Picture Time

I'm trying to get a decent picture of Quinn these days. It's next to impossible to get a picture of him without him charging over to the camera and pointing at it. He LOVES to look at the pictures in the camera.

See?.....

He was sitting nicely by the pillow. I take the camera out and he starts to charge over.

Oh, hello there.


Can I take a look?


How about now? While Cameron is pulling on your pant leg?

Okay, this has nothing to do with pointing, but Cameron's nerf gun glasses on the kids is just cute.

I Suck at Blogging

Why, oh why did I ever think a blog was a good idea? Why didn't I just look at my old journals and realize I have never been good at this sort of thing and never will be. And I tried to see if you can delete a blog so I can get it off my conscience, but no. You can't. So there.

So here I am, several months later with a catch up. Things are good. Cameron started school this September and after a few hairy days, he loves it. Quinn will be 1 year old next month. I get to have a few more months of enjoying being at home with my boys until I go back to work in January. Ash is still working and being a great father and husband. So here are some rare pictures of the past few months.


Ash & I as taken by Cameron. Who needs a professional when you have your 4 year old?



Cameron's first day of school.


Brothers who love each other, but I'm sure the fighting will soon be coming.


Yay! We went to Jasper!



Ash & I had a nice 'couples cottage weekend'.



That's right. It's Autumn in Ontario.


And we'll have to rake all those leaves of that giant maple in front of our house.


Yes, that giant maple. And yes, we are a two Corolla family.


Thanksgiving at our place. I got to use my good china for the first time in 9 years of marriage! We finally have a china cabinet to store it in.


Cameron by some of the food he won't eat for Thanksgiving.


So that's about it for now. I'm going to bed. See you in another 6 or 7 months.

Fight, Flight, or...Freeze?

In my post-baby zeal to get some semblance of a body back, I've been going out walking. Sometimes with just myself and the kids, and other times with friends. Tonight my friend Jennifer and I went out for an evening walk. My walks up until now have been in the daytime down a nice wooded path by a river. We decided to go on that path tonight, thinking that we'd have enough light at 8:30 at night.

I guess I forgot that it's still only April.

It got pretty dark by the time we were turning around to head home. I mentioned that we would have to be careful, as there might be skunks. So I was somewhat on edge as we were returning home. Then as I looked down the darkening path, I thought I could see a shape in front of us. At that moment, Jen also stops and says "Is there something there?". We both sort of stop and see some kind of a coyote or dog scampering away from us. Breathing a little sigh of relief, we take a couple of steps forward, only to now see 2 dark silhouettes of large dogs, charging full speed down the path towards us and barking. And not a nice barks; I'm talking vicious barks. So here is Jen and I, clinging onto each other in sheer terror, frozen to the spot.

Now, from that moment, I have learned three things about myself. First of all - I am not that smart. Really, I am not. Instead of searching for a stick to defend ourselves at that point, I was honestly edging towards the river to jump in as an attempt to get away from the dogs. Now I have seen 'No Country for Old Men', but I guess that river scene happened to escape my mind at the time to tell me that was not a rational plan. I was just thinking to myself "How much is this going to hurt?".

Secondly, if I die in some sort of sudden manner, the few last words out of my mouth will not be ones that I want my children to hear. I'll admit I said "holy s**t" as those dogs came charging towards us, then offered the most terrified and sincere prayer I have ever spoken in my life. I wonder if God has a forgiveness policy for those people who swear right before they are killed suddenly. You know, in car accidents or plane crashes? Those moments where you can see what the inevitable is? Because when you're standing in the dark watching the shadows of two large barking animals come barrelling towards you, I'm not sure if it's fair to be accountable for the terrified language that comes out of your mouth.

And thirdly, biology class should have included the third option of "freeze" to what your body will do when adrenalin is released. And under it, you can put a picture of Jennifer and myself, because apparently we are the only people in the world who will neither fight, nor flight.

Oh, and to wrap up the story, as the dogs got closer, they slowed down and Jen says "It's okay, they're golden retrievers". The dogs then come up to us wagging their tales and sniff our trembling, outstretched hands. The owners came up a bit later and apologized for the scare. They didn't think that anyone would be on the trail at that time of night. I guess they never accounted for brainiacs like myself, who initially suggested we take that path.

I'll keep my river walks to the daytime from now on, thanks.

Blog? What blog?

Well, it's been a loooong time. So long, I'm sure that no one has bothered to keep up with this anymore. Not that it's been that interesting in the first place. I don't think I quite get the hang of this blog thing. I feel that I'm better at the quick status updates that Facebook offers instead. So perhaps I might put this into a very early retirement.

Anyways, to catch up on things. I had a baby. 4 months ago. Quinn Robert Gibbons came into our lives on November 22, 2009. He was a much faster delivery than his older brother. The fact that I started having labour and ended it in one calendar day was much better than the 3 that it took for Cameron. Quinn is a real sweetheart. He smiles at everyone and is just as attentive as Cameron was. Recently, he and Cameron have started to become really good friends. Quinn watches Cameron all the time and Cameron is now a lot more interested in Quinn since he's become more social.

