I've created a monster!

Come on, gimme more!

Notice the whip cream he missed?

Deep in concentration.

This was done as a joke, as I really didn't think he would do it. That will teach me!

Just for Dad

Today my Dad would have been 56. So, in memory of him we started a new tradition. Every year starting this year, we will celebrate January 31st with deep fried fish and chips, with Dad's batter on the fish of course. And, in true Dad style, we rounded out this very heavy meal with lemon tarts and whip cream.

For Adam

This link is for you. I, being the wonderful wife that I am, have found your perfect job. Just remember if you get it, we're coming to visit. Check out the link here (and as far as I know this is NOT a joke. Michael from Michael's Meanderings has applied for it, and you can see it HERE). And since you'll be there and if you're not going to apply, you should vote for him and give him 5 stars!

A little help from my friends

I have a friend here that is looking for some online resources and I thought I would reach out to all of you. My friend has a son with sensory integration dysfunction and is looking for some "real life" help. She is looking for either blogs or websites written by parents / caregivers / support teams etc. She has found many online resources, but is looking for something a little more "close to home" if you know what I mean. Does anyone know of any?

Ice sculpture

This is on the other side of town from us. This is an annual contest here in town and I can't wait to find the rest of them!

For Tawny

Here are my winter boots. Not girly at all (actually they are men's) but SUPER comfortable, extra warm and no water is getting in these babies. They would kick a pair of Ugg's ass. :)

Introducing Otto

Meet Otto, the newest member of our family. Anyone care to guess the reasoning behind his name?

Look what I found!

Anyone who knows me in the "real world" knows I am obsessed with a series of books called "The Outlander Series" by Diana Gabaldon. I was introduced to this series by my SIL Kelly. I have all the books, and have read the series many times. I am in the process of reading them again, because I recently found out that the latest book in the series is in the works to be released. Diana Gabaldon has her own website that I have infrequently visited over the past and one late night last week I found myself there again. To my great surprise she now has a blog, which I have added to my blog list. There are some wonderful things happening along wit the new book, including a movie in the works (HOORAY) and an illustrated novel that should be out this summer. (O.M.G). I refer to these books simply as "Jamie and Claire" as these are the 2 main characters. While looking at her blog the other day she has the UK cover of the book there (you can see it HERE) and I'm just itching to get it. She also has exerpts of the book there, but I won't read it until I have the whole book. If you haven't read this story, I encourage to you. If you have, you'll probably be just as excited as me to see this. Now, all I have to do is figure out who I would best like to see cast in the roles. For anyone who has read the book, any thoughts??

In just one word......

Where is your cell phone? kitchen

Significant other? Rob

Your hair? blah

Your mother? independant

Your father? angel

Your favorite thing? camera

Your dream last night? none

Your favorite drink? coffee

Your dream/goal? studio

What room are you in? livingroom

Your hobby? reading

Your fear? death

Where do you want to be in 6 years? north

Where were you last night? Meadow

Something that you aren't? Impulsive

Muffins? blueberry

Something you wish for? patience

Last thing you did? pictures

What are you wearing? sweats

TV? drama

Your pets? none

Friends? online

Your life? limbo

Your mood? content

Missing someone? always

Drinking? rarely

Smoking? No

Your car? changing

Something you're not wearing? socks

Your favorite store? Northern!

Your favorite colour? blue

When is the last time you cried? Saturday

Where do you go to over and over? Northern

Five people who read the blog regularly? Jen, Kara, Mom, Nicole, Chris

My favorite place to eat? Chinese

Favorite place I'd like to be right now? Bed

My challenge to you is to try this. It's not as easy as it looks!

Pictures from the last couple days

My little skiier. He loves it and next week will join an after school ski club. The only requirement for the club is that you had to know how to tie your shoes, so he sat down tonight and figured it out! Such a smart kid.

It was finally warm enough to go outside this weekend and play. We tried to build a snowman but since the snow here is so soft it didn't work. So, it started as a "sculpture" but not surpringly became a Pokemon.

