WARNING - this could be a Health Risk

Last night we watched Doc Martin. We watch this via an Americian Internet channel and we have to endure lots of interesting adverts. Clear Teeth Alignment which goes over your teeth and puts them in line without anyone seeing. There is one about Shingles which tells us that everyone who has had chicken pox has the virus inside them and to speak to their Health Advisor (yes I can imagine they will be very happy with that). Dry Eyes - artificial tears but the side effects are burnt eyes, watery eyes, redness, eye pain, itching, blurred vision and they tell you not to poke yourself in the eye. Eyelash Thickener - Apparantly after the age of Forty, our eyelashes start getting less so you can make them thicker. Side effects are hairs grow in other places, colour part of the eye will likely turn brown, eyelids gets darker but may be reversible (then again it may not). Constipation - no apparent side effects but they do like to talk about it a lot. MSRelapse Pills - replaces injections but the side effects are slow heart rate, vision problems, liver and blood pressure problems, diarrhoea. It seems that in North America, if you advertise something of a medical nature, you also have to list all the possible side effects. How anyone ever buys anything is beyond me! Huffle and I have been very entertained by all these adverts.

I dreamt last night that part of our house that we had forgotten about had a theatre. I thought it might be a nice idea to use it to perform our Christmas plays! Anyway we rented it out to someone else because we couldn't afford it. There was a whole other house hidden behind a doorway that we had forgotten about. Ummmmmm. Any ideas?

The boys went to school (I told Smallest to ring home if he felt poorly and he said "I'll use the Canadian word though mummy", I asked what it was and he said "it's sick not poorly"). Huffle went off to work and I waited in for the the cooker man again. 8am to 12 and he arrived at 11:30. Nice man but talked a lot. I was silly enough to tell him I I didn't really understand how the indication Cooker worked and he told me, in great detail YYAAWWWNNNN. He has to come back on Friday to fit some new parts. I insisted he should come in the afternoon and after 1pm. I told him it was my birthday and I think he felt sorry for me so said it would be alright.

I spent all day making wrestling figures out of icing. I skyped Grandma this morning and she tried to help with colour mixing. I skyped Moo this afternoon and told her to get over here and help me but she wouldn't pop over just for the day!! She has a poorly mouth so it was hard to talk.

Don't laugh!

I finished the figures and started on the cake once the cooker man had gone. Two big square Chocolate cakes. One raspberry jelly. One Strawberry Angel delight. 24 small cup cakes with butter icing. A big bowl of Oreo Chocolate icing ready for the cake. A tray of flapjack. Today's work done. Tomorrow I will finish it all after work.

The boys came home and admired my handiwork, played outside, played upstairs and ate their dinner when Huffle got home, before we rushed them off to Beavers and Cubs.

Smallest asked me to take his photo on his own because he didn't like Small doing silly things behind his back and he wanted a serious photo,

Both clubs started at 6:45pm, one was in the Community Hall and one was in the Legion. Once dropped off, Huffle and I went shopping for a '0' candle for the cake and a few bits for the rest of the week. We drove home, put it away and Huffle went off to fetch Smallest who finished at 7:45pm. Huffle was once again asked if he would like to be a leader. NO THANK YOU!! He dropped Smallest home and went to fetch Small.

All the cake bits and bobs were put away safely till tomorrow and the boys up to bed. Small came down because he had a sore throat and did a salt gargle (this time last year he had strep, I don't know if that is worrying him or he is expecting to get it!). He went to bed, then came down again because he had a nose bleed - this time we couldn't blame Uncle Tuc. He bled over his rug and down the stairs. We stopped it and he went to bed. Huffle and I sat down with our tea at 9pm. We like it much better when we sit down at 8pm. Only an hour and we will be in bed, poor old duffers!

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Better than Grandma*

Everyone slept well. There was no barking from Smallest in the night and although he still has a cough he seems very well. One side effect from his steroid pills yesterday is his bottom smells rancid and his eyes are really red and puffy and very tired looking. We sent him to bed early again.

We had decided we were not going to go out but have a restful day, but being us that didn't materialise. The boys had showers, we had breakfast and then while they played on the IPad I sewed bunting for Small's bedroom and Huffle watched the football.

