The Zoo, May 22, 2008

Actually posted by Annette but the pictures are on Jim's computer. :)

So we went to the zoo on Thursday, the Toronto Zoo. Boy, did we have fun. :)

Justin had a blast seeing different animals, sitting on stones shaped like animals and just running around seeing things. He played with another little boy named Aaron, pretended to be a cat frequently, and just was a good boy. Surprised me that he managed to stay up ALL day and well past the time we got home. We all went to bed at the same time. A frequent request, whenever he saw something that he really liked was "Justin want go in there too." "go in there too?"

Some pics....NOTE: these are from the camera that died on us. It has been in process of dying for a while, so to have it completely die wasn't a shock, but was a disappointment. So some of the pictures are not so good, some were completely unrecognizable, I picked the best of the lot.

This is Tagu's big brother.

and Dumbo too!

Herein lies fascination with one of the three big aquariums we saw.
BIG fish.

The family of Warthogs, or as Justin and I say, pigs!
He stared at these fellows, asking, where mommy pig?

It was interesting to note that there were Ducks and Canada Geese in almost every exhibit, except where the big cats were. :) Wonder why?
This seemed like an early batch of goslings, looked at least three days old.
What young lad can resist going through a natural Tunnel?
Here Justin played with Aaron for a while.

Doesn't my hubby take good pictures?

I must so recommend going to the zoo in the spring.
The crowds are less.
The animals are out more.
There is room to explore and not get bumped into by people and it is WAY quieter. :)

We will most definitely go to the zoo again in the spring.
Just don't buy the ice cream! WAY too expensive. No more promises by mommy to buy ice cream at the zoo! (promises aught to be kept don'tcha know!)

Family Update

Just thought I should post an update here again. it's been a bit, granted i do post things on my blog too, so it's not like I have been doing nothing. :)

Anyways, Justin is almost over his cold. Last night was the first night in almost a week and a half that I didn't have a little boy joining me in bed OR waking me up to come wipe a nose or give him a bottle or ... (you get the picture).

Mom and Dad were supposed to come up today, but Dad isn't. It will just be mom for Lunch and then shopping afterwards. Justin may stay with us OR go to gramma's for an hour or so.

What else...my newest batches of bunnies contain some really cool colours. I'm thrilled with that! I'm hoping one or two of the neat colours is female and then I can considering keeping. :)

Most of my garden is planted. Want to purchase some celery yet, plant more lettuce and so forth. But trying to spread out the lettuce a bit so it doesn't all come all at once.

Next week is holidays for Jim, will spend most of the day around here. the week after Jim goes to the Banner. and then back to regular routine. Jim's rather tired of work, needs a break. So next week he's off! :) He'll work on vehicles, moving rose bed and start work on the patio, we'll take a day trip to the zoo. I work Friday and then Saturday and Sunday we'll go camping up at the regionals and help out there. Monday morning Jim leaves for the Banner and comes home on Friday late. Should be an interesting two weeks.

Not much else to say, so will close off here.

Life Does Not Always Go as Planned

Yesterday I had planned to be out and about with Justin in the morning. Garage-saleing, pop in at the Agility sale in London and so forth.

BUT that changed when Justin mentioned that penis hurt and hard to pee. Checked him out, he had an "owie" down there. Took him to the doctor. Doc says either a yeast or a bacterial infection, probably yeast. Need to treat it with Monistat Derm for a week. IF that doesn't clear it up, then he gave me a sample of some other stuff to apply.

Justin is NOT pleased! I hate making my little boy cry twice a day. I just hate it! Not on my list of things I enjoy at all.

I hope the monistat clears it up soon, I really, really do!

Though I have to admit, Justin made me laugh yesterday. I asked the doc what causes this. He mentioned it was quite common in little boys learning how to pee and keep themselves clean, and that circumcised boys don't get this. We just need to continue to encourage Justin to keep himself clean down there.

When Justin and I got back to the car he asked "want go see circumcise mommy? Go now mommy?" I laughed! :) Told him Oh buddy, we can't go see circumcise, we just can't do that. :) So how would YOU have answered that one?

