The best part of giving a gift is taking the time to think of the most perfect gift, the most personal gift, something that will make the gift receiver happy and let them KNOW that you have pit a lot of thought into the gift you are giving them.

This is where personalized gifts come into the story. When my boy was going into kindergarten to get him excited about it, we ordered him crayons, each color was a letter in his name, Ive also bought soap sets in a sewing theme – little sewing machines, pin cushions and thimbles, for my granny who is an avid sewer.

I think the first personalized gift we bought was while we were still in the hospital with our first born nearly 11 years ago. We bought a book personalized to our child’s birth from the hospital. Many times I have gotten Mom (and my husband, Dad) personalized articles as gifts from our sons.

My favorite thing about Christmas is hunting that perfect gift, and we start looking in January, and continue looking until we FIND that gift.

Just wanted you all to know I just bought this alarm clock for under five bucks, with shipping on eBay. But it;s not for me, its for my soon to be eight year old boy.

See. When I was a girl, I slept downstairs in a basement room (my sister had a room right next to me), and in the mornings my dad would stand at the top of the stairs and yell my name to wake me up. Now, as a nearly 31 year old adult, I wake up if someone so much as whispers my name, but I do not wake up to an alarm clock even if I put it on the pillow right next to my ear and set the volume on high. (I’ve tried that). I do have better luck waking up when I switch it to radio than when it is on the BEEP BEEP BEEP alarm, but it is not a reliable way for me to wake up.

Because of this, we got our eldest boy and alarm clock when he was seven and a half. For two reasons. We were sick and tired of me not hearing the alarm or the phone and him being late for school, AND I did not want him to grow to adulthood with an inability to hear alarms like I have.

My eldest is now ten going on eleven (OMG) and he wakes us all up every morning for school. That’s all well and good, we are up, we are getting to school on time, BUT, it’s time now for his brother to have an alarm clock and begin to learn to wake to it’s sound. And for five bucks? Can’t freaking go wrong with that!

I have to admit though, that some mornings, my eldest wakes me up and I fall right back asleep, leading to a mad rush and panic to get everything one on time (did you know that panic is one of the leading top fat burners?) Recently we switched the alarms back half an hour to seven AM instead of seven thirty, in hopes that the extra half hour will cover my OMG I fell back asleep ass. It’s been two mornings so far with the seven AM wake up, and I have to admit, it seems to be working! – Although a huge part of our morning slowness routine is the making of lunches, it seems to take us forever, and over the weekend my mother in law made buns, then a ham, then ham and cheese bunwiches for the boys to take for school lunches, so that shaves a huge amount of time off our OMG lets get it all done! Quick Quick Quick routine in the morning.

It’s time for a happy thoughts list!

• I am happy that all three boys of mine are avid readers – even my five year old who cant even read yet!
• Speaking of five year olds, I’m happy that I haven’t had to have treatment for hemorrhoids since said five year old was born.
• I’m happy for our plans for Easter that do not include spreading copious amounts of chocolate around the house, Chocolate I’m not even going to let my kids eat, but involved a treasure hunt of Epic proportions!
• I’m happy that my children, myself and my husband – as well as our pets are healthy.
• Speaking of fish. How is it we have a fish that is set to turn TWO years old in a few months. Longest I’ve kept a fish alive before is two MONTHS!
• This one is silly, but ti makes me happy, so it goes on the list. I am both happy and excited that I have over nine million coins in a game on face book, nearly twice the amount I have ever had for that particular game. And If I am patient enough and smart enough, I can double that nine million soon.
• I’m happy that tomorrow I have the entire day – 9am to 3pm – all to myself. I’m not quite sure what I plan on doing, but it will involve naps and mid afternoon naps.
• I am happy that I have a big bag of Easter chocolate all to myself.

I think, it is quite easy to see, that right now, at this moment, my life is freaking awesome.

Awe.Some

Know what bugs me about our Saturday shopping trip – more than the money we have to spend on it?

The fact that we go every two weeks but some times, the shopping list is double what we normally need to buy. See, sometimes it is like we run out of everything all at once. And that makes it really expensive and really annoying.

I try to convince myself that I am just gonna build muscles carrying in that eight bazillion pound bucket of cat litter, but truthfully? I’m just gonna have sore feet, be broke, and be all sweaty.

And the worst part is having to shop for food, its just not FUN. I could spend hours shopping for toys, socks, shoes, clothes, everything else, but food shopping is just not fun. I hate getting it all home and trying to put it all away, I hate trying to figure out if something is a good deal or not.

HATE IT.

On the plus, we do get to shop for a new spring coat for Logan (Even though it is snowing RIGHT NOW) and rubber boots for both Parker and Blake. It’s weird, but it looks like both their boots were cut with a knife, the “holes” in them are so straight. Luckily, (HA!) it’s snowing, so they don’t have to worry about their holy boots, they are wearing their winter boots, but soon (Hopefully) the snow will melt again and we will actually need the boots.

Won’t we?

Every freaking year I do this. I sit on my ass swearing that this is gonna be the winter I lose weight, this is gonna be the winter that I shed it all so that I can feel comfortable in shorts and tee shirts without a sweater to hide my pork belleh, but nope, here we are on the cusp of spring and I haven’t lost an ounce of weight.

I suck So bad.

