A look Back in Time

Day One

Month 2More Month 2

Month 3

Year 6

Earth Hour 2008 - What will you be doing?

If you haven't already heard, tomorrow between 8 pm and 9pm the entire planet (well, to be honest those of us with electricity) will be observing the first Earth hour. This is a green initiative to turn the lights off, and all electrical appliances, for one hour. This conservation initiative is one that has the potential to impact the planet based solely on the number of those who participate. Here's the link for more info: http://www.earthhour2008.com/.
Please take a moment to think about and then please act on it. Let us know what you did for one hour of one day to make a difference.
See you in the darkness!

Deep Thoughts

Well, in 25 minutes I am going to put my first born on the school bus and send him off. This morning my baby got in bed for the 5th day in a row and didn't nurse. He wouldn't be able to nurse again at this point if he wanted to. They really are growing up. I am holding up okay, there are tears streaming down as I type, but they are not really sad tears (probably mostly brought on by the hormonal changes from not being pregnant or breastfeeding for the first time since April of 2003-lol!!!).

I heard a great quote on Sunday (how timely that God would put it out there for me just when I needed to hear it).

In this house we give you both roots and wings.

They are both moving to the next fabulous stage in their lives, separating from us a little more with each step. This is what we are raising them to do, and I know that they are both ready. I will be too, but I will mourn each step as they take it further and further away from me.

We bought a bed, we bought a bed!!

We have been saving up for quite a while for a new king size bed. Several months ago we found the perfect cherry sleigh frame and have been storing it at home ever since. We were undecided on the mattress that we were going to go with. We had a couple of false starts and finally, last night, we saw that The Brick was having a massive sale on a top of the line Sealy mattress. So we went in, took it for a spin and bought it. They only had 3 in the Toronto distribution centre (we found out the point of purchase when he keyed it in) so I am glad that we went in right when they opened or the delivery might have been a couple of months from now. We bought the Sealy Posturepedic Starland Euro Pillowtop Plush King Mattress Set. A new sized bed also means new sheets, duvet and duvet cover. So we zipped off and purchased some new sheets, a duvet and the "Cameron Duvet cover".

Whew, a busy day, but super exciting!!! We have been waiting a really long time for this and are super stoked!!

Much to blog about nothing

Back at the beginning of summer I purchased a new hat for Monkey. He used it for about a week and then it was MIA. We looked and looked but it never turned up. Today, labour day, it re-appeared.

It is camouflage -how appropriate.

Thomas Recall Update-They Suck

So we got our "free gift" in the mail today. This is the gift that is supposed to demonstrate to me just how sorry RC2 is that they put my children's lives in danger by going with a sub rate company to produce their toys and then charging me an obscenely high price to buy them. This is supposed to show me just how sorry they are that I had to drag my two children off to the walk in clinic (it takes 4-6 weeks to get an appointment with our family doctor) to get a requisition and then drag them downtown to stick a needle in their tiny little veins to draw blood to check for lead poisoning.

Our free gift is Toad. Toad costs $13 at Scholar's Choice (then I get 10% off since I am a member). The 6 trains that I sent back have a retail value of over $90. This is supposed to make me want to buy my kids more Thomas items?

Not likely.

Jerks.

You have got to be kidding me!

Another recall "Thomas and Friends, Curious George toys recalled for unsafe lead content". Luckily we don't have any of this stuff. I am getting really angry about the amount of money that consumers are shelling out on this junk. We trust our kids with it only to find out that it is a cheaply made shoddy product that is dangerous to thier health.

Where's my Thomas stuff??

So I have finally had enough with this bloody Thomas RC2 recall. I called them and asked where my stuff is. She looked it up and apparently it should be shipping the first week of September.

I asked her about the "free gift" that we are getting as an appology. She said that it shipped on the 10th, so it should be arriving soon. She said that they are sending out engines. Randomly generated so we might just get one that we already have. We are not getting 6 engines to match the number of cars we sent in, we are getting 1 lousy, probably a repeat, engine.

What a rip off!! I pay between $15-35 for these things, thinking that they are of quality. They go to the lowest bidder, cover the trains with lead and sent them in to my home. Then, as an additional kick to the tender bits, they send me crap as an appology.

Identity Theft

We have recently found out that a local place of business that has our personal information stored on thier computers was robbed and the computers were taken. This brings to light some things that we should all think about when it comes to protecting our personal information.

There are some basic steps:

1-Cancel and destroy credit cards you do not use and keep a list of the ones you use regularly.

