Should auld acquaintance be forgot...

Happy New Year to everyone out there in bloggyland near and far. Thank you all for making this experience a lot easier to bear. Your friendships, all of them, have meant a great deal to both of us.

Here's to hoping that 2008 brings us...something. I'd love to be positive and say a referral, but that's just not going to happen, so let's just say I hope it brings us CLOSER to one. *cough*

Since I'm lazy ...

I stole uploaded this off the Dyson site, and you asked for it, here's the pic. :)

(Oh, and I'll totally be waiting for that 50 cents in the mail.) :P

The A-Team Summit

Last night, Josh and I had an A-Team summit at our place which included them, them, them, them, and these crazy folk all the way from P.E.I.

Wow, what an evening!

Everyone arrived by 6:00, except for them, and them who decided to ring our doorbell at about 6:30 like some crazed Avon lady needing to make that final sale. We sat around and talked for quite a while, gave everyone the 50 cent tour of our house (and yes, they all saw the Animal up close and personal). :)



We ate, we shmoozed, we ate some more...we drank...if any social workers are reading this, we only drank apple juice. Yeah, that's it, apple juice...or at least it started out as apple juice...but it ended up as iced apple wine from Magnotta wineries. ;)

A few highlights of the evening, which may only make sense to those who were there:

1. People in Australia speak Australian.

2. When you work as a CIT for the summer, you get to hit old ladies in your car and make $25 for the summer.

3. Bubka is not a former Soviet Republic.

4. Chocolate goes with ANYTHING.

5. Dishwashers should not foam at the mouth like a dog with rabies.

6. Bubka is not a Jewish holiday.

7. Bailey's is GOOD in Hazelnut Vanilla coffee...though what ISN'T Bailey's good in?

8. When chocolate and sushi are on a table, keep your hands and feet away from them.

9. Bubka is all-knowing, all-seeing.

10. My iMAC is NOT up for adoption.

11. Bubka sees you when you're sleeping, it knows when you're awake...

All in all, it was a fantastic evening with good friends, good food and lots and lots and LOTS of 'grape juice'. We're happy to say that we can now add them to the inner circle of the A-Team (and it didn't have anything to do with the chocolate sauce that they brought with them from P.E.I.) ;)

Animal...or why I love my husband...

No ladies, not in THAT way...that's a post for another day.

We went to Linens 'N' Things today and I saw the Dyson Animal and I've been wanting one FOREVER. Well, when Josh saw the price tag for it, he exclaimed a few...let's call them profanities...

I saw a sign that said if you signed up for their credit card that you could save 20% off your total...plus we had a $200 gift card (from our awesome friends). We went up to the till and they said that we couldn't combine the gift card and the credit card 'bonus', so I threw a bit of a snit and asked them where it said that...since that's a bit of bait and switch (or at the least, a little underhanded).

The manager came over and said that she happened to have a 20% coupon, that I could have...imagine that. What I didn't realize was that the vacuum was on sale as well, so...

Guess who walked out of Linens 'N' Things with a brand spankin' new Animal...for $159?

For Heather...

Feel better soon, Headda!

For i-Con

Kindness of strangers

Josh and I went to Mikasa yesterday since they're having their close-out sale (BOO). Just to look for last minute bargains, though really, they don't have bargains on the items you REALLY want. We were walking around the store with some things in our hands and a stranger walked up to us and asked if we were buying a lot. I said 'well, not really, just what we have here'. So he said 'well is it over $70.00?' and I said yes. He said that he had a gift card for about $70.00 and was willing to give it to me for $60.00.

The skeptical side of me thought 'what's the catch?!' and I asked him to come to the cash register with me and I'd pay him after we used it. He told me that he wanted to exchange the card for the cash value of it, but the cashier wouldn't do that, and he was stuck with a $70.00 card.

Anyways, when they scanned the card, there was actually over $74.00 on it. I asked him, again, how much he wanted for it and, again, he said $60.00. I guess it's all about being in the right place at the right time...

A must see...

For those of you who haven't seen THIS, go take a look at the video. I have to preface this by saying...have a box of kleenex beside you when you view it, oh and tell her that I sent you there. ;)

Remembering the move...

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we've now been in the house almost three months! Sheesh, time sure does fly, except when you're waiting. ;)

Ever have days like this?!

Though I think I would have titled the picture "Invisible Furball".

Oops, she did it again...

Well this time it isn't Britney, but her SIXTEEN year old sister who is expecting a baby. Now, I'm not going to get on a high horse about this, stuff happens, but did she not think of the consequences? Sheesh.

What I find sad/pathetic/humourous about this whole situation is her mother's comments...

