ZEST

This is my sister Amanda.

This picture, I feel, typifies her.

She is in Vietnam right now doing a "school / work" thing.

(You will have to go to her blog and check out all her adventures amandamariesmith1.blogspot.com)

I have always admired Amandas zest for life.

This is how she does everything in life

All out

She absolutley excels at everything she does, and its probably because she leaps at life like she is leaping into the water.

I miss her.

I am so proud of her!

Love you

Tender Mercies.

(If you didnt read the last post ... scroll down and read it.... this wont make any sense otherwise)

After I wrote that post yesterday, I went to bed feeling very sorry for myself. I layed down and tried to fall asleep, and then Tala woke up ... so I got her out of bed and took her to the rocking chair to feed her before putting her back down.

As I sat there I saw my i-pod sitting on the dresser next to me, so I reached out and grabbed it. Can I first just mention that I LOVE technology. I mean, on my ipod I have all the scriptures, the hymns, the lesson manuals, the general conferance talks, everything! Its the Gospel Library app, its free and it rocks. Its awesome. ANYWAY, i went to the general conferance talks and "just so happened" to first click on the talk by Julie Beck (love her)

It was like her talk was meant for me specifically.

It may as well have been titled, " Dear Kristine ... listen up"

If you dont remember that talk ... PLEASE go and read it!!!

I am planning on reading it and studying it a few more times over the rest of the week, but so far what I have gotten out of it is this ...

** There arent enough hours in the day for me to do everything I want to do for as long as I want to do it for ... so GET OVER IT.... make it work. Take care of the most important things first and worry about everything else later.

** I NEED revelation. period. These are daughters of God that I am raising. With His help I cant go wrong.

** Even when i try my best and do everything that I can. I am still going to have dissapointments it life , but I dont have to be dissapointed in myself.


** so much more, I am excited to really study this talk out and find more!


Awesome talk ... EXACTLY what I needed to hear, right when I needed to hear it.

No matter how far away I am from home, I am always able to get help from Heaven and I love that.

Good night world, tonight I am going to bed feeling alot better.

ps- Kailey went to bed with out screaming tonight, it was nice to have her back to her old self again. Hopefully she is back to stay.

Balance

I have been the mommy of two girls for over a month now, and Im still struggling to find some balance.
Sure I could blame it on the fact that we moved across the continent 2 weeks ago, or the fact that Kailey was sick all of last week ... but really I just need to admit to myself that I am going to be busier than I am used to.
I was holding on to this illusion that I could keep my same routine and schedule and everything would just fall easily and happily into place. I would still get my nap time in, Kailey and I could still do all the things together that we used to, the house would still be (somewhat) clean. I would feel rested and happy at the end of the day. etc etc etc .. you know .... dreams.....

WHy is it that all of a sudden my 2 year old is screaming NO at me all the time? Why wont she go to bed anymore with out me singing to her and rubbing her back until she falls asleep? Why do they both start crying at the same time? Why does the baby refuse to be put down when I need to get things done?

I would LOVE to have some balance in my life right now. I want to have some alone time with Tala to bond with her and talk to her, I want some alone time with Kailey to do those fun things with her like we used to, I want to get stuff done around the house, I want to have alone time with Davis when I dont feel so tired that all i really want to do is sleep. I want to have time to myself so I can relax. I want to read some scriptures again and get myself back on track spiritually.

I just want to feel balanced and not feel guilty about leaving things (or people) alone so that I can focus on other things (and people)

To moms of more than one kid .... .... how?

Tala's Story

I will post lots of pictures soon, but I just wanted to come on here and write down all the details of Talas birth before I forget!!!!!

