My Year in Photos ~ 2011

So 2011 was an interesting year. We did a lot, learned a lot, laughed a lot and cried a lot. It brought new adventures and closed some old ones.

We're looking forward to 2012 and all the new things that it will bring.

I got this idea from Jackie at withjustabitofmagic.com. I thought it would be a good way to close 2011 and bring in 2012!

My Year In Photos ~ 2011

January

We WALKED into January with smiles and hope for a fun year! I was already a few months pregnant and Carebear had just started walking! 

February

February was full of love and fun!

March

Carebear got her own bed!! She had been sleeping on a mattress for a while but this was her first official bed! She loved it and started sleeping so well, so did Mommy and Daddy!!! Which was good, since I was 6 months pregnant and working and needed as much sleep as I could get!!

April

April was hard to find a picture to sum it all up. This April held birthdays, Easter, Anniversaries and so much more but one of the best was rainy Spring days! Carebear and I started to get out more since the weather was better but we both loved rainy days and splashing in puddles.

May

May started off slow. Mother's Day and some more birthdays but at the end of the month came the biggest surprise birthday EVER! B-Man made an early entry! He decided to come 4 weeks early and super quick!

June

June was all about getting used to our new little family of four! Carebear wasn't sure of B-Man at first but soon came to like him, well at least show him indifference! LOL

July

We had fun celebrating Canada Day and watching fireworks! What a great way to celebrate July!

August

Aw, spending good time as a family outside! What a great summer, not too hot, not too cool! It was perfect and what a better way to spend time as a family then being outdoors in the sunshine! Mr. Rooster also got a new job and thus started the whole adventure of us moving!!!

September was a busy month settling into our new home! It was a quick and crazy move, but well worth it! We love our new home! We're close to family, the kids have more space, we have a HUGE backyard, close to schools, tons of parks, shopping and right on a bus route! Perfect!

October

Ah October, another busy month! There were so many things this month that it was hard to pick just one photo! B-Man's Baptism, Thanksgiving, Oktoberfest, Birthdays, and our favourite holiday HALLOWEEN!

Yes, our little family loves Halloween, every scary little bit of it! This year we went as The Addam's family (with help from our dear friend)! We had such a great time. I love decorating the house and going all out on spooky foods and devilish treats! Yes, definitely one of my favourite holidays!

November

November marked B-Man's 6 months birthday! Gosh the time has just flown by! Carebear is such an amazing big sister! She loves to help get his pacifier, give him is bottle, help with bath time, and always finds toys for him to play with! She loves her little brother and he is just in awe of her!

December

December

December will have to share two photos because the month holds the two most important events! Carebear's birthday and Christmas! Both were magical and wonderful times! We were surrounded by all the people we love and got to create some beautiful memories.

It was hard for me to just pick one picture for each month. Anyone who is on my Facebook knows I have over 160 albums of photos (oops) and am adding to it on almost a daily basis! I love taking pictures of my family. Who ever said that the more kids you have the less pictures you take never met me! LOL My poor kids have a permanent flash mark on their eyes from all the pictures I take of them! LOL You think I have a lot of Facebook but I have a thousand more on my computer that never make it to Facebook! LOL What can I say?

Kids grow up so fast I want to try to remember EVERY second of it :) 

It was a good year full of interesting things, some I'd like to forget, some I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Happy New Year everyone, and may 2012 be a wonderful year for you all!

Shopping prep...

I don't have much time to blog today. I've spent my "free time" (if that's what you can call nap time around here) doing up our shopping list.
Ah, the shopping list. We each have our own way of doing one. Some just scribble down what they think they need and others, like me, have charts and graphs, store layouts and flyers ready for price matching. 


