ugh

ugh about sums it all up.

sorry for such a long delay, and this update won't be much of anything, trust me. It's late. We're only up because mike wants to wait up to check his jobs for tomorrow. His van needs a new battery - it dies every night. he was given the day to get it fixed but the mechanic who handles the fleet at ATI wouldn't touch it, because it's under warranty, and needs to go to a dealer. So he still has a battery that dies after about 2 hours of sitting off. he wa promised a fast-paced day with lots of jumping around, so the van doesn't die in the field.

Things are ok here. the big news - we're moving to kelowna. pretty old news by now. no idea when - sometime between now and feb 1 for mike. roughly a month after that for the rest of us. John was pretty upset by it at first, but now that packing has started, he's actually excited and looking forward to it. though he has told me that he wishes we could bring this whole house with us, because he likes the way it looks. we're hoping to get something sort of similar out there - a family room AND living room. maybe even upgrade to 4 bedrooms, for the growing brood. I want a main floor play room, where we can set up all thier toys and shelves, and a fruit tree in the backyard, but I'm told I might be asking too much. we'll see.

everyone's doing pretty well. Everyone is looking forward to school getting back in. probably no-one more than me. I've been really tired lately. It started well before the news of the move, and has escalated. My doc wouldn't test me for anemia last month, but I had it several times growing up, and severely enough in college that I had to take mega-doses of iron for months, so I kinda know how it feels. And my old family doc gave me a couple of tricks to spot it on my own, and I failed each test- white skin on the insides of bottom eyelids and bottom lip. I've looked like a racoon, with pale skin and dark circles. but the last straw was getting out of breathe and dizzy every time I climbed our stairs - not normal at 5 months pregnant, but exactly what happened in college that wound me up on those wretched iron pills. So, we went to the health food store and got some of that florodix liquid iron stuff - apparently it doesn't build up, so you don't need to worry about taking too much. It actually seems to be working. After just a couple days, the dizziness and windedness was gone. Now almost a couple weeks later, I feel a lot more energetic, and I'm starting to get a bit of normal colour back - and inside my eyelids are bright red. Not sure if I should mention it to my doc on Friday. Some are ok with you taking extra stuff - others, not-so-much. The dose is really pretty small, compared to the iron pills I had to take before - even less than what I have in my normal vitamin. All together, it's actually less iron than what was in prenatal vitamins when i was preggers with John - they've since cut the levels way down. But it seems to be enough. Mike's been taking it too, but hasn't noticed any difference in himself.

Joan had her 3rd birthday on the 28th! We didn't feel much like a big party so soon after the mayhem of Christmas, so we took the kids out for burgers and then to Diary Queen for banana splits. We didn't even do presents that night. She talked the whole way home about how much fun she had, so I think it was the right thing to do. She's never been too big on cake anyway, because it makes her hands dirty, which she hates, and it was nice to get out of the house and have some fun. Can't believe she's three already. She's come so far this past year. It's hard to imagine her a year ago, taking her very first steps, but still relying on that little walker of hers. She had so few words, and so much frustration. Hard to imagine that was the same person as the happy, bubbly, mile-a-minute little tornado we have now. She's had a huge word explosion over Christmas! She knows most of her colours now, and can count to 10 (with a little prompting. Well, ok a lot of prompting). She talks non-stop. She talks about her feelings, things she sees, things she remembers. It's just great. Today, for the first time she said "love Dad." Obviously, Mike was pretty happy about that!

I have a zillion pictures to download from the camera. Even a video of john's christmas concert to pop on youtube! Max the Moose made his stage debut! It was supposed to be the "teddy bear twist," but John doesn't like following the crowd, and claimed he didn't feel ownership of any of the teddy bears we own. Fair enough - the younger kids have claimed most of them. David is madly in love with one my parents had sent to John - Dave calls him Arfarf, as though he's a dog. He has a stuffed dog by the same name. In fact, most soft, cuddly things are called Arfarf. Anyway, John, being John, wanted to take a stuffed yellow crab to the concert. We vetoed him. We convinced him it'd be a bad idea, by telling him he'd be sent to the back row. That put a quick end to that! So we went hunting, and there in the cupbourd was a Max the Moose stuffie that Mike had given me when we were first going out, in high school. John wasn't convinced he was the right choice, until I told him that Max was in fact, Dryden's mascot. That was enough! So now I have a little video of Max the Moose doing the twist with 60 teddy bears.

In lieu of pictures, I'll leave you with a Johnism that made me chuckle. John is very big into crafts, and has copious gobs of googly eyes, which seem to wind up everywhere. One escapee landed on the bottom of John's foot. John, feeling something, turned his foot over and said "ACK! My foot is looking at me!!!!"