4.28.2012

Ella's New Friend

We added a new member to our family last week!
Meet "Bigger Bear".



He's apparently 53 inches tall. We may have looked a little bit ridiculous pushing him around the cart in Costco. But it was totally worth it. She loves this thing! Giggles at it daily.

4.13.2012

That's just horrible....

Okay nothing is really that horrible but I realized I am a horrible blog reader. Even though there are blogs that I read ALL THE TIME I rarely go out of my Google Reader to actually comment. That's just some bad blogging karma right there! From here on out I'm going to try my hardest to comment more!

As much as I am blogging to keep track of our life for myself I am also all about making some new "mom friends". It's hard to make friends when you're not friendly ;)

Only four more days until Roy is back. They can't go fast enough. This round of him being away has been easier. Partly because I've been almost nonstop busy and partly because we get to do this:



FaceTime has been fantastic (and yes my husband is weird -love you in case you read this....)
Being able to see him almost every night has make him seem less far away, less gone.

I'm exhausted so I'm going to go curl up in bed and keep reading the first Harry Potter book. I've read the first few and one of my 101 in 1001 goals is to finish them all.

4.11.2012

Halfway there + memory keeping madness!

I've made it over the halfway mark. 6 days until Roy is home next.

Ella's blanket has a few more rows. I don't think I'll be finishing it but I'm getting closer!

I'm doing planks almost every night but I haven't timed myself since my first time (25 second- haha!) but I won't do it again until the two weeks are up. I'll be happy to make it to 30 seconds.

I've blogged almost every day but missed a few due to staying at my parents for the weekend. Still it's some of the most consistent blogging I've done.

Finally I have come to a decision about how I'm doing the family year books. It sounds so stupid but I have debated about this for MONTHS. It's gone like this: Should I do 12 x 12 or 8.5 x 11? Or another size altogether? Do I go completely digital and print them once a year? Do I print individual 12 x 12 pages every month and put them in an album? Should I order Project Life? Should I do the digital version of Project Life? How about I just print them out and put them in albums? What colour album? Do I get them all the same size? How many do I buy so I ensure that the entire year will be in the same album? But then how will I make sure all my [future] children have copies of all the photos? Do I make two sets of the albums, one for us and one for Ella? What do I do when baby #2 comes along? 3 copies. Oh make the madness stop!

Have I mentioned I have problems?

I'm not sure why this stressed me out so much but it did. I want to record memories. I want my children to look back through pictures, laugh, cry and remember. I want our photos to not just sit in files on my computer. I want to be able to look back and laugh, cry and remember. I am wanting it to be perfect.

But there is no way to reach perfect.

I've decided to go with the digital version of Project Life found over at Jessica Sprague. The whole purpose of PL is to just get you keeping a record of life. Not to overthink it. To keep it simple. I love the idea of the paper version but I think I would just get overwhelmed. I have great intentions but my follow through isn't always there.

I only bought the templates, journaling cards and the numbers/letters set for now (Colbalt Edition). I need to keep it simple. I'm working on January of this year and am already feeling the Project Life love.

One of my favourite parts about the whole thing is that I'll be able to get multiple copies of the books printed. My kids are leaving home with a collection of photobooks that may or may not weigh as much as they do. I am so excited for the day when Ella and I can look through the books I have already made of her newborn photos and our maternity photoshoot.

This post was not intended to be such a lengthy look at my memory keeping madness but thanks for reading if you got this far.

Cute pictures for your reward.





4.10.2012

TAT- Photo Bloopers



Linking up with Toddle Along Tuesday for "Photo Bloopers". This is one of my favourite "outtakes" of Ella. She's so little she still has her shoulder hair!!!!


4.09.2012

Non Stop

The last few days have just been non stop busy. My mom has been helping me paint (okay by that I mean she has been painting while I clean and organize) our house so we can move back in.

Long story short we were planning on selling so we moved into my inlaws to fix up the place and make showing easier by not having to get Ella and myself out at a moments notice. We found a house to build, were pre-approved for the new mortgage, it was all going beautifully.