On a different note. A lady called me up from Windsor yesterday, asked me a lot about my bunnies, mentioned how she just wanted a pet bunny and she likes how the coats turn out on the lop-rex crosses. Said she was going to come up around four to get one. She never showed up to my knowledge, but later in the day I noted one of my youngsters was missing. I have to ask myself, did she show and was really quiet about it and helped herself OR did a bunny get out and get cat-nabbed? I really don't know. I'd rather it be curious bunny escaping than to think that someone could have slipped into our backyard without me noticing (or Sassy either). That idea just doesn't sit well with me.

Anywho, we have a missing bunny and an unhappy boy (only when his mommy is administering stuff to him). Other than that, Life is very much blessed of God in our household.

Middle of April

I've just realized I haven't done a family update lately. :)

So.... what have we been up to lately?

about this lad of ours ---

• Justin's favourite word lately is NO. He's fairly straight forward, everything is NO! It's a bit frustrating at times. BUT overall he's still a pretty good lad.
  
• We've learned that right now water is absolutely fascinating...making rivers and waterfalls, sitting there and watching it. I've learned to watch him carefully with water because he'll dump it in places you really don't want it -- found him one day dumping loads of water into the mouse food container (it still had mouse food in it) I had to lay it all out on a sheet to get it all dried again. ARGH! Silly lad. :) AND he's learned the joy of throwing water at people. :) Fortunately he's fairly easy to out-run at this point in his life.
  
• He likes to be silly - he'll do something and I ask what he's doing...'Justin silly boy!' will be the response...and sometimes it is safe, harmless and silly, and other times it likes "no Justin, that's not silly, that's wrong...don't break the rabbits food bowls".
  
• He's learning to dance to music (just not mommy singing). BUT he likes to tell mommy what to sing so we often sing.
  
• He likes to go to Toddler Time, but he hates it when Missy sings the clean up song. Has a fit at home when I sing it too. Not sure if it's for the same reason though. :)
• Hoping to start swimming with him at the local pool soon. Should be fun to do that again.
• He's learning his abc's and 123's and colours. Fun to watch his mind at work. He just likes to KNOW stuff right now.

Jim

• wrenched his back/shoulder the other day not sure who, resulted in some pain and resultant lack of sleep. Found it difficult to do some things. Found he liked having a couple of back rubs through it all :)
• has sent off his paperwork to go to the Conference at the end of May. I'd drawing a blank right now as to what the conference is. But it's a pastor's conference.
  
• Continues to work hard at his job
• Is trying to get the front fender off of the Sunrunner so that he can learn how to fix the rust on it using sheet metal (or something like that). He also has plans to fix the brake lines on the Mazda as they are starting to rust up a bit. Anyways, he apparently has two more screws to get off and the penetrating oil is taking it's time to do it's thing.
• Disappointing....We got a plecko, added it to Jim's peacock aquarium, they promptly got ICK, Jim treated the tank, two fish died..and then Jim realized that he neglected to remove the carbon from the filter. Removed that, treated them again, the ICK cleared up. ARGH!!! Lost some good fish. Jim's hoping we can replace them today. So that was a disappointing thing over the past week.
  

Annette

• uh...my life...always the hardest to come to......
• My bunnies are fun! I like raising bunnies and selling the offspring. Fun work. I like seeing the different colours and personalities. Customers can be odd to deal with but I think that's pretty normal. Not bad money even if I sell the babies cheap. I've had people out from Missausaga, St.Thomas, Kitchener and of course London for them. Amazes me when people are willing to drive 1.5 hours (or more) for a bunny, but I sell to them. :)
  
• I'm starting to plant my gardens, my radishes are starting to come up already. :) I hope the spinach and lettuce come soon too. Justin is learning to stay out of the planted gardens --- I put a brick on them to help him remember.
• I've had fun learning to do build rabbit cages. :) I use old lumber and free stuff from the lumber yard. I'll have to I think buy one more piece of plywood, but other than that, should be done. I want to get the cages up off the ground but haven't figured out a cost effective way of doing that yet. Any thoughts...let me know. :)
  

Sassy, Sparks and various critters.

