fudge and calvin

fudge and calvin
Originally uploaded by bagknitter

It's been quiet around here, there are a number of reasons for the silence and although I don't feel as though I have to justify the silence on my blog I do want to say that it is because we are busy ( that and I can't seem to access blogger) that things are quiet.

There is a lot going on in our lives that I can't blog about as well, adoption is complex, this is a small county and I frankly I couldn't even begin to explain most of it. Then when I can blog about stuff, like the melted zipper on fudge's coat, christmas fun, solstice, yummy food, good friends, boy antics, knit stockings and the driveway of doom (saturday was dreadful on the driveway) I can't get into blogger to do it. I get frustrated and walk away.

I am going to make an effort though to post about stuff that I can talk about, not because I feel obligated to but because I like blogging, I enjoy the conversations that arise and I like having virtual friends in my living room. IEspecially friends that have moved past the virtual stage and have become very dear to me over the last few years.

So there it is, I'll be aorund some and not around some - I visions of some poetic post about how complex things have become around here and in the end I couldn't make it sound right so I just started typing and it may not be to poetic but it gets the point across.

So where ever you are and whomever your with - May 2009 bring you love, peace and joy.

I am off to buy a new coat for fudge!

halloween

halloween
Originally uploaded by bagknitter

well I can't seem to blog! sad but true for some reason blooger will no longer play on my home home computer and unless I go through flickr there is no way to tell you anything. I have all these great stories and stuff to share and yet I can't get it out here. Has anyone else had trouble with blogger or is it just poor little old me. I am thinking about switching to typepad... but not sure how to import all the old stuff over there.

Anyway here's a funny for the day! In the car last week P was explaining to the boys that during hunting season it is really important that they stay in the yard right around the house and not going playing in the fields around the house (normally they have free run of the place). So he explains that a hunter may mistake their movements for a deer and shoot them, or they may just be in the wrong place and get hurt - to which Fudge pipes up - yeah but they would say they were sorry!

October 28, 2008 - yes this is today!

WTF - need I say more!

rhinebeck '08 ( how's that for creative!)

Before I blather on about my weekend, as a small boy in my house turned 7 recently and I neglected to blog it - mostly because it was a brutal parenting weekend but I have recovered and the grandparents expect at least one picture! This is Fudge at a friends house on his birthday which was also thanksgiving - we were busy! His party is this weekend, so there should be more pictures.
Frankly there is not to much to say about Rhinebeck that hasn't already been said. It was a great weekend and I enjoyed every single moment of it - except the massive crowds on Saturday. There were tons of smiling faces there and I took few pictures but here are some - like 4 because frankly I did not remember to take my camera out of my bag enough and when I did the pictures were less then stellar - so here they are in no particular order
I could save this one for Saturday sky but I won't, Sandy already saw it. I took it on our way to Tivoli to have dinner with a bunch of great ladies and Mr. Celia - we got a little lost due to the beauty of the sky but we got there eventually.

Celia came from CA and this is Keri ( Jeanie designer) at the raverly meet up, I also have pics of Steph and a few other folks but posting bad pics is never nice - so imagine them there - well unless you know them really well and stupid pictures and bad ones are not the same thing at all.We stayed at the Mariott in Poughkepsie, it was quiet there this year but ther were friends to knit with( I know I didn't get you all but that is it for the link fest!). And of course I was there with Sarah and Jo - I have stupid picture collection of Sarah going, I like this one.

Our room didn't have a fridge - we improvised - Canadians with knitting and cold beer ( or in my case coolers)are happy.

stay tuned for birthday parties, boy antics and perhaps some knitting as well

back from Rhinebeck!

I'm back - there are pictures, there are stories but there is no time - perhaps tomorrow

more antics

Most days start out really pretty around here, I enjoy the silence while I am the only one awake and the some mornings there is a beautiful sunrise to start my day. But before I know it the boys have to be out the door to make it to the bus. Then it seems as though I never have enough time to get everything done before they come home. Last week I was getting stuff done after school, the boys were outside, I thought they were playing on the hammock - they weren't
They were colouring the deck for me, funny I didn't know that it needed colouring
Then they washed the deck - the tooth brushes were very effective - and all I could find! Red and Blue come off easily but there is still some purple and green out there.

Last weekend we went to Toronto for a wedding, much fun was had by all. We spent lots of time swimming in the hotel pool and had a fun trip to the ROM. The boys also found the subway and streetcars thoroughly entertaining - so exciting in fact that Fudge left his jacket on one!




