What I'm Doing When I'm Not Here

My poor blog has been sadly neglected recently. It seems like everything happens all at once and I can barely keep my head above water. As we approach the end of the school year the days become filled with a flurry of field-trips and swimming, lots of events that require parent helpers. Unfortunately it has coincided with an outbreak of pink eye at our house, as well as some vomiting and cough & cold. So that has put the kibosh on helping at the school, or going out in public at all.  All the sickness has me changing hand towels multiple times a day and disinfecting handles and door knobs. 

At the end of May we celebrated my maternal grandmother's 90th birthday with a tea and family potluck.  Several of my cousins and an aunt from the States came up for the event and it was great to see them, although we didn't get enough time together, as I also had to make a day trip to Calgary that weekend for a meeting.  The trip enabled me to pick up a bookcase for our youngest's room; now her toys and books are out of boxes and off the floor.  It makes vacuuming a lot easier.  They're right when they say "a place for everything and everything in it's place".

That week also marked the end of my husband's out-of-city training. He spent the last 10 out of 13 weeks in either Calgary or Red Deer.  This was the 7th time in our marriage that he's "worked away".  I figured out that of the 13 years that we've been married, we've actually lived together for less than 10.5 years.  What made this time so much more difficult than previous times was that we were in transition for much of it.  We moved during his training, which really made settling into our new house hard.  The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when I couldn't even hang a fly-swatter in the broom closet because I couldn't find a nail or a hammer.  In the past when he's been away from home working, we still had a routine and were comfortably settled in a home - which got us through the separation.  This time there was no routine and barely a home!  It was just a house filled with boxes and not enough furniture.

As for the furniture, we had a hutch that we bought on Kijiji delivered this week and I'm trying to wedge as much stuff into it as I can. 

Here's the hutch

We also ordered a living room furniture set from The Bay, and are awaiting it's delivery.  I will post pics once we've got it in place.  We would have liked to have gotten the painting and baseboard replacement done in the living room/dining room/hallway before the furniture arrives, but we just haven't had the time, so it will have to be done sometime later on this summer.  Now that we've settled on a style of furniture for the living room, I can start looking for floor lamps, since our living room has no overhead lights, and I'm trying to decide if we should get an area carpet for the living room or not.

We enjoyed Spectrum on Saturday with some friends; the girl's especially liked the petting zoo and the face painting.  I returned on Sunday afternoon with the kids to spend a little more time, since they hadn't had a chance to do all the things they had wanted to before.  I realized that we probably should have gone on Friday evening when it was overcast and less crowded.  My one major complaint is for all those people who thought it would be a good idea to bring their dogs down to a crowded, noisy event where there are tons of kids.  We were standing at the band shell listening to one of the performers, and right in front of us was a guy with his medium sized dog that kept barking, growling and lunging at people walking by.  TAKE YOUR DOG HOME!  I don't want to have to worry that your dog is going to bite my kid's face off because it's so wound up from the crowd.

On Saturday night I finally went to roller derby with my brother and cousin (Mike stayed home with the kids).  It was just as aggressive as I thought it would be, which was awesome, but I felt badly for them, competing on a cement surface instead of a roller rink.  The falls must really hurt.  It took me a while to figure out the rules and point scoring system, but by the end I knew what was going on most of the time.  The Gas City Rollers beat their competition, the Missfits of Mayhem.

Of course there are the usual soccer games, doctor appointments, mom's & tot's group at our church, meetings and other commitments that eat up the hours of the day.  I feel like I can never stay ahead of the laundry and dishes, and there never seems to be enough food in the house since my kids think it's a good idea to snack every half hour.  The end of school and soccer is in sight, and I'm looking forward to having a more relaxed schedule, although I'm sure that after a day or two of fighting, I will be looking forward to September!