• Sassy is doing well. Her leg tends to bother her at times. She hasn't had an issue with Justin at all lately! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!! But the weather is so nice lately she can be outside alot, and we're outside a lot too, so it's not like she's been abandoned. :) Justin's getting older and realizing that rushing a dog is NOT acceptable. She goes for walks to the park with us, rides in the car to the store (Short trips), and plays ball a lot. :) She also ALWAYS gets a good morning walk, the evening walks vary as to what's going on in the house and with Jim.
• Sparks continues to be a nice Tom Cat. He has some annoying habits that we'd like to break, but not sure that we can. He's a cat, they can be fairly particular.
• The fish...the guppies are doing well, they are very colourful which is one reason why I like them. The Kribs are growing well, we have at least one female. They assist in keeping the guppy population under control :) Also hoping to get a breeding pair so I can sell any resultant babies. That would be nice. :)
• Jim's put some new light bulbs in the tank upstairs with the south americans cichlids so they show off their colours really nicely.
• Guinea pigs, we have four girls and one boy right now. the boy is new so going through a hold stage. He was a young girls pet who simply doesn't have enough time for him. We'll see if we get youngsters from them or not.
  

That's about it I think.

Feel free to leave a comment that you've been by. :) Always nice to get comments...just click on the little comments box. If you do anonymous (because you don't want to open a blogger account) that's okay...just sign your name please. :) have a great day!

Maybe We Should Do This For Our Old Clothes

A boon and a blessing

So yesterday Eva (Jim's mom was here). She had promised Justin she would sleep over at our place when he got back from Oma and Papa's. She's very good at keeping promises to little boys.

Anyways, she said she'd stay with him while Jim and I stopped at the Doc's office to get my hand checked out. Saw the Practical Nurse who works for them. She thought that my hand should be doing pretty good by the middle of the week, but I'm to keep it wrapped until it's all healed up and to continue watching for infection. She said that I need to monitor that longer than I might think I need to. So...I'll keep a close eye on things. She wrapped it up again for me, used a new to me dressing (some antibiotic treated non-stick dressing) and it well...suffice it to say I tolerated it as long as I could and then I ripped it off. The heat generated by it caused all my healing blisters to flair up again. We stopped at shoppers' drug mart to pick up some new stuff and I washed my hand well and redressed it. That pain I'm not to desirous of repeating. I'll stick with the Melaluca triple antibiotic for sure (that and unmedicated non-stick pads)!

We continued on our way to London. Picked up a couple of mini rex bunnies from a fellow who had thought he might donate them as pet food. I figured I could give them a better home than that! One I think will end up being blind in the one eye, he mentioned that eye had been bad since birth and recently had been worse again. he'd been treating it with eye drops and I'm continuing the same.

BUT I ALSO got some clothes. God was good to us. We stopped at Pennington's. I really, really wanted to find some dress pants to replace the ones that got burnt in the fire. I found some. Also found some other pants, and some undies (yes, a number of them burnt too!). Then we scratched the scratch and win ticket and got 50% off! Go figure that! So I picked up a couple of shirts as well! We got $200 worth of clothing for $100....and much of what we purchased was on sale already. :) Pretty cool God's providence in that ain't it? :)

Got some clothes at Wal-mart too. I'll want my mom to shop with me sometime this spring to see if I can find another shirt to go with these pants I got, I don't have much that goes it them and they are really nice light pants to just wear to church or out and about and so forth. But a "NICE" shirt will make it work well for church.

Anyways, Jim and I were chatting about how much I had wanted to build 2-3 rabbit hutches this week and couldn't because of my hand. And I decided I would ask mom (eva) if she would stay over and help me...I figured the worst that could happen is she'd say no, she'd rather go home. She said yes! We got two cages built (Jim and Justin helped a bit as well). We discovered that we can work together rather well. (my lessons with Jim have paid off). I have a happy buck (lop-hop) who is simply delighted to be in a cage where he can hop around and being a crazy buck! :) Scruffy didn't much care as he'd been in a fairly big cage for a while already (originally Lop-hop's but Scruffy didn't try to escape from it and a smaller cage was easier to lop-hop proof!).

Grammer (Justin's word) stayed for a bit in the afternoon and just played with Justin. He had a blast. She wanted to stay to do the dishes up and said Mom...go home. Leave the dishes, they'll get done sometime.

