More Vacation Photos

Finally getting some time to post the rest of the photos (and a few stories) from our trip last weekend. We left Friday afternoon and got to Vancouver around 9pm. We checked into our hotel and pretty much tumbled right into bed. Saturday morning we got up and ventured out to the Greater Vancouver Zoo. Easier said than done! We had to take two busses plus a $10 cab ride to get there, and the same back again. Why they would not run a bus all the way out to something like that, I have no idea!! We got off to a rough start at the zoo, but it ended up being a great day. We rented this bike thing that was two bikes side-by-side- with a long basket in the front for kids and a roof over the whole thing. Well, we got on, I was putting all my things (camera, notepaper, pamphlets, etc...) into the backpack when Brian starts rolling backwards CRUSHING my foot under the pedal!!! The swelling has still not completely gone down tonight, 5 days later, lol! Then we got into an argument about driving abilities about five minutes into our drive around the zoo! But, we got through it and made it through the rest of the day without anymore mishaps! Here are a few photos from the zoo...

Saturday night Brian and I went out for dinner while Austin spent some time with Brian's parents at their house. Sunday morning we got up and headed to Stanley Park. We started at the children's petting farm. Austin was more interested in the tractor than the animals at first, but he did got around and give each little goat one pat on the back, lol!!! After petting the animals we went on a little train ride, which Austin just loved, he had this totally serious look on his face during the whole ride, just soaking it all in. Then we headed to the water park and Austin and I got soaking wet, and freezing cold, playing in the water. When we left the park we went to Granville Island where they were having a huge Canada Day celebration. Brian and Austin had a nap on the grass while I did some shopping. I got some stamps, stickers and a band-aid tin at a Stamping Store in the Kid's Market and a couple little wind-up toys for Austin. And I got some nice polished rocks too. That night Austin stayed at Brian's parents' house for the night and we went to watch the fireworks and went to the bar for a couple drinks.
Brian's mom had a free pass for five people to get into Science World so that's where we went before coming home on Monday. We went and picked up Austin from Brian's parents, had some breakfast there and the headed out. We asked a family walking in if they wanted to get in for free with us, since our pass was for five people and there was only two of us. They were so blown away and happy, it was so cool! Science World was very interesting, we didn't see even close to everything, it was so big and so many cool things to check out. After a couple hours there were went back to Brian's parents' place and had some lunch, a nap and got ready to come home.

Animal Photos

Just wanted to share some of the photos from the trip we took this past weekend. These are all of the animals from the Greater Vancouver Zoo and from the kid's petting farm at Stanley Park in Vancouver. I will share some more of other things later, with some stories from our trip. These are just some of my favorites of the animals.

New Scrappy Site

Check it out:
http://www.scrapattackscrapbooking.com/messageboard/

And join us for some fun!! I just know Amy has some awesome challenges up her sleeve for us!!! Oh, and don't forget to tell them who sent you! :)

Why???