I know that quick weight loss isn’t gonna happen by itself, I know that in order to lose weight I need to get up off my ass, but there are so many things that i need to do online, so many things that i want to do online, that I cant bring myself to get up and move around.

Dude. I might be addicted to the internet. And chocolate. And coffee laced with cream and sugar. And chips with LOTS of dip.

Dammit.

I don’t wanna be fat :O(

Maybe I will start the 30 day shred thing again. i got to day five last time, I will make it my goal to get to day six and see how that goes. Can;t start til Tuesday ‘cus the kids are home til then and the idea of working out in front of Micah or the boys is on my top ten list of things i never ever EVER want to do, But we will see. Maybe I can do it this time?

So we were talking about weight loss surgery and liposuction at supper the other day and my eldest suggested that if I am not happy with the way I look I should get some surgery.

I tried to explain to him that that type of surgery is for people who really, really, REALLY over weight and that any doctor would just laugh at me if I went in to ask for it.

Then I told them that if i really truly wanted to lose weight, I would get my butt off this computer, stop eating chocolate and take a walk around the block every night.

So. my dad talked to my brother and explained that there is no way in hell danny will be buying a bike so long as he owes them both money.

LOLz

They are still being stupid with money, the girls each got another whole set of clothes, coats, shoes, more of every thing.

Stupids.

See, me and Hubs were crappy with money for soooo long, then we moved out of a rent free bill free always food int eh fridge that we didn’t have to supply place with a two year old and a five week old and we damn well learned to deal with money.

Kids always had food and bills always got paid.

Smokes? Going for coffee? Buying a new pair of shoes? None of that came anywhere near our list of things to buy until bills, rent and groceries were bought.

Now, we are good enough with money that we even have a credit card. The thing about our credit card, though, is we use it like a debit card. if we want to purchase something, we check our bank account online to see if we can afford it, and if so, we buy it with the credit card, then immediately transfer the money from our bank account to the visa bill.

We have prolly bought 500 or so things on our credit card, I love eBay, Etsy, Amazon books, I love stuff liek that, BUT, we do not spend more than we have.

It’s not that hard really. If we cannot afford it, we do without. It took having to be the sole providers for our two kids for us to learn that, when on earth will my brother and his girlfriend learn to be smart about money?

This afternoon I was playing a game on facebook (keno) and while waiting for the next draw I was reading the chat messages popping up. Two girls were talking about how much in debt they were over drugs (medications, not illegal drugs) becuase their health plans did not cover them.

It made me so thankful that I live in Canada where my medicines, surgeries and basically everything health related is covered by my government. Here in Canada I don’t have to worry about having a health savings account, a place to save money for the next time I get a bad flu or need medications for a sinus infection. I’m thankful that I know I can go to the doctors, take my SONS to the doctors and not get a bill in the mail a few weeks later for their care.

Thankful, So very thankful!

This morning Logan asked to go outside and play and since I hadn’t had my coffee and he hadn’t had his breakfast yet, I said no.

This afternoon the boy next door called to see if Logan was allowed to come out and play and since I had had my coffee, and Logan had had his breakfast, I said yes.

Well, now It’s official. I can call off my OMG I’m going to go insane if I see one more snowflake emergency trip to a Cabo San Lucas vacation rentals! When Logan was done playing – and they were out for a good two hours, He came in SOAKED. And I mean SOAKED. His boots were literally dripping, I had to wring out his ski pants nad mitts and his coat had to go in the dryer it was so wet, I was worried it would n’t dry on its own fast enough.

About a week ago, I saw a facebook status from  person who lives about four hours from me, they said they had seen a live fly. Not many people get excited about flies, but let me tell you, when you live in Saskatchewan and deal with our winters, seeing a fly is the best news you can get. Flies only come out when it is warm enough – and going to stay warm enough – for them to live.

I have yet to see a fly flying around my house, but if the state of Logans’ outerwear is any indication, Spring is on it’s way!

YES!

So. No one actually LIKES dieting and exercising. Trust me. The people who say they do? they are lying. To that effect, I have come up with a list of snazzy (mostly)fun and fast weight loss program ideas!

1. Go the the garage for a smoke. There are four steps down*, which means there are four steps up. See! Easy as pie. For added benefit, bring your laptop with you, It will act as free weights!

2. Drop an important paper on the floor. The dogs will instinctively know it is important and attempt to run off down the hall to eat it. Chase the dogs. for added benefit, scream at the top of your lungs for them to stop. Screaming burns calories, you know.

3. Commit to being a coffee addict. The amount of times in a day you will have to get up to refill your cup – not to mention getting up to go the the washroom – will add up to a 5k marathon in no time! For added benefit, use cream and sugar. The extra motions of lifting the spoon and pouring the cream will also burn calories – Plus, your cup will be heavier, meaning, YAY! It’s now weight training!

4. Get the flu. NO extra commentary needed.

5. Shower daily. Most of us (hopefully) already do this daily and don’t even realize we are burning calories. Walking to the shower. Removing clothing. Finding a robe becuase you forgot to get a towel. Removing robe and hanging it up. And if you dry vigorously with a towel you are pretty much doing calisthenics right there! As an added benefit, if you choose to bathe instead of shower, add weight training to your list, after all, you have to lift yourself up out of the tub when you are done, don’t you?!

I wish you much success!

*At my house there are four steps. If you have more, please practice safe smoking and stretch first!