Pages


It's been a Long Day





Oh Saturday.  You are supposed to be an awesome and relaxing day.  Today you were far from it.  Today started off as a wonderful day – Nora and I slept in until just after 9 am.  This Never Happens.  Ever.  So that in itself was wonderful…however the day went downhill yet uphill from there.  So many good and bad parts to the day lol.  I put Nora down for her nap at 11am, as she asked to go upstairs and signed that she was sleepy.  She then proceeded to cry for an hour and pretty much destroyed her bedroom – took the cushion off her rocker, moved the footstool part behind the door, took everything off her change table.  But I was able to vacuum the basement and do a load of laundry.  Then my buddy Alicia came over to have a crafting afternoon.  We hung out upstairs for a bit with Miss Nora, who then said she was tired again so we tried the whole nap thing again.  And it didn’t work.  But we let her play in her room for about an hour, while we tried to make my sewing machine work.  If you recall, it stopped working before Christmas when my mother in law was here, she took it in to get fixed, then used it.  And it’s been in it’s case since then.  Today was the first time I’ve taken it out.  And it doesn’t work.  At All.  So now I need to start saving up for a new sewing machine, which is a real bother, because I could have just bought a new one in December instead of fixing this one only to have it crap out on me again.  So crafting was mostly a bust – I did do a pinterest inspired project which I will be posting about later this week!  YAY  Then we had Tortiere for dinner which my Mom so kindly made yesterday before she left and it was delicious.  Alicia went home and then it was just me and Nora.  We Facetimed with my parents which was fun and then Nora said she was tired again.  And once again, it was the battle of the baby.  She finally fell asleep about an hour ago (9 pm) with her fingers entwined in my hair, snuggling on my bed.  I will be so thankful when Paul gets home tomorrow night.   To all you Momma’s out there who deal with your hubby being away on a regular basis – I completely Salute you.  This week was a lot harder than I was expecting it to be, and I even had my Mom in town for most of it.  I also think I forgot how tired and impatient pregnancy makes me lol.  Hope that Saturday was a better day for most of you.  I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and the arrival of my Hubby – the European Traveller.  I caught a glimpse of some of the pictures he took on his phone via our iphone photostream – they look amazing!!

Fab Friday








So here are some fab things going on in the Otter Housefold this week:

-       The Mister is in Europe right now, traipsing across Paris and Belgium touring the battlefields of World War 1 and World War 11..  I’m jealous that I didn’t get to go, but I’m SO happy that he was able to have this experience.
-       One of my besties came out for the weekend – we didn’t do any crafting (like we had planned) but we had a blast together – or at least I had a blast lol.  And we went to Lonestar for dinner which was Delish.
-       My Momma came to town :)  Honestly – best part of my week.  She was able to watch Nora while I had to work and they had such a great time.  Dropping her off at the airport tonight was not so fab though – and I’m not the only one who hates goodbyes.  Nora cried the entire way home – broke my heart.  She did the same thing last week when my Dad left after visiting.
-       My Mom helped me pick up our new minivan!  I now have my MomMobile.  I love it.  It’s so much fun to drive and it’s just super awesome.
-       Our good friends Shaun came to my rescue today – I wanted to transfer the carseat from our car to the MomMobile.  Unfortunately I couldn’t get the carseat out of the car – I blame pregnancy awkwardness lol.  But I posted about it on Facebook and within ten minutes, Shaun came by and moved the seat out of the car and into the van for me.  I am so thankful for great friends.
-       I also started being a Sponsor on Laura’s blog.  She is the first blog that I have ever even considered sponsoring and she’s one of the first blogs I really started reading (and I don’t even remember how I found her blog lol).  So YAY for that.

Happy Friday Everyone

It's official - I'm a Soccer/Dance Mom





So I took the plunge yesterday.  I’m starting to sponsor some other blogs in order to generate more traffic on my blog.  That also means I have a PLAN to actually blog WAY more often lol.  So get ready to see more of me in the next few months.

