Moving to the Country, Gonna Eat Me A Lot o' Peaches

My girlfriend (and SIL, Sin) thinks that song ISN'T about peaches.... and, after listening again, I tend to agree. I mean, as much as the whole "coming from a can" part sounds all officially "peachy", that's not what the song is about. Liars.

Besides, everyone knows peaches don't come from no cans! Peaches come from the hudderites down the street.

And for a REALLY great price too! ;)

I got a case of peaches the other day, and decided that me and my best friend, Jean Pare, would try out a few less-known peach preserve recipes. My mom was a huge Company's Coming Cookbook collector, owning every.single.book and frankly, ALL of us daughters are hooked too. We grew up with her awesome and simple recipes, and are now cooking for OUR families the same things we tried and loved. And, what's not to love with an old lady whose clothes always matched the cover of the book!?

So, I did this. Start with THIS:

Then, decide on this recipe:

And also this one, since you think you'll like both:

Then, after slaving away, on a hot day, in front of this *......(moment of reverence for the beauty and awe that is my gas stove!!!)......*

you end up with this:

Love it.

But, like EVERY year, (remember this LAST year? No, I am NOT making more salsa or zucchini this year!) I caught the canning bug and went to the farmer's market today and bought three more cases of peaches, AND pickling cucumbers. Not to mention the tomatoes growing in our garden. And, the loser that is me is totally excited to try out new peach and pickle and stewed tomato canning recipes. Me and Jean's gots a HOT date, baybay, me and Jean!

Today is Two's-Day

I like the number two. Even in reference to 12-year-old boy mentality conversations about bathroom duties. (haha, duties. Doodies. HAHA. See? 12-year-old! ooooh, it never gets old. Reminds me of THIS Friends episode. ROFL!)

I really do miss my dayhome sometimes. Most days I think about those kids in some way or another. I think about how much more I got done around the house-- for who knows WHAT reason. I think about the money. I think about the friendships I still have with their parents. I had so many kids at different ages, but two-year olds are my favourite. They are spunky and fiesty and terrific. They say funny things, they do funny things, they eat really funny things... they are just fun fun fun.

(Jeremy at 2 years old)

We have two hands for holding.
Two lips for kissing.
Two ears for nibbling.
Two arms for hugging.

Two legs for ... um.. nothing G-rated comes to mind so let's skip this one, shall we?!
Two eyes WITH PERFECT VISION!!!
And two cheeks..
er...
cheeks.

Two is awesome.
Two, as they say, is better than one.
I am glad to have my second chance, too. My number two is my first choice!

Six Word Saturday= Where Did I Go Wrong?!

Expecting the Fashion Police ANY moment!

(To play along with Cate, visit www.showmyface.com and sum your week up with six words only.)


Okay,

Yesterday, Will and I had to drive to Cowtown again to drop off my kids for Chris and also for another eye-exam. First note: the eyes? Yep- perfect 20/20 vision and still improving, AND soon I may even be able to go outside without plastering my "granny" sunglasses to my face.


We went shopping at a new mall in Balzac. (ha ha. Yes, I'm practically a 12-year old boy... whatever, it still makes Will and I laugh. Yes, that's an actual place north of Calgary, for all you who don't believe me. And yes, *in OUR home* it IS pronounced Ball Sack). lol
ANYWHOODLE, I broke down and bought them.
The shoes.
The oh-my-freek-those-are-so-darned-ugly shoes. The DO-NOT-TRY-ON shoes. The once-you-try-on-you-want-a-pair shoes.

Yep.
I did.


AND I LOVED IT. I am wearing them today and although mine are super cute white and silver shoes, I am darn proud to have such odd-looking shoes on my stellar bod. ;)

So, in short, now my shoes match my granny glasses! :)

7 years ago, and the ever-important 8 days later.

When people ask me about a moment in my life when something REALLY made a difference, one of three things come to mind. And the first, is August 1oth, 2003.

You see, I gave birth that morning to a strawberry-blond fuzz-covered baby boy. Nameless, he was quiet and a month early, and was in MUCH of a rush to get into the world, as I NEARLY gave birth in the car. We got to the hospital at 6:20 am... but I was already fully dilated. By 6:41, my beautiful boy arrived.

We had a homebirth with our first baby, LL, so we decided to be informed of BOTH options, and had a planned hospital birth with our second.

It was a great day.
Family came to visit. Everyone adored this little munchkin. I introduced LL to her baby brother, and the pride and love on her face was as radiant as my own watching the two of them together. We received gifts.. balloons, flowers, and even a little tiny blue stuffed teddybear. Amazingly, the bear was the EXACT size of my boy. We took a picture.

