bHCG

So I just got a call from the doctor. My hCG number is 545, which I think is great.
My book states the ranges are; 4 weeks 5 to 426; and 5 weeks 19 to 7,340. So I would say I am just newly 5 weeks approx. That is great, I was really hoping my numbers would be over 100; though you can be below that and still have a great pregnancy just like you can be high and have a poor outcome. But it is reassuring.

Christmas Presents

As most everyone who knows me knows that we have already opened our Christmas presents. We (mostly me) are bad.

We got a beautiful huge BBQ from Justin's Dad. It is going to be so great in the summer.

Justin got me Carhart overalls, but they are the wrong size so I had to return them and they did not have my size but that is ok. Also Justin got me the 2nd season of Survivorman, which I LOVE. And my own girl sized mechanix gloves, so now when I am helping him I don't have to use his huge floppy fingered gloves.

I got Justin4 hotrod movies which we have watched multiple multiple times. And a Family Guy calender which is so funny.

Waiting

Just waiting for a call from the doctor on my blood levels. Waiting, waiting....

Getting very excited about going to my parents house for Christmas and telling them. I don't have any cute ideas of how to tell them, maybe Justin will. Also I am hoping we will meet Justin's Dad for supper on our way home on Sat and tell him. He will be so happy. He may be out of the country though as he has not emailed me back yet, he works overseas. Also thinking we should call Justin's brother to let him know as we wont be seeing him this Christmas. And than that just leaves Justin's Mom and her Husband who we will likely call on Christmas day.

Well that is my update other than I still have a terrible sore throat. It is much worse at night. Makes it hard to sleep. I am feeling good otherwise, little bit of dizziness at the doctors yesterday and feel a little bit of a seasick stomach sometimes, but very very good!

Update

So I just got back from the doctors. The doctor I think I have decided on is away till mid Jan so I went to a different guy. They did a urine BHCG at the clinic that was positive and I have blood work done at the hospital to check the level of pregnancy hormone. The doc is supposed to call me with the numbers, he is kinda scatterbrained though, so I may have to call him. Also he booked me an ultrasound so I can be sure of my dates. My ultrasound is for Jan 6th, which is great. Just hoping I can get my serum levels back before we tell our parents at Christmas. I hope they are high!!

Guess what!!!

Famous People Christmas Party

So the party was really fun. There where about 25 people and lots in worse costumes than us. Jesus was there, he got his beard caught on a Christmas wreath when he was coming in the house, it was very funny.
We were randomly broken into teams to go on a scavenger hunt though town in the blizzard. I was chosen as a driver as I don't drink, so I had to drive our big lifted truck. I felt bad for our team as I am not that fast of a driver esp in a blizzard, but we did pretty good. We had to find random items like a rubbarb leaf, rotten banana etc. The second half we had to take pictures/videos of someone on our team doing things such as chewing a strangers already chewed gum, dancing on speakers, getting a stranger to give us the shirt off his back. It was really fun. Justin and I were on other teams, his team was really fast and they won. After we all tried to play games but by then some people were quite drunk, like Justin and could not understand the rules for some of the games.

Famous People Christmas Party

Dr Phil with the Lone Rangers hat.

Famous People Christmas Party

Sarah Palin and John McCain

Famous People Christmas Party

Tommy Lee and Shrek (in tights, he won for best costume)

Famous People Christmas Party

Pamela Anderson, who brought her PETA fliers.

Famous People Christmas Party

Dr Phil- aka Megan

Mrs Apu Nehasapeenapetalon - aka Lisa

Oprah- aka Candace

Famous People Christmas Party

The Lone Ranger and his sidekick Tonto.

Too bad we were a few generations too late as most people at the party did not know who we where, they thought Justin was a bandit and I Pocahontas.
Only picture we took of both of us, too bad I am making a strange face.

Famous People Christmas Party

Justin's finalized costume. Note mask, hat, bandanna and gun belt. Ready to party.

Famous People Christmas Party

Justin before the party fixing his Lone Ranger mask.

Justin playing charades. He was a horse!

Famous People Christmas Party

So we are going to a Christmas party this Friday at a friends house. You have to dress up like famous people (whether real or not). Justin is not much of a party guy anyway so he was not excited to go initially, then when he heard he has to wear a costume he did not want to go at all. Then I told him that at the start of the party we are going to be broken into teams and have to go on a scavenger hunt through town in our costumes, he was not impressed. He did finally agree to go but only if he could go as Johnny Cash. We tried to do his hair like Johnny and it was a no go. So then I thought maybe we could go as John Travolta and Olivia NewtonJohn from Grease, but again the hair and costumes was not working, plus Justin hates John Travolta and Grease. Then out of the blue Justin suggests he be the Lone Ranger and I can be Tonto. After all the laughing died down we decided that that was actually a good idea. So now we have to borrow a white cowboy hat and I have to find some toy guns and make him a mask. I will rent a indian brave costume from the costume store and use bronzer on my face. It will be very funny. I can't believe that he is going to do this, it should be so much fun.

