Kristel's Blog

So obviously, this post has been a long time coming. Hopefully you all made some yummy meat loaf, and will forgive me for not publishing this post earlier. (In case you’ve missed it, I’ve been working on this post, since well, Christmas, including when Michelle was here, and could’ve published it in several small parts, but for whatever reason, didn’t.) So without further ado…

Babysat Joanna’s kids the other night. It went very well. They understood my rules for making a gingerbread house, so it went smoothly. (One candy for each finger on your left hand at the beginning to hold you through until the end where you get one candy for each finger on your right hand. You might say that it’s not as fun, but seriously, have you ever tried to put three sugar-high children to bed? Yeah, it doesn’t work. In fact, all four of you might just be in tears. This way, they’re not sugar high at all, can sit quietly through the movie, and much to my relief, fall asleep on the couch.) While making the house, they actually tell me that they went over to Joanna’s friends from church, George & Mary, and when they were there, they actually got to make one house *each*. Oh my god. What a nightmare that would’ve been! The night wasn’t all smooth though. In fact it was quite stressful, which is weird considering they were all really well behaved. Her kids are pretty mellow when they’re sick. Johnathon came down with a fever, Annika’s ear started bleeding, Jacob woke up when I tried to move him upstairs and threw the biggest tantrum you’ve ever seen — which he did calm down after I told him that once he did we could call his parents and he could talk with them a little… glad he’s old enough now that logic sets in. This was the same night that dad’s flight was cancelled and he had to catch a different flight out into toronto and mum and i had to go pick him up after I got home. What a long night.

Merry Christmas!

Did Santa/Mom & Dad/Siblings/Significant Other/YOU bring you what you wanted? Certainly did on this end! He brought me a kitchenaid mixer (hooray!) which by the way, can certainly handle 7 cups of oatmeal, out of 9, for Monster Cookies! And for all of you that visit and complain about my lack of Mario Kart, you should know that Jeff was nice enough to bring me Mario Kart. On a related note, Michelle and I also braved EB Games, and we picked up Mario Party as well. (BTW, since the Wii is my first piece of nintendo equipment, outside of that gameboy which I only have one non-mario related game for… Who on earth is Birdo?! And why is… she? so annoying? Or maybe it’s just me.)

So anyways, we spent Christmas Eve at my dad’s parents’ house. It was supposed to be at our house, but we didn’t think Grandma could take the half hour car ride, let alone get comfortable at our house. (At hers, she spent almost the entire time in her lazyboy, piled high with pillows, just to be semi-comfortable.) I went early, we’re talking 10am, to get the hosue ready. I cleaned, I put the roast in, mum put the potatoes/veggies in when they arrived around 3, I set up the Christmas tree, with a little help from Grandpa, I ironed, set the table, moved the tv so there’d be room for two walkers, etc. Later, Grandma tells my Dad that Jeff and I are just “there” don’t really seem “involved” when we should be considering she’s dying (which she tells us frequently… like every 10 minutes when you’re there). Obviously, I’m not saying anything. She is a little delusional. On a recent sidenote, Jan. 12, I called to see how she was doing. Her next door neighbour, Leigh, picks up. She tells Grandma that “Kristel, your granddaughter” has called. Grandma can’t come to the phone, she tells Leigh to tell me that she’s sorry she didn’t call me back. Um… “She never was supposed to call me back. I’m just seeing how she’s doing today.” Whatever, Grandma had to go the washroom at that point, which aparently takes a while, so I hang up. The scary part is that she thinks she has to call a Kristel back. Now while it could mean me, we already know that it wasn’t. So it could actually be two other options, both of which relating to her sister, whom I’m named after, Christel. The first of the two, and the more likely, she was actually thinking of her sister, Dorle. Whom she has been hanging up on very often for the past month. The second option, she actually is thinking of her sister, Christel. The scary part of that is, Christel’s been dead several years now. Unless she can talk with the dead, she can’t actually call Christel back. But um, I’m getting off topic here. Where was I? Oh yes, the rest of the Christmas post… So anyways, we do the standard Christmas things at their house, dinner, dessert, and finally, presents! Some pretty good ones, including the book we gave grandma and grandpa for christmas that I toiled over, and Mum did the final editing. There is a version online that you can see, but you’ll have to email me for the password. (I don’t want anyways I don’t know reordering, etc. Mostly because it kinda creeps me out thinking of someone ordering a copy of the photobook of our family memories!) Anyways, so we get through all the presents, and… my grandparents haven’t given out theirs. My parents, okay mostly my Mum, has been doing their shopping for the four of us for years. We knew they had something for us. Mum didn’t wrap them, thinking it’d give Grandpa something to do. So he disapears for half an hour. Eventually, my Uncle Harry goes out to find him, and they both come out with our presents, in the original bags, tags still on. Hillarious, yes, but kind of sad at the same time. We just recently found out that he’s been diagnosed with alzheimer’s. Again, getting off topic… Overall, it was a fun, but with a definate depressing undertone to the entire evening at my grandparents’.