Yes, grocery shopping for me is not just something we have to do once in a while, it is a full on family activity!
We price match here. For those of you who don't know what price matching is, where have you been? It's only the best way to save time AND money! You go through your local grocery flyers, find the deals and when you go shopping at your favourite store you find the same item, show them the flyer and they give you the same price! You save time from having to drive from one place to the next and money because if you only shopped at one store you'd have to pay their regular price for that item instead of the discounted price.
Yes, shopping is not just going to get food, it takes planning, prep work, and lists! We've worked it out so that now it doesn't take us long to go shopping, but the prep time before hand sure does!
We plan our meals a week to two weeks ahead and then shop accordingly. It takes time but we feel we save money. It's not cheap feeding a family of four on one income, especially now that all four members are eating "regular" food! I think it's worth the time and energy. 

What kind of shopper are you?

Coming to an end...

We have a tradition in our home that we don't take the Christmas decoration down until the 6th of January. This comes from Mr. Rooster's side of the family and since I love Christmas so much I don't have a problem with it at all! The longer the better!


We still have a week left to enjoy all of our festive decorations and it makes me sad to think about taking them all down. This Christmas has been a special one for me. This is B-Man's first Christmas, something I never got to do with Carebear because she was born a week before Christmas so her first Christmas we were so exhausted we didn't do much to celebrate it.


So this year was our first time celebrating a "first Christmas" with any of our kids! It was magical and wonderful. We did a lot of holiday traditions that I hold so dear!

Paper chains

Decorating the Christmas tree

Making a Gingerbread house (or in our case a Gingerbread Train)

Making hand crafts (this is B-Man's hand)

This is Carebear's hand!

It was also our first Christmas celebrating in our own house on Christmas morning. We got the wonderful job of playing Santa! The excitement of putting all the gifts under the tree, setting up the milk and cookies (eating the milk and cookies) and filling the stockings! It was magical and such an honour!

Cookies and milk that Santa ate!

We all got up and ran past the tree to eat breakfast! A tradition from my childhood. We ate breakfast and read the Nativity story (a first for us) then finally we all got to see the tree together as a family! It was so special! We opened the gifts from Santa and our stockings! The kids had set up a Christmas treasure hunt for Mr. Rooster which was a lot of fun watching him search for gifts and clues :)

Seeing the tree for the first time as a family!
It was a wonderful Christmas with lots of joyful festivities! Seeing family, opening gifts, eating lots of delicious foods! 

So that is why I'm sad to take down the decorations, it will signal the end of a wonderful "first" Christmas!


I'm excited about next Christmas though. Carebear will be 3 and so will have a better understanding and more excitement over all the festivities. B-Man will be 19 months and will be running around (my poor Christmas tree LOL).


There are so many wonderful things to look forward to next year's Christmas, but I will always treasure and remember our first "real" Christmas together as a family!

Evil Co-sleeping and why I do it!

I am one of those dreaded co-sleepers you hear about. 
I'm not a hippy,  new aged, or "Crunchy" Mommy, I'm a Mom that finds something that works and does it. I'll try most anything and as long as it works and sits right with me, I'll do it.
You really do act differently with each child and the difference between Carebear and B-Man are HUGE! I was terrified about everything with Carebear! I think back now to how paranoid I was with her and laugh. I was a new Mom, with zero experience and a TON of advice from EVERYONE who thought they should give it! I had so many mixed messages, so much contradicting information that I never knew what to really think. 

For each study that said you shouldn't there were an equal amount that said you should. 

I learned quickly that what you SHOULD do is what works for you!
One of those areas was sleep!!
Carebear (like a lot of babies) was a terrible sleeper. She would wake up every 30 to 40 minutes each night, and we were exhausted! I had no idea what to do, or how to do it. I read lots of books, and listened to advice but nothing seemed to work.
One thing that did was co-sleeping. I would put Carebear on the bed with me and Mr. Rooster would sleep in the spare room. This also worked so that Mr. Rooster could actually get some sleep for work the next day. 
We did this for a long time and although it didn't stop her from waking every few hours, it did help me get some sleep because I didn't have to get up , walk across the room, get her back to sleep and then go back to bed. I could just settle her and then pass back out.
We got a lot of grief from family about this arrangement so we just kept it to ourselves most of the time. But it worked. We got sleep at night and that was the most important thing. 
We were told that if we co-slept that Carebear would NEVER be able to sleep in her own room or bed!
Well, in the end, Carebear from the age of 13 months has slept happily in her own room, in her own bed! We take her up, get her dressed, do her bedtime routine, put her in bed, say good night, close the door and she'll play in her room till she falls asleep, no fuss, and it takes us less than 10 minutes each night (longer on bath nights).
It's simple and easy. Nap time is the same way, no fuss!
So, I guess that co-sleeping wasn't as EVIL as we were told it was, and the end result is what most parents dream of - easy bedtime!