After we got ourselves dressed, we went out to our nearest forest. We call this one the Quarry as there is a huge pit at the beginning and we walk all the way round before going into the forest. Huffle says the pit was made by a Meteorite, I think it was a gravel pit!

This is a good one when it is snowing. I have walked here a few times in different weather and Small had done walks here with cubs but we don't really know the route very well. Suffice to say, we got lost. We didn't take any provisions with us except a bag to carry the picked up fir cones! Silly us. We wandered off the short trail and ended up walking for miles. Poor little Smallest was terribly tired and thirsty and Small just ran out of steam and was hungry.

The boys foraging for fir cones. There were many different mushrooms here and Huffle wished he knew which ones you could eat so he could take them home and eat them.

Thanks to Huffle's compass reading skills he got us back to the car park without too much trouble. The walk was lovely, the trees were amazing and the wildlife abundant (we saw many fast moving caterpillars, a small snake, lots of butterflies and many birds).

We were all very hungry and went off to The Country Market for dinner. Not the most amazing place but it was close and quick. Huffle and I had Jacket Potatoes which are a very rare thing to find here and the boys had pasta. We checked out the 'Candy Store' where we found English Chocolate Teacakes (we are convinced they are English because the chocolate was so good). Next we walked around the market and found a Christmas present for Huffle and Smallest bought some go-go's. We have never been here this time of year and they had quite a lot of stalls, a bit like a car boot with lots of 'tat' but the main difference to Winter was that they had a singer. Ummmmmmm, interesting. I heard him sing 'hallelujah' in some kind of South American language. It was a bit 'pub singer' like. *The boys said that Grandma sang better - well if anyone has heard Grandma sing they know what we are saying!

We left there and picked up some ice-cream for Small's party and for our ice-cream cones back home and once home sat on the porch eating them. Nice. It was a really warm day today.

The boys and I cleared the leaves from the drive and deposited them down the bottom of the garden and Huffle painted the woodwork by the pool. The boys tidied their rooms and then played on the IPad and I watched Downton Abbey. Ahhhhh it's like a good friend is visiting - just lovely.

We had our tea in front of Iron Man3, just to finish the film off. It was very good.

 

 

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Poo in my shoe!

At 2am Smallest had been replaced by a Sea Lion and was cough-barking terribly. It woke the rest of the house up. He had also had a little accident. We gave him water to sip, Vicks on his chest, Tylenol (paracetamol equivalent) and opened his bedroom windows. We also propped him on pillows. He managed to get back to sleep and in the morning we took him to the doctors.

Smallest and I waited at the walk-in clinic while Small and Huffle went off to do some errands. They went to a book shop, two gadget shops, two supermarkets and then to pick us up.

We sat and waited for two hours, chatted with a Greek woman who had earache, a woman who split her lip catching a baseball and a woman from South of England, saw a nurse, got Smallest weighed (48 lbs) and his temperature taken on his finger and in his ear (which made him giggle). Finally we saw a doctor who checked his chest thoroughly which was clear, checked his temperature which was normal and then gave us a prescription for a one-off steroid to be taken with food. He said he had croup but that croup could be just a simple cough or a bad cough with breathing problems. He said if he had troubles breathing we were to take him straight to Emergency. We picked up a few bits for lunch and then met the other two outside.

We stood next to the car and ate baguette roughly spread with laughing cow (which is what we did when we first got to Canada because we didn't know where anything was! however it was much colder then). Then we drove to see the poo lady who let us have many bags of horse manure for free. She was lovely and comes from Liverpool originally. We met her through NoCustard. It was tough work shovelling poo into bags and loading them into the car. I wore my Wellies but Huffle only had his gardening shoes and because he parked too close to the manure pile, he ended up in it and the poo got in his shoes, ha ha ha!!

The pile of poo and the boys in the background talking to the lady.

Then of course, once we got home we had to carry them from the car to the veg beds and spread them. We earnt ourselves a nice big pastry and a cup of tea before we made our way to Garfunkel's gallery as she had an art exhibition this weekend. Huffle bought a card from her for me.

Biking back from Garfunkels - you can just see Smallest

We came home and Huffle and I made some more paths in the veg garden and filled them with bark etc. Looking good. The boys played on the IPad once Small finished his homework.

