes and picks up all his supplies/tools so now when i look out my bedroom window i don't see an old toilet...yuck!!!!!!


the weather today is absolutely gorgeous. sunny and hot. it's delicious. so mackie and i went out for a walk in the morning down her street (same name as her) and then this afternoon we got ambitious and decided to don our garden wear (me in garden gloves and everything, my nana would be so proud and mackie in her sunhat and cute bug shirt from great grandma judy) and get out and pull the weeds from around the landlords crap. we would love to be able to put our chairs and bbq out there. the other two suites have balconies, so it would be nice for us to have a place to sit as well.


mackie was in her trike looking all precious and i decided to wreak havoc on the weeds. bye bye stress!!! i showed those weeds who's boss. sad thing was under all our landlords crap are poor sad tulips trying to stay alive. hopefully they will make it and bloom next year.


i decided since i had done all i could do with the side of the house i would now tackled under our front windows. it is really weedy there and i would like to put some pots along there. i should have known with my luck that something would happen to me. i have silly luck like that.

since we moved in i have been cleaning little spider nests and webs from our front door garden area and along the windows outside. i keep thinking i have gotten the little bastards when poof, the next day they are back again. well, now i know why.

silly of me to dive head first into a thickly congested section of dead weeds!! i will never, ever, ever, do that again. first i found the mother nest!!!!!!!!!! oh god, it scares me to even type this. and silly me had flip flops on, not even shoes. so out comes crawling all these little spiders everywhere and if that wasn't bad enough the mother was there too........a huge, gigantic, big spider. biggest one i have ever seen. anyone who knows me knows i am very, very scared of spiders. so i lost it, freaked out had a little scream and then sucked it up and continued only under the assumption that i had to kill the mother. but i missed......i missed by a hair. she got away. i don't know where it is now, and that thought is going to give me nightmares tonight. what if she decides to crawl in the house and seek revenge on the thing that killed her babies!!!!! oh lord.....and to top it off, when i was hunting the mother down....i ran into another problem.


A MOTHER F**&#&# SNAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YES, A SNAKE! a long, ugly, slithery, fat, creepy, crawly snake. the one thing that scares me more than spiders are snakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it got away too. so now i am left with a big, bad ol fear of my yard. i grabbed the baby as fast as i could and we booted it inside.

i called jer at work and whined to him to come home and save us...hahaha. i am scared to leave the house now thinking that the spider momma and the snake are gonna get into cahoots together and take me down. also a big crow was following us outside and i think it may be the same crow that ate mack's food the other day...haha. it is still out there 2hours later cawing it's brains out sitting on the driveway. for all i know maybe all three are in on it. i am a goner. if something happens to me, you know it was the critter gang that took me down.

oh how i wished i still lived in a high rise where the only thing i had to worry about was the dust from the traffic driving in the alley behind our building.

watch out tiger woods!

my mother's day was great. i got spoiled by jer & mackenzie. my fave part of the day was getting to enjoy a late morning nap.

jer decided to take mack out to the park for a bit to let me sleep. wow was that ever nice!!! little did i know he was out priming her to be the next tiger woods. too cute.

curry, curry

i decided to satisfy a month long craving and made some curry.

i am not sure why i was dying for some curry lately, but i was.

i have been cooking alot of new recipes lately now that jer is coming home at a reasonable hour from work and i'm not just feeding myself. i am feeling a bit more confident with my cooking abilities now that i have tried enough new recipes over the last few months and felt that it was time i conquered the curry.

i found a delicious looking recipe for a mango chicken curry. (http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/007234mango_chicken_curry.php) it took a bit of time to make to make and jer helped cut up the mango. i have a problem of just jumping in head first to cooking when sometimes it's better if i just cut up all my veggies before i start cooking, especially when making something as tricky as curry, so jer helped me out of a pinch. the curry turned out delicious, the spice was just right, my nose was running, the house smelled yummy and now i can add curry to my list of fave cooking recipes.

keep those chunky monkey legs warm

i made mackenzie a pair of baby legwarmers when i was still preggers with her. i have to admit i winged it and tried to make up a pattern. they are ok, but now that i have dived head first into the world of double pointed needles i will try my go at another pair for her someday. the ones i made i had to seam (bah!). they stay up, but are still a little bit big for her little chunky monkey legs, but she loves to romp around the house in them.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

i'm looking forward to a great "2nd" mother's day tommorow. jer said mackenzie made me a pressie and i cannot wait to see it. i love you my little girl, you are my special angel. you have shown me what life is really about and that dreams really can come true.

