Stupid braderie and other annoyances

Ok,  just a little vent...

Usually they have the braderie on Wednesdays, when there's no school. This year it's today. It takes up the whole pedestrian part of Down town.  What a headache it was just to go pick up Jacques at lunch and get bread! 

Let's see, ok, seriously, do you need to keep the automated sprinklers on, Ville-de-Thionville, when it's pouring so hard the streets are flooding?

Why do the French feel they need intructions for dry cereal?  Seriously... 1.  pour cereal in  bowl. 2. pour in some cold milk.  C'est pret!

On our pack of sugar there's a mail in rebate for 0€60 (60 cents), hello!!! a stamp costs 0€53!!  Wow, a whole freakin' 7 cents, lets run right to the post office!

Why can't they find a symbol for cents?

have a great friday!

MISSION... sleep zzzzzzzzz

Ok, Mr. P thinks it's fun to get up at the crack of dawn, eat and then continue to stay awake and want to play, with me!  This morning it was 5:30.  *yaaaaawn*

My priority these days is making it through the days without falling asleep, catching a nap when I can and having some fun with my boys with out snoring.

I know that I owe lots of you emails and I have a few cutie pie pix of Thomas that I want to show you all, but for now, life is a fog with my bed as my goal.

Intoducing...

Thomas William Hodgson

I didn't take this photo, when i got there it was too dark, but I didn't want to put him down long enough to take pictures anyway!!!  Man, I want another baby!!

Congrats Helen and Paul!!! 

Now to get that gift finished!!

My new Ride

I'm getting used to my new (to me) van.  It's huge but I'm adjusting after having a hatchback!!  Driving it is okay, I'm used to the narrow roads, it's parking that's a problem...  the car's a beast, it's so wide!!!  Already with Mandy i found the parking spaces tight, but this is worse...  thank goodness for sliding doors.  Seriously, I have about 25 cm on either side!!  Needless to say I try to park with an empty space beside me!  Oh how I love the spaces at home... when you open the door it is still inside the white line!!  Parallel parking isn't as bad as you'd think, provided  you can find a space long enough...  Yesterday, I was taking Anthony to playschool.  It's ideal there to learn to parallel park, lots of big spaces on a quiet street. It's where I retaught myself.  I don't think I ever did it once in Antigonish, besides in driver's ed...  So anyway, yesterday, I nailed it and I was all proud of myself and Anthony calls from the way back of the van 'YOU WOCKED IT MOMMY!!'  teehee

The things I miss most about my old car???

1.  she used to gear down for me, I didn't need to brake too much
2.  her automatic wipers
3.  the keyless entry was on the key, so now I have this big extra heavy thing on my keychain
4.  she was purple (well, in certain lighting)
5.  I could turn off the front airbag and have Philippe next to me

Poor neglected Bloggy blog

Lots of reasons keeping me busy!  It's fabulously gorgeous out lately.  Not too hot not too cold and SUNSHINE!!  We've been outside a lot!  The boys are having so much fun, making up for lost time this spring!  I can't believe that one week ago the boys had to wear wollen hats and today they are in shorts and tee shirts...

Philippe has not been sleeping well, he keeps getting up earlier and earlier in the night and more often...  So that means I'm not sleeping and I'm dragging my feet during the day.  The night before last, I let him cry... I won't tell you how long because you'll think I'm a cruel mother, but I'm so tired, I couldn't take it any longer.  He was in our bed and I soothed and sang, but I refused to nurse him.  I never really had to do that with the others.  Philippe will not just cry a bit and eventually fall asleep.  He screams the second you put him in his crib and doesn't stop.  Usually, I let him cry 2-3 minutes to tire him out and then rock him til he falls asleep.  Only, lately it's been getting harder and harder to get him asleep.  So last night at 2am, after crying he finally fell asleep, by holding onto my pyjama sleeve.  For one of his naps yesrterday, I gave him my pyjama top.  He barely cried and fell asleep on his own!!!  We'll see how he does today.  Last night he woke up crying, by the time I got there he was asleep again, so I got some sleep...