All morning saturday I had been feeling pretty good, I had had a couple of painfull contractions but nothing too serious at all. In the afternoon I went for a nice brisk walk followed by a nap, and when i woke up around supper time I could feel some ..... shall we say .... wetness ???? I wasnt sure if it was my water that broke or not, so I kept on going about my evening, I made supper, tidyed up the place a little bit and started feeling very very uncomfortable ... this was all around 5ish.
By 5:30 I was starting to have alot of pain so Davis' sister took Kailey to my Moms house and we headed over to the IWK asap!! We werent in the car more than 10 minutes and I was in full out labour ... like painful contractions every couple of minutes. It didnt help at all that we were in the truck and every bump on the road was like a punch to the stomach. By the time we got to the assesment unit at the IWK I was in so much pain they didnt even bother to check me they got me down to labour and delivery right away and I got me some laughing gas!!! It took the edge off enough to get the IV in and to hold me over to the epidural .... ahhhh sweet relief. Once the epidural was in they checked me and I was 8 cms!!!!! By this time it was probably around 9 oclock maybe?? i dont really remember.
SO with the epidural helping me to relax, I chilled out and watched some of the Princess Bride movie .... they had just made it to the other side of the fire swamp, when they checked me again and said, OK time to start pushing!!! what the heck????
We started pushing at 10:30 and Tala popped right out 15 minutes later!! I was in shock honestly, I could not believe that it went that fast!!!!!

She is 8 pounds and 1 ounce. 21 inches long!!! lots of dark hair and chubby little cheeks!!

We named her Fai'tala Lei, after Davis' grandmother Fai'tala and his aunt Lei. We will call her Tala for short. The jury is still out on the actual meaning of the name, we were told 2 differant things by 2 differant people, but either way i really love the name and we REALLY love this little girl!

After Kaileys 20 hour labour with 2 hours of pushing, this one was a shocker to me! I could not believe that it all happened in less than 6 hours!!!

They were very good to us at the IWK and everyone is healthy and happy!!! But we got out of there as soon as they would let us go. We were discharged monday morning and we are so glad to be home now!

Like I said, I will put up pictures later on, I just had a quick second here and wanted to write down what I can remember of the weekend before i start to forget things!! It may make no sense at all to anyone, but I am too hungry to go back and edit everything and make it sound good .... sorry for the inevidable typos.....

Hippie alert!

I have been reading this book alot latley.

Slow Death by Rubber Duck

Isnt that a friendly title?

This book, and others like it, are going to turn me into some kind of a hippie or hermit or something. It is really scary to think of all the chemicals and known toxins that are pumped into EVERYTHING we use all day long and we have no idea!!

Did you know that companies can put chemicals into whatever they want without having first tested them to make sure they are safe??? Even as this book has pointed out in numerous studies that companies know some chemicals they are using are toxic to human health yet they continue to use them until law suits come up and they are forced to stop..... what the?

It has been a facinating read so far and I am learning alot about the products that we use everyday.

I really really really recommend this book to everyone!

especially if you have kids!

may so far

So yes, I am still pregnant. That is always the question that makes me confused. I think I got asked the question about 15 times on sunday.... "are you still pregnant"? ....

um, yes, clearly I am still pregnant.

Can you tell Im a little cranky? Over a month going on 4 hours or less of sleep a night will do that to a mama.

But on a brighter note!! Davis got to home yesterday!!! He is going to work and sell here until after the baby is born and I am soooo excited to have him around! So if anyone wants a sweet freakin security system he will totally hook you up! Let us know!

In Other news, on May 1st my big brother Aaron got married!!!!

It was a great day and we had so much fun!

Kailey loved getting all dressed up and showing everyone her "pitty dess". She was also pumped about being allowed to go around the temple! We live just down the street from the temple and everytime we see it she gets excited and points it out to us.

" Look Mommy, temple!!!!"

"Jesus house"

Its really cute.

Back to the wedding.

They did a ring ceremony after the temple because Shawna's family werent able to go into the temple. That RS room has never looked so pretty! Below is a picture of their first kiss as a married couple!!!!

They kept everything very intimate and private for the most part. Only immediate family at the ring ceremony and they didnt have a HUGE number of people at the reception either. They had their reception on the Harbour Queen for a 2 hour cruise. It was alot of fun and everything turned out wonderful!

Shawna is a great person and we are all very excited to have her in the family!

random thoughts of the week

So Davis left this week for Ottawa. (he does the whole door to door selling thing during the summer) he is there now, all lonley and stuff :( and Kailey and I are here all lonley and stuff. I am one week away from my due date and far too fat to be alowed on a plane, so here I stay until this kid decides to make an appearence. THEN I can go out to Ottawa for the rest of the summer and be with him.
It is quite upsetting not knowing if I will be here for 1 more week without him or 3 more weeks with out him. Very very upsetting. Should I feel bad praying to go into labour?? Im not sure, but Im doing it anyway.