Why can't I learn to just say NO!!! I had the most stressful day yesterday! A friend of bf and mine was staying with another woman in my building. A few days ago they had an argument, one of many apparently. Well she called the police and it turned into this whole big, way blwon out of proportion thing. So he comes here the next night to get into the building, which he had always done when she isn't home since he doesn't have a key to the front door. Well, she is not home and has locked the place up tight, so he can't get any of his things. He comes back down and tells me this and I ask him "well, do you just need somewhere to sleep tonight?" (apparently my first mistake, I am too damned nice!!!). So he stays here and leaves in the morning. Then I hear from my other neighbour upstairs that he was back later that day and they were able to help him get some of his things. Ok, good. Well, Saturday night he shows up and asks if he can stay the night again. I said sure, and when he asked if he could leave a couple things like his tools for work here for a couple days I said yes. Well, he talks to this woman yesterday morning and she puts all his stuff out in the hallway for him and he brings it down and fill my kitchen with it! He says he just has to go through and organize it and make sure nothing is missing. OK. I am getting a little nervous for some reason now, just this bad feeling creeping in. He spends all morning on MY computer while I am washing HIS laundry!!!! See what I mean, too damned nice I tell ya!! Well, next thing I know my landlord is knocking on my door to ask about some papers I need to sign for new managers. She sees him sitting at my computer and at first I think she thought it was Brian (bf) then she did a second look and realized it was my friend. Now my nervousness had a reason. She tells him he is not supposed to be on the property! WHAT?!?!?! He had not been told this and I was certainly shocked. She tells him he has until the end of the day to get his stuff and get off the property. And tells me "you know you can't store any of his stuff here" I am just shaking and all I can do is nod my head. So she leaves and he still sits on the computer in no hurry to get his stuff packed and out. After my stress level rose to the point where I was snapping at Austin for no good reason I called bf who was supposed to be on his way here anyways. He had had a couple beers, which usually would tick me off, but it worked to my advantage cause when I told him what was going on he was REALLY mad!! I went in Austins room and started cleaning while the friend was out in the kitchen finally going through his stuff. A few minutes later Brian comes in and starts yelling at him he has 3 minutes to get what he needs into a bag and get out. He can come and get the rest in a few days WITH Brian with him, not alone! I stayed in Austin's room the whole time, lol, I didn't want to get in the middle of them. Plus I felt bad that I hadn't said anything to him myself first. But, that's me, I cannot say no to people, I cannot tell people when they have overstayed their welcome. Why?? It causes me so much stress and I just can't do it! Which is why I never have company and why my favorite thing about this building was that I didn't really know anyone. The night before the nieghbour upstairs had passed down some rye in a pop bottle for him, but he was already sleep so he didn't drink it. And in his rush to get out he forgot to take it with him. So, I went and bought some pop at the store and I drank every last drop of the rye with it! LOL!! I don't ever drink so I got pretty tipsy! After Austin went to bed of course. Well, after a couple drinks there is a knock on my door at 10pm, I knew it was him so I didn't answer. He was told not to come back unless Brian was with him. Plus I didn't trust myself to be able to tell him to bugger off if I did open the door. I went and sat in my hallway against the washing machine and called bf to tell him. Talk about over reacting, lol, that's what drinking does to me! LOL!!! He only knocked twice and got the hint and left. I think he had come back for the rye, lol, and I sure wasn't opening the door to tell him I had already drank it!! Brian is on his way over now in case he tries to come back today, he can deal with him! Teach me to be nice to people! One of these days I WILL learn!!

Summer WAS here!

We had some awesome weather for about two weeks there, then came the rains, and now we are having some very cloudy but still very warm days. I have a love/hate relationship with these kinds of days, lol. Love, because it's not too hot or too cold, perfect temperature. Hate because there is always the uncertainty of whether the clouds will clear away to the scorching sun, or open up with a downpour! Anyways, we have been spending most of our days just hanging out in doors lately. We spent last week at my parents all week, looking after the animals while they were both away.

On the May 31st Brian, Austin, and I went to a little get-together at the exhibition grounds. The early intervention team, which involves speech therapy and child development stuff had a little fun day for the kids. Austin has a lady that comes to see him for his development once a month so we were invited. It was lots of fun, Austin had an absolute blast!! And I got some great photos!

While I was at my parents' last week I went through all of the old photo albums and got some copies of some of my baby photos. Cheryl issued a challenge over at 2jills for this month to scrap a baby photos of ourselves. I had been meaning to do it for a while and Cheryl's challenge was just the push I needed. I took the albums outside and took a photo of each photo I liked with my digital camera. They turned out way better than I expected and I printed a couple off at my mom's to work on there and when I got home, since I didn't want to wait until payday next Wednesday to play with them, lol!! And I got a few of me with my papa, which makes me VERY happy, since I don't have a single one of him other than them. I'm hoping to scrounge up enough change to go get those printed tomorrow for a challenge over at Scraplovers. Here are a couple of pages I have gotten done with them so far...

Back in the swing of things

Wow, did I ever lose track of pretty much everything for a while there! We had Austin's birthday party on May 12th. The whole week leading up to that we were extremely busy every single day, I didn't turn my computer on ALL WEEK! It totally exhausted me and I am just now getting back into some kind of routine. I'm still exhausted and my whole body hurts, but at least I have time to relax now! And scrap!! LOL!! I managed to keep up with my photo a day until about the 20th and then I gave up, lol, was just too much. I will try to share a couple each day until I get them all posted. OK, time for some catch-up...