We had pizza and a film and watched Iron Man 3 which was a bit violent but the kids insisted it was fine. At 7pm Smallest said he could watch no more and said he wanted to go to bed. I told him it was 8pm and he was happy to go, we said Small would be up in five minutes, hoping that he would be asleep by then!

Hopefully he will sleep okay tonight.

Our lovely clematis again.

 

 

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Top to Bottom Mr Lube*

Huffle went off to golf this morning.

The boys went to school and in the afternoon ran for Terry Fox (in Smallest's words - he ran from Newfoundland to Ontario and then he got cancer in his lungs from his leg and he ran over 5,000 miles to get his leg more healthy. He died in the hospital. In Small's words - he had cancer in his leg and he had a metal leg. He started from British Columbia and ran to Newfoundland. He wanted to get around the whole of Canada but didn't because he died in Newfoundland. He ran over 3500 miles for people like him who had cancer and he was 21 years old when he died). Both boys ran for their Great Grandad Ic.

I went off to knitting. My sock is coming along a treat now. I came home and had a quick sandwich with Huffle and then while he worked I tried to get some wood chippings I had seen on the side of the road but they were too hard to reach so I came home. Then I tried to cut some wood with the saw but it was too hot and too hard. I came in and knitted instead.

I got the boys swimming stuff together and sat outside in the sunshine on the porch and waited for them to come home. They told me all about their run and then we all went off to swimming.

The view of the tree from our porch (those leaves are changing colour)

Small is in level 10 and did well, smiling everytime he passed me. Small is in level 6 (which is the level that small was in when we got here at age 8, impressive - he was with three older kids, he did very well but made me laugh because he kept bumping into people. We came home and had dinner.

*there was an advert on the radio today for Mr Lube (car oil place) and they were talking about "Fast top to bottom with Mr Lube". It made me laugh and Huffle thought I was being childish. Ha ha !!

 

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Work it, own it!

Huffle worked from home and the boys went to school. I went off on my bike to my exercise class.

The corn field on my way to my class - gorgeous day

Today was Cardio Abs. Phew, it was a killer. Very hot and sweaty and far too energetic. I cycled back home and then went off to the forest to meet NoCustard. We walked for just over an hour. It was lovely. We were both tired. My phone ran out of charge and I had to leave it in the car so I I didn't get to take any photos, which is a shame because there were many photo opportunities.

I got home about 12:30 and I went straight off in the car to try and get top soil for our veggie beds. Huffle researched earlier to find the best deals and planned where I was were going. However when I got there, the bags had mysteriously disappeared, even though the website said there were bags there. Huffle thinks that the man in the back put them aside for himself. Naughty!! So I had lunch in an Eggy place, the went off to another place and bought some other top soil.

We drove home, I emptied the bags while Huffle worked and we waited for Smallest to get home. He showed us his reading books which were far too easy for him (not impressed) and then we biked to my exercise lady's house, to pick up my trainers that I left behind this morning, and biked back. Then we drove to school to pick up Small from Football training. He was very hot and had worked hard. He finds out if he is on the team next week.

Once home we started on dinner and then had a big discussion about what food Small wanted for his family party (which is just us four this year). We decided we were just having a tea party on the Tuesday after school. It will be a wrestling themed party, he has chosen his food and what cake he wants and we sorted out what games we will play.

Small watched TV, Smallest and Huffle played table Football and I blogged. Huffle went to his 'Man Cave' which he had tidied and came out brandishing his chain saw, then proceeded to cut down Jenifer the Juniper Tree. Small and I helped him move the branches.

While the boys watched TV before bed, Huffle and I played Table Tennis, another three close games. Once the boys were in bed we watched Doc Martin with our pot of tea. Lovely.

 

 

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Poor Howard! poor ball!