This weekend has proven to be a boon and blessing to me in many ways, God's providence clearly seen in many ways. And I've learned a bit more about the fine art of patience when healing. Should stand me in good stead as my life continues! :)

Update on my Hand

So it's been 5 days.
My hand is getting a better. It still has moments of "ouch"....sometimes of my own doing when I forget it and try to push off something with it. NOT a good idea by the by.

The smallish blisters around the outside of my hand are going away.

The three-four large blisters haven't busted open which is good...gives the skin underneath a chance to heal.

The large area on my thumb doesn't ache constantly and actually looks pretty good. :)
The large area on my palm is still sore, but it's in a area where it feels every twinge of movement, it's healing more slowly but I'm okay with that, since it makes sense to me.

I'm not falling asleep for no apparent reason during the day anymore. and yesterday I had so much energy in me I could almost burst. I used that energy to do up the church newsletter and to start a webpage for my small critter business.

I see the Practical Nurse today at the Doctor's office. I'm imagining she'll give re-wrap it all up and then give me some more bandages for wrapping (or I'll have to buy something which is fine). I'm hoping to find a new pair of dress pants today to replace the ones damaged in the fire. Oh, and I'll need some pants for work as well....those I'm hoping to find at value village or a thrift store somewhere.

On a practical note - If I'm careful I can catch a jumping boy child (using my wrist instead of my hand). :) If I wrap my hand in plastic I can have a shower! :) I can't manage dishes yet. If I wrap my hand in a bag I can pick up baby bunnies to check on them :)

My parents were great with taking Justin for four days. He did really well with them. Was a happy boy and listened and slept when he aught to and so forth. Showed Oma his strong sense of determination at times, Her comment "he certainly knows his own mind doesn't he?" :) Oma learned that when he's a hungry boy child that he is definitely a hungry boy child. :) And that yes...he likes being tickled (as long as one doesn't overdo it). He plays really nicely by himself said Mom and Dad to me, more than once. So it was good to hear a good report back. It's like I know my boy is a good boy with strong determination....but it's good to hear the same from others. :)

Driving Instructors

FIRE!!!

Well, we had a little excitement this morning. I had just woken, and was still in that half asleep state that is common upon waking up. I heard the smoke detector go off downstairs, but I knew Annette was up, and figured she was cooking bacon or something else that commonly triggers the detector. Well, it kept going and going. Then I heard a yell from downstairs, "JIM HELP!" I got up and went down and upon looking into the basement saw a lot of smoke. Ran the rest of the way down to see Annette dumping water from the tap on a small fire among our laundry. Apparently a pile of laundry fell over against the furnace and go set on fire. Thankfully, Annette came in from caring for the rabbits, heard the alarm and went to see what was up. All that was damaged was various items of clothing, towels, sheets and the like.

Annette burned her hand when she grabbed what she thought was a towel, but which turned out to be a melted plastic laundry basket. So after we got the fire out, we called a member of our congregation who could take care of Justin (Thank-you Margaret M.), and after dropping off Justin headed to the ER.

Even though there really were no other people there, they took their time treating Annette. Partly I think to see how bad the burn was. But after some Toradol, Tylenol 3 and some liquid from the Novacain family that numbed the worst injured parts of her hand, they tried to clean the plastic residue off, with no success. The doctor said it shouldn't cause an infection problems and should come off as the skin sloughs off in the next while. The put an antibiotic cream over the hand and wrapped it in gauze, and we headed home.

Due to Annette only having one hand to work with we asked if her parents could take care of Justin for a couple of days, and my mom can to help with the clean up. Hopefully tomorrow when she goes in to the ER again to have her dressings changed and see how things are healing, we will find that all is healing well.

That about updates our fire adventure. I'm sure Annette will add to it when she can type again.

Busy Weekend

So wow...was this weekend ever busy!