Another reason is that I have a tonne of projects that need doing now...  One I can't dwell on too much as a certain 39 week pregnant gal does lurk here from time to time... hi Helen!!  And I'm making invitations, menu cards and mass programmes for Philippe's baptisme.

BTW, I plan on changing the name of my blog to 'Only Amber loves Me!'  No one leaves me comments anymore, hmph!!

Stupid bleeping electronic thingies!!

So I decided not to be lazy and put some recent photos on my blog today...  For some strange reason (remember how I somehow break electronic things)  the computer will not recognise my camera!!!

So here is my entry without fun photos!!

the weather sucks!  HELLO!!  It's June, people!  It's so dark I've had the lights on all day, it's pouring off and on and it's sooooooooooo cold!!!!  I'm talking 12°C!!  This was Friday (insert adorable photo of boys bundled up in woolen hats and scarved) before leaving for school, June is not a month where you would normally wear wool, but hey that's what we are all doing...

Of course, that all said I'd rather this than a heat wave, but I wish for once we could have some 20-25°C weather for once...

Yesterday we almost had warmth!!  We didn't need coats but those wool sweaters were definitely on baby!!  We had a bit of sunshine so we headed to Montnach's natural reserve to see the orchids and the butterflies (insert fabulous photos here-I can say that they are fabulous because you can't see that they are just mediocre!!).  There is a 5km nature trail through the woods and it's so pretty with it's wobbly log bridges (insert photo) and earth steps (another photo) and woody secrets (one more photo).  The boys had fun looking out for slugs (don't worry mom since I can't post a photo you don't need to get all squimish) and insects...

Today's a holiday, but of course Matthieu is working anyway, just him and Eric.  I think Eric must be in a foul mood as Matthieu came home grumpy at lunch...

stay warm!

Why I don't Scrap Digi...

Matthieu is really trying to get me to try digital scrapbooking.  I really have no desire to even try it... The bottom line ...  it's not fun for me.  This is a hobby, so is supposed to be fun but I really dislike the computer end of it... I don't like getting the photos from my camera and editing them...  Love the results, just not all the work.  I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that my photoshop is all in French.  Ok, yes, I realise that I am bilingual, but this is vocabulary that is pretty specific and I don't know what a lot of it is.  so it's a lot of trial and error...  I mean Amy Howe posted a cool, simple tip in the BG newsletter and I couldn't even figure out where all that suff was in my French PS.  Matthieu recently got me Nikon Capture, that's cool because eventhough it's in French everything is icons and I don't have to go through 6 zillion dropdown menus to find what I want.  I haven't played around much yet, so we'll see how that works out. 

Another reason is I just love paper and pencil.  Give me an empty journal and I get all giddy!!  Give my a blank Word page and I get all stressed out.  I took a great online class from the Big Picture and was all gung ho until she said that we had to journal on the computer.  Well, I stopped right there...  stuck... writer's block.  It wasn't until I decided to do it by hand, like I do with all my scrapbooking, that I could write what I needed. 

One last weird reason is that I do something to screw up electronics...  seriously I have some sort of electric force that breaks them in strange ways.  I used to have a stereo that would only skip for certain songs numbers on any given CD...  CDs that worked just fine on any other stereo...  Matthieu bought a camera when we were first dating... a camera that I acquired when we moved in together 3 years later.   It broke, don't know how I did it, it would have cost about 200€ to fix it so we bought another one, it's my P&S that I keep in my purse today.  This one will turn off all by itself at any given moment.  Usually, while I'm taking a photo.  Mind you this camera works perfectly fine for anyone else!!!!  The other night when I was resizing the photos from SAG I turned around to say something to Matthieu and when I turned back, they were all gone.  19 photos poof!!!  And last night a whole folder disappeared, I found later under another folder...  see I'm bewitched, or maybe I'm a witch and don't know it!!  Speaking of...  we got Harry and the GOF on DVD today...  the boys enjoyed the un-scary bits!!