go

We're off to St. C today. I let James stay up late last night in the hopes he would sleep in. That did not happen. He is so exicted about the trip. He asked me at 6am if we could have lunch yet?
He tells me he is looking forward to tuna at Oma's.
He also really wants to decorate a Christmas tree.
I am taking him out grocery shopping this morning to keep him busy as the train doesn't leave until 2:30 this aft.

ready

I spent most of the day preparing academic dishonesty cases. They are now ready and sent to my boss.

I am not in the process of getting ready for our trip. Laundry, dishes and packing await!

We are going out to dinner because a restaurant sent me a $20 gift certificate for my birthday. It may be a marketing thing, but it worked!

James has been getting up at 5:30am every morning. I am hoping the trip to St.C will kick start a new schedule as he likes to party late there!

Exam pass off

My arms are really sore from carrying Heidi for so long Sun. night. I realize I don't carry James anywhere anymore! Good thing! It was hard even to get him in his bike seat this morning.

I have a meeting with Angie at 11am and Boris (to give back his exams) at 11:15am, and none of these meetings are in my building so I have 20 minutes to kill before I need to go. It's hard to start something when you just have to stop.

I am awaiting the results of the copycheck. I have scheduled tomorrow to go over the results and then on Thursday James and I are off to St. Catharines for our Christmas! (It's early because he's spending the real Christmas in Moncton with Myron's family) I will send out the results of the copycheck to the students as soon as we get back unless I bring the letters with me. Lots of crying will then result. I'll probably wait until I get back so I can deal promptly with all the crying.

The day after we get back I have a massive meeting about what my job may or may not look like next year. Always something to look forward to. I invited my head of department to come along. I don't know if my boss appreciated that but the head is the one who pays me, so he should know what I'm doing, I figure anyway. I also invited Melissa, partly because I knew she'd want to come, partly because I knew it would bother my boss if she was there, and partly because she is my liason with him and she would be the liason with whomever does my job, if I am not doing it, so this meeting affects her too. I love to fill the room at difficult meetings :)
(Edited to add: my boss just uninvited my head of department)

Heidi

Last night I went to Kim's church with her 4 charges. An 8 year old, 2 six year old twins and a 4 year old special needs girl (Heidi). Heidi is the same age as James but is non verbal, she has just learned how to walk and in actions she is more like an 18 month old. She doesn't sit still! She is very sweet and affectionate but so busy. But working with her was still natural for me. I was surprised. But she was still a lot for Kim and I to handle. The people in Kim's Church were sooo good with her. They danced with her and held her and were a real community support for Kim. I was really impressed with how easy it was for people to help and how helpful it really was!

Not related, but my boss was trying to be helpful in suggesting I switch my email. I think he was trying to come up with Mozilla, but instead he said why don't you switch to Gorilla? Then realizing that wasn't right said no, Mozzarella! Oh, whatever. Mozzarella? I was amused.

Morning

James' ear is not hurting this morning!!!

I went to bed early and had a restless night, but I slept a lot of it. James and I have had breakfast already and built his new wooden railroad that we got from some people a block away from kingston freecycle. Fun.

Now I have to take a shower, wash some dishes, put dinner in the slow cooker (something chickeny) and bake some bread.

Ear

James was fine for most of today but around 5:30pm started complaining about his ear. Then he started running a fever. He fell asleep around 6:30 as I went to get his Tylenol. I hope he feels better in the morning, otherwise it's another trip to the walk-in clinic.
When he's sick, I'm shaken up.

Missionaries

Last night, I went to Kim's Church as it is their 10th anniversary. It was a good evening. Very long! When I go to visit her Church, almost always there is a missionary there talking about the work they are doing. Her Church loves to help missionaries. Last night the missionaries were from Hero Holiday. The guy reminded me of Al when he said he'd wear a green and white checkered shirt to a black tie event. Anyway, what they do is they take 300 teenagers down to the Dominican Republic (this year also Mexico and Thailand)and they have them build houses for poor people. This to give the teenagers a sense of purpose in their life, how they can help other people and that true religion is helping widows and orphans and those downtrodden by society. I know the teenagers in Canada could certainly benefit from this!


can you find the hidden James?
nmmvsdxcvvjameszofffbhbgngnnuifighubnbhjhuuunjmnnmmnmnmnmnn njj7gtgh

The best thanksgiving post

The best American Thanksgiving post that I read was posted by Kristy. The Thanksgiving poems and her commentary cracked me up. If you want a laugh, go read her post!

