9/52

It's the ninth installment of Find Mom Friday. And, I'd just like to say, that I don't think I've been in as many pictures as I have been lately! ;)

So, although these are LAST week's photos, here's a few more candid wedding photos of me being a mom. I missed FMF last week, though, so now I'm a week behind. Oh well. :)

(Taylor and I, after the reception.)

(Bear and I, dancing and having fun!)

(Mimi's kiss after the ceremony when we danced out of the chapel outside)

(Five of the seven kids, watching Mommy come down the aisle)

8/52 and with the amount of driving I've been doing, it's a miracle this has only JUST happened once.

*graphic content and photos-- fair warning*

Find Mom Friday features last weekend's antics.

Yay that Will and I took his kids last weekend to the lake with Sin and Vegan and her family. We had a great time, about an hour away from our home.

Yay that there was fishing. Lots and lots of fishing!

Triple Yay that there was some AWESOME tubing. Yay that Sin and I went and we laughed our butts off so much, but nay that our stomachs hurt after! It was soooo fun! Nay that I haven't been tubing like that since I was young and I missed it!

And at the end of the day, we started the drive home.

Everything was great (yay), until a big doe ran across the highway (nay). We swerved to go behind her, and yay for her, she got across the road. But her little Bambi ran out right after her...big nay. At that point, we tried to swerve the OTHER way to avoid Bambi, but it didn't go so well.

BIG NAY: Bambi hit the front of my van with a huge *THUD*. Legs starfished, deer spun around in front of our screeching van, and before we knew it, we realized what had happened. Pulling over, we assessed the van damage. LUCKY for us (yayish), although we were travelling at 110kms/hour and the deer hit the front of the van pretty squarely, no airbags went off and no one was hurt. Yay.

Nay that I found out later that it was SUPER close to being much worse, as Bambi hit the van so hard that it moved the hood fairly severely back, and, another few millimetres and the hood would have flown up. Um. That woulda been a super big nay!

Yay that Kay was clever enough to look at the time on her cellphone. Yay that it was kinda freaky that it was EXACTLY 9:11 pm. Okay, how weird is that?!?!

So, Yay that Will kindly moved the body off the highway, and we all paid our respects to the little lad. Nay that I had to file a police report and everything, but yay that it was just a little deer and not worse!

And is it a yay, or a nay, that I've become SUCH a blogger that the first thing I think is "grab a camera!"???

7/52- The Summer's Ending!!!

It's Find Mom Friday. I'm back at the Calgary house for a whopping few hours doing another switch of children with Chris and grabbing another load of stuff from the 'old house'. It's amazing, now that I'm down to the end of the 'little stuff', I'm realizing I STILL have a lot of junk! Who knew I had so many boxes of maxipads under the sink!? Like, I could rival the hover dam for being able to stop liquid.. sheesh.

The other day I was in a FOUL mood. Like, stick a feather in my butt, FOUL! (yes, I know it's fowl, sillies) But Will tried the entire day to make me happier. I think there was just too much in my head, I was tired, I felt like I did everything the wrong way even when I was trying to help... just one of those days. and it had nothing to do with PMS, in case the previous paragraph led you to think that.

So, Will bought healthy food because he knows I'm trying to fit into a wedding dress pizza. Will drove us to a local park. Will took pictures of me and my grumpiness awesome children. Will was bound and determined to stop my crankiness from oozing into the kids.

And he did a pretty good job. I mean, I can be downright lovely not fun and, gasp, even witchy when I'm cranky. Will says he is a glutton for punishment still wants to marry me. What a man!

It's Small-Town Living at it's best and 6/52 (a bit late)

I missed last week's Find Mom Friday-- but you all know my excuses. So, here's a buttload of pictures to satiate at least a FEW weeks' worth of Mom-photos! :) Although, I'll play fair and only count these as last week's entry.

Will is having a fun time taking me to all the 'hot spots' around our little podunk town. Although I may grumble about some of the aspects of living in a Southern Alberta, LDS-centred, what-the-freak-are-all-these-minivans-doing-here town, there are some DEFINITE sweet selling points to my new hometown, too.

At the start of the 'tour', Will has taken us to the parades and celebrations. Everyone's there. Everyone's PART of the parade. Candy is thrown by the truckloads!

(Mimi and Bear, filling his pant pockets with as much candy as he can gather)

Children nearly get run-over by mini-motorized cars, and everyone laughs at her cuteness and thinks it's normal. ( If you can't tell in this picture, yes, Mimi nearly DIED, but you know, she's a girl after my own heart-- there was some GOOD CANDY on that there road!!)

