#38- Rolling hills, rolling tractors

we went up to Erics parents in A-ford last weekend to celebrate Easter and birthdays! (there's quite a few of them grouped together over the next few weeks)
It was beautiful weather and I must say, I genuinely miss the beauty of Bruce County; rolling hills, streams and rivers, so many trees and pastures, lakes and sandy beaches...it is really gorgeous over there. 
Eric and I went out on Saturday night to the beach in Southampton to see the stars "Why are you going to there?!" relatives asked, all born and raised is area, "just to be there! We want to see the stars!" 
We definitely took for granted the landscape of the Bruce, having lived within 15 minutes of a lake for all of Eric's life and 12 years of my life, I can count on one hand the amount of times we actually went to the beach every summer. I miss it! This year I'm so excited to make the 40 minute drive to the nearest lake to London since Isaac is now old enough to really get some fun from it.
Anyway; it was a beautiful night to stargaze, we also saw (before we knew what it was) Jupiter and Venus glowing incredibly bright right next to each other which was amazing.
Grandpa N. wanted to take Isaac to go see 'his' tractors over where he works with his brother. "Real up close John Deeres and tonkas!" Clutching a toy truck in his hand the whole time Isaac didn't say much but was clearly in awe of the huge machines. Grandpa even let him climb up into the seats and 'drive'. 
With his little shirt barely buttoned up he looked just like a little Bruce-County boy indeed:)
Rosie could have cared less and was too preoccupied with getting smiles out of anyone who would give her the time of day:)
Lovely to see Eric's family again and enjoy the peace and quiet.
(Lucky for us we missed out on the big riot in London two blocks away from our home. Thanks for nothing, students)
Now for cute pictures!!!!

#37- Fridge

My fridge is old.
It's stained
It's rusty
It's an energy sucker
It's stinky (that could be my fault...)
Solution? Buy a new one. Reality? Save a few bucks first...
It would be just SO easy to buy a new fridge though...it would solve ALL my problems. I would never have to clean my new fridge. It would clean itself. I would never have to worry about rust, it'd be ir-rustable. As for energy, obviously my fridge would have to be the newest on the block to clean itself so obviously it would be energy efficient...but obviously we won't be buying the newest fridge on the block from Kijiji :)


After many days (weeks..? I don't want to say months. But that could also be true) of grumbling about my stinkyoldstainedsucker fridge, I one day decided to roll up my sleeves and see what could come out of a good clean.
At the  end of a day, I do not want to clean anything.
All day I say to myself, "I'll have time to clean when the kids go to bed", but let's be real, at the end of the day all I want to do is look at my way-cooler-friends lives on facebook (studying, avoiding studying, and posting lame links and photos..) and gaze at beautiful pictures of immaculate homes on pintrest and read how EASY it is to make YOUR home look like this. As long as I'm sitting, I'm feelin' fine.
But not that night! That night I cleaned my fridge. 
The result was glorious. to me anyway, some good elbow grease and it was actually a lot shinier in there than I ever remember, it almost looked new! Or to me anyway. Students rented this house before us, and there were certain parts that I simply could not scrub off whatever residue it was, but luckily it was behind one of the drawers, sooooooo.......
I even organized the food and condiments and put leftovers in pretty little see-through-containers just like those organized girls who would NEVER put leftover casserole in an old margarine container with a yogurt lid. (Gasp!!)
I tried to clean the outer fridge, but alas, even bleach couldn't remove the rust and stains. But every time I opened that fridge for the next 14 hours (I went to bed, woke up, used the fridge a couple times, and by noon it was looking rather disorganized again) I was blessed to see how tidy and clean it looked.
This is, after all, the only fridge I have. 
And I was reminded of a valuable lesson that has been easy to forget living in the city and being influenced so much by 'if it's old, if it's inconvenient, if it makes you unhappy, get a new one!" attitude;
Take care of what you have until it dies. 
Be gentle with it. Love it. Clean it. Tend to it. Don't abuse it. Learn how to use it.


The fridge is certainly on its last legs (literally) but until the day it simply sputters out, I'll try to clean it more than once a year. 

#36- Rosie is half-a-year old!

I've been meaning to post for awhile, but every time I sat down to start, got distracted.
Hey, life is busy when you've got a toddler and a crawler:) 6 Months as of March 2nd!
Yes, Rosie is not QUITE crawling, but creeping around anywhere she wants to go, has two teeth, is starting to chatter more and more (squeak more like it:) has started solids, and while she doesn't act like she's been starving her whole life (like Isaac when he first tried them) she seems to like everything just fine and will politely finish off a small bowl as long as she can take her time.
She is sleeping pretty well through the night, going about 4 hour stretches. Since this makes only 2 night feedings for me on average, I am not too worried about her sleeping ALL the way through the night yet, she is growing fast and only just started solids, if she does wake up in between her usual times I don't feed her, as I know she has got enough calories through her feeding schedule throughout the day, and she'll generally go back to sleep, so it's certainly a pretty good routine for me right now:) 
She has a very sweet personality, content and observing, but she is certainly a wiggler and loves 'walking' and standing. The world is more exciting to her as she gets more active. She isn't a big fan of 'thrills' such as swings or being tossed in the air, but direct attention and tickling will get her giggling. (cutest sound ev.)
First 6 months; CHECK, and I thought we were taking our time!!

Pretty in Purple

toes!

(on a side note, my floors are amazingly clean in this photo...)

playing this drum is one of Rosie's favourite things to do