Mr.& Mrs. Shovel Hands

That is our new name. It is a good representation of what we have become. After last nights mega shovel-the-four-foot-drifts-off-the-roof-a-thon followed by the now-we-have-to-shovel-up-this-roof-snow-which-turned-to-cement when it hit the ground-a-thon.

We are looking forward to turning in our snow shovel hands for some sturdy sand shovel hands one day. That's what keeps us sane.

Why do we live here again?

just call him 'The Bieb'

Nathan got a hair cut. You in blogger land may not be able to tell really, but trust me, he did. he had some sort of perma bed head situation taking root so something had to be done. He wanted to grow his hair longer and we needed him to do something to tame that mane. So we compromised...he didn't have to get it cut cut, more shaped.

He wanted his hair like Justin Bieber...

Although he didn't quite have that much hair, we are well on our way to having our very own 'Bieb' in the house. Let's time this trend shall we.

Won't the real Nathan please stand up, please stand up, please stand up......whoooot!

*I apologise to the nice person I stole the photo of Justin Bieber on the Internet from.

Spanish Wednesday

Every Wednesday night I lose my husband to his other love...language.
He has become pretty darn great at Spanish in his 6+ years of casual study. It has helped us out a lot on our travels tremendously!

I know he would like to spend a heck of a lot more time engrossed in his quest for Spanish fluent-ness but instead he spends his time helping with home work, building snow forts, driving to various practices and events as well as studying for a new career in Fitness...all this and looks too!
Fix the truck, renovate the house, shovel the driveway, start the fire, fix this, fix that and "could you also please help me with my school project?", eggs every morning.....phew.

We appreciate you Terry, Ter, Ter-Bear, Bear, Step-dad and BFF. Thank you for being you.

late night dinners

It was a late one tonight. Not getting dinner ready until after 8 is too late in my books, especially when I have been going to bed at 10pm every night lately.

We still have to eat and it does beat getting take out, I hope.



So what does a family of 5 minus one make for dinner in 20 minutes (or less! yes!!) late on a Tuesday night?

Well, hamburger helper on steroids of course....

And by steroids I mean lots and lots of veggies of all kinds. And by hamburger I mean turkey. Throw in a couple of nuked potatoes and wha la...a semi-healthy one pot family dinner.

I've got to look into taking some kind of speed cooking class, we need some pep around here...in 20 minutes or less of course.

cactus buddy & thoughts

Look at him......Just look. Isn't he cute? He needs a name. He makes me smile.
What do you think of skinny-alien-cacti-dude? It has room for improvement.

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On another note, I recently took a couple of brand spanky new vehicles for test drives. A first for me. I don't believe I have ever set foot in a new vehicle before...the new car smell isn't all it's made out to be.

This whole searching for a new vehicle isn't as fun either. I am getting a little tired of telling our life story to every sales person we come across. Please stop trying to be my life long friend, I am here to check out your vehicles for possible purchase, tell me it's features, sell me well and you may make a buck. But be real. Please be real, I just need some one to be real. Get what I am after?....I think I should stretch out my search, make it my mission to find a car salesperson in this city who can give it to me straight.

This is a lot of money to spend after all, a big decision to make. Each vehicle has their pros and cons it's so hard to decide.

Plus, the one thing that is hard for me is how much time a salesperson will spend on me, taking me for test drives, writing down the #'s, doing the up-selling all while becoming my BFF, it's hard to have some one waste..er..I mean spend all that time on me and then I don't buy their vehicle. Will they be mad at me? What if I park next to them in the mall one day in my new 'other' vehicle? Awkward, after all we were pretty close for 30 minutes.

ooooh man! I like my truck. It's hard to let it go.

I know it's time for something new, we just haven't found each other yet.

snow white

Nope. Not more snow, although it is still falling out there pretty good, this time I took some pictures of flowers.
I went on another photo walk with some fellow photo peeps.

We have all pretty much lost our tolerance of the cold and snow so we took this one indoors, to the Muttart Conservatory.

So many flowers so little talent. It took me until around the end of our walk to really start figuring out my light, angles and settings..I was surprised to see how many shots I took that were actually out of focus when at the time and on the LCD screen they looked pretty good. One step closer to a lesson learned.

