tiffany's spot

Good morning, people! Where to start? Oh! With an early morning walk, no breakfast, all the coffee and the ever-awesome early-morning-all-the-coffee-no-breakfast jitters. I love coffee high. We went on a road trip this summer. BC, Vancouver Island, all the good places. Nobody fell off any mountains, was eaten by a bear or was brutally pummeled by a sibling in the many hours spent in the van. Win win win. I have pictures here..... somewhere, but that would involve a lot more than just typing some stuff out. School started, two days ago for the kids. Not for me. Ah well. Subbing for now still, I suppose. Elliot is in grade 2 this year and this morning as she comes out ready for her day it occurs to me she's now worn the same outfit for the entire 3 days of this school year so far. I'm sure nobody will notice. Mitchell is in grade 4, the oldest class in his school. It's weird, because he never seems like the oldest anything to me. Tennyson  is in grade 5, first year at a ...

Today's Ten Things! I apologize in advance for making that title so misleading, what with the exclamation point and all. I worked at Arthur Meighen today. In a class that has some fun little challenging kids. We had a great day.  One kid came up and said shyly, "can I hug you?" and I said, "sure!" He hugged me for a while, even after I made natural attempts to bring the hug to an end. He just made them tighter. It was sweet.  I stole some kids soccer ball and threw it over the crowd and gave it to the girls.  I got to play librarian for 20 minutes because the actual librarian was out. Only one kid cried in library. He was actually today's only crier.  I told Steven he should make supper today. I ended up with BBQ steak, asparagus and potatoes with all the fixin's. He's sealed his fate. It's Friday.  The kids have Soccer Jamboree tomorrow.  Jordan had her track meet the other day. She didn't place in any of her events. This is why ...

Today I have accomplished: 1. A nap on my couch in the middle of the afternoon, in my kitchen. 2. I took the kids to swimming lessons. 3. I hit a bunch of pokestops and got no revives . I know, it's kind of a big deal. 4. I ditched my family for 30 minutes to meet a friend at a specific pokestop so we could lure it and sit there for 30 minutes and see what turned up. 5. Showered. 6. Braided daughters' hair. 7. Transferred a spider plant from an itty bitty container to a nice hanging basket thing that has yet to be put up. CoughCoughStevenCough 8. I told Steven that he was making pizza for supper. Nicely. He's totally doing it. 9. I drank all the coffee . 10. I stayed completely caught up on my blog. Go. Me.

This summer, we went camping at Rushing River, Stephenfield and Morden, for a total of 26 nights of camping. It was our campiest summer yet! As with other summers, I refused to let my kids bring electronics. Instead, we hit the library on our way out and each kid took out a bunch of books, and I bought them each a new scribbler, sketchpad and a bunch of crayons, markers, pencil crayons, etc. We always do lots of swimming and biking and running around, but I love when we have downtime and they pull out their notebooks and write stories, or draw pictures. This year, over May Long Weekend, Elliot and Mitchell each asked me to write down their stories as they dictated them. Mitchell did some of his own too, but I wrote some for him, and I wrote some things down for Elliot. At one point, during Elliot's 3rd of 4th dictated story, I decided to pretend I was writing what she said, and instead I scratched out something entirely different. I did the same for Mitchell. First I need to ...

They will be missed.

This seems to be the week of Steven. I came home the other night and when I opened the garage door, he was standing there, in his pajamas, playing the mandolin. It was somewhat unexpected. Steven has this thing where he does these random things, that I'm sure make perfect sense to him, but are highly amusing to me. Keep it up honey.

I really don't know why his arm is sticking directly out the front of the box. Tennyson spent a bunch of time today taping random recycling bits together, filling in the spaces with newspapers. Then when he went to "robot fight" with his dad and the paper all fell apart, well, so did he. Hence, the box. Thanks to Steven for picking up the box for him - and for trying it on after.

This: Is not how I put socks and underwear away. Steven's undies are now better organized than mine.

Sometimes I want to go back and find specific blog posts. It's hard. I've decided to rectify that by making my titles more specific to the post. Right? Today I skipped school and went into the city for a day of shopping with all the women in my family. 'Twas fun. We ate a lot and shopped a little and spent the bulk of the day trying to get certain family members to leave stores with sale prices when it was time to eat again. All good. Then I came home to model some of my new outfits for my supposedly doting husband. Know what he did? He laughed at my unitard. Not even kidding. I know, I've spent years mocking people in full-body spandex, but when I do it he should be more supportive. In my own defense, I was still wearing the leggings (I know, I know, leggings ) from the previous outfit and I put on a black undershirt so I could show him the sweater/cardigan/button-uppy "thing" that went over it, but somewhere in the middle of all of this I had on a ...

I'm not feeling particularly "bloggy" tonight. There are a few things that would be fun to write about, but I don't want to ruin them. If that makes sense. Nanowrimo is coming again in November. I know it's kind of goofy to devote so much time to something I'll never ever let anyone else read, or read again myself (for the most part), but it's awfully fun to do. I've only ever finished twice, so this year I'm determined to make the third. I made Steven order a power cord for his own computer last night. I just now kicked him off his computer so I could take back my power cord. I feel like I should write about what we did today. Let's do it in ten points. Today's Ten Things: 1. I took Elliot to swimming lessons, but not before she freaked out at me at home because I brushed her rat's nest air, and she doesn't think it needs brushing if she doesn't have to go to school. Her meltdown quickly became a tantrum, and she d...

