Packing

Well, it snowed again here this morning, just a dusting of a few cm. Marlene- feel free to come and get all the snow you want!

I am packing and James is watching a new feature he found on his Thomas DVD- a read along story. He has read 'Thomas tells a lie' about 10 times this morning. I have so far packed all our clothes and our packages. That takes 2 bags. I still have to pack a backpack of things to do on the train and another bag to include James' snowpants and all the other stuff I forgot to pack in the first 2 bags! Then tomorrow we'll be hightailing it out of Dodge.

Before we leave tomorrow morning we will have our little Christmas celebration and open the packages we don't want to take on the train. James will be getting the Thomas the train heliport, which should keep him busy for the morning, while I finish getting things ready.

Kim is coming today to pick up the birds for their vacation so their cages have been scrubbed and they are ready to go!

It looks like it will snow again soon.

Santa

In the midst of even MORE snow, Santa arrived at James' daycare. Apparently he came with full effects as the children got to hear the reindeer on the roof first. Santa had all the children sit on his lap to tell him what they wanted for Christmas. However, James would have no part of that. He told me on the way home that he wouldn't sit on his lap because he 'didn't know him'. It seems the keep away from strangers thing also applies to Santa. Not such a bad thing I think. Apparantly Santa gave him a stuffed crocodile, which he was quite pleased with. All the children got a stuffed dinosaur which they were all pleased with (I think the crocodile he got may be a tyranasaurus or something. All the girls seemed quite pleased too. Quite a good idea, I guess.

Snow up to my knees

Yep, we got lots of snow. I saw 5 cars stuck as I ventured in on foot. I saw 1 snow plow and 1 city truck with a snow plow attached. The city of Kingston has 36 snowplows they told us on the news yesterday. 'We like snow' the head of the snow plowing department said on the news. They may like snow, but they are not able to keep up with the storm. There were only 2 streets that were plowed on my way in. One that the truck with the plow attached plowed and the other was tthe causeway and was plowed by the real plow. Unfortunately for me, that plowing plowed everything onto the sidewalk.
I hope things are better for the walk home, but I don't have much hope- it's still snowing hard.

Winter wonderland

Well, in case anyone had a doubt, we will be having a white Christmas. The storm that was only supposed to get here at midnight got here at 7pm. It's only been 3 hours and it looks like we have 5cm of snow already (on top of what was still here from last weeks weathermaker). I can't see the road! We also had ice pellets chucking it down around 9pm. Now it's thick snow.
This storm is expected to last until Saturday and dump between 30-40cm of snow. Gah.
I'm not terribly impressed!
Tomorrow I plan to leave early for RMC as the time it takes me to walk in will undoubtedly be longer than usual!
In the evening Myron has a potluck for work. He'll bring one of the cheesecakes I made on Wednesday. So I'll have to think of something nice for James and I to have together. His likes are rather limited, so it's not easy. He likes rice and noodles and pizza with no toppings. So not much to work with.

We picked up some HUGE ice/dirtballs on the way home from daycare today. They were seriously big and heavy and I had a hard time lugging them home in the wagon.

James says so many funny things that make me laugh but it's hard to remember when I go to write them down. Tonight when he went to bed, he said 'I need to leave the flashlight on because Bear likes it' and then proceeded to tell Bear all kinds of things like 'when the sun comes up it's wake up time'

He also has expanded his list of who he loves. If you ask him he loves 'Mamma and Dadung and Karen and Oma and Rebecca' Rebecca is a little girl about the same age from his daycare.

He is also memorizing Psalm 91

Dirtballs

Time it takes me to walk to RMC a good 2km+= 40 minutes
Time it takes me to walk WITH JAMES home from his daycare tonight a distance of a meagre 3 blocks= 40 minutes
The problem was the dirtballs. James wanted to carry these chunks of dirt and ice home but had been greedy and wanted to take too many home. He was crying and crying but quite determined. Finally, we went home and got the wagon and loaded them in there to take them home.

Snow day

Yesterday we woke up to a thick blanket of snow, and it was still snowing. I slogged my way into RMC. It took about an hour with all the extra resistance while walking. Crossing the Causeway was exhilirating- watching the wind whip the water.I was in for 8am and as I walked in I could see that the parking lot was empty! Well, relatively anyway. I thought- I hope they didn't close it and not tell me- it wasn't THAT much snow! A lot of people weren't in at the department I worked at. Apparently they aren't CANADIANS! So the project I was trying to work on ground to a halt because Dave, Brian and Dwayne all weren't in. Also, the new computer had managed to log itself out of the network and would NOT log in. Still hasn't as far as I know. But I need Dave to help with that too, and as I said- he wasn't in! So, I left the silly computer to it's own devices for the day and worked on something else.

Now for the funny somewhat-humiliating story (seeing as the day was going so well): When I arrived at work my pants were pretty wet. I had a change of clothes, but I wasn't sure what to do with my wet pants. We have some hooks by the main door to the office but they are pretty public and I wasn't sure I wanted to hang my pants for full view. (not that anyone would really care- I've hung my splash pants there) So I decided to put them on a free table near the back of the office. This table is technically my bosses' office but he has a 'real' office down the hall and he just keeps stuff in his office part of my office and so he only rarely goes back there, so I thought it would be safe to leave the pants there. But of course, my boss made it in and DID go to the back area (of all days!) He was gone for a minute or 2 and then he came back and said something about pants and I said 'yes, they were wet' and he was o.k. with that, but I laughed and laughed (after he left!). So there I go embarrasing myself again!

Temper, Temper

In one of James' train stories the trucks say to a grumpy Percy 'Temper, Temper', this would apply to today!