Cute story for the day.

I was laying awake in bed at 4 am (because thats the cool thing to do) and I heard Kailey wake up down the hall. All I heard her say was her alphabet .... thats it .... and then nothing more. Either she woke up with the desire to repeat all her letters, or she was saying it in her sleep, either way it was hilarious at 4am, and I am glad I was awake to hear that.
Since when is she old enough to do that?

Yesterday I was puttering around in the kitchen. Kailey was walking in and out of the kitchen. At some point I mumbled something to myself about not having any apple juice left upstairs and a minute later i hear this sweet little voice behind me.

"apa ju ... mama"

I turned around and there is my sweet little girl with a giant can of apple juice. She apparently heard me say we had no more apple juice and went down stairs to the food storage room and grabbed a can and brought it up stairs for me...

Little moments like this melt my heart.


ps- she said the entire alphabet today straight though, all by herself .... just sayin'

LOOK WHO IS 2

Happy 2nd Birthday KAILEY!!!!

Its so hard to believe that she was born 2 YEARS AGO!! Some times I still look at her like she is a baby (and treat her like that), and she reminds me very fast that she is a "big girl" and she can do it "by herself"

Our birthday party was fun, we just had family over, because lets face it, there is alot of them.
In this picture she is dancing for everyone, she loves music and dancing so much ... and also a captive audiance. She enjoyed being the centre of attention for so many people.

This picture makes me sad, proud & happy all at the same time. She looks so grown up allready, how did that happen?????

Ok so, she LOVES sesame street .... ALOT .... it was a sesame street themed party. Most of her presents had something to do with sesame street. I made this cake for her.... phew!!!!! Im glad it turned out so good, because it took FOREVER !!!!!!!!! Best part of all is that Kailey was so excited with it!

I put up all the pictures of her party on face-book allready. so feel free to check them out. We had a great day and I still can't believe that she is 2!!!!

If I could stand up in sacrament meeting and bear my testimony about cloth diapers ... I WOULD!!!!!!!

I wish we made the switch LONG ago.

Kailey has pretty sensitive skin and we have always dealt with rashes on her since she was born. Its only been a few weeks of using cloth, but I am NEVER going back to the disposables again, we have not had one ounce of redness on her skin!!!

The best part, is when I am putting them on her and she smiles and tells me they are soft .... :)

I am going to take a video of them to post on here soon, because seeing is believing folks!!! The more people I can convert to cloth the better!!!!!!

Kristi has done it again!

go to her blog here

www.visiblevoice.com

to win some super cute handbags.

72 hour kit building adventures.
Like most of you, when I thought of making a 72 hour kit ..... I shuttered ..... I'll admit it.
I didn't want to think that I might eventually need one, I thought it would take alot of money & time to put together and keep updated .... I was procrastinating ALOT.

But I knew I needed one.

Seeing the news on the earth-quakes in Haiti pushed me over the edge. The thought of not having any help for days or weeks on end and not being able to feed my child was too much for me so I bit the bullet and got 'er done.

GOOD NEWS --- it was not as hard as I thought, not as expensive as I thought, and OH my does it feel good to have them ready! They aren't completley done yet, there are still some things on my list to get, but for the most part they are good to go should we need them.

We used old gym bags that Davis had stashed in the storage room at first and while we were packing them we realized that all the zippers on these bags were broken and one of the bags had some mold action going (ewwwww) so I got on my favorite website KIJIJI and found us 2 good hockey bags on wheels for 15 bucks each.

The list of what is inside comes from the LDS website, they have a really helpful list there with lots of great ideas for what to put inside. Like with anything we had to adjust it to suit our situation (diapers and bottles for the baby(ies) preparing for the fact that its the middle of winter and freezing cold) so we made our adjustments and got a sweet list together and it only took me one morning of grocery shopping and dollar store shopping to get everything that we needed.

I was thinking of posting the list from the LDS website, but for some reason it wont let me "copy - paste" and I don't feel like typing it all out.

But if you just google - 72 hour kit list. a bunch of great stuff with pop up, the lds website is near the top and the best one that I found, but there are other great ones on there too.

