Just got back from a miserable day in Barrie. It was a grey rainy day before we started out and it never really got much better. We went up to belatedly celebrate hubby’s birthday which was June 5th with his family and his sister’s friends. One of the friends brought her 3 daughters along and with our niece who is generally moody they were all miserable by the time we arrived. They had gone up early to make sure we got a shelter, and had been there like 3 hours before we got there. On the way up we stopped to get burgers for everyone as instructed by hubby’s mom. When we arrived she said that she only told him to bring our own food, but he swore that twice she said that we should bring the burgers. That pissed us both off because we wouldn’t have stopped and spent money we didn’t need to otherwise.

We did use the Baby Buzz patch on baby D and between the super smelly patch and hubby and I swatting away the pesky skeeters, I don’t think the baby got any bites at all. Wish I were as lucky. About 10 minutes after I arrived I got a bit bite on my forehead. That I am aware of, I got 3 on my hands (including one right beside the nail on my pinky finger), 1 on my forehead, 3 on my ankle and tons on the backs of my thighs. Talk about itchy!!!

Eventually after we ate the rain stopped so we went on a little walk around the park to view the animals. We saw an albino raccoon, a bear, wolves, foxes and various raptors. It was so sad though, the poor wolves were just running around in circles and obviously had been for some time since the ground under them was all sunken in. I was told that all these animals had been rescue animals, but I wonder if any of them would’ve chosen death over this captivity. Poor animals.

I was hoping to be home by eight since it’s my first day back at work tomorrow, but as usual I couldn’t pry him away from everyone and it was after 21:30 by the time we got home. I’m surprised I’m even writing this – I should be in bed! So I’m off to hopefully get a good night sleep before tomorrow.

Yes, I’m gearing up for the end of the year (school year) madness. Even though I’m not back at work yet, I still have a bunch of stuff to do. Like tomorrow night is my school’s grad. Even though I haven’t been there for over a year, I promised the students that I would be back to announce the grads as they walk across the stage. This has always been my thing, and I really enjoy doing it. Besides they always seem to have a problem finding someone who can say some of the names. For instance Sathananthalingam is just the last name of one of our students. Her first name is still 12 characters long. I don’t seem to have much difficulty in saying these names so I’m always called upon when there’s a long name like that to pronounce. Then on Thursday is our end of the year staff breakfast. Even though I went last year, I think I’m going to beg off this year. I don’t really want to sit through all the goodbyes of staff I don’t really care about or know. Besides I anticipate it being difficult keeping a little guy who is *almost* walking still for like 4 hours. It’ll probably be more trouble than it’s worth and frankly I don’t care that much.
My mum was down for a couple of days and we had a really nice visit. This was the first time she stayed for more than one night. We decided the last time she was here that it didn’t make much sense to just stay for one night because it was all so rushed. We really didn’t do much. We managed to get out for a long walk and admire other people’s front gardens. It gave me all sorts of ideas for mine. And we had my brother and his wife over for dinner Saturday night. They left around 21:00 and my mum, dad, hubby and I stayed up till 23:00 talking about baby D and his birth. Even though it wasn’t that long ago (14 months) there were a couple things I had actually forgotten. I love reminiscing! Yesterday we went to church together and then came home and finally hung up some pictures I’ve been meaning to get on my walls. I will still have to get some more pictures as I have a humongous wall in my family room that could use some lovin’.
This time next Monday I will be at work. I am trying desperately not to think about it for fear that I will lose my mind. It’s only for 2 weeks; 9 days in fact so I’m sure I can do that. The worst will be when baby D goes into daycare and it’s a full time arrangement. If hubby was staying home with baby D the whole time as we had planned I probably wouldn’t be as nervous, but my Dad will be watching him for 3 days. I’m sure it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but he’s old-school German and tends to have his own way of doing things and criticizing mine. I guess I’m just afraid that he’ll be letting baby D scream himself to sleep or feeding him large chunks of stuff that he might choke on or possibly being too rough on him. I’ll just have to keep thinking happy thoughts that everything will go fine or I’m going to make myself sick thinking about it.

I’ve been away a lot longer than I ever expected. As previously mentioned my computer has been extremely sluggish and I’ve sort of been avoiding it altogether lately. Strangely enough, without doing anything to it, it appears to be acting much better today.
Not a whole lot going on in my life at the moment. GM turned 14 months yesterday and has 2½ teeth on the bottom and almost a full tooth up top. He’s still not quite walking on his own, but he’s certainly trying. I’m starting to get a bit worried about his communication skills – or lack thereof. Besides babbling ‘dada’ he really doesn’t communicate. I’m really not sure that this is normal, but he’ll be getting his next set of shots in the second week of July so I’ll be sure to talk to the doctor about it.

Saturday 9: Happy Father’s Day Eve

1. How long since you have been with your dad? He lives in the basement, so … yesterday.
2. How many siblings share your dad? one younger brother
3. Will you see your dad tomorrow? definitely, we’re going to my brother’s for a BBQ
4. Do you give him gifts on Father’s Day? usually, but he never really wants anything
5. Have you ever had a tough time in your relationship with your father? absolutely. we’ve been through a lot of tough roads, but are finally starting to see more eye to eye
6. What was the last thing that you did with your dad? we went out for dinner Tuesday night
7. Growing up, was your dad tough on you? yup, he was the disciplinarian
8. Are you close to your father? yes, I would say so
9. How long since you have spoke to him? a couple of hours

This morning started uber-early as we had to drive across the city to get some papers signed. We have been having some pretty serious debt problems that we were getting worked out through an agency which removed all the interest off the credit cards, but we found an even better deal. The new deal got our debts down to like a third of what they were and the payments are insanely easy compared to what we were paying each month. If all goes well we will officially be out of debt in a year and half at the latest. Yahoo! Finally.

I have to say it’s really irritating though when I have to get myself up, dressed, do my hair, get my son up, nurse him, get him dressed, feed him, get the diaper bag ready, get all the papers together that we needed to take and somehow, hubby having a coffee, showering and getting dressed makes us late. They say women take forever to get ready? Not in this household!

On the way back from the financial planners’ we stopped to check out the garden centre at the local grocery store. I’ve been chomping at the bit to get a move on so I convinced hubby that we needed to go somewhere. We wandered around and found some really nice plants, but I wanted to see other places too to see if we were getting a good deal or not. I figured that there was probably markup on these plants (coming from a grocery store) that there might not be at a nursery. So we then went to nursery up the street from our place. They had different plants around the same price as we’d already seen. I still want to check out Wal-Mart and see what kind of prices they have in comparison. I’ll probably end up getting my plants from a couple of different places. My Mum is coming over on Wednesday, so I’ve asked the seasoned gardener to assist me with my plant choices.