And our lives are slowly getting back to some form of normal. I think I forgot how much work a baby is. Getting back into the full time motherhood thing was a lot harder than I expected. I've had to remind myself to be patient with Cameron and to not try and have control over all things all the time.

Cameron, Quinn and I spent a month in Alberta with family. It was wonderful and I was able to see a bunch of friends who have since moved from Lethbridge as well. Thanks to Erinn, Nikki, and Beth for spending time with me!

Anyways, I'm not sure whether I will keep this page around since I don't really seem to be doing much with it at all, so yeah.

H1N1 Fun

So after much going back and forth, I've decided I would like to get the H1N1 vaccination, and have Cameron vaccinated as well. Since I'm 36 weeks pregnant, and Cameron is 3, we're both in the "high priority group". We tried to go today when it opened, and there was already a huge line up. I'm talking about 4 hours in line. I physically cannot stand up for that long, so we left without getting the shot.

But the funniest thing happened when we first arrived. I got out of my car in the parking lot, and a man was by his car across from mine. He was talking loudly on his cell phone, raging about the stupidity of people getting the vaccination. His conversation went something like this - "Do you know what's in those shots? Thimerosal, which is mercury! Do you know what that does to people? Why would you put mercury right into a child's brain? You're going to kill your child! These people are all stupid, why would you put that stuff into your child?!"

First of all, I'm thinking to myself has this guy ever eaten a can of tuna fish? Secondly, what was so funny about this, is that he was railing against the evils of putting poisons into your body as he was lighting a cigarette! Oh, the irony. I couldn't stop laughing. This other guy next to me noticed it as well and we both had a good chuckle.

Here's hoping for a happy and safe flu season. Because until those line ups go down, I'm afraid I'm vaccination-free for now.

No More Complaints From Me!

Lately I have been feeling really ready to have this baby, even though I'm not due until November. I guess with all the chaos of moving, working, chasing after a now 3 year old, I was feeling just plain done.

Especially last weekend. I was so tired, and on Thursday night started having these uncomfortable Braxton Hicks, which made me want to be done even more! Then the Braxton Hicks just kept coming. And getting more uncomfortable. And weren't stopping. By Sunday morning, I paged my midwife (LOVE midwives, by the way) and told her that something just wasn't right. By this time I was sure they were contractions, and they were coming every 5-10 minutes or so. She told me to meet her at the hospital in about 2 hours. In case your wondering why 2 hours and not immediately, we had time since there wasn't any other signs of pre-term labour. My midwife also ran through the possible scenarios of what could be happening, right from nothing to worry about, to ending up in a Toronto hospital that specializes in pre-term labour. I was a bit freaked out.

When we got to the hospital, they hooked me up to the machines to monitor the baby and uterine activity. Baby was fine and moving around lots. But it also showed that I was definitely having contractions every 3 minutes that were lasting about 60 seconds each. I started to panic just a bit more with that. They were going to do a test to see if I had a certain chemical present that would indicate I was going to go into labour within the next 7-14 days. About an hour later the results came back and were negative! We breathed a huge sigh of relief.

So what was causing my contractions?

Mild dehydration. Who knew? My midwife practically stuck a garden hose down my throat. Well not really, but I was drinking a swimming pool full of water as soon when she saw I was somewhat dehydrated. After drinking my weight in water, by Monday afternoon the contractions had completely stopped, and I was feeling a whole lot better.

And as for complaining about how I'm feeling and wanting this baby out NOW? Um, no thank you. The scary possibility that presented itself this weekend cured me of that. This kid can chill out for about 2 more months and that will be just dandy with me.

But if he's past my due date, I reserve every right to whine and complain after that.

The Big Catch-Up

Although I'm fairly certain that by this time no one is reading this thing, I figure I should try to post to catch up from the last few months. A LOT has happened.

First of all, we found out from our ultrasound that we are having another boy! We're very excited about having another boy, especially as we are so cheap and will not have to buy a bunch of girls clothing. Yes, we're that cheap. Either way, baby is healthy and fine and now I have to try to find a name. Since this is probably our last child, if anyone wants to take my girls name of Lauren, please feel free.

Backing up about 6 months now, the first two sentences that came out of Ash's mouth when I told him we were having another baby was "Really? Guess we need to get a bigger house." I didn't realize how serious he was about that. Well, he was serious. We ended up selling our house at the end of June, and have bought a new home in Holland Landing (just 10 minutes north of our current home). We move on August 28. It's a detached raised bungalow, with 3 bedrooms upstairs, and 2 rooms downstairs. We're really excited about it and now the fun of packing begins. I can't elaborate enough on how much I detest moving. Especially since I've calculated that this is our 7th move in 8 years of marriage. We will have been at this house for just a month shy of 3 years, which is the longest we've been in one place. I think this new home will have enough room to feel settled for awhile, even though the kitchen will be smaller than our current one. Guess it's a good thing I don't do much cooking.

We also went home for a visit to Alberta at the end of June and beginning of July. It was wonderful and we had a great time. I would post pictures, but we have changed computers and I haven't set up anything yet with this one. I think when we move we are planning some fancy thing with both of our computers, so I should hopefully post new pics of our home when we get it all settled.