Then had our house assessed and BAM- dreams temporarily killed. Our house is worth less than what we paid for it and less than what we owe on it once you factor in realtor fees. Womp womp.

So we are going to move back in for at least three months and then look at all our options again.

In the mean time to make our tiny 660 square feet work we switched the master bedroom and Ella's bedroom around.

Ella now has the big bedroom so she has room to play.

Our bedroom is a little squished but all we do in our bedroom is sleep and if there's any playing in there its definitely not on the floor ;)

New paint, a new rug, an excellent Kijiji change table find, moving a few things around and some MASSIVE cleaning and reorganization and I think we'll be able to make our tiny little place livable again.

I'm going to work on some before/during/after posts as we get all this finished. I just pulled up the pictures from the weekend we moved into the house and I can't believe already how much its changed!

In the middle of cleaning out the kitchen! I feel bad for the garbage man!







4.06.2012

A sunny day

On Monday we had gorgeous weather. It was nice enough that I busted out the sunglasses. Can't wait for more days like that!!!

Pretty much all of our snow has melted since yesterday so hopefully the sun will stop being so shy!

4.05.2012

Today

Since all I did was re-post a photo from THIS WEEK I figured I needed to write another post to make blogging today count!

This is what I woke up to this morning.

Snowy day More snow 














































Just fantastic.  It continued to snow until late this afternoon and then the sun came out and melted a bunch of it. Could mother nature please just make up her mind about which season she'd like it to be now? My vote is definitely for spring!!!

PS I tried to put those pictures side by side but blogger is being a cranky biotch with me so that just wasn't going to happen. 

Favourite Photo

This photo is a repeat but it truly is my favourite photo at the moment. I love seeing it every time I pick up my phone :)

I'm linking up to Growing up Geeky's Favourite Photo Contest. You should enter yours too!

4.04.2012

Currently

Danielle at Sometimes Sweet has a neat little feature called "currently" and invites her readers to do their own version so here is mine!

Obsessing over: This song




Working on:  Ella's baby blanket. I think I've added about three more rows since taking this photo this morning. I'm not sure how big I'll make it. For now I'll use up the yarn I have and see how big it is then and go from there. And on being happy where I am now in life instead of always wishing for the future!

Thinking about: Our house. Constantly. We had hoped to be able to sell it but that looks like it may not happen. I'm mentally arranging and rearranging the 660 sq feet to try and make it work for another year or two. It really hurts my brain.

Anticipating: Long lazy summer days spent out on a picnic blanket in our yard.

Watching: Lipstick Jungle. Only one more episode to go and it looks like they just cut the show off in the middle of the season. Sigh.

Eating: Fruit Loops. I've been craving them like crazy lately.

Wishing: that spring would just get here and stay. We're anticipating 10-15 cm of snow overnight. Efffffffff.



4.03.2012

14 Days

Earlier tonight I dropped Roy off for his next 14 days away.
I'm hoping that third time's the charm and this rotation is easier than the last one was.
Over the next 14 days I plan to do work on a few goals from my 101 in 1001 list. 

I'm going to work on my planks (I'm aiming for 2 minutes which is probably a dumb goal to some people but I'm fairly certain pregnancy completely destroyed the little abs I did have so 2 minutes seems like a lofty goal to me!)

My second goal is to complete Ella's baby blanket. It would probably be a good thing to finish it before she is finished being a baby.

I'd also like to work on our getting caught up on our family yearbooks. I've been having a lot of internal dilemmas on how I want to do these. But I think I've settled on using InDesign to make the pages and using Blurb to make the books.

So between that and BLOGGING EVERY DAY (maybe if I say it in all caps I'll actually do it) I think I should manage to keep all my non-Ella time full.

A couple pictures from earlier today!




4.01.2012

How I View Happiness

It is already the third month in the "How I View" series.
I'm linking up with 11 other wonderful ladies for this bloggy circle. Be sure to visit them all starting with Kelly!

March's theme was happiness.

<3 These two are my happiness  <3