Looking for a brighter Year

The joys of the holiday season are coming to a close. Can you believe it? There is so much anticipation leading up to it and in a blink it's over. I am kind of glad though. I am in need of my routine to return. I enjoy seeing people that I don't get to see often, but I also long for my routine schedule. I get peopled out easily. I guess I'm mostly introverted, although I like to think of myself as extroverted. I use to look at introvert as a negative thing, but now I'm seeing it as just the way I function. Nothing wrong with that. I just hope it doesn't come across as snobby or rude. Sometimes, I just like to be alone, with my thoughts. I find that after visiting a lot I run out of energy. Weird.

Anyways, I guess I'm just more reflecting on it because the season is still on high until Monday. We have our last round of guests arriving today and I am mentally preparing myself. I am hoping that they feel welcomed and that it is fun. At this point today I am feeling weary. I don't seem to have much more to give.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year.

Until next year,

Michelle

No Sugar say what?

Here I sit on a Wednesday night. I am eagerly awaiting a phone call that should happen in about an hour saying that some very important guests have arrived in town. We are having Christmas tomorrow and I am excited. I think I may just have a hot chocolate tonight to celebrate. You see normally this would be just a regular occurrence but starting last week I have limited my hot chocolate intake to a maximum of two cups a week. The reason, the sugar content. I am cutting out a lot of things out of my normal diet in order to prevent diabetes from happening. I am making a huge life style change and I need your support in order not to cave. I am allowing myself one more day after today (since tomorrow is our Christmas and that would just be cruel). However, I did work out today. Sadly to say the first time in a very long time. What happened? I use to be the boot camp queen. I use to drag my friends and family to the class with me (Literally, at 5:30 in the morning I would show up at their house and wait for them to get in the car). I am going to do an over haul and get myself healthy in both mind and body. Starting with the body cause lets admit it, there is just way too much to fix in the mind. (This is a joke, stop nodding your head).

Well, that's it. No new years revolutions yet. I will keep thinking of one. The new life style is just that, a lifestyle not a fad. The revolutions are just fun to see how long you can stick with it. Maybe it will be to try something new this year that I've always wanted to do but just haven't yet. That would be a fun one. What's your new years resolution going to be?

All in a day

Whew, what a day. I woke up at about 8:30 and started my day. Within the first 2 hours of being awake I made: Ambrosia salad, jello, after eight cheesecake, midnight mint squares and chocolate rice krispie squares. Then my mom and I went out and did a bit of grocery shopping, went for a quick bite to eat in a really quaint restaurant and then did a bit more grocery shopping, stopped in at a friends house, had tea with them, grieved with them for a while (as we were there they received a phone call telling them some friends of theirs had passed away last night on the way from church in a car accident. This is incredibly sad and I ask you to pray for this family. They had another loss in September, where their son passed away, now the parents and there are other children left behind. This is going to be a very sad Christmas for them! My heart breaks for them.

After our visit we came back to our house and started preparing dinner. Cam and Becky came over and stupid skype wasn't working! We had plans to skype my sister and her family to share in their experience of opening gifts. Alas stupid internet interrupted our awesome plans. As soon as Cam and Becky arrived we had dinner. It was laid out as follows:

Starter: Caesar salad, bread with balsamic vinegar and oil, shrimp ring

Main: Lobster tails (all I could hear was "Lobster killer" as I boiled them), Teryaki steak, Ambrosia salad, jello, yams, veggies, stuffing, and rice pilaf.

Dessert: An assortment of squares and cookies. Which included, moose balls (a family favourite), peanut butter marshmallow square, chocolate rice krispie square, chocolate peanut butter balls, shortbread cookies, chocolate chip cookies, after eight cheesecake, midnight mint squares, and brownies.

All in all we all left full and there is so many left overs. And another plus was that we got our bbq set up on the balcony. Oh yeah, and I shovelled the driveway today too. Needless to say, it's one am and I'm so tired. Off to bed I go!

Love

Michelle

The never ending Weekend

Manic Mondays are always so much fun. This morning I headed to the mall to do my 2nd to last shopping trip for Christmas. When I arrived the stores were all still closed. Forgetting that they didn't open until 10 I was a lost wanderer for about 20 minutes. Once the stores opened, I went to the one that I went there for and then headed back to my car. In the adventurous mood that I was in I headed in the long way back to my car (remember I'm the kind of girl that HATES shopping and I willingly went the long way) and I'm glad I did because I came across a new store that had just opened in the mall on Friday and it's all about tea! I was super excited and went in and discovered a gift for that hard to buy for person on my list. I left the mall a happy customer and my shopping list became one person less than I was expecting and I was in the mall for a mere 40 minutes (that includes the 20 minutes of wandering). Not too shabby. Than I headed off to an appointment and then headed home to meet with the people who are going to be cleaning out the vents in our home. The previous owners had a dog and we just want to make sure there are no traces of the dog left. We don't have anything against dogs, but we have family members who have allergies and in order to make them comfortable in our home we will do what we can to make it an allergy free zone.