Friday...Good Friday. Had a service in the morning, then Jim had a funeral home visitation. I had work. Thank goodness for Eva being around...she was able to watch Justin while I was at work and while Jim was at the visitation. The Good Friday service was apparently really good....I had no chance to listen to it as Justin did not want to go to the nursery and there was no way he wanted to go into church. He was quite adamant that Grammer get out of Sunday clothes and play with him and Mommy was to go to work! He was 32 months of profound determination. :)

Saturday we had the funeral service. Really good service. Justin sat in service until the sermon started and then we took Marcus' boy with us down to the nursery. It was rather funny at one point....Christopher started to cry and Justin's response to that was "throw him out!" (in reference to my oft repeated threat of "I'll throw you out the window") Made me laugh, which made Justin laugh and become the helpful little boy I know him to be. :) He made Christopher stop crying by his playing antics. :)

Sunday, sonrise service, breakfast and morning service. Then off to see my Sister. We had a family gathering there to celebrate birthdays and Easter. We had a lovely time. Justin hunted for Easter eggs, and had a lot of fun playing with his cousins. Tired boy fell asleep on the way home and went straight into bed.

A good weekend, but rather exhausting. :)

Building with a boy child

My boy and I worked hard today.

He hammered,

I hammered.

Together we got those nails into the wood.
I thought I was making a new rabbit cage.
He said, "we making crib for kitties!"I could not change his mind. :)
(can you see his Sparks and then Tagu in the train?
Giant Cosmos and baby Cosmos and little cat are there too really!)

Did we get finished?
Not today, 7 p.m. came much too fast.

He even learned today that thirsty, hard-working people
can drink juice right out the jug!

And one tired boy had a nice fun bath and crawled into bed.
Ah...but did we have fun. :)

For the Video of this, go here.

Justin's Current Favorite

Today Justin kept asking me for Diesel 10 on 'puter. I kept searching youtube, but had to google Diesel Ten to find out what episodes he was in. I found he was in the movie "Calling All Engines." This is now Justin's favorite.

Travis on my bum?

see these? Justin's are somewhat different, but you understand the concept. :)

Justin LOVES THEM!!! I have underwear I don't have a struggle putting or keeping on him! (so I guess I love 'em too!)

He made me laugh today.
I put on the Travis undies him. Justin was fascinated. "travis on my bum?"
"wanna see him, travis on my bum, mirror mom mirror? travis on my bum see him?".

here I had to lift him up so that he could see travis on his bum in the mirror. :)
I laughed.
I told him, yes, see, there is travis on your bum.
his response "wanna see travis gain!"

But by then my back was saying "Stupid woman, put that boy child down!" so I did. :)

My Back

If anyone reads this blog and feels inclined to pray.

I shoveled snow on Saturday...heavy stuff at the end of the driveway. I must have done something wrong since my back did not appreciate my effort. By the end of the day I was not in good shape. Not good, but I will survive. makes me thankful for days when my back isn't spasming as much. :)

and to think ...I've shovelled oodles of snow this winter without a problem....

Ah well...God plans things out differently than I would, but grants also the grace to deal with it.

March 4, Ear Check-up

Today Justin had his 6 month check up at Dr. Raymond's office in Strathroy.

His ears are good.
His tubes are still intact.

His tonsils are big but not infected. If they get too big they will be removed or if get white spots on them he'll be put on an antibiotic. They will need to be monitored. I can see his tonsils very clearly if he sticks out his tongue at me. To me they look HUGE! :)

He doesn't have a lot of wax in his ears which is a good thing.

From an ENT perspective he's in good shape.

Yesterday Visit

So yesterday Justin and I headed up to Mom and Dad's for a visit.

The whole way down Justin kept up this litany.
Where we going mom?
To Oma and Papa's house?
What do there mom?
I don't know Justin, visit I think, what do you want to do there?
Play with TOYS! was the delighted response.

Granted, after 10 minutes of this the conversation was getting rather old for me...but hey...what do you do when it's just the two of you in a car? You point out trucks and silos and farms and tractors. And manage to intersperse those into the conversation, and when all else fails... get "tagu" to help you drive the car (and be scared off all the transports on the road). That's what you do! :)

Anyways, had a lovely visit with my parents.
Helped mom with a computer problem.
Justin played and played and played some more.

We left a bit later than expected because the first attempt at downloading a thing that mom needed failed, and I wanted to get it all installed for her as well.

Justin fell asleep soon after we left.
Slept when I brought him into the house.
Slept even after Jim tried to wake him up.
Slept after I got him up.
Finally I held him in my lap so he could watch Thomas on my computer. That helped him get going again. If he'd gone to bed for good at 430 he would have been up WAY to early for me.
We had a BAD supper...pizza, but it fit for a end to a tiring day.

