I'm a sheep! ***UPDATE***

I was looking at Redmaryjanes' blog and noticed that she enrolled in "The Ultimate Blog Party". Since I'm never one to turn down anything that has to do with blogging or partying, I figured 'why not' and decided to follow the herd. ;)

For those of you that might be new to my blog, welcome. Look around, read the archives if you wish, kick back and enjoy!

If you visit, please leave me a comment and I'll visit your 'party'. (I guess this is a new form of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours') ;)

***Ok, it seems that some of you are confused, so I'll explain this a little. I found out through Redmaryjanes blog that there was a site that was hosting a 'blog party'. Basically all you have to do is write a 'party invitation' post (which this is), add your blog to 5 Minutes for Mom's site and put an icon in your sidebar. After you do all that, then other people who have signed up for the party will come to your blog. Does that make sense?

Remind me not to try to explain things when I have a migraine... ;)***

Nice...not thrilling, but nice *

It looks like the new referral batch is just about to come out and the CCAA did 11 days worth of LIDs. I was hoping (beyond hope) they might get to at least October 26th or 27th, they went from October 13th to October 24th.

There are still ten and a half months worth of LIDs to go through before our referral. If only that meant we'd see a referral in 10.5 months...

I'm still holding on to the hope that we'll see our referral sometime between September 08 and January 09, with the wildcard, of course, being the Olympics in '08.

It's disappointing that we're still so far away from our daughter, but I know (eventually) this will happen...right?

*For those of you that remember History of the World Part 1 you should recognize that quote...

I'm honoured...I think?! ***UPDATED***

So as usual I was checking out statcounter and for the past few days I've noticed a certain site that's been showing up and I've had a few people trickle in, so I went there to check it out.

Apparently the people at this site like my little blog as they've added me there under "related blogs". Two things strike me as funny:

1. It's an American site that talks about adoption...and I'm Canadian
2. Out of all the blogs out there, why would they choose mine?!

Now this isn't a plug for you all to heap praise in my comment section, because honestly there are a lot better blogs out there. While this obviously is an adoption blog, the amount of time that I spend actually talking about adoption is somewhat limited.

So to those of you from that site, I just want to say welcome and, umm, thank you?

***Well, I wrote to the webmaster of the site, just to find out why they chose my site. He came by and read my current posts and I guess since they weren't 'on topic', I'm now off the list. Honestly though, my blog has always been written with a bit of 'snark'. How much can I really write about adoption when our timeline is possibly September 08 or January 09 for referral? How many times can I write 'woke up today, still waiting...' ;)***

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

Yet another month of collecting loonies and toonies for the jar which is going into our "Little Maple" account in the morning. We were actually a little lax with saving this month, even though the total is 'average', part of it came from that experiment I did a while back. The cheque came in for that a couple weeks ago, and while it isn't huge, every little bit helps. Oh and the $50 in the jar is because I needed some loonies for the laundry. It would have been stupid to go into the bank to turn all this in for the account and then ask for a couple rolls back. So I just took the easy way and threw the money in and took the two rolls I needed. :P

On a different note, I noticed when I looked at the blog over the last couple of days that the ladybug in my ticker has gone right off the page. Perhaps it knows something that I don't?!

It looks like Redmaryjanes is having a slumber party! So if anyone is visiting from there...HI! Welcome to my blog and make yourself comfortable. ;)

Running with scissors...

Josh got the following email, and I thought I'd pass it along to all of you...

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1940's, 50's, 60's and 70's!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun.

We drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem .

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents .

We played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good...

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?! For some reason this made me chuckle out loud...hell I remember ALL of these.

By the way, the vote on the sidebar is still open if you're interested...

10,000 maniacs...

Well, maybe not maniacs, but certainly 10,000 hits on my site! Thanks Spitgirl (E) for getting #10,000. ;)

Snow snow snow!

Toronto, and many areas, were hit with a major storm today! We were only supposed to get about 5cm of snow with the possibility of freezing rain. Well, something funny happened on the way to the forum...

We got at least 10-15cm (between 1/3 and 1/2 foot) of snow, and the freezing rain is falling on top of that. I know, it doesn't sound THAT bad, compared to what other places have been getting, but this is the first major storm of the season. I remember when we'd get completely hammered with snow when I was younger. You know, where you'd wake up in the morning and the snow would be up to your knees (if you were lucky, it would only be your knees)...or little kids would go out and play in the snow drifts and all you would see is the pompom of their hats sticking out of the snow. I *miss* that kind of snow.

The only part I don't like is how long it takes to get anywhere in it.

We went to pick my mom up from the subway station after work. I told Josh to leave early, I figured that if he did, it wouldn't take us terribly long to get to the station. Well, I was, umm wrong.

It took over an hour and a half to drive 5km. The only way to get to the station was to go down a big hill. Cars were swerving and fish-tailing all over the road and one car came close to fish-tailing right into us. There were cars broken down all over the place, and it didn't help matters that we're right in the middle of a gas shortage.

(Long story short, there was a fire at a gas refinery and the majority of Esso stations ran out of gas this week...and then the other stations that were trying to make up for the shortage ran out themselves.)

I felt sorry for people who were stuck on the road in this storm.

The traffic was going so slowly that people were getting out of their cars and cleaning off their windshields. Trust me, they had the time to do that...the traffic simply didn't move.

We finally got to my mom, picked her up and she took us out for dinner. We were basically just waiting for the majority of the storm to pass before we got back on the road again, which was probably the smart thing to do. After dinner, we dropped mom at home and that's when the freezing rain started...

It wasn't too bad, we took the side streets home (since the major streets were still bunged up with traffic) and got home just in time to watch American Idol. ;)

How did you all fare with the storm? I'd talk about AI, but I don't want to ruin it for any of you that haven't seen it yet. All I *can* say about it is, what the hell is up with the voting public?! :P