2-Carry only the identification information and credit cards that you actually need.

3-Do not carry your social insurance card or birth certificate with you. This applies also to your passport unless you need it for traveling out of country.

4-Pay attention to your billing cycles and follow up with your creditors and utility companies if your bills do not arrive on time.

5-Shred or destroy paperwork you no longer need, such as bank machine receipts, receipts from electronic and credit card purchases, utility bills, and any document that contains personal and/or financial information. Shred or destroy pre-approved credit card applications you do not want before putting them in the trash.

6-Do not give personal information out over the phone, through the mail, or over the Internet unless you are the one who initiated the contact and know the person or organization with whom you are dealing. Before you share such information, ensure that the organization is legitimate by checking its website to see if it has posted any fraud or scam alert when its name has been used improperly, or by calling its customer service number listed on your account statement or in the phone book.

In some cases, such as this one where the office was broken in to, there isn't a whole lot that you can do to keep your information safe if the information is leaked by a third party. That is why at least once a year, and you might consider doing it more often, we should all be checking our credit reports to be sure that we recognise everything that we see on it.

You can order both your Transunion and your Equifax credit reports on line for a low cost. Or, if you are super cheap, you can mail in a request and get them sent to you by snail mail for free. Just go to http://canadian-creditreport.com/freebymail.htm to get the forms, addresses and the details. Get both, it is worth the extra stamp.

The WB family cuts thier hydro consumption by half!

Dave and I consider ourselves to be very environmentally conscious. We barely ever use the air conditioning, we hang our laundry to dry. Big C is in cloth diapers and we walk to the grocery store. We were really confused when our hydro bill came two months ago and it was higher than many other people's that we know. We looked back and realised that this has been going on for quite a while. It caused us to take a good hard look at how 4 people were using 1900 Kw hours over 58 days.

We toured the house and we made some changes. These changes resulted in us cutting our consumption by more than half, down to a mere 900 Kw hours in 60 days.

So how did we do it?
*We toured the house and we started to use a power bar to turn off the computer, printer, modem, speakers and monitor all at once. That represents more than 2 Kw hours per day. These things use "phantom power" even while they are turned off
*We put the TV, VCR (yes those still exist), DVD player and cable box on a power bar and we shut them all off every time we are done with them.
*we turned off the de humidifier in the basement. I don't know if this will be sustainable through the winter when the clothes are hanging down there-we'll see.
*we turned off the furnace fan
*we never used the air conditioning (there was one night where we wished that we had used it, we just didn't think of it soon enough)
*we only used the ceiling fan when there was no wind and the windows were open. It helped us to keep the AC by sucking cold air in to the house
*we turned off Monkey's CD player (it used to be on 24 hours per day)
*We borrowed a kill-o-watt meter from the library and took a good account of where we were loosing our power. This also helped us to see which appliances were not taking power (my clock radio and the noise machine seem to run on air alone!)

The WB Family issues a challenge...

Here is our challenge. If any of you out in WB Family land can lower your hydro bill by 25% or more your name will be entered in a draw to win a trip in our luxury 2001 VW Jetta to the restaurant of your choice to buy your OWN lunch. How could anyone not want to give it a try!? To enter, please provide a copy of your previous and most recent hydro bill to show the change. There is no deadline to enter-we will award a random number of prizes at the sole discretion of the WB Family co-founders.

Hydro Ottawa is running a *slightly* better incentive plan you see the details here https://www.hydroottawa.com/conservation/index.cfm?lang=e&template_id=396 "If you reduce your electricity use by 10% this summer, Hydro Ottawa will give you a credit on a future electricity bill. It's just that simple!The Hydro Ottawa Summer Savings program runs from July 1, 2007 until August 31, 2007. Just reduce your electricity use by 10% between July 1 and August 31, as compared to the same period last summer, and you'll receive an additional 10% credit on a future electricity bill. This is on top of what you'll save by using less electricity!"

Buh bye computer monitors / paper weights!!

About three months ago I scored two huge computer monitors on my favourite site http://www.usedottawa.com/. I got them home only to discover that the cables that were required to go in to the backs of these things to connect them to the CPUs seemed to be proprietary and that I could likely find them, but not without a lot of hassle (read: time) and money put out.

Since spare time is not something which I have a lot of these things just sat around. Dave moved them upstairs and then downstairs. In to the garage and then back upstairs. He is very tolerant. These things must weigh 25 lbs each. Finally I admitted defeat and I put them back up on http://www.usedottawa.com/ for sale.