I managed to post all the photos my boss wanted, just like he wanted them. If you want to see them you can go here for a sampling. The are boring physics pictures though. No laughs there.

The weather here was gorgeous. I left work early to run some errands. It was so nice, I didn't even need gloves. Love it!

Myron is still sick. He went to the walk-in clinic and they told him that it was just a cold and to rest.

My last full class is tomorrow. I still have some partial ones after that, but most of the load is done after tomorrow.

Happy birthday to Kathy! Love ya!

Christmas trees

James is VERY big on Christmas trees. Myron was trying to find a photo of something from his childhood yesterday and there was a pic. of a tree his Mom had set up and James was all excited because he thought it was Oma's tree (though Oma would not decoarate like that!). We explained that Grannie also would have a tree. He was over the moon. 2 trees. One at Omas and one at Grannies!

Today I am spending working on our website for work posting photos of a conference. Should be fun, as photos are my weak point. I can barely even post them here and it's easy using 'hello' but I post my work photos in code, which actually makes a lot more sense to me than the simple blogger functions. I like seeing the guts of things.

Done, baby

One minute ago, I finished all the crazy exams.
Even the one that said that the North Korean nuclear test didn't have as much radiation as Hiroshima because of the expansion of the universe. Yeah, baby!
I still have to organize them alphabetically and all, but the brain work is done.

Myron is also done with being well and is off sick again, this time with a cold. Well, at least he worked 2 days of the week this week! Poor guy. At least he has sick days.

Tomorrow, I'm working at RMC. I have lots of my course messes to sort out on Friday. But the term is winding up nicely. Nothing left but the cryin'. (by the people who copied, not me!)

Blur

I was trying to remember if it was last night that James woke me to get him a new water sippee at 12:30AM or if it was the night before. I asked Myron. He heard nothing both nights and had no idea what I was talking about. Can you tell who sleeps deeper. Maybe the fact I sleep so lightly is why I have so many dreams. I'm always in REM! Makes you pretty tired through. REMing.

Today was my long day. I have 2 classes today and my day was filled with helping in the lab, keeping students in line, entering marks, checking our upload site, fixing our website and making up a proposal for new equipment. I thought I could squeeze in some time for marking, but it was not to be.

James has a nasty cough :(

Prayer letter visual

This is an example of a prayer letter done by James. I believe the 2 words on this letter are "God" and "Bib", though I am not entirely clear on what the prayer is! Sandy just sent me an email to tell James that her prayer request is "Joy". She's probably good at crosswords too.

My eyes are very tired from marking. 

James writes

James wrote my birthday card for me himself. Can you tell? He doesn't always write left to right either, sometimes it's up and down! 

Snow in the morning

This pic. is a bit fuzzy because my camera battery is almost dead. However, I wanted to publish the contrast to yesterday morning! The picture was taken about the same time in the morning as yesterday, but today we see snow! It is very light out even if it is gray. James was up at 5:30am this morning. That wouldn't have been so bad if Myron hadn't been up playing his game until 1:30.
So now Myron is sleeping and I want to start my work. We'll see how this goes. I have another day of marking exams. I'll try to post a picture of James' prayer letter when my camera is working again.The limit of the 3 letter words is because that is the size he figures he can spell. But let me tell you, it is difficult to condense your prayer to 3 letters!

Also, James' eyes are bloodshot so we may take him to the walk-in clinic to see if he has pink-eye. Sigh. Hopefully, it's just this cold that he got after the stomach buggy thing is making his eyes irritated.
Later today: Back from the clinic. Dr. says it is NOT pinkeye, just irritation from his cold. However, it could BECOME pinkeye, so we have a prescription if it does.
 

Prayer letters

James has recently been writing prayer letters. He goes up to people and asks them what their prayer is. The only limitation is that it must be a 3 letter word. He doesn't take prayers longer than that.