The Best Thing About Winter Is HOCKEY!!!!!!

Our big beautiful dog and parents little puppy last Christmas

Christmas puppy; last year.

Ready for Christmas

So now it is December and it is finally Christmas season. I am all done shopping for gifts and have all the gifts wrapped. Also I am finished and have sent all my Christmas cards. Justin and I are bad as we have already opened most of our gifts. We likely wont have anything to open on Christmas morning. Justin put up the Christmas lights last week. All we need now is a tree.

My Democratic Rant

This is a copy of a post I sent to my American friends about what is going on in our country and I like it so much I thought I would post it here.

We just voted in our election about 6 weeks ago. We have a very different system from you guys. We have a multi party system, anyone can make a party instead of your 2 party system. Our main parties are the Conservatives (more capitalist, which I support), the Liberal (more socialist), and the New Democrat Party (more socialist and spend happy). We also have the BLOQ(separatist party of Quebec which has a fair amount of power but only in Quebec) and the Green Party (environmentalist, small power), plus many tiny parties that don't get any support like the communist party and the don't want to work party (it is an actual party).

When we have an election you can vote for any party that has a person running in your area. Each area gets one seat in parliament and the party with the most seats is in power and the leader of the party with the most seats is the Prime Minister (like your President). So we don't actually vote for the Prime Minister himself unless he is running in our riding(area), we vote for the individual in our area from the party we support with the party leader we want as Prime Minister. Hope that makes sense.

So 6 weeks ago we had an election and Steven Harper and the Conservative Party won the most seats so they are the boss. But they did not win enough seats to have more than half the Parliament seats, so they have a minority government. But they won way more seats than any other party, close to more than half the seats of the Parliament. The problem is that the loosing parties (Liberal, NDP and BLOQ) have decided to join together to overthrow the leading party (the Conservatives). Which I find as very unfair and undemocratic. We just elected our government, Canadians did not vote for a joined coalition government of Liberal/NDP/BLOQ, Canadian voted for Conservative government. I think the Liberal/NDP/BLOQ should join together if they choose and let us vote as is our right. It is sneaky to quietly go through an election campaigning for your party then afterwards suddenly scrap your party to join with others without Canadians having the chance to vote on it. We will know on Monday what is happening. Because we are a commonwealth of Britain, the Queens representative must decide what is constitutional, to either call another election or allow the sitting government to be taken over. It did happen once before that the ruling party was overthrown in 1928 in the world war.

I feel very disappointed. How would you feel if you just voted and elected your government then they tell you all the voting does not matter that they can pick the government without the people consent. I love my country but it make me feel like democracy has no meaning.

How is that for a rant!

As an update to the previous post about Christmas presents. I was excited when Justin got home from work for him to notice his Christmas presents, he pretended not to care. Therefore I let him, no that is not right, encouraged strongly for him to open them. So he opened all four of his movies that I had carefully wrapped and made a sparkly tag for and then we watched two of them. After he opened them I regretted it as now he has nothing for Christmas to open and it meant we had a whole night of car movies to watch.

I love Halloween.

Last week I ordered some Christmas presents for my husband. They came today, so I wrapped them up. Now we have to see if I can wait until Christmas to give them to him. I am really bad at waiting. I will probably let him open one of the four now. It is a long time until Christmas, he probably wont have any presents left by then!

Fall

Fall is the most wonderful time of year. I love the cool winds and blowing leaves and all the harvest. The fields full of bales. The geese flying over honking. The late blooming flowers.

I love how crisp the evenings are and how cozy the house is with a fire going.

Also I love Halloween. I'm not quite sure why but I have always loved it. Halloween feels earthy and dark. I love pumpkins and all fall decorations. Also spooky, witchy things are so much fun.

I also love fall because hockey season starts. The start is the best time of hockey season because it has been so long without it that you crave hockey every night. Plus the excitement over the changes to your team, anticipation of the wins in the future.

My beautiful baby!