Chris and I had two names we liked. It was either Ryley or "Bear". When he asked which name I wanted, I was a little afraid to admit that I liked "Bear" better, because we already HAD a family member with the same name. Looking at the baby, I told him I thought he looked more like a Bear, and Chris smiled a relieved smile-- apparently, we both felt the same way.

Bear was sleeeeeeepy. He didn't wake up for ANYTHING. He didn't want to nurse. He didn't want to play or visit the world around him. He just wanted to SLEEP.

By the end of the day, the nurses were getting concerned that he wouldn't eat. They were bringing in lactation consultants to teach me all the million things they thought would help, and then all the million things they concluded I MUST be doing WRONG...
blah blah blah.

Turns out, my boy just wanted to SLEEP!

After one nurse came in, I was past being frustrated. The rest of the family had gone for dinner, and I wanted to join my little man and take a nap. But they were relentless-- enforcing a nurse-period for 'baby'.

At one point, I had one very annoying and pushy persistent nurse come in and try to feed him. She took a bottle of formula, trying every WITCH which way to get him to swallow it. I got up to go to the bathroom, leaving her with her futile attempts.

When I returned, Bear was back in his bassinet beside my bed. She looked at him, and asked me, "Is he always that colour?" I stared at him, thinking... Uh, I've known him for less than 12 hours... I have NO IDEA what colour he's supposed to be. I mean, when he came out, he most definitely WASN'T that colour, dumbnuts! She checked his heart rate, and suggested that he's probably tired and needs a bit of oxygen to perk up.

She didn't freak out or anything, just informed me that she was going to take him to the nursery for a second, and she left with him. Not worried, I took a minute to locate my shoes. It was then that I heard the intercom through the halls. Panic-stricken voices were calling STAT and NICU and CRASH CARTS...and feet were racing through the corridors. It was at that moment that my mothering instincts clicked in and I knew that the commotion was because of my baby.

I walked out into the hallway, watching running nurses and doctors and specialists with carts get wheeled into the nursery. I stood in that hallway, frozen. Not with fear...just..frozen. Holding my arms around myself, I looked and saw a lifeless, bluish grey body. A perfect little strawberry-blond fuzz-covered six pounds of an angel. I knew my boy was not alive at that moment.
And in my grief, I found something amazing.

I don't think I've ever tried to tell someone on paper the significance of that moment. I don't think I'll do it justice here. But, that very moment that I felt POOR ME, and asked God not to take my baby...I felt IMMEDIATELY lucky that I had been his mother for even just the day. That I was SOOOO blessed to have been given such a perfect soul that it only needed a body, and went back home to heaven to wait for me. I didn't 'convince' myself of this. In this type of moment, you don't get to "convince" yourself of much of ANYTHING. This, gratefully, was a gift that God gave to my heart, knowing I needed it most right then.

Mothers were all leaving their rooms to stand at their doorways to watch. Some holding their newborns in their loving arms, some with their terror-stricken faces just stood there, hands over their mouths in shock and pity. They weren't pitying the baby...I realized they were pitying me. They were bonding with me. Supporting me.

A nurse looked over. I must have had that look. She approached me, asking if I was "Mom". I could only nod. Holding me, she took me inside to watch this continue. I know she said lots of other things.. but I didn't hear her.

Eventually they wheeled him over into the intensive care nursery, and somehow I walked behind his bubble, supported by the nurse who literally held me up.

It was a long night.
He didn't move. He was poked and prodded. And nobody knew anything. What was wrong? What happened? What tests could we run? Will he make it through the hour? Through the night?

When Chris returned to the hospital, we stood at his bedside, crying. Bear was covered in machines. He was lifeless, were it not for the monitors that told us otherwise. I tried to sing the lullaby my mother sang to us for him, because the doctors didn't know if he would survive the night, and I knew he needed to hear that song at least once before he left. But I choked on the tears, and Chris just held me.

At two in the morning, I called my home teachers (church men). They arrived at the hospital, dressed in suits and ties, and gave a blessing to my little baby, touching his heel-- the only part of his body they could get access to with all the bubbles and tubes around him.

I went back to my room, where everything was exactly the way I left it. Balloons. Flowers. And a blue teddybear that was the exact same size of my baby. I held that bear in the crook my arm, and cried.


......

8 days is a long time.
8 days were the hardest 8 days I had ever had to endure up to that moment.
But, in the blessing, I was assured that he would grow to be a great man.
8 days after being born, my baby boy, Bear, came home. And although he wasn't healthy, and it took many months of nearly daily visits to doctors and clinics, today, he's out with his cousin, riding bikes with popcans on the wheels, making dirtpiles for their trucks, and eating whatever they find in the kitchen.