And, although my heart may TOTALLY jump out of my throat when I see THIS, (this HUGE truck is barreling down the parade route, with kids TOTALLY hanging out the side-- they could fall to their DEATH, but no one seems worried!) it's a town where I can accidentally leave my daughter's hat on the bench we're sitting at, and come back hours later after a thousand people have walked past to find it sitting nicely on the back of the bench, waiting for it's rightful owner to reclaim it. TRUE STORY.

Will has taken us to the creek. Where it's perfectly normal for everyone to strip down to their skivvies and swim. MY KIDS LOVED IT!!

Will has taught Mimi how to swim. Well. Kinda.

Will has taught Bear how to "run like a man" through the safe, SUPER wide streets.

Will has shown me how fun it can be to catch snakes in the bush and freak the heck out of the kids! LOLWill and I have enjoyed ripboarding down the paths.
But mostly, Will has introduced me to many great people. People who befriend me at church, who sit beside me, who introduce me to other great people, and who seem genuinely interested in making us feel welcomed.

All in all, my new hometown is bound to bring lots of great experiences. That's the best part about country, small-town living. Everyone knows everyone, everyone helps everyone, and the best of dirt and mud and memory-making moments reside there.

5/52, SWS-Weddings, NMM-Lessons, TT-Advice?

I am in a funk.
Not a muse-funk-- in fact, I have TOO much to say! I have so many things going on right now, and I could take days and days just talking about each one.

Truth is, I don't have TIME to do that.
So, it's a funk as far as getting posts posted. I should join the P.O.S's. The Prisoners of Summer Bloggers. As in, since summer hit, I can't blog as much. Parole is in a month or two once school starts, the wedding's done, and I've moved.
I'm gonna do my best for the next while- but there's SO much going on, and I'm in the middle of so many time-consuming things, that blogging will continue to be sporatic and possibly mundane. Fair warning.

So, first things first. Let's play "KETCHUP".

Friday: Find Mom Friday! This was me at my good friends' wedding in Nelson, BC this past weekend. Well, not at the actual WEDDING. Who would wear a tube-top to that!? No, it was an outside wedding on the beach, and between the ceremony and reception, there were 4 hours to kill. So my (ex) mother-in-law and I took the kids swimming at the beach. It helped that it was a killing 37' outside that day! HOT HOT HOT!!

Saturday: Six Word Saturday. My six words for that day are, Wedding Vows Mean Something More Now. Watching Uncle Andrew and Joe join their two families the way that Will and I will be doing in a few weeks touched my heartstrings, and I had tears fall easily as I saw how much they had gone through to get to this precious moment in their lives. Chris was the best man, and looking up there at the couple and him standing beside them, while vows of fidelity and "forever love" and devotion were spoken, it was hard not to feel a bit of that heartache from years past. Remembering when he said those same things to me, promised. My heart said a prayer that they would ALWAYS love each other this way so they wouldn't have to end up like Chris and I did- hurt. I was reminded last night that I'm truly being blessed to have this new life in front of me with such a special man in Will.

Monday: Not Me Monday. I did NOT miss my man this weekend. I did NOT drive over 12 hours in a 24 hour time period. I did NOT learn a bunch of lessons this weekend, mostly from my children. I will NOT be blogging about those in the near future.

Tuesday: Tuesday Tunes. Of course, lately I'm listening to a lot of love or wedding songs. But my kids crack me up- while we drove home the other day, it was thunderstormin' somethin' fierce! The kids requested "Fire Burnin'" on the iPod. They loved watching the lightening crack to the beat, and we probably listened to that song on repeat about 6 times before *I* said I couldn't handle it another time! lol

And, Wednesday: Wednesday Ws:
Who: Me
What: hates playing "Ketchup"
Where: in my blog, in my journal, in my housekeeping, and in my LIFE!
When: when I forget to take the time to keep up
Why: because it always makes me feel unorganized when I don't have my thoughts written or typed down. It's just how I cope.

4/52

It's Find Mom Friday.

Which sux, cuz this week I didn't even SEE my kids, so I couldn't have taken a picture of me with them.

:(

Instead, we'll use one from last week, since that's allllllls I gots. As you can see, this is a pic of me with all my daughters (and daughters to be) working hard at setting up camp! ;P It's tough being a girl.


I'm off to family reunions with Will's family, and a family birthday party on my side tomorrow, so have a GREAT weekend and we'll chat Monday when I'll tell ya what I DID NOT do. ;)

For now,
peace out.