LIFE IN GENERAL: Austin's birthday was lots of fun. I invited about 12 kids, and we had 3 show up, from the same family, lol. But, it ended up being the perfect amount. I don't think me or my apartment could have handled anymore than that!! I premade some shakers with paper plates and rice/cheerios, got some stickers and let the kids go town with those. Then they decorated their own cupcakes with gummy bears and sprinkles and had some jello with that. Then Austin opened his presents. The kids got him a bubble machine so we went out in the yard and set that up and they had an absolute blast!! Austin kept asking me "bubboos?" for days after that, lol! He had another party the next weekend at Donae's house, since her and the girls weren't able to make it here for the first one. He had lots of fun at that one too. Not spoiled or anything eh? LOL!! Other than that, there hasn't been a whole lot going on around here. Yesterday we went out to Lake Cowichan to our Dr. Austin had his 2 year checkup and I talked to him about some pain I have been having in my whole lower half of my body, from my lower back down. He said he sees the same thing in a lot of moms when their kids get to be between 30-40 pounds and they are having to carry them around a lot. He did give me some stronger pain killers than the ones I have already been taking for my hips, so we will see if those help. Brian spent the night last night and today we got up early and went to the Salvation Army to get some food they put out in the mornings. I am thinking I will probably start going everyday just for something to get me up in the morning! Then we ran around doing some errands and enjoying the sunshine. Got three prize packs I have been waiting for in the mail today, talk about a good mail day!! Now Brian is here, Austin is in bed and we are watching some tv. Tomorrow we have a fun day to go to thatthe Child Development Services is putting on, should be fun!

SCRAPPING: I have been managing to get quite a bit of scrapping done. I entered a So You Think You Can Scrap contest over at scraplovers.com and have made it to the 4th round so far!! So excited about this, I have never made it this far in these kinds of contests before. And I have joined Lucy's Diva Designers at her My Sketch World blog.

Here are my entries for the SYTYCS contest so far:

Week 1: Use no patterned paper and a song title:

Week 2: Scrap some part of your family history and use some memorabilia on the page. My memorabilia is from a trip my grandma and I took together to the UK.

Week 3: Find an album/CD cover to use as inspiartion for a layout and use your favorite technique:

Here is the album cover I chose:

And here is my layout. I did not do this artwork myself. I printed the images from the computer, transferred them and colored them in. I did add some of my own doodles to tie it all in together. The photo is Austin sitting on the base of a totem pole downtown.

For this weeks challenge we were given descriptions of 7 dance techniques. We have to choose which description best fits our own personality and scrap our layouts in a style that we think suits that dance technique and show why we think that technique fits us. I'm stumped, but I'm sure I will come up with something!

Photo A Day - May 4, 5 & 6

Getting behind already...not good! So, catch-up time...

May 4th:
I started out taking some photos of Austin coloring a picture, but then leter in the evening he was on my lap and kept giving me kisses. He is so funny! He grabs both sides of my face with his little hands and pushes really hard to kiss, it's so cute. I grabbed the camera and took some self portraits. I managed to get one good one before the novelty wore off and he found better things to do, lol!
May 5th:
Austin loves to watch cartoons, though he rarely actually sits down and settles in to do it. Usually something will catch his eye while he is playing and he will stop in his tracks and watch for a minute or two. Usually standing perfectly still in the middle of the living room, lol. But, he was in a cranky, tired, just plain rotten mood all day today and actually climbed up on the couch and settled in for a while. I got some great shots, but this was the best one, I love how wide-eyed he is!May 6th:
Austin just loves to get into whatever I am doing, and LOVES to 'help' me with everything. This is becoming a great thing around here, he puts his laundry in the basket and his diapers in the garbage! But, when I am trying to scrap, not so great, lol. Though it is very cute, I have to admit! Today I was looking through buttons to find which ones to put on a layout and Austin got his little hands in there and started laying out the buttons on my page for me. Then he helped me put them all back in the box, lol!! Love this close-up of his handy work.

2nd place!!