Things are finally about to slow down here depending on what you consider slowing down lol.  I have 3 weeks of work left until I can officially start my maternity leave and you can bet your bippy that I’m starting it as soon as I’m legally allowed to!!  Up here, you can start mat leave 7 weeks before your due date and it lasts for one whole year.  I will have enough hours to claim it thank goodness, there was a bit of a concern for a little bit but I will be over the 600 hours needed.  So as of March 16 I can start my mat leave but the week before that happens to be Spring Break at the dance studio so I actually get to finish teaching on the 9th of March.  I’ll still be working on base at the gym for the last week but that’s easy-peasy work.  I like how I consider no longer working slowing down after I finish working we start showing the house depending on whether or not loverboy has received our Posting Message yet.  So we show and sell the house, get organized, Loverboy heads to Peg City to check out possible living quarters for us I don’t get to go because I will probably have a 2-3 day old baby.  He will come back, graduate from RMC, we will go to the Grad Ball, then the movers will arrive, pack us up, we clean our house, and we travel across country to our new home!  I’m nervous, excited and happy and sad all at the same time.  I will touch on that in a whole separate post it deserves it’s own lol.

On a happy note we are now the proud OWNERS of our Honda Civic we paid it off on Friday with a little bit of help from the parental units.  BECAUSE we bought our minivan on Friday morning.  We have been looking for a van for ages and have had little to no luck, but we found one at a dealership near by and went to check it out on Friday.  Everything about it was awesome it’s a 2008 Honda Odyssey EX-L and it has a sunroof and leather heated seats!!  Two things that I didn’t need but think are totally awesome lol.  Having a mini van is going to make our move so much easier can you imagine moving with a 2 year old, a newborn and a 65lb Labradoodle in a Honda Civic??  Me either lol.  Paul did an awesome job of dealing them down too we saved over $1000 off the asking price.  I’m definitely happy about that.  So our monthly payments are actually only $12 a month more than our car payments were, which is awesome for our budgeting.  Definitely makes Karen a happy camper.  Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday and get ready to see more of me in the near future!!


Miscellany Monday




miscellany monday at lowercase letters

Oh Monday – it already feels like this week has been SO long and it has just started lol.  So here are some randoms to begin the week.

1.  Yesterday was a weird day for us.  I didn’t sleep well on Saturday night, woke up several times with major heart burn and stomach pains.  I know I only have 12 weeks left til this baby arrives, but I am SO ready to be done soon lol.  And then we had a Nora scare where she tumbled down the stairs, worst experience of my life.  She’s done it once before with just me at home but this time Paul was home too so he was hurdling to get her so she didn’t get hurt – she’s a-ok and only has a teeny scrape on her chin.  But that didn’t stop us from being SUPER WORRIED all day yesterday. 

2.  I have the best husband in the world.  Seriously.  He has been so sweet in putting up with my crazy preggo mood swings.  And yesterday he took me to get a BeaverTail downtown at FebFest.  And it was absolutely delicious. 

3.  Our realtor is coming over tonight to talk to us about what we need to do to get our house sale ready.  I’m already starting to panic.  We can’t list our house until we have our posting message in our hands which could come anytime in March or April, but we have a REALLY small window of optimal time to sell our house.  If we list too late we will miss the prime market opportunity in our area.  And all of this is going on while we’re getting ready to have the baby and Paul is trying to finish his thesis and get ready to graduate and trying to secure a home in our new posting location.  No stress at all, right? Lol.  I just have to relax and laugh about it.  Even though that’s SO hard to do.

4.  I have started my moving binder.  And so many people are making fun of me for it.  The reason I am making/made one is because there are so many ins and outs to a military move in Canada.  There is a 125 page manual that covers everything that we are entitled to in our move, from what type of hotel room we can stay in, to what is covered when we sell our house and when we purchase or rent our new home.  And I figure I might as well try to be as organized as possible with that since we will have so much other chaos going on.

5.  Nora is getting to be such a big girl – she is starting to sign more and starting to say more too.  I hope that she starts to talk more soon.  I’m excited for Valentine’s Day with her, we plan on making some crafts this week and next week to celebrate, so it should be fun. 

6.  I’m also excited this month and sad at the same time.  Paul is heading to Europe for a week without me.  That’s the sad part.  The exciting part is that my Mom is coming to visit that week so I won’t be all alone with Nora for an entire week.  Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal but since I’m still teaching – it’s tough to find a baby sitter who can watch her for the fulltime that I’m teaching – Tuesdays it would end up being almost 8 hours of watching her when you include driving time. 

And that’s all for today – Happy Monday!!!