Last night after watching The Great British Bake Off ( ahhh poor Howard, I liked him but it was his time I think!), Huffle went to bed feeling very headachey and sick and spent part of the night sat in the bathroom with a blanket wrapped around him. He wasn't sick and I I made him go back to bed and sleep. However, while he was downstairs I heard Smallest shout out so I went to check on him. He was really hot and sweaty. He went to the toilet and I went to check on Huffle. On the way back upstairs Smallest was just coming out of the bathroom and I startled him. He screamed, I screamed because he did, he screamed again, I screamed back, Small woke up in a panic. Smallest and I stood on the landing crying, him because he was scared and me because I scared him. OMG! After that, everyone slept through. Though it did take me a long time to get warm. My toes were so cold. I slept in long fleecy bottoms, bed socks and a cardi with a blanket on top of the quilt.

This morning Huffle felt better, he went off to Toronto for a meeting. Once the boys were off on the bus, I changed our bed and put a soft fluffy sheet on it and changed the quilt for our Winter one. The two boys are very hot blooded so I will leave their quilts and sheets for now. I then set about clearing my wardrobe. I moved all my summer stuff out, hung things nicely and rearranged everything.

Then I made Oatmeal Cookies for the boys lunches as we have run out. Of course I don't eat them!!! And because I did eat one (just to try), I ran around the sun room squatting and squishing wasps again. They were dive bombing me so I was working quite hard, maybe not quite enough to work the cookie off though so after my lunch I mowed the grass - all of it and then raked it all and deposited it down the bottom of the garden, so I did get a good workout after all.

While I was mowing, I ran over our football. This is a football that Grandma bought from Wicksteed Park when Small was about two years old. It has lasted ages and it wasn't an expensive or big one. It has been on holiday with us to Cornwall, Devon and Norfolk, lived with us in The Village, UK and came across the ocean in our container to Canada nearly two years ago. It was well loved and needed constant pumping up. Once it disappeared for about a month and we bought a new one to replace it (it was never the same) and then it reappeared again. Anyway, now it is no more, finished, ripped, dead. Poor orange ball.

The boys came home while I was raking and they played in the garden while I finished and then we played 'shoot a Nerf gun at the other two and hide and seek and run'. It was very funny and very energetic. Yeah, I can have another cookie later with my tea.

The leaves are changing colour.

Our clematis, climbing the barn

I took this while I was hiding behind it at th bottom of the garden. It's just one tree, lovely

Smallest cut his lip today on someone's head. The secretary rang me to say they had put ice on it and it was bleeding but he was okay. I rang to check him later but she said he was fine. Then later on when he was supposed to be getting ready for bed, he was swinging on a chair and cut the back of his heel. He couldn't walk properly and hopped to clean his teeth and then hopped to bed. Bloomin' clumsy oaf!

Huffle came home early, finished some work and then while the boys had their showers we had a nice cup of tea and a chat. As we were making dinner the cooker went wrong again with the silly error messages. (Same as before) but this time a pan that was on the top suddenly turned itself up to boost which is Instant boil - very dangerous!! I rang the company again and held for far too long, in fact I asked them to ring me back after the second long hold with the same awful song!!! She has arranged for an engineer to visit on Monday. I asked her what he would do as I did not want him to come just to look at it, I needed something fixing. She explained that she couldn't tell me what he was going to do. I asked her to put a note on the file to say that I would not be at all pleased if they didn't attempt to fix it on Monday. She has also asked for my permission to publish the fact that there may be a risk failure with this particular model. Yep, no problem.

Huffle and I attempted to play table tennis while the boys watched TV but one of the lights was flashing. In the basement we have those awful 1970 chip shop strip lights which take ages to get out and it is a huge puzzle. We swapped a few bulbs around and now have a very bright basement where we play and exercise and a very dark part where the freezer and cold room is! Still we got to play three games. I won't say who won but it was quite close.

Smallest is at a try-out for football tomorrow after school to play in a tournament for his school. He is very excited. He is also very very excited about his upcoming birthday. We haven't sorted anything out for him though do have an idea of what to get him. I won't say though in case he reads it, Nosey boy!

 

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Waiting.......

So I had to wait in for Mr Repair, between the hours of 8am and 12.  Why can't they be more specific?  Surely they know their route beforehand.   Rang work to tell them I may not be in and set about cleaning the house. I swept, mopped, dusted, cleaned the bathrooms and sorted washing.  He came at 11am, took out the computer of the cooker and put a new one in. Ta daaaahhhh. All done.  Now we just have to wait and see.