This is his 7th birthday and 8 days later. I am sooooooo glad that I have him still.

Bear is so incredibly sensitive. He's sweet, and goofy, and even sometimes a little 'slow'.. in a cute, shake-your-head kind of way. And I love him. He has had more near-death experiences than I would ever wish a mother would experience, but he always comes back to me.

He's healthy. He's cute. He's into cars and tractors and skateboards and lego.

And I am soooo lucky to sing him one of our lullabies every night, to cut his strawberry-blonde, fuzzy hair, and mostly, to be his Mother.

In Case You Were Also Curious...

My sister asked me the other day how my BALLS were, chocking back a laugh. Well, my "balls" are just fine...eye-balls, that is.

ISH.

I mean, my eyes are capable of looking at the computer screen for more than a few minutes at a time, which is a HUGE improvement from a week ago! But I'm still SUPER light-sensitive, so it's usually a bit tough to stare at this white screen and type.

The surgery wasn't bad itself.
I am there for a total of, like, 5 minutes.
They lay you down on a surgical table, and after a few numbing eye-drops, they put some nasty thing in your eye to keep your eyelids apart. THANKFULLY, they also give you stress-balls to squeeze. MUCH APPRECIATED.

I didn't have LASIK surgery, which is the most common surgery. No, I had something called PRK. (don't ask, I don't know. Look it up in google). Apparently, I have soft corneas, which makes LASIK a no-go for me. And, to top it off, I also have 'abnormally' large pupils. Will keeps telling me that he LOVES my large brown...pupils...and giggles like a 12 year-old boy. typical.

So, Lucky me gets the slightly easier surgery, but the harder recovery. Instead of a simple cut and seal type of surgery, they SCRATCH MY ENTIRE EYEBALL with some weird dentist-tool looking device. Then they laser, then they put a 'bandaid contact' over my scratched eye, and send me home.

TO. DIE. A. LOOOOOONG. DEATH!


Oh.
Em.
Gosh!

It was the most excruciating pain I have EVER been in. Worse, a MILLION TIMES, than childbirth! At least labour ends quickly (for me, max 3 hours). But allllllll night I was drugged on some pretty heavy painkillers and it was NOT helping.

My theme song became: *THIS*. For about 4 days I slept/ate/showered with sunglasses on. And stayed in a VERY dark room. I hated the light- making me feel much like Mad Madam Mim: *WATCH ME.* (From 4:45 on)

It's been a bit of a slow recovery-- some days I'm not too bad, and other days I'm back to wearing sunglasses everywhere.

But I'm happy that I can wake up and SEE. I wasn't that blind to begin with, but I love being able to look across a football field and SEE the things on the other side, knowing I don't have contacts or glasses on.

Hopefully soon I'll be back to 'normal'. When I can wake up and not have to PRY my weeping eyes apart before I can see. When eyedrops aren't more important for me to have on me than my bankcard!

Six Word Saturday= These Granny Glasses Are Quite the Sight!

Sis Word Saturday:

Move along- Nothing to see here!



(play with Cate at shomyface.com for your week summarized in six words)

My eye surgery is done.. I technically shouldn't be on the computer anyways, since it doesn't help the healing. But lucky for me I took a typing course in high school that makes it so I feel confident enough that I can type without looking at the screen. (so ignore the typos, kay?)

I'll blog about it next week, once I'm not in a dark room with shades on, and once I'm able to wean myself from the T3s and numbing eye-drops in order to function normally. I'm hoping that by next Wednesday I can get back to 'normal'.

Till then- enjoy being able to rub your eyes!

When Your Eyes Are TRULY Opened

Today I'm having eye surgery. Where, for some weird reason, I'll be staring STRAIGHT INTO A BURNING BEAM OF LIGHT... when my whole entire life I've been told NOT to stare at bright lights! And THIS? This is a friggen LASER!! The thought of smelling my eyeball flesh burn kinda sickens me, but hey, at least I will have pretty, contact-less eyeballs when this is all over with.

In the meantime, I get to wear GRANNY glasses for a day or two. That's gonna be the best. I may convince Will to take me out shopping JUST so I can be seen with him. I mean, seeing as how *I'm* wearing the Granny glasses, and he's so much older than me-- we'll be a cute couple! :)

I'm fairly blind as it is once the lights turn off. I can function without glasses and contacts, but in the dark-- I stumble like a drunk sailor. All the things people use their eyes to see- such a darkness to be put into without them.

Today, I am thankful for the gift of my eyes. To see the beautiful colours, the flowers, the animals. Wentworth Miller. (haha).