I saw this when i was going to work this mroning, and luckily had my camera with me. The lighting was crappy which is why I flipped it to b/w. This truck belongs to one of the women I work with. Her granddaughter's boyfriend drove it out on the ice and got it stuck in slush. So they left it there overnight and dug it out sometime today.

Joey and his bike

Pictures from today

It was so warm today we were finally able to get outside and play. It warmed up to -1 degree, which is a big difference from the -46 we had on Wednesday. That's 45 degrees warmer in 72 hours. Crazy, but I'm not complaining. I even had the windows open for a little while today!

Daddy and Joey shovelling. Notice Rob is wearing sneakers!

Joey and his new best bud Brian, who lives across the street.

I also took Joey sliding with a few friends and couldn't resist snapping this picture. I just love it.

Boys and their toys. Rob decided it would be fun to tow Colby on his sled up and down our street with the tow cable on the truck. Colby loved it! The rest of these pictures can be found HERE

My boys

I really am a rotten wife

Who else but a wife like me when cutting her husband's hair cut buzz a strip right down the middle and THEN take a picture? Doesn't this picture scream "I hate you". If he didn't then, he will as soon as he sees this post! AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Alrighty I'll play too

I've been tagged by Trudie and since I have nothing to blog about this is a good time to do it. So here are the instructions:

1.Go to your documents

2. Go to your 6th file.

3.Go to your 6th picture.

4. Blog about it.

5. Tag 6 friends to do the same.

This is the picture I did of the boys for Christmas. I sent this home and wanted to wait until our family members got it before I posted it here and then forgot to post it. Oopsy. Oh, and Nicole I forgot to get this printed and send it to you. It totally slipped my mind. Do you want one or do you want to wait until next christmas for another christmas picture? :)

And as for tagging 6 people, well if you see this and you haven't done it, you're tagged!

Yummo!

Supper this weekend, after a week long sleep in the freezer of course surrounded in plastic!

(Eat your heart out Adam!!!)

Toutons

I can't believe I forgot to post this picture. This is toutons, which I thoroughly enjoyed for breakfast on Sunday morning. Toutons are fried bread dough, slathered in butter and molasses. And along with my morning Tim Horton's coffee in my spiffy Tim Horton's collector mug (Thanks Mom!) it was worth the wait.

I also couldn't resist posting this picture. Colby's class cleaned our their desks on Friday and after wading through the half finished coloring pages and Pokemon drawings, I found this. This was for their "Anti Smoking / Drug Week". I took it to work and laminated it. I'm making a collection of their work for a set of placemats, so we can enjoy their artwork every night.

More artsy fartsy

Have I mentioned how much I love living here?? (You can see more here )

I DID IT!

For all of you anxiously waiting to find out what a touton is, you'll have to wait until I have my supper and I'll show you!

What is happening to me???

Something crazy has happened to me since I moved to the North (and I use that term loosely because I don't feel like where we are is "north"). I'm turning into someone who makes really good food. Not that I couldn't cook before, but living in an area where take out and "convenience food" is not available forces you to becoming creative in cooking. Last weekend I made "east coast donairs" for the 2nd time since moving up here, and they were such a big hit I've had multiple requests to make more. I also successfully pulled off christmas jiggs dinner, complete with salt beef and cabbage and all. That was the first time I've cooked with salt meat since Rob and I have been together. I can made a mean stir fry, and am no longer turning to pre made sauces.