I contemplated not going in to work but decided to anyway. I made it just in time for coffee and snack which just happened to be a shortbread brownie - OMG it was yummy!   I stayed till after 1:30pm so I got a good couple of hours work in. Today we were weeding out Lamium and Locusts trees and replanting an area near the pond.

love this tree - it is a tulip tree and the leaves look like tee-shirts.

Once back home I had lunch and then set about cleaning the Sun Room. Three more wasps appeared in the kitchen (who knows from where) and a dozen or so in the sun room which I I squashed. Then I swept, moved all the furniture and shoes etc, cleared away Summer stuff and mopped and disinfected the whole room. It smells better and there were no wasps after the job was finished.

When the boys came home we went out on our bikes and scooters to the library. Smallest and I I rode on our bikes on the road and Small followed on the path with his scooter. We had to wait for him at the main crossroads to help him cross which Smallest said was a pain! We changed our books, the boys had a look on the computer and played maths games while I read a magazine. The we cycled back and I made a start on dinner.

When Huffle came home we ate and then the boys all played football while I blogged.

If it all looks different today it is because my normal blogging tool isn't performing well.  Still I have sent my problems to Lance at Blogsy - he normally puts me right.

Hot tub gone

Huffle went off to work and the boys went off to school. The weather was cool but they still went in their shorts but with a fleece each. I did the normal house things and then went grocery shopping. It was empty in the first supermarket and almost a pleasure to shop. I went off to two other shops to finish my shopping. I was looking for inspiration for Small's birthday as he has asked for 'surprises'. I didn't do too well and came home to put the shopping away, Skype Moo and make lunch.

The other day my neighbour gave us a huge basket of tomatoes so I made three tomato soups. Carrot Tomato and lentil, Tomato and spinach and creamy tomato. We had them for dinner. It took a lot of sieving and blending to get rid of the skin and pips but the soups were nice. Huffle particularly liked the fact that they were zero miles and it was Hamlet organic.

A lady I met last week through Kijiji (like Ebay), put our hot tub on Facebook for us, saying that it was free if someone could pick it up. Someone came this evening and took it away. We have had an email from the lady already saying that they are trying to get it working. We now have a corner of the patio free - what shall we do with that then?

I did some path making in the vegetable garden today. I moved wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of stuff from the side of the house to the back. It is made of chopped up tyres. We had researched this last year and found it leached into the soil so we put it on top of weed free matting so it won't bother the veggies. The boys thought it was great and did lots of running and bouncing on it.

Picking 'helicopters' off the trees!

Small did his homework. We spoke to Grandma and Grandad, had dinner, played football and then watched the men take the hot tub away. Good riddance. They said they were going to put the ducks in it and make it into a pond, I think his wife had other ideas!

Falling in the trees during football and laughing his head off

Small requested pain au chocolate for his birthday breakfast and asked me to buy some when I did the shopping. I forgot and asked smallest to put them on the list. I expected him to write 'panochoclit' or something similar. He wrote 'croissanants'. Both Small and I were very impressed.

Aaarrrrggghhh he shot me!

I had an argument with a man on the phone earlier. They are coming to fix the cooker tomorrow but didn't give me any notice, just rang to say they would be here in the morning. I told him it wasn't good enough and I won't be here. I argued and argued but in the end I gave in. They are coming tomorrow between 8am and 12. No work for me then unless they come at 8am! While I was on hold they played the same song over and over again. I haven't heard it before but by the time I came off the phone I was singing the bloody thing! They better fix it - it went wrong again tonight!

 

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Another Festival?

Smallest lost another tooth. He came in at 5am Saturday morning to show us. Huffle sent him away and said we would sort it Saturday evening because the tooth fairy would probably have done her rounds by then. She left him a dollar and he was very pleased.

Today is the first day of Fall or Autumn as we know it. After a slow start to the day we got our walking boots and fleeces on and headed to the forest. Today we chose the Red Maple walk. It was only 7* at the start but warmed up considerably by the end. It was just right for walking, picking up sticks and collecting acorns, of which Smallest collected many.

The boys loved it and were very well behaved, no complaining, lots of running, good walking and many photographs taken. Smallest was our leader with his stick. We found the 'Freddy' tree and the 'Tom' tree.

