you know that you have poison ivy when...

you know that you have poison ivy when...

1) when you are weeding in your garden, you repeat in your head "leaves of three; let them be" over and over again
2) your bathroom counter looks like a mini pharmacy with calamine lotions, q-tips, gauze, and benedryls.
3) you wake up a half hour earlier in the morning so that you have time to bandage yourself
4) when the children come to give you a hug and kiss good-night they look for a safe spot to touch you and then decide to squeeze your pinky
5) a truck driver asks you to sign the delivery papers and then insists that you keep his pen
6) the history of your computer shows the last 50 googles as being...
    ~help, I am going insane, I have poison ivy
    ~how does poison ivy spread
    ~how long does poison ivy last
7) when you wake up from your slumber in the middle of the night you panic and try to fall back to sleep. Too late you realize that it feels like you are being attacked by thousands of mosquitos. After laying there you decide to put a bit of calamine lotion on the worst spot. After trying to go back to sleep you get up again and put it on the next worse spot. This goes on and on until you realize that you should of just taken a bath in that stuff.
Sleep at this point is the furthest from your mind. You are concentrating hard at not scratching your body apart.
8) In the middle of the night you come up with silly rhymes such as:
                           Poison ivy is a dirty rotten weed
                           It spreads with just one little seed
                           I won't tell a lie
                           I wish that it would all die
                           Poison ivy is a dirty rotten weed

Word and Deed Bike-a-thon!

Dressed in bright orange and preparing themselves for the next few hours of bike riding, you could feel the excitement of the 300+ bikers during the 6th annual Word and Deed bike-a-Thon. Strangers could not help but ask what this was for. When they found out that all of these bikers, from the ages of 7-81 worked hard and raised close to $54,000 for an AIDS clinic in South Africa, the strangers gave an impressive whistle.
Even though the clouds threatened to give way to buckets of rain, the rain held off and made the bike-a-thon a whole lot easier than last year. (think torrential down pour, thunder, lightening and picking up 400 people, plus bikes along the route)
Biking along the beautiful Niagara Parkway is a great way to spend time as a family and to meet others who have the same passion as you.

 

 

 

Joining us all of the way from B.C.!

 

Nate and his cousin Isaac biked the whole 52km. It took them a long time to finish the bike-a-thon but they did it and now they know that they could do it again!

My three little helpers. I am smart and volunteer at the water station/registration table every year.
You get to be in on the action without feeling the soreness of not being in shape!
If you think that 52km is too hard than you can join us at the 22km mark and still take part of the bike-a-thon.

 

Liam met me at the water station with a huge grin! He biked 30 km!

At the end of the bike-a-thon we met at a park and were treated to some great food!
Every year I am just amazed at the crowd's eagerness and excitement. The atmosphere is wonderful and the stories keep on rolling in along with the bikers. Even if you live further away, it is worth the drive, so mark it down for next year! It is the first Saturday of June!

2 stories

    Tyler, just two, is a small little fellow so our family doc. puts the pressure on me to have him come into his office to get weighed. Our doctor knows that I am a slacker and put visits, vaccines, and everything else on the back burner. The whole problem is that with small boys, I dread being stuck in a little office waiting for the doctor to come. Boys are a lot of fun and full of adventure but when you are cramped in a wee little room with one or two young boys it becomes something close to a nightmare. I have learned to pack the diaper bag full of books, cars, gadgets, and goldfish crackers.
So awhile ago I was stuck in the drs. office with Tyler. We waited for a very looong time for the Dr. to arrive and when he finally opened the door to his office, I breathed a sigh of relief- but his eyes bulged out. There were goldfish thrown all over the floor, books were scattered on his desk, and Tyler was spinning furiously on his swivel office chair. I tried to convince myself that there is such a thing as a state of happy chaos, but that wasn't applying here. After Tyler's check up I mustered all of my courage and told the doctor that I was pregnant. He gave me a big smirk and congratulated me. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, but when he found out that this was not a surprise for us, he could not hide his reaction. Not only did his eyes bulge out for the second time, but his mouth dropped open. He quickly recovered and told me that he would send me for a dating ultrasound. I had prepared a speech about how we see children as a beautiful blessing, but it didn't seem like an appropriate time!
A few weeks later it was time for the dating ultra sound to see how far along I was. We like to keep the pregnancies a secret for as long as possible. My sister Heather was due for her little one during the same week so I was very afraid of running into her in our small town hospital. When it was time for my appointment I found out that Heather was not in labour so I wouldn't have to worry about bumping into her.  As I laid on the stretcher in the ultrasound room and the tech started to do her observations, I told her that if there were twins in there, she had better hold my hand! I think that you can understand my fear!
She assured me that I was pregnant with one and that everything looked great. I walked out of the hospital full of joy (and relief). I was standing outside of the hospital trying to cross the road to get to my car when I saw a very familiar car approaching...my mom. Unfortunately she spotted me too and quickly pulled over. As I stood there trying to cross the road, my mind raced. What was I going to tell her? Why was I at the hospital? For cry'n-out-loud, so much for the secret. Now what do I do? As I crossed over to her car, I felt a sheepish smile tug on my lips. She had her head out of the window. "I thought that it was you. What are you doing at the hospital?" Now you have to understand my mom. She never suspects anything. Her heart is too kind for that. If I was quick enough I could of pulled a fast one on her but instead I told her that I was at the hospital for an ultrasound. A dating ultrasound. My mom burst out laughing. I was very disappointed that I had been "caught"  but she said that nothing like this happens by accident and that God had orchestrated this for some reason. She promised not to tell anyone including my dad; this was news that I wanted the boys to have the joy of sharing. A few Sundays later my parents came over for Tylers birthday but it was also the day that we were going to share our news. I was pretty sure that my dad had figured everything out so when he shook my hand and said "congratulations." I blurted out, "who told you ? How did you figure it out?" My dad looked confused and asked me what I was talking about. He was talking about Tyler's birthday. I had given the secret away!

Thank you for all of your well-wishes and prayers. For those who know me, pregnancies have the tendency to turn into a trial with sickness, kidney stones, and high blood pressure.
Before I was pregnant with Tyler I was so scared of the pregnancy that I  spent 5 months getting healthy. I loaded up on vitamins, especially vit. B, and did a liver cleanse. Prior to this pregnancy the healthy part slacked a little, but I managed to do two liver cleanses, one in October and one in March. I also made 15 freezer meals during the winter. I have had pregnancies where I have spent most of the nine months on the couch. These past two times have been easier. Right now it is still challenging with feeling sick, but it is all manageable. You need to let things slide and it is so much easier now that the boys are older and are more helpful.
In the mornings, the boys take Tyler out of his crib, get him breakfast, get themselves ready for school and pack their lunches while I sit on the couch with a bowl. After one rough morning, I was rinsing out my bowl and I overheard Nate say to Liam, "At least we know what's wrong with her" to which Liam replied, "Yeah, and at least she isn't contagious!"

a family picture

We are thrilled to tell you that we are prayerfully expecting a baby
 in the beginning of January!

Thanks be to God!




This is how we told the boys our good news this afternoon:
We gave the boys these signs and had our pictures taken. The whole time they were trying to guess
what it meant. Yes Tyler turned 2 today so he is growing, and yes they are getting bigger. But after running out of suggestions we told them the good news and Nate had such a great reaction. Liam was concentrating so hard on holding his sign right that he missed the whole thing. After the pictures were over he asked what it the signs meant. When we told him that we were going to have a baby he was besides himself with excitement. He told us over and over again how he loved babies (he does:) and went to find the baby name book to name this baby. What a joy it is to tell your children when they are older and understand it.