We rented a movie that has an Ironman preview on it and Quinn keeps watching it over and over and rocking out to the song.

Da Da DA DA DA da-da-da-da-da-da-da DaDaDa
He sings along with the heavy Black Sabbath guitar riff. It's pretty funny. We left Zay with Gramps for a couple hours and took Quinn and Meme to see that movie and we all really enjoyed it. It is my second favorite superhero movie after the Spiderman series. It's way better than the Fantastic Four or even X-Men. Loved it. Robert Downey Jr. was very funny and witty. I'm already wanting to see it again.. gonna have to wait for dvd though. Movies are so expensive in the theatre!

gettin stuff done...

Major stuff got taken care of today. My mom and her hubby Jon came over and helped me fix some stuff around here. He replaced an electrical outlet that wasn't working properly and patched a pipe so that I can use my outdoor faucet again. She hauled a bunch of boxes of toys out of the basement and out to the shed to get ready for a garage sale and held the baby so I could clean the cat box. I'm very appreciative and slowly warming up to her new husband. As it turns out he seems to be a decent sort of fellow with only good intentions. I'm glad for that.

Our dogs are recovering from being spayed and neutered on Sunday. No corgi puppies for us. It seemed like a good idea at one point but we came to the conclusion awhile ago that it would just be way more effort than we are willing to invest to take care of a litter and make sure they all made it to good homes.

I also got my shop up and running finally. You can see a link over to the left there for it. I haven't been doing anything for the shop lately but I hope to get back to it soon. Right now I just have some small pieces that I finished weeks ago.

I'm trying to get the yard all cleaned up and ready for planting. I got my compost pile all sorted out today. The old compost that is ready for using in beds is now piled up and the bin is empty and ready to take all the food scraps that have built up over the winter. I just stick my kitchen scraps in plastic shopping bags and put them in a trash can next to my back door and then empty them into the pile when spring comes. It's kinda messy but not too heinous as long as I wear gloves. It doesn't smell nearly as bad as one might imagine and occasionally, oddly enough, a very sweet earthy smell emerges from a bag that had just the right combination of veggie scraps. It's quite satisfying to see just how large the quantity of food scraps that we've avoided adding to the landfill over the course of a winter. And it was extremely satisfying to see the rich black humus that came out of my old heap. I'm eager to get it into some beds for planting.
Yay for summer!

oh and one last thing. My brother T called to let me know that he finally got all of my dad's old 8mm home movies converted to dvd. It turned out to be three hours of tape! Ohmygosh I am soo excited to see these.. he said not only is there stuff from when we were really young children but there is also stuff from when our parents went to Rome for their honeymoon and even stuff from my dad's childhood.. oh I can't wait to get the dvds in the mail!

spring has sprung!

Yep, the far north has thawed and the leaves are popping out and sunny has become the norm. Okay so the clouds have been consistently rolling in for the afternoons and we've been getting frequent drizzles but I'm not complaining. I'll take rain over forest fire smoke any day of the week.

I'm definitely feeling the added energy of 20 hours of daylight everyday. Yesterday I was brave enough to try walking all 6 children. Meaning the three human ones and the three canine ones. At the same time no less. All.by.my.self. Talk about a walking circus. There I was with a baby on my back, a great dane on one hand, two spastic little welsh corgis on the other and a two year old using my skirt to hang on to since I didn't have a free hand for her. And then top it off with a six year old riding circles around us on his bicycle. We must have been quite the sight. That was somewhat manageable until Zay decided that she couldn't walk any more. So then I had her held on my hip with one hand and all three dogs in the other. Which meant that they got all tangled up every three steps and I'd have to stop and free them before the dane had all his legs pulled out from under him and he squashed one of the corgis. That lasted for all of 5 minutes before Zay decided that walking was more precarious than being held. So needless to say, our walk didn't last long.

So that night was topped off by the wonderful experience of Meara having her first late night spell of inconsolable crying. It struck at around 12:30 am and I was up with her until about 2. Fun stuff. Now I'm up way earlier than I want to be with the two big kids. At least Meme is still sleeping. Thank goodness for the little things.

a wonderful discovery

oooh boy....I finally found it. The mysterious Queen video that I'd only ever seen small clips of here and there. I can kind of see why it wasn't featured on the two main Queen music video compilations since some of the camera work is less than stellar. However, I care not. For a die-hard Queen fan such as I this video is a wonderful thing to behold.

look ma! I can spin!

Lately I've been feeling the itch to change my appearance. I feel as though I've allowed myself to slip into a more "normal" or mainstream appearance and I don't really feel like it's true to who I actually am. I feel as though I'm not standing in solidarity with all the other freaks and geeks out there in the world by masquerading as just your average mom with small children when the truth is I am actually quite different than most people in my ideas and ideals and general outlook on life and society. I've been toying with the idea of a nose ring but I have concerns about it getting yanked on by my small children. I'd like to get a tattoo or two but they are expensive and I have concerns about injecting strange substances into my skin. I doubt they have organic tattoo ink.. I'm not sure it's a good idea even if they did, from a health perspective. I know that it may seem silly to be concerned about tattoo ink but then to go ahead and slather a bunch of bleach on my hair but I figured it's been 8+ years since I dyed my hair last and that it was probably the easiest way to alter my appearance drastically without costing an arm and a leg and not being too permanent.