Tonight I am off to Cub camp with Calvin, nothing like a night outside in 0 degrees to make you love your nice warm house. I have new hand knit socks to wear ( I finished them awhile back but didn't post them) - yipee for socks!

PS - I know where I'll be the 3rd weekend in October and I know some others who will be there too- anyone else coming to play.

aww, ain't that cute

they built a little snake house, but wait that snake looks awfully realistic (the mom reaches out for the snake) a little screech is heard - it looks real because it is! I know where they found it and as soon as they get home from school the deceased snake ( it was already dead when they found it) will be returning the yard to decompose in piece.

See why I call them Fudge and Calvin!

I must get back to the laundry and tomato's - Good times around here.

newkrainians

So we were all in the car the other day coming back from church, for some reason we were talking about being Ukrainian, - now lets be clear, I am 1/2 Ukrainian but it is the piece of my family heritage that I identify with most strongly and I am Ukrainian catholic. P is also Ukrainian catholic and so by because we are a family we keep telling the boys that they are Ukrainian to! - okay so back to the story - the youngest, who will now be referred to as Fudge ( from Judy Blumes amazing Fudge books because he is a little bit to much like that curious young lad) pipes into the conversation "well I am not newkrainian!" and we start to tease him a bit, "yes you are, your stuck with it" and he is adamant that he is not, so fine we drop it with him but still continue the conversation, after a little while he come up with "okay I guess that I could be newkrainian" to which P responds" yep just for the first year and then after that you get to Ukrainian like the rest of us. Fudge was a bit lost but we thought it was pretty funny


Smiling boys, now the other boys, who we are going to refer to here as Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes because boy oh boy is he rather Calvin like) decided that it would be appropriate to give himself a hair cut at school on Friday - after I got over the - you did what moment! - I calmly responded with, "I 'll have to take a picture of that for my blog!" I wonder how obvious it will be by picture day in 2 weeks.

The lost wallet has appeared, given the shape that it is in I imagine that it ended up in a dumpster some where and then was found and dropped in a mail box. All of the cards that are easy to steal were gone but the thief wasn't to smart - they left my birth cert. and SIN card in the wallet along with the movie tickets certificate and all my teaching cards. So although it has been a tad inconvenient I do have my wallet back, although it is rather bruised but I will happily use it again until it actually falls apart and now I have less things to replace, I am left wondering why they left the cards that they did and not my aeroplan card or the boys health cards... I think it was just a lack of higher brain capacity, a smart thief would of stolen the things they could steal my idenity with.

And finally I got a great new toy this week, I was recently genrously rewarded for some volunteer time that I spent working a camp earlier this summer and so with the gift card and some of our hard earned pennies I bought this, and it took the pictures in this post, I am loving it!

this is my life

get up ( in the dark!)
breakfast
lunches
school bus
can/dry/freeze veggies
feed myself
more veggies (see previous veggies)
pick up boys
veggies
dinner
reading
bed for boys
veggies
feed dogs
sleep
repeat
But it's a great one, my life I mean but man it's busy. So this is yesterdays haul from the garden ( not including the apples) and I have been canning and drying apples and making apple sauce. I made the fatal error of not picking zucchini for a few days, now we have zucchini big enough to use as baseball bats - lucky us!

We are drawing to a close on the garden season and I must say that as much as I love all the food in the winter I am ready to be finished with the canning for this year. Tragically the tomatoes have not done as well as I would have liked and so I have to make sauce because most of the tomatoes are cherry ones.

On another note I have discovered that losing ones wallet is a huge inconvenience, well I lost it but I know where I lost it and when I lost it but it is what the person who found it did with it that is causing the inconvenience because the person who found it did not bother to try and find me or leave it in a place where I could go and retrieve it but instead decided to take the money ( 12 bucks or so) and run - lucky me.

So that's it, not to much else to say, I am hoping to make it to knitting on Thursday afternoon and perhaps I could take photos of some of the other things in my world beside just the veggies, but maybe not.

Since it is the first day of school

I had these grand plans for this fabulous blog post all about the fun summer that the boys and I have had - days at friends cottages, fishing, tubing, rock climbing, ping pong, swimming, boating, s'mores for the first time, adoption parties, apple picking and generally just having a great time learning to be a family. I came to the coffee shop, got settled and hooked up to the high speed, plugged in my memory card and found this

and this

oh and this one too

Sad but true, the boys played with the camera on Sunday, they did ask first and some how managed to erase the 2 weeks of pictures that were there - luckily I downloaded a bunch of them earlier in the summer or else we would of had none! So there are no fun apple picking ( although we will do that again), rock climbing or adoption party photos - there are the ones that I had taken in the first 2 weeks, so for your amusement, (in no particular order) a collection of summer memories.