Well buh bye monitors. Some young fella named Jackson* is now their proud owner. He came and loaded them in to his car. It was riding visibly lower as he pulled away.


For my trouble, money towards the king sized mattress fund. At this rate, we'll be sleeping tight by 2010!


* names have been changed since I never asked the guy if I could use it

** photo is of the actual money that changed hands during this transaction

*** no vehicles were hurt in the off-loading of these monitors

The Tent

So last weekend Dave went to Canadian Tire to buy a tent. He went for the 6 man tent in the flyer. Dave has spoken for years of wanting to go camping with the boys. He was ready.





So I wanted to pay homage to the tent by posting it on the blog. The trouble is that Dave didn't get the 6 man tent, He got the two room 8 man tent. As such, I couldn't figure out a good angle to get the picture from. I tried to get a shot from inside the front door...

but that was too far away

So I went into the living room, but I couldn't fit the whole tent in the shot

Then I went on to the back step, but that still failed to capture the enormity...
So I took a shot with me in the picture to try to put things into perspective...
Finally I was forced to go upstairs to Monkey's room to get an aerial shot.

In summary, Dave is thrilled and I am really happy for him. I hope that he and the kids (and maybe me) share many wonderful memories out there.

They said yes

An update about my jaw:

I am still really surprised. I got a call from my insurance company tonight and, in conjunction with my extended healthy bennys, I have been approved to get braces. I was honestly setting myself up for them to say no, so I don't think that I was fully prepared for this to happen. I am excited and worried.

Brace face, train tracks...14 years old again, here I come!!

My Jaw

So what is going on with my jaw you ask? TMJ is the answer. It seems that the motor vehicle collision that I was in last April knocked my jaw out of alignment. I have dislocated the disks on both sides of my jaw. I had some minor TMJ before the collision but nothing that was causing me any pain, just the odd popping of the jaw.

Well, once the dust settled after the collision it became apparent that the increased pain in my face was constant and not abating. I went to go and see Dr Wexler who said yep, TMJ and suggested infra red treatments, physiotherapy and a mouth guard. He submitted this treatment plan to the car insurance company who turned around and sent me to get a second opinion.

I saw Dr Leroy Shaw who suggested that orthodontics, rather than the Dr Wexler way of doing things would work in his opinion.

I went to go see Dr John Kershman, Orthodontist, to see what he thought. Before I even got in to see him I asked the other people in the waiting room what they thought and they gave rather poor reports of his bed side manor. One mother even went so far as to call a friend to get me the name and number of another orthodontist.

He suggested a mouth guard built in the opposite way of Dr Wexler's followed by braces and then orthognathic surgery (breaking my jaw) and more braces. He explained that the mouth guard would be needed to calm my jaw joint down enough to allow for braces and the the mouth guard was not really a long term solution. I was lucky to get even that out of him. He was up and down no less than 10 times during our consultation to go see other patients (he has a buzzer system and he jumps the second it goes off) and I didn't get to ask all of my questions before I was ushered out of this area and in to see his office manager to make payment arrangements.

Next I paid for my own evaluation with Dr Milne, Orthodontist. I did this because so much information was being thrown at me that I wanted to see what someone else said. Plus, I wanted to get a lot of my questions answered. I thought that Dr Milne was awesome! He took the time to sit down with me for no less than 20 minutes, uninterrupted with the door closed to distractions and answered all of my questions.

He suggested no mouth guard, straight to braces for about 18 months, very likely orthognathic surgery, and then a continuation of braces with no need for a mouth guard long term. He explained that the mouth guard would not be needed since once he got the braces on and started moving things around, I would see almost immediate relief. He warned that the relief would likely last only while the braces were on if I didn't go the whole way of doing the surgery if it was required. His view is that the collision moved things to such an extent that without trying to re-align the jaw, I would always have problems.

It seems that the orthognathic surgery is an unfortunate recurring theme but at least now that I have heard it more than once, I believe that it might actually be true.

So what is a girl to do? I have no idea. I have all of these dental professionals chiming in but it is so hard to say who is right. We have to submit the treatment plans to the insurance company and see what, if any of this they will approve.

I really just wish this whole thing was behind me.

Our marriage

Yep, this picture pretty much sums it up.

The backyard-May 26

So we moved to this house last year so this is only our second summer. I am a little sad about how small the plants still are since the plants at the old house are now on thier 6th summer and doing wonderfully. Sigh.

So here is a picture of what it looks like now. I am hoping to keep track (mostly for myself) of how it looks as the summer progresses to make sure that I have a good blend of flowers at all times and other such things.