With B-Man I felt the pressure again not to co-sleep and so he was put into his crib from day one! I didn't mind so much but again, just like his sister he is a terrible sleeper, and was up even more often. :(
We tried a bunch of different things but the past week the only sleep relief I get is to co-sleep with him.
Not what I had planned but you do what works.
I try to be as safe as possible, and I am such a light sleeper that even the smallest noise or movement wakes me up. He sleeps far from me, spread out on the bed with no pillows or blankets near him. He does spend the first half of the night in his crib but the second half seems to be rough on him so he's up a lot and comes to bed with me.


I'm not sure if he'll continue to co-sleep, but if he does, I don't mind. The most important part for me is getting sleep, precious, precious sleep!


I try not to listen to peoples "advice" now. We each do what we think is best for our little ones. We all have different ways of doing things, but we all do what works for us!

Organized Chaos

Today I was blog searching when I came across one that really hit home with me. "DIRT"Y LITTLE SECRETS a blog about becoming an "ideal homemaker". It really got me thinking about what I do each day and how I can try to perfect it even more.

I try to keep my house organized and clean, try being the word when you have little ones. I have a cleaning list, of daily cleaning chores and a schedule that we loosely follow on my fridge that I do each day.

 One of the phrases that "DIRT"Y LITTLE SECRETS posted was one that my Grandmother and Mother always drilled into me as a child and one that I try to still follow today.

 "A place for everything, and everything in it's place." 

That is such an important phrase to me because I think that it's key to keeping a house organized. I often look at different places in my house that seem to have 'clutter' and try to figure what is cluttering up that spot and how can I find those things a better place to rest instead of that one pile.

Sometimes I have success, other times (like the top of my fridge right now) I don't have the much success. LOL

I like a home that feels welcoming and like you can just walk in, sit down and relax, and I hope that for those of you who have been to my house you feel that way. I think being organized helps to create that feeling.

I have a long way to go and sometimes I doubt I'll ever feel like my house is 100% organized and clean. I find myself constantly scrubbing something, sweeping somewhere or going through a drawer to organize!

I wish I could invest a large amount of money in bins! I LOVE bins, but have never had enough money to invest in a bunch (except for my Christmas stuff). Oh cdnkaro if only I could have your problem and have too many bins! That's my dream!!
That and shelves! I need more shelves! I'd love to have everything in bins on shelves! LOL Now that's a dream!!!

I love being a homemaker! It's been a dream of mine to be a mother and homemaker and I do what I can to make our home run smooth and relaxed. 

Thanks  "DIRT"Y LITTLE SECRETS and fourunder4plustwo (cdnkaro) for the inspiration and motivation to organize the chaos!

Food Families

Carebear has quite the imagination and today she proved just how extensive it is!

Today as we were eating lunch she was munching on a piece of Bologna when he hear her saying, "Mommy, Mommy." I look, thinking she's talking to me and much to my surprise she has chewed her Bologna into two pieces and made one 'Mommy' and one 'baby'. She was playing with them and making them have a conversation. She played Mommy and Baby for a while before eating both pieces with a happy grin on her face. LOL

This is our Bologna family

I thought this was a cute thing to do, and it continued later in the day! I was privileged to meet The Pita Family, and later The Apple Family. 

She had all sorts of food families today and they all had long conversations about the days events and then were eaten!

And finally....

This time of year is crazy for most people but in our household it's just a bit extra crazy! Carebear's birthday is one week before Christmas and so it's been a buzz around here with things to do, add NO SLEEP since little B-Man is on a sleep strike, let's just say Mother Hen is about to pass out! Oh and now both chickies are sick with a cold! Yay!
Even now my eyes are glazing as I try to type!
It's been nearly a week since I intended to write this blog post and yet even now the hours are passing and another day may pass before it's actually up and on my blog!