also a big HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO MY MOM! i love you very much and thank you for being such a great mommy. i can only hope to be half the mom you are to me. you are always there for us no matter what and i hope you have a great day today. relax and spoil yourself. your pressie is enroute....ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

toys r us here we come!

we braved the crowds today and headed out to mayfair mall. i hate that place and so does jer. it sucks the life out of you as soon as you enter it's doors. it has a bad aura. i know it's a mall but it has it's own vibes and they are bad. we only go there when we absolutely have to and we did today. mackie had some bday money that we have been dying to go spend there in toys r us. she usually is asleep when we dash in but today she was awake and ready to spend some money. she had so much fun in there running up and down the aisles oooohhhing and ahhhhing over all the fun toys. that was the only good part of our shopping trip there today. here are a few of the things she got today with the help of her great nana and papa.

we got mackenzie her very own "little people farm set". it's so much fun. it plays music and all the animal homes make animal sounds. she loves it and i remember playing with the one i had as a kid for hours.

she also fell in love with this adorable beach chair - mackie sized.

we found her one of those "poppers" as well. the long handled toy you push on the floor that has air balls in it that pop as you walk, sorta looks like a vacuum. i was going to get a pic of it, but she won't let me take it away from her long enough to get a shot. she also got her first set of crayons, paints and a huge jumbo coloring book. i can't wait to get into those!!! mom is more excited than she is.

after standing in an extraordinary long line at toys r us we bolted for the parking lot and got the hell out of there. we then had to head over to another mall where our shopping day only got worse. after tiring ourselves out and with sore feet we finally dragged ourselves (mack was attached to the boob) back to the car and had to endure another torturous chore and go buy groceries....bah.

in the long run it was worth it. mackie loves her toys and we ate a delicious new recipe. http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/005280spicy_grilled_turkey_burger_with_coleslaw.php i didn't make the coleslaw but instead we had http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001320dads_greek_salad.php this delicious greek salad recipe. probably one of the yummiest i have ever had and i love a good greek salad.

chop chop chop

get out your power tools ladies!!!

mackenzie just loves it when i get out my drill.

we were given a great magnetic knife holder from our friend wes as a housewarming gift in december and had yet to hang it. i was waiting on jer to decide where he thought the best spot for his knives to hang would be. needless to say i decided to make the decision for him.

i was cooking a yummy dinner last night (http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/000123hamburger_and_macaroni.php) and was frusterated with the lack of chopping space on my counter due to the knife block we had sitting there. so first thing this morning mack and i set to work. we drilled the holes, plugged in the anchors and screwed in the screws and voila!!! a nifty space saver.

darn crows

mack and i went to the park today to try to get some more pics for her little photo shoot session. we are still on the hunt for that infamous shot to use for her one year mail out. it was sunny and warm out and we were having a riot at the park running in the grass and climbing tress when the fun was ruined by the arrival of a not so friendly crow.

now i realize there are people out there who probably like crows but i am not one of them. i cannot stand them and they have scared me for a long time. i don't trust seagulls (after seeing one rip a pigeons head off in mid-flight) or geese (i was attacked by one once) and now i no longer trust crows.

crows have bugged me and mackenzie before and she is a very diligent crow shouter. she likes to shoo them away with me. well today put our crow battles to a new level. this crow was a pretty damn brave crow. while we were playing he decided to brave "the BOB". he went after our jogger!!!! the little black feathered pest (or rat with wings as jer calls them) was trying to take out my groceries from under my stroller and had also pulled many other things from the top of my stroller and strewn them on the ground. if that wasn't bad enough i realized he had eaten my daughter's food!!!!!!!!!! friggin bird ate all of her cracker snacks and was going after her banana as well. i went for it...i chased it around and then turned around to see my brave little girl waving a big stick in the air and chasing after the crow as well. it was priceless, too cute for words and i was so proud of her.

we decided to move from that spot after the dirty bird hopped away a bit, but the thing followed us. we kept moving and he kept coming after us. so i started to get scared. he didn't even jump away when i lunged at him anymore and i was worried he was going to go after mackie next for his meal, so went left.

this time the crow won, but the battle isn't over mr. crow. we will be back and this time you ain't getting our snacks!!!!