And just in case you thought that this was a knitting blog, here is a hat, one of only 2 things I managed to finish this summer. There is a sweater, a tomten jacket and summer slip socks on the needles at the moment. I am looking very forward to knitting on weekday afternoons now that the boys are at school.

I am exhausted

as all new parents are and I imagine should be.

As tired as I am things are going well, the boys are great, summer is fun and we are all learning all sorts of great new things - kleenex shredded into the fan is not a good idea, watching Nim's Island on a crazy busy day is a good idea, trying to ride the puppy is not a good idea but turning bunkbeds into tents was a great one. It's a learning curve for all 4 of us but it's all good

I have pictures of boys, veggies and knitting and I will get to posting them eventually but not today. Just wanted to say hi as I know that some people have been checking for news here.

2 feet

I'm a jump in with 2 feet kinda girl and I always hope that the whatever I'm jumping into is going to work out in the end. It may not be the best way but it is my way.

We have been "with boys" for 2 days and we are all still here. Things are going well - I am not going to say it's easy but it's good. In this case jumping in with both feet was a good thing, I could not imagine separating the boys, they are far to close to even imagine what that would be like. Jumping in with 2 feet has also proved successful in another case, a time when I took a big step but good one and the other part of that big step is celebrating his birthday today.

So Happy Birthday to my favourite pirate P. - hope it's the best one yet.

The day of J.

The day of J has drawn to a close for another year - it was good day, P and I went to a friends cottage with the boys for the day. We arrived home exhausted but happy. Before I retired for the night I managed to block Jeanie which I finished at knitting on Wednesday night. Here she is in all her glory - I didn't use sock yarn, instead I used Hacho by Mirasol Yarn and decreased the center repeats to 6 ( I think)



And as promised some pictures of the last week with the boys - sadly the camera didn't make it out yesterday but there was much fun had, these are from earlier in the week.

walking along the river
looking for and finding frogs!
at the splash pad
having a great time!
I am off to see if I can rent Kung Fu Panda... do I need to tell that it wasn't my idea.

what's in a name

Earlier this week one of the social workers came over to talk about the boys and to have us sign some paper work. One of the things that she asked us about was names - what would be changing their last names to and did we want to change any of their other names ( they each have 3). I was sort of shocked because the boys are 6 and 8 - old enough to know all of their names and know that their birth mom named them. I hadn't ever even considered changing anything about their names unless the children wanted to. One of the boys has the same middle name as P and that is kinda neat but I really would ever think of changing anything else - I even feel a little odd about changing their last names but a family with all those different last names would be a challenge

As a result I have been thinking about what a name means and our attachment or lack of attachment to a name. I have 2 names that I love but I know lots of people who could take or leave the name that their parents gave them - some people do. But I can't imagine if my name were any different, I didn't change my last name when I got married either and I do wonder how the boys will feel when they are older about their names? How does a name effect your self of identity or belonging? These boys have had a rough couple of years but does their name still provide a sense of belonging to their birthmom?

Of course I don't have any answers but lots of questions! But to move on...

So it happened, we met the boys and it was great. They are fabulous small people, things where tense at first with the adults ( us, foster mom and social worker doing all the talking) but then P pulled out his cell phone to add a birthday in and that was it, they were won over by the technology and the rest of the visit went pretty well. We left on a good note with a request for us to bring a game next time and we will see them again tomorrow and then every other day this week. Transitioning is an interesting process - I would of assumed that it there was a bit of a standard procedure but there isn't so the foster mom and I worked out what we thought looked reasonable and now that they know we aren't monsters with 4 heads (no comments from the peanut gallery) I think that things will go well. I know how nervous and stressed I am about the whole thing I can't even begin to imagine how they feel - especially since they have moves so many times already.


So my world revolves around the boys at the moment but in between the moments there are other things, like gardening and knitting - yes knitting! But I don't have any pictures of my knitting, although I am almost finished Jeanie - like about an hour from being finished. Instead I offer you a HUGE potato from the garden, My hands are not very big but the potato was tough to hold, as you can see and I was impressed. Jove and I have picked a some already and I was forced to pick a few more last night because the puppy decided that she should have a nap in a nice shady spot, on the onions and under the potato plants - luckily for the puppy it was only one plant.

