The Goings On

Whoops.  It's been since the middle of July since I posted - two months have come and gone since my last post.  But they were a good two months.  Let's go for a bit of a recap…

{1} Family vacation - the end of July saw part of our family heading out on a mini-vacay to Drumheller and Calgary.  Colby stayed and watched Joel so Mike and the Littles and I could get away for a few days.  We left on   a Thursday morning and just drove and hotel swam that day.  On Friday, we hit up the Tyrell Museum in Drumheller.  Andrew was absolutely enthralled with all the dinosaurs - especially the ones in the gift shop! We also went to Fossil World where they have an animatronic T-rex and a fossil digging area.  Andrew wasn't interested in digging so Katelyn and I buckled down and found ourselves a couple of fossils.  Again, Andrew was pretty keen on the gift shop dinosaurs. Spent a pretty penny in both of the gift shops!

We drove to Calgary later that day and visited with my grandparents.  The evening saw Mike and Andrew relaxing in the hotel room with Andrew's new haul and Miss K and I in the pool.  Saturday morning we woke up early and headed for the Calgary Zoo.  We rented two wagons and pulled the kids through the habitats.  They have a Dinosaurs Alive section with more animatronic dinosaurs which both kids thought was pretty cool.  We didn't make it to the Canadian Habitats since by 1:00, we were D-O-N-E.  The afternoon saw us relaxing in the hotel room, looking for a store that sold Japanese candy kits for Miss K.  We ended up locating one and set out to find it.  Turns out, it wasn't that far from our hotel!  We all picked out some Japanese goodies and made our way back to the hotel. Sunday was our return home day and it rained all the way home!

{2} Trips to the lake - the littlest kids and I made several trips up to my parents' cabin at Little Bear Lake.  For the most part, the weather was good and there was lots of beach time.  When the weather wasn't as nice, we played Uno inside and watched movies.  My sister, her husband and two boys came over from Germany for a week.  Given the growing size of our family, we wouldn't all fit in the cabin so Mom and Dad rented a trailer for the week.  Jenn and her family stayed out in the trailer and the rest of us squeezed into the cabin.  A full house, especially at meal times!

Mike and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary by sneaking off to the lake by ourselves for a few days.  Night number two saw me come down with a migraine that left me puking so that wasn't much fun.  After my last session of puking, the migraine was instantly gone and I was good to go again.  Back to sipping on tea and working on the puzzle we started!

{3} Harry Potter - when we were in Calgary, I saw a copy of the first Harry Potter book in a bookstore.  I know a lot of my friends my age have read it so I figured, "What's to lose? May as well check it out". I had the book finished within two days and I wanted more!  For my birthday, Mike bought me the rest of the Harry Potter books, including the newest one, The Cursed Child.  I'm only on the fourth book as my reading has slowed down.  I don't have time from 4:00-8:00 and then I'm in bed by 9:00.  I really need to make an effort to find more time during the day to read!

{4} Andrew and my birthdays - Andrew's birthday is the day before mine so it's always cause for lots of celebration.  We celebrate on our own days and this year, Andrew's theme was dinosaurs (surprise, surprise).  We just had a family party as Andrew isn't quite ready for friend parties yet.  Along with the Harry Potter books, Mike also gave me a silk and bamboo pillowcase from one of the local spas here in town.  It is absolutely divine!

{5} I've been weaning off of clonazepam and not planning on replacing it with a pharmaceutical.  I've been taking something called GABA (an amino acid) and it does wonders for calming me down.  I've noticed a definite correlation between PMS and suicidal tendencies. BUT I'm getting stronger and better at fighting them off and not giving in. My counselling has been huge in helping with this. One night when Mike was at work, I was plagued with suicidal thoughts. I went through my list of things to do when I'm feeling down and out.  I coloured.  I put on Mike's deodorant (smelling him helps me feel better).  I sat with the headphones on and tuned out the kids for a couple of minutes. I would have taken a bath but that would have just resulted in both of the kids bothering me every twenty seconds so that would have been pointless.

I also notice that with PMS goes wanting another baby. Or another animal in the house. Something with nesting and mothering kicks in with me and I crave having new life in this house. Makes a lot of sense, hey? I want new life to take care of but don't want to be alive. Oh, the joys of mental illness.

{6} Health - I've been doing my best to eat less and eat properly - trying to cut out junk.  I still have sugar in my coffee - that will likely never change! I've been going for walks in the morning after Katelyn and Joel go to school.  If Mike is at work, I do yoga instead since Andrew doesn't like coming for walks unless the park is our final destination. And I don't feel like playing - I just want to cruise and get my walk done and come home and drink more coffee. I tried one yoga DVD but I think I'll try and find more videos on YouTube that are a little bit more challenging than the one I did.

And that's pretty much the goings on in this house lately.  We were hoping to get away to Vegas in the middle of August but some major car repairs sucked up the rest of our vacation fund. We're hoping that after Christmas, we can sneak away for a week or so!

And so it goes...