So, I entered the wall decor I did for Austin's room into a Creating for Kids contest at Serendipity Scrapbooks, just for the heck of it. Why not, right? Well, the winners were announced yesterday and I got 2nd place!!! Very exciting!! You can check it out here: http://www.serendipityscrapbooks.com/contests.htm#Personal_Sketch_Contest_winner

Photo A Day - May 3rd

I have decided that my photos for the month are going to be of Austin and the things he loves. Yesterday was apples. Today I got a cute shot of him with his favorite stuffy after he woke up from his nap. I have no idea where he even got this little bunny, I think my grandma may have sent it with a bunch of other stuff before he was even born. And then again, maybe not. Who knows! All I know is that he absolutely loves the thing. He sleeps with it every night, and every nap. Except for the couple days it was in the laundry after Austin took it for a swim in the toilet! LOL! Here's the photo: We were also given a mini challenge to photograph a pet peeve. I chose my smoke detector. In the year that I have lived here this smoke detector has become my biggest pet peeve, I hate this thing!!! First of all, as you can see, it is hanging from the ceiling. No, it's not disconnected! I have tried many times to get up there and get it to stay up, but it refuses. But, what I really hate about this smoke detector is how sensitive it is. And not just to smoke, it seems to be sensitive to heat in general. And it is only about 6 feet from my oven. Every night when I make supper I have to set up a fan on a stack of boxes under the smoke detector, turn on the overhead fan above my stove, and open my front door, to make sure it doesn't go off. And if it DOES go off, it takes quite a lot of towel waving to get it turn off again!!

Photo A Day - May 2nd

So, I joined a photo a day challenge for the month of May over at scrapbook.com. Not off to the greatest start, I missed a day already! LOL! But, here is my photo for the 2nd. Austin is loving the apples lately, he has one for a morning snack and an afternoon snack (or even for dinner some nights! LOL!). Here is a fun photo that I think shows just how much he really loves his apples!!

2Jills Blog Challenge #7

This week Tam has challenged us to list 7 habits that we have. Good, bad or otherwise. So, here are mine...

1. I leave my wet laundry in the washing machine until it gets stinky and has to be washed again. This is an awful, awful habit since it wastes soap and electricity, I'm trying to work on getting better at this!

2. I have to be early for everything. This can obviously be a good thing, but it also can be a bad thing. I can't count the number or times Austin and I have been standing at the bus stop in the pouring rain waiting for a bus that will not even be leaving downtown for five more minutes and won't get to us for fifteen!

3. Lately I have been leaving the house without letting the cat out of the bathroom! Bad mommy!! LOL! She is an indoor cat, so when I want to have the front door open to let some air in I shut her in the bathroom with her food, water, litter box, and a blanket in the tub to sleep on. She doesn't mind too much, she sleeps all day anyways, lol! But, she is not too happy when I put her in there in the morning, then head to town for the day without letting her back out! I actually had to put a note to myself on the door so I will see it when I am leaving and let her out, lol.

4. I swear a lot when I am angry, especially at Brian, and especially on the phone. This is something I really, really have to work on since I have noticed Austin picking up on it in the past few days. Definitely do not need my 2 year old repeating those words in public!!!

5. I may have to be early to get everywhere, but I always leave doing things until the very last minute. I have done this for as long as I can remember.

6. I forget to wrap up my leftovers and put them in the fridge after supper. Usually I remember just as I am getting comfortable in bed at night and have to get back up and do it, but some nights I totally forget until I find it sitting there in the morning!

7. I stay up way too late. You will rarely find me in bed before 1:30am, I like to watch the late night talk shows, like Jay Leno and Craig Ferguson. And I am always wondering why I am so tired! LOL!