But this blog post has more meaning to me than just a funny story about my little chicks, this one makes me have to think and lately that is something I don't have a lot of time for! :)


Someone that I admire a lot  (fourunder4plustwo) nominated me for the "Tell me about yourself" blog award and I must say that I feel very honoured to be thought of :) so big thanks to her :)

So here it goes! Please keep in mind on a good day I can barely form good sentences so in my sleep deprived, glazed eyed state, here goes nothing! LOL


7 Things You May Want to Know About Me, Mother Hen.....


1) I used to jump from one thing to the next without giving it much thought or realizing the consequences. I now research and make a plan before I start something new, which is a HUGE difference for me. I'm still not perfect but a lot more settled than I ever was before. This is all due to Mr. Rooster, who has helped me calm down a lot. He is my rock and helps to keep me centred. Every once in a while I get him to loosen up and do something spontaneous, but for the most part, he keeps me focused!


2) For the past 4 years I have been on a long and exciting spiritual journey! I was raised in an Agnostic/Atheist house, we were never discouraged but never encouraged to believe anything. My father was an Atheist and believed that when you died, poof that was it, you were just gone. On the night that he passed away I just knew that all the things he believed about death were wrong and thus started my journey to find out what I truly believed. It's been a long, bumpy and very lonely journey but one that has brought me more peace than I ever dreamed and more love then I ever knew possible!


3) I LOVE BEING A MOMMY!!!! Ok, this might not be a shocking secret to some of you, but the level in which I love being a Mommy always seems to shock me! Each day brings new challenges and I feel proud of myself each time I am able to overcome them! I have discovered such strength in myself that I never knew was there, and so much love that I can't stand it sometimes! My children are the most important people in the whole world and I am truly blessed to get to spend each day with them, watching them learn, discover and grow!! I'm not sure what the future holds but I hope to have another little one one day, or as many as God will give me!


4) I use LOL way too much! I use it in e-mails, blog posts, and this year, I even used it in a Christmas card! I don't know why I use it as much as I do, but I use it all the time! LOL see there ya go!


5) I have recently started a Pet Portrait business. I drew some portraits a few years ago as Christmas gifts and as much as I really loved doing them I never had the courage or the confidence to do anything else. This year I have had to face a lot of demons in my life and one was to get enough courage to start this business. So I did! This has been one of my proudest moments. I've had a few clients so far and I'm really enjoying it. As much as this will probably never be a "full time" career, I am proud to call myself an artist, that has been a  life long dream of mine! :)


6) I have an amazing and fantastic husband! If you've ever met Mr. Rooster, you know that he is kind, funny, smart, patient and caring, but what you might not know is that I know this too! :) and tell him every day! He has sacrificed a lot for me and I don't think he'll ever know how truly grateful I am. He always surprises me with how sweet and sensitive he is. He is an amazing father. He's so loving and caring with the kids! He works hard all day and still comes home ready to play and help with the kids! He loves to get on the ground and play with the toys, I mean, kids :) He loves to read stories, play games, help feed them, bathe them and changes his fair share of dirty diapers! He is an amazing father and our kids are so lucky to have a Dad like him!


7) I sometimes surprise myself with how much I've changed in the past few years since I've met Mr. Rooster, and although some may disagree, I think it's all been for the better. I have come to see some people for who they really are and have had to make changes to my relationships with them. I wear my heart on my sleeve and am such a guilt ridden person that I tend to get hurt all the time. :( I care way too much about people and what they think that I would rather put myself out than to disappoint or hurt them in any way.
I've had to "grow a back bone" as some would call it and start to stick up for myself. This has been scary but at the same time refreshing. I hope to I continue to see more of these good changes in myself.


So there are 7 things you may or may not know about me :)
Part of this award is to nominate 15 other people but shamefully with being as busy as I am, I don't have the time to read as many blogs as I wish I could!
When I have the time to start I will find some to add to this and award them all! :)