Done - now with pictures

Done it is all done! The homestudy was signed off on Friday, they think that we are sane enough to be parents ( tee hee, us sane!) and we met with the boys foster parents to set up a transition schedule, they will be moving in at the end of July - very exciting. In order to get the home study finished I have been running around getting things done and they are all done! Yippee for us.

Pillows have been made, every house needs yarn themed pillow cases.

The boys room is finished - it was a lot of work
Quilt covers are sewn
A TV room was created
The carpet has been removed and the stairs painted

The yarn storage facility is finally all organised - some of the grey drawers have been replaced with bins with lids though - no moths are welcome here.
The front flower bed has all these great plants that attract butterflies, this one lingered for quite awhile yesterday
This is Bella, looking like an old man, she does it well. She is so the 4th - there are almost no pictures of her
Oh and the garden is finally all in, most of it has been in for awhile but yesterday and today I got the last 2 beds planted. I love eating from our garden, we have lettuce and spinach at the moment with lots of other great things just around the corner.

Okay that's all I have for you today, no knitting around here at all for quite some time although I am hoping to get Jeanie finished sooner rather then later and there are some socks that are on the go and some that are finished and waiting for fall to arrive. I'll save that for another post though

I thought I might never know....

A number of years ago before my Gramms died she told me one day that she was in love, it was another love for her as my grandfather had died a number of years before and she had met another man. I very clearly remember her saying " I never thought that I would feel this way again", she never ever thought that she would really love another man again in her lifetime. I remember listening to her and wondering if I would ever feel that way - I mean here I was in university with boyfriends and such but no one who I thought was the one person I could be with for the rest of my life, I wondered if I would ever know what it was like to love someone like that - would I ever really know or was I destined to jump from one relationship to another wondering if this person was the one.

Little did I know at the time that person I would fall in love with was already there, already loving me. Two years ago today I married that man, the man who courted me from a distance, afraid that I might choose another over him. No other man was to be chosen, because he is the one for me. A happier woman I could not be today, why, because I married a man who loves me to the moon and back - what more could I ask for.

shhh don't tell

The silence around here is ending but I would not be surprised if it is replaced a new silence - but a good one.

How's that for cryptic.

In the fall P and I started the process of becoming foster parents - we thought that we would be good at it and in Ontario it is the same process as adopting, that is to say a long one that involves a complete home study and a list as long as my arm of things that had to be done to our house to make it "safe" ( like installing child proof locks on the cupboard where the cleaning supplies are kept - which I did the other day and then proudly announced to P that it was " done" only to find that the key to open it (a magnet) was inside the cupboard!)

So we did all those things and a few weeks ago the social worker came back and mentioned that the 2 boys she had in mind to live here had become crown wards and needed to be adopted, would we be interested in adopting instead. After much thought and a lot of talking we decided that we would be and so if things go according to plan we will parents in July. There are still lots of hoops to jump through and nothing is for sure yet but we are hopeful that this is going to work out. We won't know for sure till all the i's are dotted and the t's crossed but so far everything looks good.

I'll keep you posted but in the mean time I have rooms to paint, curtains to sew and gardens to weed. No shortage of work to do around here, luckily for me I have great friends who are helping out when I am panicking - thanks to help from JoVE and company the garden( which is also partially their garden) is now in in and weeded - one less thing to worry about for now, till the weeds decide to grow some more.

all in all it's good - really good. I am off to enjoy the last of beautiful day, summer is finally here.

off by 3

I am off by 3 days, I am now 3 days into my 5th year of this blog - amazing! I started blogging because I was travelling and I am blown away by all the fabulous folks that I have met and become friends with as a result. I won't bother with a link fest because you know who you are and I don't have the time.

Things continue to be busy - I am home, gardening, knitting and working to finally get this house finished. I have pictures from my trip but I'm at home and we all know how much dial-up likes pictures. I must go teach some little angels how to be better angels so this is all there is for today... here's to 4 years blogging, great friends and hopefully more years as well..

still here,

well not there but here and there instead.
There have been walks

trips to the beach

airplane rides

fresh seafood - yeah for markets

and my beloved ocean - there is something about the pacific that makes me happy

All is well, life is good and I am on my way to visit my parents next. I'll be home next week and now that life will be a little calmer ( less dogs and more gardening) I will update you on life, knitting and some of the other things that have happened on my trip - like lunch with other bloggers.