....and we found some bugs.......

We managed to keep to the trail this time (last time we were on this particular walk with Aunty A we took a wrong turn and our small walk ended in a walk around the edge of the forest), and then drove to port perry for dinner. The boys wanted to go on the park so we headed for that until we realised something was going on and decided to check it out. It was another festival.

This time a chilli festival where the shops have a chilli contest! you buy a mug and get to taste each shop's chilli and then vote for the best at the end. Some of the shops had sales and there were activities lined up for the kids. We all got to make badges, Smallest made a clay ghost and we watched some kids on a Potters wheel (smallest wanted to have a go but it was bitterly cold and we ran out of time).

There was a petting zoo with a pot bellied pig, sheep, goats, chickens and a couple of alpacas called skippy and ginger.

Well look at this handsome fella

We bumped into NoCustard who invited us back to hers for a cup of tea, a muffin and a warm. She also gave the boys a bag of sour sweets each. The boys hung their bird feeders out that they made yesterday.

Our lovely clematis has just started flowering. Beautiful

Once home, the boys had their showers and had tea watching an old favourite of ours, Disney's Robin Hood. Smallest likes to tell us who all the characters are (all of us including Moo and Grandma and Grandad) and then shouting out through the film, ha ha here comes Moo banging her drum. Daddy is sucking his thumb ha ha ha!!

The kids went to bed and Huffle and I sat in front of the fire watching Doc Martin.

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Happy Birthday Hamlet

Last night we did get that storm, just as we were going to bed - why does that always happen? This also meant that Huffle didn't sleep so well, firstly because of the thunder (I don't remember any lightning), then it was too hot, then too rainy and windy!

Today was the start of the celebrations for the 175th birthday of our Hamet. It actually started last night with a corn roast and a teen dance but we didn't go to either of those. This morning, once we got ourselves organised, we walked off in the rain towards the parade. This consisted of vintage vehicles, horse pulled carriages and ended with some children riding up-to-date bicycles and scooters.

There was also a piping band which marched to the community centre and park. The boys got a ride in one of the oldest cars there while we stood and got wetter and wetter. We met NoCustard there and walked up to the park with her to find the boys.

The band piped some more, corn was handed out and we listened to the town crier open the festival. Mr Royal thanked lots of people including his wife, Mrs Royal who had done a lot of work on the whole festival. Then we watched the tree planting ceremony (which had already actually been planted but a stone was unveiled to go with the tree). The tree was donated by the garden Club.

Next was Mr Magoo. We stood in the cold under a tent watching a older man sing about dinosaurs and the sun and tried to get us to participate which we did to start with. There weren't many kids in there and Small refused to watch - too cool for such things, though Smallest seemed to enjoy it.

We went inside to try and get warm and the boys ended up doing some crafts. They made Farmer's out of lollipop sticks. Very funny.

Then they both made a bird feeder bird - bird seed stuck to a paper bird with glue made from a 175 year old recipe - water, flour, salt and cornflour. The women running the crafts remembered us from the winter festival.

We went off to get food but got sidetracked when the boys decided to go on the wagon ride which went through the hamlet, unfortunately it was still raining and they got very wet.

We got them some Macoroni cheese and Huffle had a chilli. I chose a grilled veggie wrap but was very disappointed when I I found a half eaten piece of chicken in mine (I'm guessing I ate the other half or someone else did - either way I wasn't impressed!). I sent it back and the woman who made the mistake said nothing! I had Macaroni Cheese instead.

Next we tried the photo booth which was hilarious. We were supposed to dress up as settlers but I think we were more like rock stars. It was a lot of fun and free.

There were lots of other things going on but we were so cold and wet, we decided to go home and get dry.

We walked home, still in the rain, with the boys deciding to jump in the puddles all the way home.

Huffle and I left them to it.

Small stole a balloon. We could still hear the music whilst walking home. It was a shame the weather was so bad.

Once home, changed and dry, we sat and watched the Goonies until Smallest started to get restless and we stopped and played operation! mousetrap and upset.

We had tea and watched the end of the Goonies and then watched photos and videos on the TV through the computer. We started from when Small was born and then when smallest was born. Fabulous videos, very very funny.

 

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