New Vacuum

Well, I bought a new vacuum today. I had picked one out from the sears website, for $250. I thought today I would look around town just in case I could find it here. At Walmart I was looking at their vacuum and looking at a Hoover for $150. The one from sears got my attention because of 3 features; it can do bare floors, it has a small power head for stairs or pet beds and the canister can be removed to ease vacuuming the stairs. Well the Hoover at Walmart has 2 of the 3 features I wanted for $100 less, the mini power head and bare floors. It also has some other nice features. I thought about it in the store and decided that since I am saving $100, I could also buy the little spot carpet shampooer too for $100. We have needed a little carpet cleaner because of Miss Piddle Pants the cat, and ooops or sicky times with the dog. So I went and got a cart and went back to the vacuums to load up the one I wanted when I noticed that it is not $150, it is on sale for $88. You can't get better than that.

So here at home, I have already tried both machines. The vacuum sucks (which is good for a vacuum) really well, way way better than my old vacuum. Also tried the spot remover, it works well, not as good as the large commercial units, but gets the job done and is easy to use. Yeah!!

Very very mad!

Someone has stolen from us. Last month Justin dropped one of his cars off at his brothers house, his friend was going to buy it. Justin told his brother not to let the car go until he has money in his hand, as he did not fully trust this friend. Next thing we hear is that the friend has come and picked up the car without paying for it. Justin emailed the friend and told him he should not have gotten the car without paying and asked for his money. Now we find out that the friend is not going to be able to pay and he has already cut up the car. He took it and cut it up without any right. Justin says that we will go get it if it is not too bad, so that will cost us anyway time and fuel to go 3 hour one way; or if it is bad than he is going to tell the 'friend' that we need the money. I was so mad I was ranting about calling the police or our lawyer. Justin is right though, if we were to do that now it would scare him that he might dump the car or something. How rude can someone be. Why would he think you can take something you don't own and can't buy and ruin it? I really hope everything turns out ok. Justin should go get the car and charge him for the cost of travel and the damage done.

Our walks

My dog and I have been walking every day along the creek. It is so nice. It takes about 40 minutes. Everytime she has to stop and swim in the water and stop to smell all sorts of smells. Lately there have been hundreds of grasshoppers. The all jump away with each step you take. Sometimes they land on you and then you can feel their scratchy legs pinching as they jump off of you. It is nice there have not been any mosquitoes. I just cannot bring myself to go out when there are swarms of mosquitoes. We are very lucky to live in a neighborhood surrounded on three sides by a creek.

The Terrors of Flowers

I have a large flower garden, well to be more precise many little flower beds. I remember growing up having to weed my mom's garden in the hot sun and hating it. I also remember about the age of 12 having my own little garden and how much fun it was to plant everything, but that was where the fun ended and my little garden never got weeded and soon was overgrown that you couldn't tell it from the field beside it. And now I have many flowers and many weeds, the only good thing is they are perennials. My rule is if you cannot survive with minimal care then you do not belong in my garden. So slowly for the 2 years we have been in this house I have been trying to downsize my gardens. I would rather have a few nicely cared for plants than many wild weedy plants. Also with all the gardens and the dog pen we do not have that much grass, I like cleanly cut nice smelling grass. So today I killed some of the plants along the fence in front of the Virginia creeper that covers an arch. Why do we need plants there? Also they are kinda ugly plants, for all I know they could be special lifesaving rare plants, but ugly none the less. So I chopped them up and raked and raked the wood chips at there base. Finally got fed up with creeper vines tangling my rake and picking up sluggy wood chips and poky weeds, I decided to call it a day. At least it is mostly done. Now just have to pick up small pile wet slimy wood chips and put down some grass seed. Next target is the long oval shaped flower bed under a tree. I will leave the part directly under the tree, but why have flowers across the middle of your grass so you have to walk around. Those flowers hopefully will get moved to the flower bed against the garage to replace the ones we had to dig up when we got power routed to the garage. Then I plan to mulch wood chips over the flower bed at the west side of the house as they are mostly weeds and iris'. The irises will fight through the mulch, i would think, and then hopefully the weeds will die and maybe it will protect the little evergreens there. Also on the east side of the house against the fence I plan to kill those flowers and weeds and grass that in, just leaving the little crab apple tree. I told you, I have alot of flower beds, total maybe 12. Way too much for a non gardener like me. And if I get so inclined I can always kill grass to put in flowers or even a little vege garden. In this whole plant infested yard there is no veges at all. I also hope to one day convince Jon to gravel the small muddy patch of grass off the deck on the west side of the house where the dog pees all winter. It never seems to properly recover anyway. Lots of plans, I feel like I will never get done. But I did do alot last year, killing some huge ugly buggy evergreens and a few trees that would have had no where to go had they grown more, and cleaning all under the plum tree and hedge that was full of leaves and misc and rotted plums that smelled like bad liquor.