I didn't believe it because Jamie Lynn's always been so conscientious. She's never late for her curfew. I was in shock. I mean, this is my 16-year-old baby.

Just because she's never 'late' for curfew doesn't mean she won't be 'late' for other things...

Oh yeah, and the father-to-be is her 19 year old live-in boyfriend. Umm, ex-squeeze me? Who lets that happen? Why didn't her mom step in and prevent that from happening?!

In the middle of all this, her mom was writing a book on how to raise daughters. That one is sure to be a bestseller... ;)

I wonder what's going to happen to her show on Nickelodeon. You can't exactly have a 'role model' for tweens being pregnant. I'll bet that they end up writing her off the show and come back when she's had the baby.

She wants to raise the baby in a 'normal' family, but not before she sold her story to OK Magazine. I wonder how much money she got for selling THAT story...

How many other 'stars', and I use that term loosely, have kids out of the public eye? Certainly not many sell their story. I find that part completely repugnant. Is she hurting for money? Does she think she's doing something noble by telling the world about it? Ugh.

Banned?! ***UPDATE -- AGAIN***

I've been wondering this for a little while, but it seems that either my comments are banned from the RQ site, or she has me on moderation. Lately, no matter what I post (good, bad, or ugly - realistic), it doesn't get posted on her site.

My most recent comment I posted this morning and I still haven't seen it up there...hmm. I've since posted another, and that isn't up there either.

I can't exactly say that I'm heartbroken over it, but I find it funny (if not a little pathetic) that this has happened. How funny that she can't handle anyone's opposing views?

Now join me in a little Nelson Muntz-esque laugh...HA HA!

Now watch, all my posts are suddenly going to appear on her site as soon as I hit 'publish post'. :P

***Surprise, surprise...my comments showed up. I'm sure that I'm being moderated. Why else would it take 12+ hours to get my comments up? I didn't even write anything that was that 'controversial'. Weird.

Oh, and by the way, David in a way I take it as a 'badge of honour' but also I think it's utterly ridiculous that she's that worried about what little ol' me is going to say. Honestly, how sad is it that she has this kind of time to devote to censoring what I'm going to say when she has thousands of readers? Is the RQ army going to attack me because I disagree...and do I really care? ;)

If it weren't so pathetic, it would probably be a little funny...***

***Oh...my...dog...whoever posted that comment from "RQ" made me spit my coffee out all over my snazzy new iMac. :P***

Snow day! ***UPDATE***

Holy hell people, I haven't seen snow like this in *YEARS*. I'd take a picture, but well, there's just too much and it would be hard to get a perspective with it falling as hard as it is (and I'm too cozy inside). ;)

We've gotten *at least* a foot, if not more so far, it's about knee-high right now. They were saying that the snow was falling at a rate of about 2-5 centimetres (roughly 1-2 inches) an hour. Personally I think it was a lot more than that. Josh has done our driveway four times already and it still needs to be done at least once more. Luckily, he bought one of those power shovels, so it's not as bad for him to go out there and do it. He was going to get one of those $400+ snow blowers, but since we haven't had really bad snowstorms in years, he didn't think we would need it...oops.

He went out this morning to do the driveway and by the time he got to the bottom, he looked back and it looked like he hadn't even touched it. So each time he goes out, he ends up having to do the driveway twice. I know this because I've been watching him from inside our nice warm and cozy house. ;)

We saw one of our neighbours doing their driveway, he has to be a man in his mid-70s (give or take), so we thought we would do the neighbourly thing and offer to do his driveway, or at least let him borrow our power shovel. He turned us down and said that shovelling the snow was "good for me". Well, we tried...

I called my boss (my FIL) earlier today and asked what we were going to be doing tomorrow as far as work was concerned. After much hemming and hawing, he decided that I should call the patients and cancel tomorrow's day out. I called all the patients, but the last one surprised me.

I told her that her appointment was cancelled because of the weather, and she said "well it's only Sunday afternoon, the weather is going to clear up". This was coming from a woman who lived in the Barrie area (about an hour or so north of us, and they probably got the same, if not more snow than we did). She said "I've waited for a week for this appointment". I felt like saying "Lady, if you want to show up at the office, feel free, but nobody's going to be there...", but I held back. I couldn't believe my ears that she was trying to argue to have the doctor come in, in weather like this. She should try to get an appointment with another physician and see how long she'll wait...

Some people.

