Born 'n Bred Country Girl

I'm always on the look-out for fun things we can do together as a family. So I picked up a pumpkin the other day for real cheap and decided that since we won't actually be home for halloween we should carve it now.

I can't remember if we carved one last year or not but I do know that my son most likely didn't remember. This year both kids were very excited about cracking it open and seeing what was inside. Although, neither of them, were too fond of the "goo".

Check out the face on my son. We gave my daughter her own little bowl. She was very intent on finding all the little seeds.


I let the kids draw their own faces on the pumpkin with washable markers. It was looking like a face until my daughter had her turn.

Eventually my husband and I had our turns. Thus the end result.

My son was very excited with the end result. He wanted to leave all the lights off for the rest of the night. My daughter on the other hand became very leary and cautious of the pumpkin once it was lit up and dark. A transformation I don't think she quite understood.

Another fun, family night for the books. Cheap, simple and memorable. Good times.

Kind of a crappy day here. The weather is gloomy and dark and cold and rainy. The kids are more irritable than normal (most likely overtired from our busy weekend). And its my late sister's birthday today. Just a lot of ugly mood affecting stuff going on here.

So I was flipping through my photo's I just put on the computer and thought i'd share some that made me smile.



Hope your day was more sunny than ours.

Two months ago I lost a set of keys for a couple of homes (mine included). I figured my daughter had taken them out of my purse, since she goes in there all the time, and left them somewhere in my grandparents house where we were visiting almost 4 hours away at the time.

It wasn't a really big deal. I was disappointed more about the actual key chain than the keys. So imagine my surprise when I received a call from our local OPP detachment letting me know they had a set of keys that belonged to me.

Turns out they were found somewhere on the main drag in our town by some guy who turned them in because they had an M&M meat shop tag on them. He figured they would be able to trace the keys back to the owner.

I was pretty excited to get my key chain back. Only, as you can see, my keys were no longer in one piece. I must have lost them somewhere in a parking lot because those three pieces you see used to be attached.

Never the less, I am thankful for that gentlemen that decided to turn them in and I am thankful to have my key chain back so I can stop blaming my daughter for "hiding" them somewhere.

I had my regular midwife appointment yesterday. We discovered that the baby is currently in a breach position. Nothing to worry about but it did get me thinking. We discussed the plan of action if the baby is still in that position in another month. If she is still breach then, depending on a few factors, she will most likely be born early.

This made me think that maybe I should get a head start on my to do list sooner than later.

1- do the official switch over of dressers and clothes to their respective rooms (my son and daughter will be sharing and the baby will have her own room)

2- spend more time/energy/patience getting my daughter used to her new bed in my sons room. This means having her actually sleep in it more than once.

3- figure out a way to get a nightlight in the hall so that the bathroom door can be kept closed at night time for safety.

4- spend more time getting my daughter 100% proficient at going up and down the stairs by herself (this way I will no longer need to carry her or spot her while holding a new born).

5- find a crib mattress to replace the one I stole out of the baby's bed to put in the toddler bed for my daughter.

6- stock up on little activities the kids can do by themselves while I am nursing and am the only adult in the house.

I am sure there is more, like packing the bags and stuff but for now these are some things I want to work on in case the baby comes early.

Eight more weeks to go!

So it appears that we have managed to somehow be rid of all squeaks. The van miraculously fixed itself. We changed a fuel filter and now the van is running a million times better and after a few days decided it didn't want to make noise anymore. So strange. We at least have the part in our possession if it should decide to start up again.

I can hardly believe 10 days have gone by since I last posted. In those ten days we managed to tear apart the kitchen and install new kitchen cabinets that we bought for a phenomenal price (otherwise I fear we would have no cabinets right now). While the walls were bare and the holes where we believe the mouse to have entered our house were open, we did NOT see any sign of our mouse. I set traps every night and caught nothing! So we sealed the poor sucker in there unless it decided it preferred living at our neighbors and is plaguing her with its presence.

We are still waiting for one last cupboard to arrive and when the kitchen is complete I will post our fun before and after pictures.

So I bought the traps but forgot to set them up last night. Talk about frustrating. I set them up this morning and so far nothing. Not even that same scratching sound. On top of it all we have for sure confirmed that the mouse was in the wall behind the cupboards underneath the sink. This means that it must be traveling between condo's which supports our theory about them not entering via somewhere in our unit.

I talked to our neighbor we share a kitchen wall with and sure enough she has had mouse problems this past week. I'm hoping that if we both set traps and catch the little bugger we'll both be better off. The only things is that she doesn't think its entering via her unit. I'm hoping to catch the guy beside her sometime and see if he has any mouse sightings in his place.

Anyways, in the process of tearing things apart to figure out where the mouse was coming from we re-discovered and realized just how badly warped and old our cupboards are. Things were crumbling as my husband was prying to get a closer look with a screwdriver. So now we have another project on our hands.

Oh and the van still squeaks. We spent so much of our time ripping apart the kitchen and figuring out solutions to this problem that we never made it to our friend's house to change the fuel pump in the van.

Only so much we can do in one day.