Third headache this week............

Migraines! I could live without them...they used to come sporadically. Since last week I've had three 'episodes' that were heading into migraine territory.

I had these weird lightning bolts in kaleidoscope colors last week, then I took my Advil, and went to bed. Managed to escape the vertigo that comes with my migraines.

Had slight vertigo and then the headache started the other day in Trail, so I took my Advil straight away and the headache never materialized.

Today while at Office Depot I got that same spinny feeling and took my Advil and went straight home to bed. I fell asleep at 10:30am and woke at 1:15 pm this afternoon!

I still have a minor headache, and NOTHING got accomplished today at home! Uugh!

Tomorrow I'm going x-country skiing with Michael's class. I know it's good for me, but it's sooooooooo cold out! Wahhhh!

Stay tuned for an update tomorrow!

Hockey Tournament Update..........

Man alive, it is freakin freezing here in the booming(not) town of Rossland, BC!

I have yet to regain feeling in my fingers and toes. The rink was sooooooooo cold that even with the small little heater on above where we were sitting, you could still see your breath!!

We are here for Michael's tournament. Jacob came along too because he really wanted to ride on the chartered bus! It's a 4 hr trip here through windy mountain passes filled with snow! We left home on Friday morning ...had to get up at 3:35 a.m. so we could catch the bus which left at 5 a.m. Michael and I slept on the bus, but Jacob only slept for 20 mins,and then proceeded to stay awake ALL day until we got back to the hotel after the evening game!! I was about ready to collapse, and probably fell asleep before Michael that night.

Unfortunately, the boys lost both games on Friday so that meant they played at 7:30 this morning. Michael had to be up at 6:00 a.m. I got him up and dressed/fed and out the door as they were all going on the bus with the coaches. I then went back to bed....just for 10 mins, and woke up 2 hrs later! Jacob was still snoring away but I had to wake him up or we'd miss the entire game! Turns out we only caught the third period, and the boys lost that game too. We had one more game in the afternoon and we managed to WIN that one....21-1! Seriously, they could have spread all those goals out between the other games and maybe we'd have done better than last place. Oh well.

Tonight the boys went to the aquatic center and swam for 2 hrs. They're winding down now with a glass of milk and a pb&j sandwich. I'm ready for bed. We head home tomorrow.

Andy, Nicholas and Christopher are in 100 mile house for Nico's hockey tournament. They drove there on Friday. Andy said it was a loooooooooooong drive into the middle of no where! It's absolutely freezing cold there too. Today he sent me a text message saying that his privates had frozen and fallen off! lol, what a funny guy!

Nicholas is playing very well and scored 1 goal in the first game, a hat trick in the 2nd game, and a hat trick in the third game tonight! He also got player of the game tonight too!

Ah, it will be nice to be back home tomorrow. Tournaments are all finished for Michael and his team starts playoffs the first week of Feb. The other boys all play till mid March....we're almost on the downhill slope.................to Spring! Counting the days till we see and feel the sunshine again.

The 44th President of the USA!

Today I witnessed history!

Today Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th American President!

It gave me goose bumps to watch it all.

I've recorded it all for the boys to watch later on.

Here's a link with footage of the events of the day.

God Bless Obama.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/obama-inauguration-speech-ceremony

Asleep!

Finally Jacob is asleep!!

Michael's heading back to school tomorrow. We just found out his hockey tournament schedule, and that we have to be on the bus ready to depart at 5 am! Waahhh! That is going to be horrible! That means getting up at 3:45 am when no one should be awake! lol

We play 2 games on Friday. One at 10:45 and the other at 7:30 pm. It will make for a L O N G day that's for sure.

Why is it?

That bedtime was an hour an a half ago, and I still have a 7 yr. old that's wandering the halls? The other three have been asleep for an hour, but no way will Jacob settle down to sleep!!!

I'm watching Jon and Kate plus 8 and marvel at how Kate can just point to the corner if one of her kids isn't behaving and they ACTUALLY go to the corner!