***Well, I just did our driveway...that makes five times it's had to be done...FIVE! Oh yeah, and it's still snowing. By the way, running a power shovel with a migraine is FUN. I recommend it to everyone. Ugh.***

Fifteen months ou quinze mois

No matter how you say it, it still sucks. ;)

So, we celebrated our fifteen month LIDiversary tonight with a kickass, if I do say so myself, homemade chocolate cheesecake. Yes, I know K1, cheese isn't considered dessert, but when it's this good...it is. ;)

If anyone wants the recipe, here it is:

2 packages (8 oz each) of cream cheese (I used Philadelphia original cream cheese)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. (real) vanilla
1 tsp. coffee
2 eggs
4 squares of Baker's semi-sweet chocolate (though I used bittersweet chocolate)
1 pie crust (ok, I cheated and bought the crust)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Beat cream cheese, sugar, coffee and vanilla in a large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs and mix until blended. Stir in melted chocolate (without sampling). Pour into crust.

Bake 40 minutes or until centre is almost set. Put pie into fridge, again without sampling.

Refrigerate for several hours (or until your tummy starts grumbling and saying 'CHEESECAKE NOW!') Store leftover cheesecake (who are you kidding?) in refrigerator.

We had my mom over to enjoy the cheesecake-y goodness, and it tastes even better than you can imagine.













Since it was our 15 month LIDiversary, I also got a charm for the bracelet. The new charm is on the far right of the picture and it's a J for Josh's initial. Next month will be an R, for obvious reasons...and then a 'space saver' for Little Maple's initial.

So, how much longer do you think we're on this little sleighride hayride for? Are we even a third of the way there?

For Kathy and Cari...

Weird search...

Ok, this is just weird. As you know, I check Statcounter everyday to see how people are searching for my blog. Well, this one is just plain bizarre. Not one, not two, but THREE people did search terms 'little maple captain caveman' today. What the hell?! Two of them were in France (different parts...and different ISPs) and one was in California.

What do you make of that?!

Is it just me or did Bloglines explode?

I went to check my usual addictions blogs this morning and I had a bunch to read, but they were all dated back in October. I even had one on my blog, yes I subscribe to my own (since I have a few contributors, it's nice to know when they're posting).

Has anyone else encountered recycled posts this morning? Weird...

By the way since I, obviously, hadn't been online too much I just marked all the 431 posts that I had waiting on Monday to 'read'. If there's anything that I've missed in the past LONG week and a half, let me know with a comment below. ;)

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaack

After a relatively long withdrawal hiatus, I'm back!

We had been having problems with our old computer for quite a while and had decided that we were going to upgrade to a new one. Well, the decision was pretty much made for us.

We were researching new computers and had decided to get an iMac. A *really* nice iMac...and really overpowered for our needs. Anyways, we took our old P.O.S. into the Apple store as they needed to transfer files from the old one to the new iMac. Well, something funky happened on the way to the forum.

They told us that we would have to take out the hard drive and then they would transfer the info we needed. Whatever. By the time we got our old computer back home, we plugged it back in and it wouldn't even boot up. Nada, nothing, nil. We're not sure if we've lost all our info on the old puter or not, we'll look into that at a later date. We already had all the adoption info backed up, so really all we lost were our emails and some other (less important) info.

The reason that I haven't been around is because we were waiting for the new modem for our iMac from our ISP. Wouldn't it figure that when we got our new computer that they would run out of the modem that we need?! Grah!

So after waiting for a very long week, we finally got the new modem today and, obviously, got online. Woo!

As some of you know, there are new requirements in Ontario that we have to get our paperwork updated for the adoption (ie., new police checks, new medicals, etc.) We ran into a bit of a snafu as our social worker doesn't do homestudies anymore and we had to start with someone new.


Last night, when I was getting changed for bed, I took off my ladybug necklace and it broke in two. I wasn't sure how to take that as we were going to meet our new social worker the following day. I got a little superstitious about it...like it was a bad sign about the adoption.

We were a little nervous about getting a new social worker and I was asking some members of the A-Team (Josh's term for our adoption friends) and we really lucked out and found a great one based on Cari's suggestion and we met the social worker tonight. Wow, he was fantastic!

Not only did we get in to see him quickly, but he's doing the home visit this Saturday! I asked him when he would have the home study done and he said that it would be completed by the first week of January! Woo hoo!

Woo! When all is said and done...sometime in 2010? 2011? we're flying first class, bay-bee. :P

FINALLY!

Thanks for the many emails that I've gotten about us being out of the review room! I actually found out by calling Josh at work and asking him to check out the CCAA site. Our computer finally gave up the biscuit, so to speak, and died on us on Thursday. Josh is actually talking to a rep while I'm typing this...and we should be getting the new beast shortly. I probably won't be back online until sometime in the middle of this week. We're waiting for a new modem...grr.

While I know that this is a big milestone in our journey (being out of the review room, not the new computer)...it doesn't really feel as "good" as I thought it would.