Red sky in morning

James looked outside this morning and said for me to look at the sunrise and wasn't it pretty? and wasn't pink my type of colour? I'm not sure what that all meant as pink isn't one of my favorite colours, but it was pretty. Nothing against pink though. Will head back to marking.  

Queen of the bland meals

We are eating very bland meals these days in the hope of getting myron better.
Today we are having chicken that has been cooking in the slow cooker all day with no seasonings- it was just cooking in water. Plain rice and some mixed veggies (though I'm not sure if Myron will have the veggies and he's asleep so I can't ask him)

James has become very artistic since he's started watching blues clues and is drawing everything. Including our bland meal!

"It's not fair!"

"It's not fair" has entered James' vocabulary as an oft used sentence.
I was trying to help him get ready this morning and he didn't want to and he was complaining that it wasn't fair. Then I said he could get ready by himself tomorrow if he thought I wasn't being fair and we went round and round in this discussion until he finally agreed that I was being fair and we finished getting him dressed.

James still seems better and I still seem fine, but Myron is still sick. It takes his system a long time to get over things!

I'm about 30% done the marking. Lots more to go!

And again

Myron looked all better last night and stayed up till midnight playing his game. He has relapsed today and is in bed, banned from games!

James seems hunky-dory and I sent him to daycare.

I'm still doing o.k. Exam marking is going slow, but then I am at the start. I get faster once I've figured out what I'm looking for. Breathe!

Rustlers down

A number of other Rustlers have been down with this stomach flu thing, so apparently we are not rustling cattle but germs. We'll have to work on that.

I didn't eat anything today, for worry of the bug overtaking me with my students, but when I came home I had the lasagne and seem to be o.k. so far. I don't know the incubation period of this thing. Probably less than a week. So it'll be a while before I can breathe easy.

Myron and James seem on the mend. No more symptoms from either of them since 6:30am. We'll see how the night goes as James has still been flushed.

I had a nap from 6-7pm to recover some of the lost sleep. When I woke up, I checked my email and had scads of problems to deal with from my course. Now I have dealt with them, I can get back to marking.

How to prepare to mark 280 exams

1. Have husband catch stomach bug
2. Have child catch same bug and puke in the night
3. Get less than 1 hour of sleep

Check. Check. Check. I'm good to go.
James doesn't have much left in his body. He puked at midnight and then a little one at 5am and just now a tiny one at 6:30am.
I'm still hanging tough, though very sleep deprived.
I'm feeling o.k. but not sure if I should introduce anything into my body at this point. I may go to my class with no breakfast. If I'm feeling really brave I might try some peppermint tea!

Sickness marches on

James just puked. I hope I can hold out. I have so much to do this week!
It's midnight and I'm doing laundry.
I'm feeling queasy but I'm not sure if I'm getting sick or if it's just from all the pukey things I just cleaned.
I'm not cut out to be a nurse.

Lasagne

Well, the birthday was rather unmomentus. No mail was even delivered due to that there civil servants holiday that I always forget about.

Today, Myron is sick with some sort of stomach bug. He'll be off work tomorrow too. Everyone seems to get off work for my birthday, but not me!
Tomorrow I disappear into a heap of exams. Hopefully, I will resurface sometime next week. Hopefully, I don't get sick. I have a lot of time pressure on this marking.

Today I had a wonderful slow cooker lasagne for dinner. And ate by myself because Myron was sick and James said he didn't like lasagne. Here's the recipe for you Dawna!
I make both a meat and a veggie version. I'll give both.

Put in slow cooker and mix together:
8 cooked lasagne noodles (break them up before you put them in the boiling water)
1 large can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
2 green peppers chopped up
1 onion chopped up (if you like onion)
2 cups grated mozzarela cheese
1 cup cottage cheese (recipe suggests creamed cottage cheese, but I only rarely find that)
1 tsp. basil
2 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp pepper (i use more)
recipe suggests 1/2 tsp salt, but I don't use it, use it if you like
1/2 tsp oregano

For meat version put in 500g cooked ground beef

For veggie version add any veggies you like in lasagne. I have used carrots and frozen spinach (defrosted and drained) and lots of peppers. I have not tried mushrooms because I don't like them. Read hate mushrooms!