I can't believe it's only 5 days until Christmas! Can you believe it? We are having our first of three Christmas' on Wednesday, our second on Saturday and our third on the 30th. I am very excited and can't wait for people to open their gifts. That's one of my favourite parts, I love watching the person's face when they open their gifts.

Well, that's about all there is to update you on....oh wait, I had a weekend that wasn't updated...Ok, here's the long/short story. It's a long story but I'm going to wrap it up in a 30 second read. Ready....set......go! (this means read the next little bit as fast you as you can!)

Friday: I woke up at 5:40 talked to my sister on Skype, she baked, I did my hair...why did I do my hair so early? Because B's Christmas party was that evening and I didn't have time to get ready between work and the party. That night ended at midnight and I won the prize for playing the DJ bingo game at the party. That's another story: Ran into our friends Katrina and her bf Daniel. They were playing the game hardcore (had to guess 5 songs the DJ would play throughout the night, once he plays all 5 of your songs, you run up and get a prize). So by 11 o'clock with no winners yet (the game started at 8) cheating started. So Daniel was using me for my vast amount of knowledge on song titles and we ended up winning one of the prizes! Shameful I know, but I have a weird penguin thing to remind me of this night (Daniel and Katrina didn't want the prize they just wanted to know that they won..haha).

That night I laid my head on my pillow at 1am.

Saturday: Wake up at 7:50am. Get ready (luckily I only needed to fix two curls and then I could keep my hairstyle from the day before), tidy up the house and head over to B's parents house for our niece's 2nd birthday party. After the birthday party we headed back here and cleaned and re-arranged a few things. Than we had my brother, his wife, her brother, B's brother, his wife, their daughter, and B's parents over. After the tour we all decided what we were going to do about the dinner thing and ordered sushi. Unfortunately B's parents and brother's family were not able to stay and they went home before the sushi arrived. Than Cameron and B worked on some electrical work that needed to done because one of the light switches was a little confused. When the light switch was on the outlets in the room wouldn't work and when the light was off the outlets would work....so Cameron fixed that and installed a couple more outlets. YAY!!

Sunday: Went to church, sort of. We didn't make it into the sanctuary but we did socialize in the foyer. Then we went out for lunch with B's parents. We did a little shopping after lunch and then headed home and I had a nap and then woke up and then didn't do much of anything.

The weekend update...I think that would take longer than 30 seconds to read. Sorry, my bad.

Until next time,

Michelle

So tired

Today was an interesting day. The first little guy I worked with today was a handful. I don't know how else to explain it. I left the day feeling completely inadequate and unskilled. I felt useless and so very worn out. I looked around the room today and the way I was feeling is the way everyone else was looking. I think this Christmas break is coming at just the right time. A good 2 weeks off will do a mental health good.

I am excited to have our place set up soon. I want to have company over but alas I do not because it still seems like such a mess to me. I have yet to do a "weekly" cleaning because it hasn't stopped with the move and set up. But hopefully by the end of the Christmas break we will have our place in order and it will be open for friends and family to stop by at any time.

One more day and then no work for 2 weeks. I can do it!!

So tired.

Michelle

Michelle's Mittens?

So today I got a Visa bill from a pre-existing card I carried back when I was a young 20 something. I have since cancelled the card and when we went to get our banking stuff in order the lady so kindly told me that I still had a balance on the old card. A whopping $2.71. I hummed and hawed if I could afford to pay off my haunting debt. I guess I didn't quite cover it because today I just got the bill for an outstanding balance of $0.01. Yikes, I can't believe I still owe a penny. If only I could pay it. I think I will open an account in which my fellow bloggers could donate to in order to help me out of this bind.

I find it funny though because it cost more for them to print and mail the bill than it would have been if they would have just taken the full amount out at once. So ridiculous if you ask me. Good laughing material though.

I had a great evening this evening hanging out with Jenn and Peyton. She is so funny, so full of energy and ready to play. I think tomorrow is going to be a lot of fun seeing the three cousins in one room. Better remember my camera. I'm also excited because today was the last day this week that I had to make dinner. Tomorrow we are having dinner at B's parents house. Thursday we are having dinner at my cousin's house, Friday we are going to B's staff Christmas party where dinner is being served. BooYA! No more making dinner this week for me! And I also like how BooYA! doesn't come up as a spelling error!

Today's work story: I was working with this one little guy and we were going outside. I found out as we were getting dressed for outside weather that he didn't have his mittens with him. We went outside anyways and once outside and realizing how cold it was I put my gloves on his tiny little hands. They kind of just hung there and looked funny. He looked up at me and said, "Michelle's mittens?" He said this a few times with a confused yet concerned look on his face. It was really funny because it kind of looked like Ricky Bobby in a television commercial "I don't know what to do with my hands" as they keep creeping up by his face.