What if the surgery goes wrong?! What if I never see again? What would I miss most without my eyes? My family's faces. Their smiles. Their goofy-ness. Even their silver eyes when they cry. Seriously-- with faces like these-- how could I ever want tolook at anything else?!

I Once Made A Video About Humps!

OOOH! My absolute FAVE day of the week! HUMP DAY!!!

Grab your nearest Willy, and ....

okay okay. Just kidding. I mean...seriously... My Mom and Dad read this. ;) Besides, you have to grab your OWN Willy. Mine is already grab-ed. (Darn, this is STILL not sounding right).

Quite honestly, however, I *DID* make a video all about 'humps' once. Believe it or not, it was 100% clean and G-rated. I think. Maybe 95%, but still. AND-- it was for a Mormon Missionary. Worse yet (or better, depending on how you think), it was for my BROTHER!!! Actually, it was in honour of his 1/2 mark out on his mission, and so I took my video camera on a road trip and looked for "HUMPS". It included mountains and...um...cows.... um...possibly a haybale? Best part was the worlds largest tour, including the world's largest wind turbine (well, it's the same size as ALL of the ones in Southern AB... but it looks friggen HUGE when you stand close to it!). The World's Largest Crow. (Turns out the REAL World's Largest Crow is NOT in Crowsnest Pass, although I totally fibbed and told him that it was. THIS is the World's Largest Crow, in like, Minneapolis or Missouri or Mississippi or some other M place). And the World's Largest Truck. (True attraction!)

And yes, because it's HUMP DAY-- Today is 'Word Verification Wednesday'. So, play along-- include your word verification in the comment box, and your own personal dictionary explanation of what it is. :) Have a great time!!!

Tuesday Tunes- They stole a radio AND my sanity!

Although it FEELS like a Monday, (since Canadians had a long-weekend and yesterday was a holiday,) today is TRULY Tuesday. Which, here at the Nine Peas means it's TUNESday.

I'm so music-denied lately.
When the van got taken into the shop to be fixed the other week, they took the radio apart and then found out that there was more extensive damage than first anticipated. So, they needed to order parts that are STILL not here. In the meantime, they gave the van back to us so we wouldn't have to pay for a rental for three weeks plus.

Except-- they didn't put everything back together, and now I have NO radio or CD player or ANYTHING in the van. Which, for a musically-inclined family like mine, doesn't make a big difference for short trips which are usually spent singing goofy songs at the top of our lungs.

LONG trips, however, are tougher. My three little monkeys are fairly good travellers, and can somewhat entertain themselves well. They start yodeling singing. Or they RAMBLE FOR HOURS!! tell stories. And I have driven back and forth to Calgary more times in the past month than perhaps the entire year of '10 combined! Needless to say, I am music-less on those treks. And, even MORE needless to say, I AM GOING BATTY!! Not an iPod, not a radio... NADA!!!

I have only a few songs to share. I'm kinda sad-- I used to come across a LOT of new, good music. But lately, I just listen to whatever the kids are listening to, or whatever is already on my OWN playlists. Hopefully this week, Will and I will get around to replacing the stolen iPod, so I can run and have my music again. These aren't NEW songs, so you may know them already. Whatever-- newer to me.

• In honour of my endearing children, THIS SONG is kinda sweet. (It Won't Be Like This For Long by Darius Rucker) No... it WON'T be like this for long-- cuz soon the shop should have my music back into the van! ;)
• The benefit of living with teenagers is being introduced to music you don't already know. Like THIS ONE. (Dear God by Avenged Sevenfold)
• Today I stumbled across this song. I am reminded of SO many people in my life. LOVE IT!!! If you listen to NONE of these, at least listen to THIS ONE!! (We All Need Saving by Jon McLaughlin)

And, as usual, feel free to introduce me and the others (via comment) to songs you're liking right now.

Not Me Monday- Quiet Summer

It's NOT ME MONDAY.

Where I surely talk about the things I DID NOT do this weekend.

Like, I did NOT do NOTHING! ;) Will and I drove out to Bearfoot Beach to help my grandmother rebuild the dock. Okay, so Will rebuilt it-- I did NOT cheer him on. And, no, I was NOT the 'counter-weight' for the screws he couldn't get in...
don't start, VL.

Other than going to church, I did NOT go over to my S-I-L's house where Sin, Bell and their spouses and us did NOT play cards until WAY past my bedtime!!! Will and I did NOT get to bed last night at 3 am- and did NOT sleep in until 10:45! It's NOT been nice having summer, and having the kids with Chris for the weekend.

Today may be a BIT more productive-- I am off to Cowtown to go pick the kids back up.
Yep. I'm NOT super awesome like that that I do NOT have NOTHING I *HAVE* to do!!! :)