Edited to add: My apologies to Dawna, I did not include the time to cook! It can go for 3 hours on high or 6 hours on low, or any amount above that- it won't burn!

Kim came to visit me at work today and gave me a book called 'Fight like a girl' for my birthday. By Lisa Bevere. I really like her work.
Kim and I had a nice lunch together, but short as she had to visit another friend at the hospital and get to work. But she knows where my office is now, as it was moved a few months ago.

I'll try to do some cleaning tonight because goodness knows nothing will be done in the next week! And I have all this sickness to clean up. Sometimes I wish I could see germs but most of the time I'm glad I can't.

35

Yes, 35 has arrived. Unfortunately it arrived about 2am when James got up. Too early to celebrate my birthday, but early enough to make me tired for the whole day because I couldn't get back to sleep!

My birthday appears to be a holiday for civil servants as there is almost NOONE here at work (RMC) except for the contract workers. Good noone will notice when I fall asleep.

Today is also municipal election day here and traffic was especially crazy downtown this morning. Not busy, but crazy. Elections do that to people.

Rustle went formal yesterday. Al had to pick my jaw up from the floor when I walked in. I really thought it was funny, but didn't feel it was appropriate to laugh. And the message was on being who you are. I guess they were trying proof by contradiction.

2 days until insanity begins and I am swept into the abyss of exams.

Brooding

I switched on the Chantal "All I can do" video this morning. And immediately James said "Is that from Church?" He hadn't seen it in a week (though I had it on while I was working a lot this week, he wasn't there) and he remembered! Little children = sponges.

Myron is going to see a sleep specialist in a couple of weeks to look into sleep apnea or assorted thing as to why he's tired. I keep telling him thje first thing the dude is going to say is that he needs to go to bed at the same time every night. No more late night video games. We'll see if he listens to a doctor.

I woke up at 2 and drifted in and out of sleep until 6am when James woke me up.
I'll put the meatloaf in the slow cooker when I'm done writing this. I have a really cool recipe that has cheese in the center. I like it anyway.
Then I need to wash the dishes because I need to take a large bowl in to Church and I use the same bowl for meatloaf!
I also have heaps of ironing that I need to get done before I get my exam on Wednesday.
I also have to write a few letters and get some stuff wrapped up to send.
I won't get it all done before Church of course. I have 2 hours.

Here's the prayer for today based on Genesis 1, Psalm 18, Psalm 42 and 1 Corinthians 2. It was inspired also by a dream a few days ago.

Brooding

Oh Lord, you have brooded over us.
Waiting for us
Waiting for us to become what you have called us to be.

To be people who listen
To be people who are being transformed by Your love
To be people who listen for the sound of your waterfalls
To be people who love one another deeply

You catch us when we fall
You pull me out of the ocean of hate, out of chaos, out of the void in which I was drowning
And put me in a wide open field
I stood there saved – surprised to be loved!

I want Your Spirit to dive to the depths of me and bring out what You have planned all along.
I want to live by Your waterfalls.
To never be far from You.

Thank you for the sound of your waterfalls
Thank you for the life and the love that flows into our hearts.
Help us to draw near to You this week and feel your love flow over us.

Party- The conclusion

Before the party, I biked to the library to return the oft watched Blues Clues and get out another. I also got out 'Matchstick Men'.

James was a bit confused because I was having my party today, he thought the actual birthday was today, and so I got to open my gifts today! Not a bad confusion really! And actually, he opened the gifts. The first he really thought was for him and he opened it and he handed it to me and said 'It's clothes for you' (Thanks Mom!) and moved on to the next present, hoping it would be better. But another package of clothes. (Thanks Shi!) And my third was again a package of clothes (Thanks Mom again!) James was disappointed with my gifts. But I really like them! Especially the turqoise pants my mom sent.

Then on to the party. Judy ended up being busy and Karen was puking, so it ended up being Lesley and Kim. But fun, it was! The pizza was good and the cake great! Lots of leftover cake for us to enjoy in the week.

Then Kim and I went to Loblaws and Toys R Us. Everything was SO busy. Hard to believe the Christmas rush has begun already! I picked up something fun for prayer tomorrow. I have to go and test it now.

Hi ukok, thanks for visiting!