As an aside, since today was the GGG-I am trying to figure out just how much multicoloured plastic kids stuff I can fit in my yard!

Great Glebe Garage Sale AKA GGG

If you are from Ottawa chances are good that you know exactly what the GGG is. If you are not from Ottawa here is a quick explanation. Picture the nicest area of your city to live in. Picture all of the nice houses, nice cars the whole nine yards. Now imagine if all of the people in that neighbourhood decided to have a garage sale on the same day-if you are a garage sale-ing kind of a person, chances are good that you would show up, even just to see. The prevailing theory seems to be that if rich people are selling their stuff, it must be worth buying.

So we went. Rebecca and I suited up (after having to reschedule a car seat clinic some weeks ago so that it didn't fall today). Prior to going we mapped out what we needed. The bottom line was that neither one of us needed much of anything, but we still wanted to be there at 7:30 so that we could get the first crack at all of the rich people's crap that we don't even need anyways.

What did we buy? I bought a drum set to go along with the kids daily love for making music. We now have a drum, a moroca (<-sp??), and a tambourine that fits really nicely in your hand. How much does all of that cost? They were asking a dollar, I offered 50 cents. Sold.

Next we saw a pretty faded but structurally sound basketball net. Asking price $3, I counter with $2. Put it in the truck.

Moving right along to some brand spanking new Tupperware (it still had the plastic on it). I am thinking of Monkey's transition to junior kindergarten in the fall and I spend 7 of the $8 she was asking and put that in the wagon.

We got stopped along the way and interviewed for a local community paper. Let me know if you see Beck and I hauling a wagon full of crap published somewhere-I can't remember who they said they were from.

I grabbed an ab roller for $4 and then I am rifling through a bin of goodies and I spy a harmonica. Now the boys love the harmonica that Aunt Heather got for them so when I see a plastic version with handles I am intrigued. I ask how much. Much to my surprise she says "3 items for $0.25". Yeah, this woman knows how to garage sale. I pick up two Little Tikes tools that we also in the bin, hand over my quarter and we are good to go.

Now the finale. I was looking to get a grocery cart for Monkey. Earlier negotiations had not proven fruitful and I was still light one grocery cart. Rebecca and I spot one just getting put out on display and we inquire. The reply is a mind boggling "$5". Barely unable to contain my excitement and still needing to see what I can do here I counter with $3, she

counters with $4 and a grocery cart that is in brand new condition and costs $35 new at Toys R Us gets loaded into the truck. I skipped the whole way back!!!

That was our morning, then we met up with the boys and went to soccer, then the Gloucester Fair. What an incredible day!!

3rd of a century (almost) deep thoughts

Waking up this morning it dawned on me (sorry for the pun) that I have been alive for nearly a third of a century. Putting things into a larger perspective that's a decent amount of time. The cold war has ended, along with apartheid, the global make-up of countries has changed dramatically, major ecological events have started in motion including the extinction of a vast array of species and the impending threat of global warming. All of the big stuff in the world has little effect most days on little old (but still very young at heart) me. I've seen the passing of a few of those two generations before, and the birth of two in the next generation. Looking back I can see the wonder that my parents had a third of a century before. Long before the age of the computer and the internet. Long before cell phones and I-Pods and I-phones (when will the cell-pod come out?). Long before the rampant commercialism of the current age when everyone needs to buying something to feel like they're in 'the now'. And what I feel matters is the how. Waking up every morning for the rest of my life feeling 'what difference can I make today?'; 'who's life will be positively changed by the time I rest my head on my pillow?'; 'How many times can I hug my kids before they get dressed in the morning?'; 'In what ways can I show my wife how much I really love her?'. The bigger questions for me are where will I be in another 1/3 of a century, and where will my kids be? What will they write at this age and how will they write it? I know that I'll still be asking myself those 4 questions and striving to make better answers. I'll write again when I get there.

I heart Usedottawa.com

I have been looking for an eliptical trainer for a little while now. Concerned about the potential risk of wanting one, buying one, then hanging my clothing on it while it sits neglected in the basement, I was looking for a used one.

Tonight, I went on the site just as this http://www.usedottawa.com/classified-ad/2895822&category=fitness-equipment was posted. I was the first of many callers who jumped on this awesome deal. First come, first served and the race was on. I GOT ME A FANCY NEW ELIPTICAL MACHINE!!! Yay!!

At least I know that in 6 months, if I am not using it, I can get my money back.