Productive weekend and an interesting Monday

I got quite a bit of scrapping done this weekend. Felt good after having hardly any time to scrap this month with school ending and then being away. I got 2 sets of wooden wall decor done, one for Austin's room and another for Lesley's little baby boy who will be arriving in July. I am so overly excited about this baby, lol, and I don't even see her very often. We used to work together and she is just such a sweet girl. It's a good thing Austin isn't quite old enough to be jealous yet though, since he has been Lesley's "little prince" ever since he was born! Anyways, I have so many more things planned to make for the baby, I love making baby things!!! I also got a couple layouts done for some challenges. One of Austin that I had started about two weeks ago, but halfway finished it I realized two of the photos had gone missing. I must have spent about 20 minutes asking Austin to show me where he put them, he started crying and made me feel awful, lol, and I turned the house upside down trying to find them. Finally I gave up and worked on something else. Well, Saturday afternoon I am sitting at the computer and the little bugger walks up and hands me the two photos!!! I have NO IDEA where he was hiding them! Another layout I got done was of some prom night photos, and the third was a Jesse layout. Every time I finish a Jesse layout I think it is the last one, that I have finished that chapter in the scrapbook of my life. But, alas, the guy just won't leave my head, and I always think of another idea for a layout about him and our relationship. Anyways, here it all is:

The baby decor:

Austin's new room decor:

Breakfast in Bed (this is the one Austin hid the pictures):

These are the Days (prom night in the limo):

Bittersweet Memories (this is a park Jesse and I spent alot
of times at that holds many memories)

After all that scrapping, last night around 9:00 I started cleaning my bathroom. I have no idea where the energy came from, but I scrubbed the whole thing down until it sparkled! Then this morning when I got up I just kept going. I set a goal about two weeks ago to have my whole house cleaned up before Austin's birthday on May 13th when I have to have people in my house and don't want to be embarrassed by the mess! LOL! I still have boxes in my living room, packed, from when we first moved here a year ago. There is this one giant one my mom keeps asking me what is in it and I have NO clue! So, I started in the entranceway this morning, tidying up the closet, the shoes that Austin pulls down everytime we leave the house, and the cat food that he spilled everywhere, lol! I also cleaned out one box, completely got rid of it, woohoo! and then filled the space with two boxes of Brian's things that he asked me to store for him. When that was done I moved into the kitchen. I rearranged things, completely cleared off my counters, and the top of my fridge for the first time ever, lol. And put my paper towel holder back up that fell down MONTHS ago!! So, now I have a sparkly clean bathroom and kitchen, woohooooo!!! It feels good, now if I can just KEEP it that way! Tomorrow I am going to take the burners are plate things out of the stoved and clean them, and keep foil in the plates from now on (I really should have changed that sooner, I usually do, I HATE cleaning the things). Oh, and I keep forgetting the microwave, it's scary, LOL!! The I have to move onto the living room, and find out what is in the mystery box, LMAO!!

But, anyways, cleaning was not the interesting part of my day, though that is about as interesting as it gets around here on many occasions! No, the interesting part was the fire across the street today that I totally DID NOT NOTICE!! Brian called around supper time to make sure we were ok, and I had no idea what he was talking about. He told me there had been a fire in an apartment building on my block. When he said this I suddenly remembered that while I was making supper I had heard sirens and had thought they were going on for a very long time. They didn't seem loud/close though so I didn't think anything more about it. Even when, a few minutes later, I smelled smoke. I just assumed I was smelling someones cigarettes coming in from ouside since my door was wide open. But, no, it was the smell of a burning building. I had to wait until 11pm to watch the news and see what had happened. At first I thought it HAD been one of our buildings (there are two buildings on this property), the footage they showed it looked just like our building. It wasn't, I didn't I could be quite THAT clueless! But it was right across the street. It spread very fast through 7 suites, totally ruined the roof, and most of the suites in the building ended up with water damage. It looked like, on the news, that it was quite a few families with small children that were put out of their homes. They did open up the community centre for the anyone who has no friends/family to stay with in town. It is so sad and really makes a person think about what if it HAD happened in our building? I have not prepared in any way for anything like this, although if we had an earthquake tonight we do have a whole case of water and lots of fruit in the fridge! But, we have no insurance, no rental insurance, no insurance for in case anything happens to me. It really has made me start to think about what would happen if anything DOES happen to me, what will happen to Austin? Anyways, for now I am just glad it wasn't us, and my heart goes out to the families who were affected.

OK, enough of all that serious talk! Here's a couple funny photos of Austin from yesterday. He's such a goofy kid! He is obsessed with his boot lately and keeps putting them on (on the wrong feet of course, lol). These were taken at diaper changing time, lol, I just had to get a photo of his silly outfit!!