Moral of the blog story for today is for me to encourage all of you to start thinking about a 72 hour kit! Heaven forbid we should ever need one, but there is something to be said about being prepared right? If you do have one allready let me know about yours, where you store it, whats inside, how often you rotate the stuff inside etc ... Im all for new ideas!!!!

give-away

two lovely ladies are doing a give-away that I want to take advantage of!

check them out!!!!!

www.visiblevoice.ca

buzz agenting

Wow, I have been blogging alot latley. Im on a roll! One more thing to say though! You may remember a while back that I was doing this "buzz agent" thing. ( www.bzzagent.com ) Basically they sign you up for free products in exchange you tell people about the stuff they gave you. Word of mouth marketing. ANYWAY. Last week they sent me a coupon for a free case of Danactive. They also sent me a huge pack of dollar off coupons, if you want one let me know!!!!
So after trying out the drink, here is my list of pros and cons;

-Con- it's a little small, and while not too expensive ( about $1 a bottle, its not really cheap enough that I would make it a regular part of my dietary life. (I'm cheap, what can I say)
-Pro- Taste wise, its great! really tasty!
-Pro- It is nice and small (which I know I said was a con) but it would be really easy to pack this for a lunch, or toss it in your purse (or diaper bag) for a snack. So in that way its really convieniant.
-Pro- really healthy for you.

Health facts -

- each bottle contains 10 billion L. casei probiotic cultures.
- probiotic cultures help your digestive system to fight of infections and sickness
- on their website ( www.danactive.ca ) they have a list of 24 differant studies that they did, showing how this drink helped to strengthen the immunity of the body. Flu season is still upon us, so it might not be a bad idea to drink back a couple of these bad boys!!


So long story short, what I am trying to say is that I really liked the drink, and while it may not become a daily event for me, I can see myself buying these occasionaly for trips or outings when I want a healthy little snack to bring along.

Like I said in the begining, they gave me a stack of dollar off coupons to give out to friends. Please take some from me!!!! Its a big stack and I cant use them all before they expire. ALSO they gave me some contest codes to give out to my friends, to win a year supply of FREE danactive drinks! Even if you dont live close you can still do this one, I can just scratch off the number on the card and email it to you and you can go to the website and enter it in there!!!! It would be really fun if someone won because of me!

Well, I found this great idea on www.make-baby-stuff.com which was to find a great picture and bring it to this one website where they will expand it for you and then you just print it out on your computer. Its totally free (which I love) and easy (also I love that)

So I picked out a few wonderful pictures that I would like to have blown up on one of Kaileys walls. I need some votes on which one is best. The colours in her room are mainly, peach, green and pink. Which one do you like best?

I like them all for differant reasons, so I am having a hard time deciding which one to do.

Anyway, can't wait to see what this looks like! I will definetly post up some pictures when its all done.

Just in case you did'nt see it on face book .....

Just in case the facebook grape vine hasn't reached everyone!!!


!!!!!!!!! IT'S A GIRL !!!!!!!!!!!!!



I can't tell you how excited we are to have two little angels in our house very soon!!!

SO I found this really cute site.

www.makebabystuff.com

There are TONS of really cute and easy little projects.

Just in case any of you Mamas out there are feeling crafty, they have anything from clothes to baby safe cleaning projects, to babys room decorating ideas .... I have been having alot of fun today getting lots of ideas for stuff to do.

It is satisfying my "nesting" urges!!

kijiji

Does anyone else have the same obsession that I do with getting a killer deal???

And I don't mean like 30% off at the mall, I mean like a KILLER DEAL!!!!!!

I got a HUGE blue recycling bag jammed FULL FULL FULL of clothes for kailey .... wanna know how much I paid for it??

20 bucks my friends. 20 pesos!!!!!

Inside were at least a dozen pair of jeans, 6 or 7 sweaters, 3 dresses, well over 25 or 30 shirts, a snow suit, and some spring jackets. All of them were in excellent condition, some even had the tags still on them, all of them super super cute!

Try getting that kind of a deal at the mall!

I have a love obsession with kijiji.ca, its sick really, but I love it. Its how I clothe my daughter, and myself sometimes, I got a bunch of awesome maternity clothes on there too!