The preschool I work at has a parents night every month, where parents are invited to come for a meal and "something else". Once time it was making scrapbooks, another was a traditional christmas Metis pudding, another was how to cook meat loaf.. well, you get the idea. Everything you need is supplied at no cost, and supper is always cooked before hand. They had one planned for today for "bread making". I am now realizing that not a lot of people in this community make their own bread. Well, unfortunately since today's event was planned for the morning instead of the normal evening time, no one but me showed up. Now, I know how to make bread. I grew up watching my mother make it. She tried numerous times to teach me this skill, but I stubbornly refused. I have tried it since I have moved home a few times, but lack of patience prevented me from turning out a good batch of bread. Anyways, we got chatting this morning and I mentioned to the ladies there that I know how to make bread, and somehow ended up volunteering myself to teach them how to do it one day this week at work. I also tried to explain toutons to them, and now they all want to try them. ( If you know what a touton is, your mouth is probably watering right now thinking of that warm butter and molasses, and if you have a puzzled look right now, well you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out). So, I called mom tonight and asked her the ingredients for her bread. In true Newfoundland fashion she said:

"Well, every batch is different since I don't use a recipe but you just need" ...... (sorry, the rest is top secret)

So tomorrow I'm going to try to make bread. I can't very well go in there and teach them how to make it without first making it myself. Check back late tomorrow night for either a picture of a beautiful loaf of bread and toutons, or a burnt pan and a pissed off self portrait.

A great mommy moment

When Joe and I are home by ourselves, I turn off the TV and put on one of the music stations that Bell has. Lately we have been listening to Galaxy HitList, which is really 10 songs that they play over and over, or at least that is waht it feels like. My new favorite song is "I'm Yours", by Jason Mryas (I think that's his name). So when that song comes on, I tend to drop whatever I'm doing, turn it up and Joey and I dance around the livingroom. He now picks the song out whever we are, and have been known to do some crazy chair dancing in the truck while waiting outside Colby's school for him. So that brings me to this morning. Joe was playing on the computer, so I turned on the music channel and snuck off to clean up the bedrooms. Next thing I know, Joey is running in the bedroom to find me, just bubbling with excitment. He grabs my hand and drags me to the livingroom, where "our song" is playing. He's just beaming from ear to ear at me and looks up at me with those big blue eyes and says:

"Dance Mommy?"

Really, who can say no to that? And thanks to the DVR, we were able to rewind it 3 times and danced and laughed like fools all around the livingroom.

A big thanks to everyone

First of all, thank you to all of you who left birthday wishes. The phone calls, emails and Facebook messages were all great. I woke up this morning honestly not feeling the best, and debated on not going to work and crawling back in bed. I am glad I decided to stick it out and go, because waiting for me was this. (blogger won't let me upload pics or I would have put it there)

Along with this, (which I was told I had to wear all day and who am I to argue with 3 and 4 year olds) there was a big Happy Birthday sign in the window and a cake waiting for me. All the kids sang Happy Birthday to me and of course, helped me eat the cake and ice cream. Have I mentioned how much I love my job?

Ice fishing

Just wondering if anyone has any pictures of ice fishing? Our cultural teachings this week at the preschool is ice fishing, with trips planned to take the kids out on the lake to see nets being cast and pulled in. It is my task this week to gather pictures of ice fishing to show the kids before we take them out. I have googled this and have a few pictures, but was wondering if anyone has any that they would like to share. Thanks so much. You can email them to me at rob tina schwartz (all one word) at hotmail dot com.

Donair recipe

For those who asked, the recipe for the donairs that we made and the sauce can be found here

Stolen facebook pictures

My mom, brother and nephew

My mom and nephew Alan who is 5 months younger than Joe

My SIL Kelly, Alan, my brother BJ, my siste Kass and my mom

He's just too cute! And my brother's not bad either.

Such a cute couple!

I figured I would post some pics of family members from back home.

Burn After Reading

We just finished watching this movie, and I'm still shaking my head. After "Don't Mess With the Zohan" (which we watched a few nights ago) probably the worst movie I've ever seen. I still don't get it. Any thoughts?

For all my transplanted east coast friends

This is what we made for supper on New Year's Eve. Good, ole fashioned super messy donairs. They turned out awesome, and even had 3 take out orders by the local RCMP!

My New Years Resolution

My resolution for this year is to make a post everyday, even if it is about nothing. So here goes. We have spent a very lazy day here, and it has been wonderful. We spent the morning taking down the tree and putting the livingroom back in order, and then spent the afternoon playing playstation and doing a lot of nothing. Hello 2009!