To read up on how I got him into bed at the close of the day, go here.

It's been a Spell

So it's been a spell since I've updated everyone. Not a whole lot to say either!

Okay...let's think here.....
This past weekend Jim and I headed out of town so that we could go to a teaching conference. We stayed at another Pastor's house as they were very close by. it was nice to stay with them and get to know them a bit more. Jim knows Doug better than I do, but the family seems quite nice and Doug is just this sweetie of a man. :)

This teaching conference was hosted by the Discipleship Committee of the RCA, Ontario Classis. The conference was put together to explain Vantage Point 3 and LOH (which official name escapes me at the moment). Anyways, LOH is based on Vantage Point 3 which is an adult discipleship/leadership training course. It lasts for three years, costs mega-bucks to be part of, but the classis is willing to reimburse some of that cost. LOH is directed toward youth, cost is more reasonable and includes a yearly retreat. Both sound good, but I have to admit I have some hesitancy toward it.

My hesitancy toward Vantage point 3 stems a lot from my irritation in the morning session where the Speaker used a lot of pop-psychology language where I ended up thinking...so what exactly is he trying to say here? Can't you just find a normal way of talking rather than using all these stupid catch phrases that don't mean anything.

My hesitancy toward LOH comes from
1. why should we pay for a conference that we might not be able to attend? Why should that cost be built in? Does it (and I never got this answered) include the price of accommodations (the standard answer to such like questions was "depends a lot on the churches and the region involved). Tells me nothing, even if it is true.
2. Most churches, if they put a bit of work into it, could develop a similar program for a lot less financial outlay on the whole. $100 per student per year (for 2-3 years)translates into a lot of cash. Cobbling something else together could quite effectively do just as good a job. Granted, means a bit of work on the part of the church, but that's what we're in ministry for...to do the best job we can with the resources God has granted us, to further the kingdom of God.

Enough of that. :)

Justin, while we were gone, had LOTS of fun with his grammer (Jim's mom). Tunnels, trains, tents, snow, popcorn and laughter all round. :)

I've posted my bunnies for sale. Have 12 to sell. I'll give kijiji a couple of weeks to do it's thing and then I'll just bring those I don't want to the market in London and sell them there. I potentially have two of them sold already. YEAH!!! :)

This coming weekend Jim is off to the Classis meeting in Welland, Justin and I might go to the Market in London and we're visiting my folks on Thursday (Justin and I, Jim has to work).

What else? Can't think of anything off the top of my head so I'll just close off then.

Update on my bunnies

So, all my young bunnies are sold! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most I sold for $10 a piece, two for $8 each, most went to decent homes as far as I know, and three I sold at market for not as much as I wanted, but ah well... at least I didn't have to feed them and I didn't want to risk being stuck with them either. :)

One lady came out at 11 p.m. to get her bunny she was so eager. Dragged her boyfriend along for the ride. Came out from London.

Sent one off yesterday to a lady who is hoping to start breeding her own bunnies. Had a lovely chat with her and her two little ones.

We're left with the two that I really wanted to keep as replacement girls so life is good. :) Oh...and the one non-grower that I still have no clue what I want to do with. Not sure that I can leave her with the piggies indefinitely.....

Some of Justin's favourite on-line places

As an aid to my hubby

some favourite pages of Justin's

colouring pages

• Disney CARS colouring pages.
• bob the builder colouring pages ... same company with CARS
• blue clues :)
  

Activity Sites

• thomas the train
• bob the builder
• pbskids for caillou, berenstain bears, and clifford.

And then of course there's the ever popular YouTube with it's various thomas the tank engine clips. :)

Challie's Contest

You'll notice in the sidebar a link to Challies new Contest.
He is giving away this month the following:

Three prizes will be awarded as follows:

• First prize: Five Films Gift Pack: Still Standing: The Stonewall Jackson Story, Inherit the Land: Adventures on the Agrarian Journey, The Eden String Quartet: A Bountiful Blessing, A Journey Home, The Peasall Sisters: Family Harmony.
• Second prize: New Films Pack: Still Standing: The Stonewall Jackson Story, Inherit the Land: Adventures on the Agrarian Journey.
• Third Prize: Still Standing: The Stonewall Jackson Story.