If you have never tried going on kijiji, you seriously should, especially if you have kids and they are growing out of their clothes every other month! I mean, who wants to go and buy a whole new wardrobe for their kid every month and pay, who knows how much??? seriously try it out, it feels good!!!!

I dare you!

I love 2 year olds

Kailey and I have been having some wonderful conversations latley.


Last night I was sitting on the couch, Kailey was in the "office" room playing and getting into trouble, but I was tired and didnt want to see what she was destroying, so I ignored the fact that she was in there being a little TOO quiet.

Then all of a sudden she struts out to me (and if you have ever seen a Kailey strut you know what I mean ... there are arms swinging, and hips going and she means buissness) so she struts up to me and tells me very matter-of-factly ....

" babble babble babble .. elmo ... babble babble ... cheeeese ... blah blah blah .... lights ... babble blah babble blah .... yellow ... blah blah blah .... aaaa baaa di das ... .... then there was a pointed pause where she looked at me like I was supposed to respond to that profound statement. I found it impossible to say anything at that moment, so I just smilied.
She stuck out her little lips and said ... " mmmmmmm .... yes"

I would really love to invent a toddler translator so i could know what the heck she is talking about on days like that. Anyone with more kids than me have a translation?? so far I think she was saying something like " mama, lets get a snack of cheese and watch some elmo, and while we are at it, lets turn on those christmas lights .... oh and get me my yellow (her blankie) um yes that sounds like a plan"

I love 2 year olds.

re-thinking my inks

Well, I have been reading up on the cloth diaper debate alot in the last few weeks. I am still learning alot but I have found some pretty shocking things so far, that I thought I would pass along.
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Cost benefits
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For the amount of cloth diapers that I want and the brand that I want to buy it will cost me around $600 for diapers that will last me not only through one kid, but probably through 2 or more kids!
An average canadian baby will need between 5000 and 7000 diapers in the first 2 years of life. I took the average of 6000 and multiplied that by 0.25 cents (thats usually how much I pay for Kaileys diapers, those are the cheap sales too!) That adds up to $1500 bucks just for 2 years of diapers. Depending on when you potty train your kids, and how much you pay for diapers that adds up to ALOT of money my friends!!!!! Add to that the cost of wipes, creams and diaper genie refills .... phew!!
Now I know what you are thinking, "what about the cost to clean them?" well I calculated that to, according to nova scotia power the cost would be an extra 60 to 70 bucks a year. not that bad, if you ask me.
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So, one point for the cloth side! Less money!
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Environmental benefits - In Canada there are 4 MILLION diapers thrown out every day!!!! every day!! that is 1.6 BILLION diapers a year!! just in canada alone! wowzers. Add to that, that landfills are not supposed to be handling human waste, making them a breeding ground for viruses and deseases. Don't feel better if you don't live near a landfill. Those garbage trucks drive right past your front door full of biohazerdous waste! gross.
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Here is probably the most shocking thing I found out! There is a product inside of all disposable diapers called polyacrylates. It used to be used in tampons until it got linked to toxic shock syndrom and so it got banned from use in tampons, but is still being used in our baby's diapers!!! Does anyone else see something wrong with that???? Not only has it been linked to toxic shock, but also a higher rate of respitory problems like asthma and pnemonia etc etc etc.
Tin has also been found in disposable diapers, and rate of 3.6 higher the daily exposure allowable by the WHO.
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It doesnt look as hard to clean as I thought. You just dump out the diapers into the wash. You don't have to like pre-wash the poo by hand or anything like that.
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Not that I am trying to switch people over to cloth diapers BUT if I had known this when Kailey was born, I definetly would have used cloth. I would switch right now with her, but we are going to start the potty training in the next week or two, so we don't have much more need of diapers.
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And they arent the diapers that you are thinking of either. They are all pre-sewed and fitted, with velcro straps, so it makes them just as easy to change and put on as disposable!!
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Anyway, I just wanted to pass along information to Mommys, and potential mommies!!

Cloth diapers?

Do any of you Moms out there use cloth diapers??

I have been reading up on them a bit and I think I know what type of diaper I want to try out but there are so many differant brands, I just don't know what kind to try out.

If any of you use cloth diapers, or know someone who does, PLEASE SHARE!! I still have a few more months of research to do, but would really appreciate the help!!!!