Party

Today I'm having a party for my birthday!
James was in charge of the cake,cleaning the house and decorating. These are the things he put himself in charge of.
He loves parties.
I have 3-4 friends coming. That's about how many people our house holds!

I have had some problems in the last few days of students not listening to me. Keep making me thing of myVoice post If I was overbearing, would they listen?

James is enjoying his last day with the 'Blue' videos. My goodness, he's crazy about Blue. I how as Dawna said, it's just because it's new.

I went out last night with Sandy to the Goat. It was odd not having seen her for a while. I learned some stuff about myself and some stuff about her. It was nice- tea and cookies we had. I showed James the link to the Goat from Lesley's blog and he was really surprised. He thought we were going to a farm!

All I can do

On Sunday at the beginning was this video. I keep listening to it while I work. On Sunday, I think Brooke wasn't at Church and when the video was on, James thought it was where Brooke went. He calls her 'my Brookie'. Too cute.

James was up this morning at 4:30am. Not so cute!

Am having problems with weasely students. Lots of excuses when they don't seem to have read the rules.

All I can do is love you to pieces.

Stealth vegetables

James isn't too keen on vegetables, so I try to put a little plate of cucumbers or carrots on the table near where he is before dinner when he is hungry. I don't say anything about them and somehow they seem to disappear.

We've borrowed 2 Blue's clues videos from the library and the songs go through my head all day! He had not seen Blue's clues here before and he really seems to like it. He's got a handy dandy notebook too.

Today was long as all Tuesdays in term are. Only a couple more weeks and term will be done! I have my first serious copying situation this term. Not a happy situation, I tell you!

Myron has his class tonight and James is asleep, so I'm going to try to squeeze some work in.

Monkey spoon

James has a little plastic spoon shaped like a monkey. He loves to use this spoon. Whenever I wash the monkey spoon he always tells me "Thank you for washing the monkey spoon". It always cracks me up because he's so polite!

Prayer I read from Isaiah 58 from Church on Sunday (Myron got his new game that was just released and has been hogging the computer, so I only just get to post this now):

We pray:
That You would keep our purpose pure
That You would loose the bonds of wickedness
That You would let the opressed go free and that You would break every yoke
That we would see with Your eyes
That Your light and healing would spring forth in our lives
Help us stop pointing the finger and speaking wickedness
Show us how to extend our souls to the hungry and the afflicted
Guide us continually
Help us not to want to do things our way, but to want to do them Your way.

stripes

James and I went shopping this morning. We went to a clothes store where I picked up 2 more shirts with stripes. Then we went grocery shopping. We have lots of crackers in the cupboard now. We had a short lunch, then we went off to the library and to A.J.s for a bit. He didn't eat anything all afternoon and so it took him 1.5 hours to eat his dinner. He had 2 bowls of soup and lots of slices of bread and then an ice cream cone for dessert. (We bought cones at the grocery store, james has lots of fun with that!)
Now Myron and I are going to watch a DVD from the library something like 'All about Eve'
Update: The movie was a Quebec one called "The Book of Eve" about a woman who leaves her upper crust but overbearing husband for poverty and freedom.

First name basis

James is going through a phase where sometimes he calls me mom and sometimes aphra. I find it so funny when he calls me by my first name. All of our friends and his teachers at the daycare are also a first name basis. When I was a kid we always called friends' parents Mrs. Smith or whatever. I meet them now and still call them Mrs. Smith. But James calls Tara's parents Sarah and Paul. I can't imagine him calling them Mr. + Mrs. B. It sounds so grown up!

Myron is working tomorrow, so it will just be James and I. James has planned out my birthday cake so maybe we'll go and order that.

I have landed another work contract starting on Nov. 15, so I've been trying to shuffle my schedule around to work this. I do it as a favor for Myron's old supervisor. We'll see how it goes this year. Wouldn't it be great if we could clone ourselves and the clone could do all our work and we could just have fun?

Caterpillar

This is our lovely caterpillar. We went to the mall for Halloween because James isn't too keen on the dark. James wouldn't ask for candy, but if people offered him some he would normally take some. We got him a new snowsuit and some Thomas sweaters when we were at the mall.

I think God really enjoys prayer meetings. I love this picture that Jo wrote about.