Well, it was my paranoia about my hair becoming brittle and strawlike that threw a wrench in my plans for purple hair. I left the bleach on my hair for 45 minutes and I could see that parts of it looked pretty light. I thought it was light enough to show of the purple in a few key spots and so I prematurely rinsed. I should have left it in for another 15 - 30 minutes. As it was, when I put the manic panic in it only gave me some very subtle purple highlights. Not at all the dramatic change I was hoping for.

Ah well.. Maybe I'll try again in a month or so.

I got closer to setting up my online shop a few days ago. I now have a new checking account that is exclusively for my store paypal account. This is to avoid any possibility of a paypal glitch wiping out rent money. Now I'm just waiting for the debit card to arrive in the mail and I'll be ready to start listing stuff. Woohoo! I've got a variety of fiber art, wood burnings and paintings ready and I'm thinking about maybe figuring out how to do prints so I can sell some photography, digital art or prints of original paintings or burnings.

Another thing I've been doing lately is learning to spin. I made my own drop spindle and spun up my first yarn. It was and is still very challenging but it's quite fun learning and playing with the oh so soft merino wool. I'm still pretty darn slow but I think my first attempt came out rather nice. I'm now working on some beautiful blue and brown roving that I bought from Allspunup.etsy.com and it's just wonderful to handle and gaze upon. I was a big fan of fondling yarn before this but making it myself just brings it to a whole new level of enjoyment. I'm now fantasizing about a spinning wheel. Something to work for I suppose. They are pricey and it will motivate me to get busy creating things to sell in my shop.
Here's a small portion of the roving after I fluffed it all up in preparation for spinning.
Playing with this wool has been my beacon of light the past day or so amidst all the barfing. Quinnster and Zayzae have been fighting off a nasty stomach bug they caught from our neighbors. No fun at all when they only thing that stays down is water and maybe some toast or crackers. It's especially difficult for Zay because nursing is such a source of comfort for her and she's not able to keep the mama's milk down. She's doing surprisingly well understanding that right now having nummies= throwing up and therefore she's not begging for it and has been drinking water instead.

So it's late and I really should be going to bed.
One last thing... my brother transferred some really old home movies to digital and uploaded them to YouTube. I'm the one with the thick bangs and pony tail. Interestingly Quinn runs just like me it would seem.

freaky weather and kiddo updates

Well the old man's grip seems to have loosened considerably in the few days since that last entry. Now the daytime temps are in the 50s and our backyard is more than a third melted. That also means the dog poo glacier has melted and our front yard is so so icky. Tomorrow is to be a poop scoop marathon day. yay.

Oh more fun topics, Meara's first two teeth broke through on the 16th and now they are emerging in full force. She's getting so grown up! Also doing lots of rolling. I think she may become our little athlete. Zay wasn't quite so active at that age but she's definitely making up for it now. She's like a wild monkey girl running around the house using the biggest voice she can muster half the time. She also loves to sing. She's surprisingly good at carrying a tune for a two year old, I might add.

Quinn hung out with my dad on Sunday and got to drive his first snowmachine. It was a last chance sort of thing, with how quickly it's all melting but he had a great time anyway. It was one of those little kid size snowmachines (that's Alaskan for snowmobile in case any of you lower 48 folk were wonderin) I wasn't there but dad said he took right to it and commented that he seems to pick things up very quickly. He's a sharp one, that Quinnster. We signed him up for soccer this summer. Unfortunately I don't think we're going to be able to do that and teeball since they take place at the same time. He's bummed about that but I think he's really going to like soccer... and if he doesn't he can go back to teeball (little league??) next summer. His best friend who lives across the street is into soccer so he wanted to give that a try and see if maybe they could be on the same team.

I took this picture today and got a serious case of deja vu and then realized it was because I took a very similar picture almost two years ago.. check it out.
( I know it's blurry but I love it because it shows off that lower lip action that I love to death)
Now compare it to the one with Zay.. she's older than Meara is now but I'm wearing the same shirt.. I swear I did not set that up on purpose..
Serious deja vu....

old man winter won't let go

ugh.. it's snowing... again. Twice now our backyard has gone from being 1/3 snow free to being a winter wonderland all over again. Big fat fluffy snowflakes are falling for for the second major accumulation in two weeks. I wish I could say at least it's been warm but that doesn't seem to last either. Two days ago it was 20 degrees, which would normally be considered somewhat warm but the wind was gusting so hard that it felt like 20 below zero out. Brrrrrrr. I just want it to be spring already. We keep getting taunted with the promise of it only to have it snatched away again. blech.