Here are a few of my favorite whites...

Tomorrow I return my rented lens. I really enjoyed playing with it. Not sure if I am quite ready yet to dish out the dough involved in purchasing one....I DO want one yes...I would definitely like to own one of my very own. I could only get better right...practice and tomorrow you'll be better than today.

One of my favorite mommy things to say to the kids.

more snow...& garlic too

Another set of snow pictures...just because it doesn't ever seem to stop and I was playing with a rented lens.

pretty snow,very cold, clean it up

all the roofs have big puffy blankets

my toes stay toasty warm in these, I need to work on my poor fingers now.


and garlic...because I liked it

finding my focus

Tonight, through tremendously YUCKY traffic, Terry and I headed to the downtown core to rent me a lens for my camera for the weekend. I am taking a Nikon 60mm macro lens for a test drive.


Every one together go wwwoooooooo...I KNOW RIGHT!


I am very excited about it and weirded out since I don't have the time to waste on my normal 'OMG I just bought something really cool that I have always wanted but I am to afraid to use it for a good two weeks until I may or may not feel worthy enough to drop any unnecessary guilt I may or may not feel for making such a selfish purchase' (something I am working on)



So I jumped right into it....




I was shooting everything around me until we had to leave for yet another one of Tayler's high school performances...this time she was in the Sting. No pictures of that though...haha you totally thought you were getting another round of 'look at my kid on stage' didn't ya!? I saw your eyes glaze over from here. I was pretty good though..two more performances tomorrow, you should go.


Nope, tonight you will be getting a couple of my very first practice shots...that's it...me, finding my focus.....

it would help if they stayed still....

or stopped with the goofy noises...



or didn't get so testy just because I got a little to close...

Tomorrow another day of click click clicking as I dash the kids around....Stay tuned, I may indeed actually find my focus.

laundry, tea, laptop & me...

Laundry always surrounds me at home but with a giant mug of tea and a little laptop surfing in my P.J.'s it's pretty easy to ignore.

bringing the work out home....

While the new year craze once again takes over our gym and an arctic deep freeze invades our lives with accompanying mass snow fall it is easier and more effective to get in my exercise at home these days.

I super love that we splurged for a treadmill last year....I KNEW we would use it and not turn it into a clothes hanger/dryer! I knew it. (Thank goodness for the t.v. strategically perched in front of it.)

where do they go?

No, really, they HAVE to be some where....

Tonight, it's me vs the loney one more time......One day I will triumph over....the sock box.

acoustic grooves

We went to yet another school show that Tayler was in tonight...what will we do for entertainment when she graduates?....gotta get those boys involved.

There was a great number of performances of talented variety from the creative music and jazz kids at Facey.

I only took pictures of my kid of course....even then Michel took my camera down to the stage level to get a few shots a little closer up so I can't say these are all mine. Thanks buddy, I know... I need a new lens.

Seriously, thanks to all who showed up and sat through the good, the pretty good and the "hey, that was alright!'

Here is my super star:

put it away already!

With us going away to a tropical paradise late last November we seemed to be in such slow motion getting Christmas up and running at our house.
Now that the festive season has passed we seem to now be towing the line in putting it all away.

These glass containers, now mostly emptied of their Christmas goodies and sparkly things, sit annoyingly and randomly in the middle of our kitchen table waiting for some good person/s to please put them away...please!?! (I may be talking to my self)

snow day 2

It's still coming down pretty good out there today. Shovel fest round 2 coming up.

To top it off the 4x4 in my truck refuses to engage. Great. I have been back and forth on whether I should get a new vehicle lately with this one continuously causing problems. But then Terry finds the solution and the part and its fixed. OK, I'll keep her.
It keeps happening though and the problems get bigger and harder to fix on our own. I just seriously don't want to add a monthly payment to our budget.
Terry is out there right now tinkering away at her. *fingers crossed*

As true blooded Canadians we didn't let a few flakes of snow get in our way last night from enjoying a yummy BBQ'd dinner.

snow day 2011

A snow day is a good day when you have no where to be, no responsibilities for the day. The giant flakes falling from the sky so light and fluffy still need to be cleaned up.
We didn't mind one bit today. Although this is just round one with 10 more cm or more predicted to be on the way. Movie night!!!