I love rainy days

I love rainy days. The air is so fresh and the sky is dark and the wind fills the house with freshness.

My Husband is MacGyver

So for our Sunday, Justin's only day off he wanted to go fishing. He had bought a map showing the backroads in our area so we were sure we could find our own secluded fishing place on the river. We loaded the dog in her big kennel and off we went with a route picked out. The 1st route the map showed was one we had already tried, goes through someones field and onto fenced private land with no trespassing signs. Our second route shown on the map wants you to drive right through someones yard. Again and again we tried, the map showing us proper roads where their are fields and farms and no access to the river. At one point we could see the beautiful blue water but still could not get to it. Finally after 3 hours of driving and searching through muddy trails and after Jon had drove over the map in his anger, we decided to go to a park we know about on the river and pay to fish and swim. Driving to the park Justin was not talking much so I was quiet. Once there I let the dog out for a swim throwing her tennis ball in the water. Justin did not seem like he was enjoying his one day off at all. Then he mentions, how far is it to the the nearest town H..? Why I ask? He says that we are mostly out of fuel, not sure if we can make it, should we try to go back to our town or will little H.. have a gas station open. We load up the dog and away we go slowly and carefully, using neutral when going downhill. Thinking about the fuel situation we hit a bump in the road we previously hit and should have remembered. At the crossroads we decide to go to H.. as it is a little closer and should have a gas station. Next corner we turn Justin suddenly stops the truck and jumps out. We have broken a tie rod holding and steering the right front tire. What are the odds. Still 20 km away from H.. Justin says as long as the tire points straight we can keep driving, the gas tank is past red. Up and down hills we go and around gentle curves in the road we get to H.., and there is a gas station, open, but now we have to wait for a train before we can get there. When we go to cross the tracks our gas tank light is flashing and beepbeepbeepbeep. I thought, Oh please do not let us get stuck on the tracks, but we roll in to the gas station. As the attendant fills our truck we realize that this is also a hardware store. Justin searches for something to hold the wheel in line follow the steering. We buy some wrenches, washers, metal clamps and duct tape. Adding a tie strap from the dog crate, Justin is able to put it all together like a metal enforced cast for the brocken tie rods arm. Then it is the 30 min drive back to our town. We made it back to our house and just barely as the wreches were breaking through our cast. Now how is that for your only day off! How come every thing we do turns into an adventure?

My loves

The two things I love most in life are my hubby and my dog.

I have loved my hubby for almost 10 years. I feel very privileged that he chooses me to share his life with. My hubby is very strong, confident and good. Also he is always right, as he often reminds me, but I cannot argue.

My dog is my baby. When she was little I couldn't wait for her to be old and calm enough to cuddle and now she is big I miss how tiny she was. She is a very good dog and she loves her Dad more than anything. She has such caring and intelligent eyes. I also love how she kicks and growls softly in her dreams.

Vacuum

I hate my vacuum. We bought it about 5 years ago for about $80. It is good because it is fairly lite weight and it has a canister that you just dump to empty, no bags. But it is bad because the rotors do not work really well anymore. It is heavy to push on the carpet, maybe the wheels don't roll well and it is hard to steer, and above all it does not clean very good. It does not have much sucking power. I checked the rotor spins and the air sucks but still it does not pick up clumps of dog hair, let alone inbeded dog hair, paper, dust, mud, rocks etc. You have to go over and over a spot from different angles for it to even try to pick something up. After vacuuming the carpet looks greyish still just as if the dog hair, dust etc has been neatly pushing down into the carpet fibers to even the look. Thought the carpets are not great it is not their fault, after steaming cleaning them they looked remarkably different. We don't have much carpet but what we do have I would like to keep tidy. Also we have carpeting up the stairs and it is difficult to carry and work the vacuum on the stairs and it still does not get the hair etc. It works better to pick up the hairs and feed it into the mouth of the vacuum. Justin mostly vacuums the stairs because I hate it and it is difficult, but that being said they do not get done that often. So I am hoping to buy a new vacuum as soon as I feel we have a little extra money. I have one picked out that is moderately priced and looks ok. It is specially for animals, or so it says. And is supposed to pick up pet hair off carpets and furniture and stairs easliy. We shall see.

First Post

Well I have started a blog. Justin wont be happy, he does not want me writing about our life for people to see, but really, who is going to look! No one needs to know it is me unless I want them to know. That gives me the freedom to talk about what I want. The trouble is I don't think I have anything to say. Nothing interesting anyway. I have never been good at writing a diary or anything like that. I think I am too boring, and the stuff that isn't boring, I really don't want to share with others.