So we drive home from my grandparents, they drop me off at my house with the understanding that I’ll be ready to come back in the morning at 9am. Jeff complains when I tell him I won’t be ready for the party later in the day and he’ll have to go a whole 10 minutes out of his way to pick me up for then. But really, 10 minutes of his time is not worth the extra hour of my time. Anyways, so I’m ready at 9, or at least dressed and have the presents for the 3 of them in a box ready to go, dad picks me up, we have breakfast, presents, hooray 4 mixer, and mum and I wrap presents for that afternoon. We were running behind though, so instead of the plan where they go to pick up Grandma at the Louttets, drop me off at my house, and then head to Georgetown, they left me at their house and proceeded with the other steps. Jeff again complains that he has to take me home, once I’m finished the last few gifts, but he got over it. Especially when I suggested we load the car then instead of him doing it on his own. But longer story cut long, eventually we arrive at the Louttets, with presents in hand. And proceed with the same proceedings as the night before except with turkey instead of roast, Nana (my cousins’ grandma) instead of Grandpa, Great Grandma in place of Grandma… but a little less morbid, just a little more ornery, and my other Grandma, complete with potatoes, and obviously my other Aunt and Uncle instead. It was fun. We had made a book for this grandma too and thankfully, she seemed to appreciate it a lot more. (if you want a link to this book online, let me know!) We watched Mama Mia, Richard didn’t rip his presents open like he threatened to, and yeah. A lot happier than the night before!

On to Michelle’s visit and New Years…

She arrived Sat. night, Dec 27th, and the next day we headed to Toronto to see the Nutcracker! It was AWESOME! She promised to go see Carmen with me in June, I wonder if she’ll still be keen when she finds out it’s also an opera. Anyone else interested?

We also did some groceries, and made some great dishes from my new cook book. Or at least I thought they were. She loved the norwegian meatballs, but not the crab stuffed chicken. Still good. We also made shortbread and monster cookies to test out my mixer. We put skittles in the shortbread for her, and I don’t really like them… Especially since the skittles do what I say they would in the oven, and melted and then rehardened harder than they were before. The also made the mild shortbread into seriously sweet cookies. But the monster cookies were good, though I did learn to read the recipe all the way through else you will have several freezer bags full of cookies.

We also went to Simply Wonderful, and picked up a couple new games: Quiddler & Moonshot Euchre. Quiddler was great! It’s great for word buffs, but you can get away with 2 letter words and still get a lot of points, and completely screw over your mother who likes to play scrabble and tries to get the longest word possible out of her cards. The first time Michelle and I played, she dealt me a hand that read, exactly as dealt, “The Gap”. The Gap just can’t beat that kind of advertising. Moonshot Euchre was good once we had figured out the rules. So the first couple hands weren’t so fun, but I thought the rest were. Michelle plays with some weird Euchre rules, so she didn’t really enjoy it. It kinda combines bridge and Euchre all in one game, and there are no 9′s or 10′s, and it’s perfectly valid to play a hand with “no trump”. So we played games, and we actually went to the butterfly conservatory. Those pictures will be up… once I have my photo page written. I’m currently experiencing some bizzare error with one of my customers and trying to fix it, so it’s not happening.

Happy New Year!

For new years, well, we just played Mario Party/Kart. She doesn’t enjoy Air Farce, so didn’t make her watch it. Thankfully they put a repeat of the program on a few days later, and I got my chicken cannon fix. It really is too bad they’ve cancelled the show. After new years, well, it was just too cold to go out anywhere, except maybe the mall, no wait that was before new years, so we just hung out here, played more games and more of the wii.

So where am I up to now? Jan. 3… hmm, well, not much has happened. Been working, cleaning, took the christmas tree down, and oh yeah… Nearly a week without heat! They replaced the boilers, and well, the new ones just couldn’t heat all 9 floors, so it took nearly 3 days after they got the new ones in and working up to the 9th floor before it was actually warm in here. Nothing I could do about it but sit on the couch with 3 shirts on, a sweatshirt, and a duvet.

Went to scrapbooking on Friday night, with my cool new boxes! Okay, not talking about the ones for Christmas, haven’t found an easy way to carry all of they easily yet. But I made these other two boxes for Usable scraps and Trash scraps. You see, I tend to spend every meeting cleaning up after the kids… when I’d really like to get stuff done. So every time they go to the cutter, they just leave the parts they don’t want, and i end up picking them up off the floor and off the table — which is just stupid considering the youngest kid we have is in grade 4, and is perfectly capable of putting things in boxes. So while they still don’t help clean up all the scissors, glue, tape, photo corners, stack the paper they pulled apart, we don’t have to pick up dozens of little pieces of paper off the floor, some of which could’ve been reused if no one had stepped on it. I’m so proud of my boxes. Surely there’s something more I can do, but that was the best I could come up with so far.

Anything else? Well, I’m looking for sheet music by “RyanDan” In the event it actually does exist, you can let me know, but I’m heading to Music Plus tomorrow to see if they know, so they’ll probably tell me. If I’m lucky it does. Their album came out in 2007, but it’s not like it did very well, so maybe not… We shall see.

Is that enough for you? I think so… Until next post…

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