Apparently the night owl wants me to lie down with him............stay tuned for a report! lol

Also, I can't believe how diligent I've been in blogging the last few days! Good on ya Maria!

Home sick today.........

Monday....three boys at school and one home sick today!

Michael has a throat infection and is currently on antibiotics. He also has a really bad cough.....although I haven't hear him cough in hours now.....hmmm back to school tomorrow....I have WAY too much to get done and organized before heading out of town this week for a hockey tournament!

Both Michael and Nicholas have out of town tourneys this coming weekend so that means Andy and I are going opposite directions on the highway....last time for the season....but then there's playoffs to contend with and I'm not sure where that will take us.

Apparently the deer are loving our succulent cedar trees that were planted in the fall. We found a family of deer eating the cedars on Saturday morning. They're not frightened either as the papa deer was eyeballing me as I drove by! I stopped and watched then(sorry Andy!) they were so darn cute! Today Andy wants me to go to Buckerfields store to buy burlap sacks so that we can cover the trees before they eat them all!

Trascending: Words on Women and Strength by Kelly Corrigan

This video clip was sent to me by the numerous wonderful women in my life. I watched it with tears as I related to what she was saying. It's so true!

Love you all!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_4qwVLqt9Q

Pizza and movie night.......

Pizza and a movie.....that's what we have planned for tonight.

Although Christopher had other plans because he wanted one of his friends to come over and have a sleepover. Normally I'd say yes, but it's been awhile since we've had any ALONE family time, and I don't think it's wrong to have said no.....he does though and has been just a joy since he got home from school today.

Christopher's team was in the newspaper today!

http://www.bclocalnews.com/okanagan_similkameen/kelownacapitalnews/sports/37720704.html

Had dental work done this morning and the freezing came out about an hour ago. It's made eating a challenge, and quite funny for the boys to watch!

Busy weekend of hockey coming up with 4 games tomorrow, and three on Sunday.

What is it with boys and wrestling????

I so don't get the whole wrestling thing!

Currently, Nicholas is watching Drake and Josh on TV and Christopher has Jacob in a hold and is pretending to 'slam' him on the couch! WTH? Jacob is of course screaming at the top of his lungs and laughing and I'm losing my mind with all the noise and the fact that the TV keeps getting L O U D E R!!!!!!!!!!

Uugh, I break it up, get them to change gears and then it starts all over again...... 90 mins till bed time, 90 mins till bed time, 90 mins. till bed time...................

Great..........chicken pox!!!

Not the kind of phone call you want to receive from the parent of the kid yours was playing with and even had dinner with last night!!!

Apparently Nico's friend Drew woke up covered in chicken pox this morning! LOVELY!

Thankfully all our boys were vaccinated....although so was Drew apparently....hmmmm, we watch and wait, tick tock, tick tock......I'll freak if they all get them now!

Waaaaaaaaahhhhh!

Jacob

Jacob's teacher says that he's a leader in the class. He's been working so hard at school, and sometimes she has to tell him to put his pencil down and go out for recess as he's so focused on getting his work done! lol

Back home from the tournaments.......

Funny how the weekend goes by so quickly when you're having fun.....the boys teams did well with Michael's team coming in third at the Kamloops Pee Wee Tier 3 tournament and Christopher's team WON the Enderby Bantam House tournament!! Michael's team had the worst draw...not only did they have to play most of their games on the Olympic size ice, but they also had to play till 10:00pm both nights. That meant bed time was after 11 pm and then up at 5 am on Sunday. We met the other Kelowna team in the semi final. I so hate that team! The parents are a nightmare too. But it wasn't meant to be and we lost in a shoot out. Andy was with Christopher in Enderby this weekend and he said that Christopher played really well and in one game he scored 2x and had 2 assists. He also got the hard hat award from his coach(for the hardest working player on the team). Way to go!

Right back at it on Monday....the house was a minor disaster, and it took me awhile to get the laundry caught up.....it's washed and dried but not folded yet. Floors are vacuumed and washed and counters are sparkling!