When I went to pick James up at the daycare, he refused to share what he was playing with (and would be leaving!) with another little boy. Then he created a HUGE scene. He refused to get his snowpants on, so I put them in my backpack, something he really regretted later! I managed to get his coat and boots on and haul him bodily out of the daycare. He continued crying and being troublesome all the way home. When we got home, he knew he was in trouble and went immediately to the 'talking' spot that we have to talk about what went wrong. We went over the whole episode and at the end he came up with a genuine 'Sorry, Mommy', but he's heading to bed early and didn't get any treats tonight.

I hope he's better behaved on his Christmas trip to St. Catharines. Can I say, I was not at all impressed by the display?

Hood

I have to say, I really love the hood on my new winter jacket. It was worth it for the hood. It is a hood that keeps all the cold out and does not blow off in the wind. The perfect hood!

I had to walk into work today as it is too icy now for the bike. Would be o.k. if the land was flat but the sections I go in seem to be a little steep and need a little more traction than I've got. Anyway, I walked across the causeway, which is Highway 2 but is pretty narrow at the crossing of the river and a bus passed me and stopped at the bus stop (what buses do, right?) The 10 cars behind him stopped too, because the road is too narrow to pass the bus when there is oncoming traffic. But there was one guy who evidently wasn't paying too much attention. I heard his screech from behind me and SLIDE by me (and there was no ice on this stretch of road) His wheels were locked and he was making huge black marks on the road. Luckily, he did manage to stop before hitting the car in front of him. But he did slide a long way. It's pretty rare to see someone slide with no ice!

Yesterday, Kim and I saw the remains of an accident. It looked like the whole front of the car had been sawed off. Apparently, the lady driving the car made a left turn in front of a flat bed truck. It didn't look like the truck was damaged at all. Noone was seriously hurt, but it looked mighty nasty.

Be careful driving out there!

Sleep

I am a light sleeper. Unfortunately this means I often am walking around pretty tired. With a 3 year old, who requires lots of energy. Last night I could not believe the number of things that woke me up, or rather the number of times I was woken!
# of times woken by heating system- 6 times (until I finally turned it down to zero so that it could not do this to me anymore!)
# times woken by neighbour talking outside to a buddy- 5 times (I couldn't turn him off though- and why he was outside in the freezing cold talking to his buddy every hour, I really don't know)
# times woken by James- well only 3 but when he woke me at 2am I couldn't get back to sleep until after he got up again at 3am! so I 'm not sure if the 3am waking counts as a waking becasue I hadn't made it back to sleep yet.

The guy with the beard:
Today there was a guy with a big white bushy beard at Church. James says to me "What's that on his face?" I explain it's a beard, like Gadda has. C'mon boy- you've seen a beard before! But maybe because it was so white and so bushy it made it special. James had me take him over to the man. The man was quite friendly and offered to let James touch the beard, but he didn't want to. Then someone told James that this man was Santa, and James BELIEVED them and went around telling other people it was Santa! I'm not sure he really has any concept of who Santa is except he's seen a few pictures.
We had a really nice turkey lunch served at the Church. I believe Santa was serving the turkey :)

Coming back to James' waking in the night. He wakes because he is worried, I think. Maybe because he too is a light sleeper! So we have started reading Psalm 91 before he goes to bed. He really enjoys the reading and I am hoping the eventual benefit will be he will be able to sleep better!

Twins

James keep claiming that we are 'twins' and this means that we 'do everything together'. This comes from the train twins in the Thomas set, I believe.

James is still gung-ho on the advent calender. It's the first thing we do in the morning. We've had a tiny chocolate king, lamb and snowman so far!

I got James a book called 'Railroad Rhymes' which has rhymes about the different Thomas the train engines. He really likes the book!

An update on the murder nearby- on Tuesday, I guess they finished getting their evidence and the police guard was gone and instead the door and windows of the house were boarded up with plywood. Today when I walked by there was now a 'memorial' to the dead man which consisted of a piece of wood which said 'Remembering (name of deceased- I don't remember.lol.)'in marker. There were 2 blue balloons stuck to the wood sign and underneath a small vase that may have at one time contained flowers, but in this weather, they wouldn't have lasted long!

Chocolate Advent calender

Today, being December 1, allowed James the much waited for pleasure of opening the first door of the chocolate 'postman pat' advent calender that James' Great Nan from England sent. He was most excited about this and first thing in the morning we opened the first door. There was a little chocolate king behind the door. The chocolate king lasted only a few seconds, but James has been talking about kings all day! He also goes over and over the numbers on the calender figuring out which door each day belongs to. The Advent calender actually goes to New Years, but after the 25th the doors are not labeled with dates any longer, but as '5 days to go' etc. .This is a wee bit confusing for the mite, but he's doing o.k. with it.

Today I made a lovely smelling 'Maui chicken' dish (tasted pretty good too, but not as good as it smelled!) because the dish was to be served on rice, I made just plain rice and figured the sauce would perk the rice up. Well, James was quite upset with this as he quite likes his rice from packets! So he refused to eat the rice, but he did agree that the chicken was good. We had watermelon for dessert.

James is now playing inside a cardboard box that used to house the dehumidifier.
We're going to make some popcorn and watch Survivor when I'm done writing this.
Myron called at 6 (after I had made the dinner!) to say he wouldn't make it home till about 9 so James and I are having a 'quiet' evening in. Don't take 'quiet' literally.

James is very excited about going to Oma and Gadda's for the holidays. He talks about it every day. Today it was triggered by passing a corner store that had a chip(crisp) truck outside of it. He said that Oma and Gadda have chips and that he was going there for a holiday. I was sure that Oma and Gadda would be sooo pleased to be know for being the House of Chips. Hi Oma! Hi Gadda! I know y'all are really healthy!