*still on vacation, but here's a picture showing our soon-to-be family dinners, with Sin and her family too.

Let's hope this pre-posting is working again. Silly blogger.

3/52 and As My Friend, Montgomery Burns Would Say: "Exxcelleeent!!"

Hey! So, remember this post, from not too long ago? It was that one where I entered into a contest for 'looking back' on a post from when I first started blogging and comparing it to now.

Yeah, well the other day, I won! (okay, I was one of 7 winners, but still, that's pretty great) How awesome is that, hey?

You can read all about my claim to stardom *here*. Then you can beg me unashamedly for one of the Ben & Jerry's coupons I have. Maybe I'll even do my very first giveaway. Although, that takes a lot of work, and to be quite honest, I'd probably rig the results, just for the sake of feeling all powerful and omnipotent! muahaha.

Cuz everyone knows, I need to feel SOME sort of power in my life. :)
Besides, it's so unlike me to share ice cream. Let's be honest here.

Oh, and it's Find Mom in Foto's Friday.
So:

This was Family Home Evening this past Monday night. We did a high quality, slave all day making it 'board game', girls against boys, on which Latter-Day Prophet said which quote. Girls won by a landslide. Then we had pie and ice cream. As you can see, I dressed up for the occasion by wearing sweat capris and Will's T-shirt. Stylin' eh?

2/52

So, we're on week 2 of the "Find Mom in Fotos" challenge. I was in a lot of pictures this week, so this one wasn't too tough.Watching the dancing and bad kareoke with D-Jo and a few of our kids. Ignore Mimi's look of sadness, she was having a GREAT time.

I caught Will stealing my camera, so I flashed him a smile. Again, let's ignore Mimi-- simply cuz it's gross! ;)

I'd update you all on everything else, but for once, I have NOTHING to report. YAY and NAY. Yay, because that means life is chugging along at a perfect pace, I'm happy, everyone I love is healthy and supportive, I have food on my table, and my kids are good. Nay because I haven't sold a house yet. And it's currently super messy with the possibility of an open house again tomorrow. But Yay cuz Stampede started officially this morning, which means free meals for 10 days, and, to top it off, it's the weekend and I'm spending it with Will and my kids. What else could I need?!

FIFTY-TWO "FIND MOM" FRIDAYS!!

Last night we went to the Block Party for the soccer camp that the Baptist church puts on every year. I've put my kids in it for 3 years, and it's a SUPER program! They just rock. I'm so annoyed, however, as this year they're only doing it for the little kids, and the program they're running for the bigger kids is during a week I'm out with Sin and Will's family, camping.

But, that soccer camp is where I met EF years ago. And I'm always afraid of running into her again at these block parties and such. Is it kind of wrong for me to be relieved that she's likely seen the FOR SALE sign on my lawn and now she knows I'm going to be gone?! Half of me expects her to phone me to ask where I'm moving to or something once she sees the SOLD sign. I find that lately I am much more paranoid about running into her unexpectedly. Or, worse, that she calls me or something with the excuse that she has money she wants to get to me (which, yes, she DOES owe me money, but I'm SOOOO letting it go- not worth the phone call.)

There's certain times I find myself more prone to thinking about her- and the soccer camp is one of them. And although I didn't put my kids into the community soccer this year, her daughter and LL were on the same team one year, so when I drive past the teams playing, I can't help but wonder if they're there.

Are her and Steve still together? Last I knew, he was living in the basement. Was that her car? Does her daughter still get on the bus at the end of my street? Do they still live in the house I designed? Is she still using that horrible, semi-abusive dayhome? Is she sleeping with THAT dayhome-mom's husband?! (oops, was that my outside voice?!)

It's an obsession at times. An annoying obsession I'd like to be DONE with. It's not all the time, either, and it goes away. But right now, I find it creeping back in. And I don't like her in my thoughts, as I don't find it productive in any way. I'd like to say it doesn't happen, but I think it'll be many years before time passes and I'll realize I didn't think about her even ONCE. This, in my opinion, is expected and normal. And it's rarer and rarer lately. Which just reaffirms: It will be nice to move away.

On other notes:

I'm joining a year long challenge, created by Carin at Forever In Blue Jeans. The goal is to be in one picture a week, for 52 weeks. Since us moms are always behind the camera, this gives us a chance to get out in front and be in the pictures with our family. So, click on the button if you want to join in on the fun!

So, here's Week One of 52, me and Mimi and Bear at the soccer camp/block party last night. I think it was a bit sunny! ;)