The fog was something else earlier today. It's finally lifted now and I can see the lake from the kitchen window.

Andy's parents gave him their car, so he's taken that to work today. It's a newer car than he had....although I'm sure it came with strings attached.

Looks like it will be another busy week, but no hockey tournaments this weekend.Yay!

Ok better get back at it. The Christmas decorations need to be put away, and I'm guessing they won't jump into the boxes themselves(darn). Most of them are put away already last week, but the last little bit is taking it's time being put away as I don't have the energy to get it all done atm. At least the main floor of the house is orderly and clean. Not enough hours in the day...and I have a first communion meeting to go to tonight.

The snow is melting slowly and it's nice to see a bit of the concrete again....I was thinking it was going to be April before we saw it again with the way the snow kept falling and falling.

Dinner is cooking in the crock pot too so that will be nice to come home to tonight after Nicholas hockey practice.

Re-cap of the Christmas Holiday 2008

It seems that December flew by at such a speed that I didn't get the chance to blog about our day to day happenings.

Here's a re cap:

The boys finished school on Dec. 19th and their cousins Julianna and Matteo arrived on the 20th. The amount of snow we've received so far has been unbelievable. We've shovelled more than we'd hoped,and it still keeps coming down!

On December 23rd we had our family and some friends over to celebrate Christopher's 13th Birthday. It was a fun evening, lots of good food and fun.

Christmas Eve was spent at Mass with mom, dad, Mina, Carlo and all the kids. Christopher was an usher at the afternoon Mass. He looked so handsome all dressed up. Hes growing up so quickly, and is such a nice boy. I hope he continues to grow into the young man I know he can be. We all had dinner at mom and dad's and then went to Uncle Sal's for dessert. I kind of miss the days when we ALL got together for dinner. Times have changed since Nonno Giovanni died, and it seems that some of our extended family has become distant. Sad really as I have such fond memories from my childhood and even through to three years ago, when my cousins. aunts and uncles were so much a part of our lives. I still invite everyone over for the boys Birthdays. Sometimes everyone comes and sometimes only one of my cousins and aunt and uncles comes. Nonina is getting older and it's harder for her to get out. I love it when she's there though and it's so wonderful for the boys to have her in their lives. All this talk of families has me thinking that I've never typed out Christopher's birth story, so I will have to do that and add some photos. I'm on my laptop atm, so don't have access to his baby photos.

Christmas Day!

The boys got all sorts of new gadgets: A cell phone for Christopher, digital cameras for Christopher and Michael, a new PSP for Jacob and new ski boots for Nicholas. Lots of PS 3 and PSP gmes, DVD's. I bought Andy a new watch which he loves and he got me this fantastic lap top computer! I'm loving it! One thing we did learn though this year, is that we seem to have been caught in a situation where some of the boys feel they're hard done by compared to what some of their friends received for Christmas. It's ridiculous, and makes me crazy. Next year we may just go away for Christmas and that can be their gift!

On the 27th we spent with Mina and Carlo taking the kids to a movie and other stuff.

Dec.28-Jan 2nd:

BIG WHITE!!!

We stayed in the nicest chalet at the ski hill. It had three bedrooms, lots of space and a great view of the Monashee Mountains. They got lots of snow while we were there, but it was COLD!

Had dinner at Jen and Tim's pizza one night and then yummy ham the next. I cooked a Turkey for New Year's Eve and we completely gorged ourselves......it was delicious, but then we all felt like we needed a nap afterwards!

New Year's Day:

I cooked dinner for all of us and for Jen, Tim and their kids. We had spaghetti and meat sauce. I don't know if it's the fresh mountain air that makes all the food taste so good, but man alive this spaghetti sauce was amazing....if I don't say so myself!

I didn't ski alot....it was nice to just hang out by the fireplace in the chalet, and the day to day stuff like laundry, and dishes weren't such a chore when I could putz around in complete quiet most of the day, It was nice.

Headed back to Kelowna on the 2nd.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!