Dear Steven: Hey, I wanted some coke to drink with my soup. But there was no coke! Can you believe it? No? Me neither. But don't worry, I found one. Although, I DID have to open a box. Whew! And once it's open.... Love you    -Tiffany This is the series of texts I sent him today. I don't know if any of you remember my facebook posts from just after Coca Cola changed its recipe:       There is one case of coke left. At most, we had 26. I think Steven is having a hard time coming to terms with the end of his never-ending supply. Also, I would think that (as the original facebook post suggests) since he spent OUR life savings, the coke should be OURS. Apparently he does not agree. Suddenly it is his coke. I told him that six of them are his. Five are mine.  He made this face: See, he doesn't even look all that angry. It's like he WANTS me to just help myself.  Love you honey. ...

Steven's working on my dining room. Not even sure if it's a dining "room." Dining skeleton. Because that's what it is. All I wanted was linoleum. And then he was all: well the room is sinking. It's slanting. We need to level it. if we are going to do stuff in there we should probably worry about the windows. there's no insulation. It's cold. We should probably insulate.  the paneling is ridiculous. Let's gyp-rock.  I hate smacking my giant head on the light fixtures. and on and on and on. So my "Hey, let's put new linoleum in the dining room to replace the carpet that somebody thought would actually be a good idea to put under the dining room table" has now become a completely gutted room. It's frightening. Here's hoping it's done before it snows. Because right now we have no south wall. I kind of like south walls.

I'm washing dishes. Steven is clearing the table and putting leftovers into a container. It is a riveting opening scene for this blog post. I know, you don't have to tell me. "Just save enough rice for that amount of sauce to make sense," I say. "In what?" Steven asks. "I don't know, that black thing I cooked veggies in." "There's not even enough to bother using that." "I don't know, just use a bowl." "A what?" "A cereal bowl." "Huh?" We argue all the time about who is deafer. It's definitely him. I think it's probably more that we only half-listen half of the time. Actually, when I can't hear him it's because he mumbles. Then when I finally figure it out I still say "huh" a few times and he repeats himself a few more times because he hasn't caught on yet that I'm messing with him. "Huh?" he asks a final time. I sigh at his obvious ...

We've had a busy couple of weekends. This weekend hasn't been busy per se, but we've kept ourselves busy and away from the front of the TV. Yesterday Mitchell had swimming lessons in the morning. I should mention that he's cute and little and apparently two years younger than everyone else in the class. He'll stand nicely in line with his class, but when the teacher goes down the line getting the kids to bob under the water, he'll just give her a giant happy smile and shake his head no at her. She carries on. I have a feeling he'll do this class a number of times. Probably until he's twelve. At least then he'll be the same size as the other five year olds. Sometime in the mid morning a little girl from across the street came over to ask Jordan to come and play with her. She went. Tennyson sat and cried, because he's still not used to Jordan having a social life that doesn't always include him. I sent him outside to help Steven fix his tr...

But I won't. I have bought a few "teach your kids . . . " books lately. One is Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons . The method seems different than what I'd expect, but once you get into it there's so much sense to it! I started with Jordan yesterday, and she went through the first three lessons before her attention was irretrievable. Then just for kicks I did the first little exercise or two in lesson one with Tennyson. Jordan will have absolutely no trouble with it, and I'm convinced that it's something Tennyson can do too, although a little slower. I expect that Jordan (since she knows the alphabet and sounds already) will fly through it. She can actually sound out easier words already with a bit of prompting, and is so close that I know she'll have no trouble. Tennyson actually knows his alphabet (writing, the names of letters, etc. - yay Brain Quest!) and I know he can do this too. I'd probably go slower with him so we don't get...

I just called Steven to tell him to pick something up at the store on his way home. I told him that he needed to come home and see what I bought , that it was necessary, and kind of a bigger item. He doesn't wait well. Soon he was guessing and wanting to know what it was. I told him he'd have to wait and see, and that it was sort of for everybody. S: It's not a dog is it? T: (pause, he's so fun sometimes) . . . Maybe . S: You didn't. T: (frantically looking for a dog barking on youtube ) Just come see. S: (exasperated, as if I'd actually buy a dog on a whim and not ok it first) You had better not have bought a dog. You didn't . - Dog starts yapping on youtube . T: Shit, this is the first time it's barked. I promise it's not going to bark. S: You didn't. Is that a dog? Really? (big sigh) I'm going to have to kill it. ( lol he wouldn't really) T: Just come see. S: (breathing noises) You didn't. Not really. Is it a rob...

I came across some notes I was kind enough to make of Steven during a trip into Winnipeg last winter. I thought I'd share them. Steven doesn't think he's a princess, even though: it brings him to tears if he has to drink pepsi instead of coke he never has cash on him when we go through the drive through he's pouting because I'm losing weight and he is so not . he needs to have snacks in the van because he could faint while driving and that would be bad. His words. he's going to start blogging again, just to get even. "I'm just not gonna talk to you at all if that's the way you're gonna be about it." quotation fingers "You're numbering them?"

Jordan : Daddy, are you 100? Tiffany : Pretty close. Steven : 100 on the "Cool Scale" - 100 being very cool , and 1 being Mommy . Uh huh. Just so you know, saying "snap" after entirely negates any points on the cool scale.

What's new over here you ask? What? You didn't. Whatever. I get it. You googled "incredibly cool Mommy/life/humor/extremely insightful personal opinion blog" and this is what came up. My sincere apologies. It's been a weird week. I had this weird stomach flu thing that started on Tuesday, eased off Tuesday evening, and then came back with force Tuesday night and all day Wednesday. Life is great sometimes. I keep thinking I should put in for sick days, but every time that I get around to looking for that employee handbook that outlines my benefits and how to put in for them I just can't find it. Maybe if this place wasn't such a mess these days. I have plans to get some spring cleaning done. I'd actually like to purge and clean this whole place before the end of April, have a garage sale at the beginning of May, and then haul whatever is left to MCC. Steven thinks he wants to clean out the garage and then coat the floor in some cement floor coating stuf...