Well that's my life from today,

Michelle

Monday Madness

It's Monday! I am excited because our internet connection arrived and now our computer seems lightening fast! Sorry dlink but your internet connection sucks, but thank you for allowing me to use it temporarily. I am super stoked to have the internet connection because now I can load up photos. I am also excited because now I can view my friends blogs and facebook pages without being kicked off every two minutes. Oh and now I can talk to my sister for any length of time rather than having 2 minute intervals. How annoying was that!

Yesterday B and I made a huge dent in our box collection downstairs. I was quite impressed. I was laughing though because we both got side tracked often, especially with Corner Gas playing in the background. There was one point when we brought up a foot rest for in front of the couch. We brought it up together, turned it upside down, put on felt on the legs (not felt the legs) to prevent them from scratching the hardwood floors and then placed it down in front of the couch. Than we had to test it of course and about 20 minutes later(when the episode was over) we got up and continued on working. It was really funny because we both got sucked in and we both didn't mean to. We are definitely becoming one.

We now have the guest bedroom set up (still have to hang a photo and a mirror) and the office items are up in the office(not completely set up in there yet). We also have our master bedroom unpacked and set up. It's so cozy and a few items have yet to find their place. All in all it's coming along and I'm happy that the moving process is almost complete. We are however, finding small jobs that are adding up every day. But in time there will be more and we will conquer and destroy them all!!! Mwahahaha. Or something like that.

Today I had my cousin over and we played dance dance revolution and it was sooo much fun. We busted out some serious dance moves and laughed so hard. She was off to a staff Christmas party this evening and I told her she should bust some of those moves out on the dance floor. How funny that would look to see someone doing dance dance revolution moves out of context. It makes my insides smile because I really want to do this at B's Christmas party this coming Friday.

Well, I should get back to the kitchen and make some more cookies or something. I am so excited for Friday! The reason behind this excitement is that I will be done work for 2 weeks and I will have ample time for baking and preparing the house for guests. Until later

Michelle

The new and improved

Welcome to the new look. I was feeling down so I thought a good change to the look of this blog could help me get out of the oogly mood I was in. And sure enough it worked. I hope that this is a good change for your eyes too. If you notice on the right hand side I have listed in detail the blogs that I follow often and when they were last updated. I see a few cousins of mine haven't updated their blogs in years and I tell you I will be giving them a personal phone call and hopefully we'll see their updated blogs in the near future. Christmas is just around the corner. I am so excited as I sit looking out my kitchen window watching it snow so heavily. I think it's snowed about 5 inches so far since about 4 this afternoon at it's now 9pm. How exciting. I was just looking out the window this morning, noticing how much the snow has melted and wondered if we would have a white Christmas...now I have no doubt that we will. I think I might just make a hot chocolate and continue sitting in this spot and maybe look through some facebook. But I do have to tell you I've been avoiding facebook lately. I still check it out once a day but that's much less than what it use to be.

Merry Saturday evening everyone. Welcome to the new Table Discussion! Please feel free to leave comments or suggestions on what you would like to hear about. As soon as we have our internet connection on Monday I will be able to upload some photo's of our new place. Until then, imagine a house with some snow on it and you'll be thinking of our place.

The screamer is a more fun rollercoaster

So this past week has been an emotional roller coaster. It's weird yet understandable, but I'm not really going to share the root cause of it because it's not a for certain thing yet and until I know in late January I will keep it to myself (and B). It's just so freakin' annoying. Thanks, I just needed to get that off my chest.

I am so excited about Christmas vacation coming up. I haven't had a real Christmas vacation since 2000. I've always been working and had a couple of days off at most. But now, this year, I have 2 weeks off! I am so excited and I can't wait until next Friday when the vacation officially starts.

I am also excited for Monday. Why? Because our internet is going to be hooked up. But Michelle, you have the internet because you updated your blog, you say? Well I am actually hijacking someone else's internet and their connection sucks. I haven't talked to my sister in over a week because the connection can't hold a call and it becomes choppy and hangs up on us and is so incredibly annoying. All that to say I can hardly wait until Monday.

Funny kid story of the week: (this is a new segment I just created and I thought maybe I would try to keep up on this so you're guaranteed an update once a week). I was working with this one little fella and he was in his happy zone with blue paint gooping off his hands. He looked up at me with the biggest smile on his face and started singing a song we had just learned. As he started singing it I, in slow motion tried to stop it, but it was too late...he had started singing, "If you're happy and you know it......."(enter in my slow motion here) "....clap your hands" and with such force and enthusiasm he clapped his hands spraying blue paint EVERYWHERE. It was in his hair, all over his face, all over the table, all over the floor, all over my pants...haha, it was so funny!

Have a great weekend everyone. Here's hoping the roller coaster is over for a while.

Michelle