Times Passing....

I don't know...maybe every blog needs some Cliche ridden post.  A post reminding everyone that life is out there somewhere, good actually does come to those who wait for it, and when you jump out of the frying pan you do sometimes hit the fire.  Maybe this is mine.

I had some time a couple weeks ago, after surgery and before spending all my "free" time on the new website, to scan in a bunch of old photos that hadn't seen the light of the digital photography age.  There was a bunch on there from high school, youth groups, camp and just general life B.C. meaning, Before Children.

It was...diffferent...looking through all those old pics, remembering the dreams attached to that girl in them.

I look at pics of me now and I don't recognize myself as the same person.  It's like one day I walked into this new world and decided to hit pause on the old one and see where this journey takes me for awhile.  I feel like I am in the wardrobe, living a life I never dreamed about and thinking that someday, the old one will be available to return too.  When did I grow up?  Aren't I still only 18?  I couldn't really be this old...where has the time gone?

The last 10 years have been effortless, they've gone by without any help from me.   Life has seemed to glide on this path that we have just followed.  There have been the hills, the valleys, the deep dark trenches, and the mountains of hope that we keep climbing.  We have swam in oceans of happiness, skated across frozen ponds of desperation and clawed our way through the toughest of jungles.   There has seemingly been no question of where we would go or where we will end up, just each day arriving like the last with not option to pause, rewind, or fast forward.  Just the sun rising and falling, another day blooming, and our feet inevitably continuing, are feet just keep moving along and we make sure we pick up whatever gear may be along the way for whatever this path may throw at us next.

Every now and then I come upon a meadow where I can see all around me, the people walking next to me, and realize -  This is where I am right now.  This is where life has brought me.  Dreams are meant for childhood.  These beings around me are the real and wonderful part of the hear and now.  Who can dream and foresee this wonderment?  What child can fathom the journey we have been on.  Youth allows you to see snippets of little pictures between the treetops leaves. Pictures that will show you how great life can be, the amazing view of what is all out there and what is just yours for the taking.  Snippets that make you take those first steps away from the nest and plunge down into the journey called life or soar among the treetops.  Youth makes you brave enough to start...life takes you on a path that slowly reveals more of the bigger picture...it throws you the curves and the forks in the road so you can see that life is more than those little pictures.

So Seize the day, Enjoy the journey, Stop and smell the roses, Follow the path laid out in front of you.  My life isn't what I dreamed it would be but I couldn't tell you where I would be now if I had made different choices.  I do know I probably wouldn't like it as much as I am loving this.  Memories and pictures are the map we are creating as we continue to follow the path.  Not so that we can find our way back but so we can tell the people along the way what happened in the journey.

Creating a website

9 days ago I got it into my head to start a new website.

Head must have been empty when I decided this.  It was at the very least filled with fluff and delusions that this task would be somewhat easy.

To be fair to my silly head, it's past experiences with building websites were fairly simple.  Sign up for a freewebs acount, learn some basic controls and formatting and spit out a website had basic functions but completed everything I wanted it to do.  See www.pawpawrazzipups.com www.jayesdoodles.com www.spottedbeauties.com

This has been a completely different journey.  It has taken me from godaddy.com, to host monster.com to classifeds software and and software tutorials.  I've had to learn about cPanels, and php and FTP, and HTML and domains, sub domains, and SEO.  Almost 9 wholes days later I feel like I have barely started on the journey and have created only a sampling of what I saw coming together at the beginning.  What was I thinking?

The basic shell of the website is done and is functional.  I saw it more "fancy" and less basic but I find myself limited by the hours in the day, the other things to do and my limited knowledge of exactly what I am doing.

As difficult as I found the first part of this journay the next parts are even harder.  Now that you have built the business how do you divert traffic to it?  How dod you get google to recognize it.  Hoe do you get search engion optimization.  How do you get regular clientelle, how? how? how?

Today I must have sent out a minimum of 1000 emails and I can almost see the tip of the iceberg breaking the surface, but only if I hold my breath.

I have to keep reminding myself that Rome wasn't built in a day.  The site has only been live for a day and a half.  I can't expect 1000's of people flocking to it.  I can't expect it to be an instant viral success.  I can't expect it to take off at all....but I can hope.

Hope I have by the bushell full.  Hope keeps me coming back to this chair and turning my monitor on for another 10 hours of staring at it's depths.  Hope has me believing that 6 months from now all this will pay off.

In the mean time please check out www.puppysearch.ca  It's the newest FREE pet classifieds online listing for North America.

So it's been a week...

Last Monday was the day of my knee surgery.  My ACL replacement seemed to go without a hitch.  I had a spinal so the pain was minimal, the nausea was nonexistent and I was discharged a couple hours after surgery for the long drive home, whcih was the most uncomfortable part of the day.

I was really good for the first two days.  I was hurting so I stayed in bed, took my meds every four hours, kept Ice on my knee and watched Greys Anatomy and played on the computer.

The kids spent the first couple days at their Grandmas house which I am so grateful for.  The pain just trying to tilt my foot was bad enough, I couldn't imagine having the extra shifting around and focus on the children.

Come Wednesday I was starting to go stir crazy...laying in bed all day was starting to make other parts of me hurt even though we have a Tempur mattress.  So I went into town with Grant for a playschool meeting.  Now that a lot of the initial pain and throbbing has ceased, sitting up is the most uncomfortable and my foot and ankle starts to really hurt and go numb simultaneously.  So I was glad it was a fairly short meeting.  (The final decision was to put Brook in playschool)

We were missing the kids and their happy faces terribly, so since I felt good enough to attend that meeting I figured it was time the kids could come home.  It was so nice to finally have their faces close by again.

It did end my total rest abilities though.  Thursday Grant was home all day so it wasn't too bad.  By Friday we attended the Spooktacular Breakfast in the morning that is put on for the community to show off all the kids cute costumes.  The whole school attends and the School Council, which Grant and I both run (Grant as the representative for grades 1-3 and myself as the new secretary), So Grant was asked to help with serving the pancakes and sausages tot he younger grades.  It was lots of fun but lots of sitting up and time on my feet.  It was great to get out of the house though.

So great I took some more pain meds when we got home and stayed on my feet.  I was missing the dogs and even though Grant has been doing an excellent job caring for them I had to go outside and visit them all.  Of course I took my camera and had to take pictures of all my little ones.  Dakota came over and helped Grant spread the straw for the ponies and it felt great to be outside.

Until the pain killers decided they weren't going to be strong enough.  Until Saturday morning when my calf muscle decided it wasn't used to being worked this way and was going to cramp up every time I tried to move it.  Needless to say that Saturday was a very slow day and I spent most of it off my feet.  All five kids were home and Grant was gone but they helped out lots and we spent a very long day with my feet up.

Yesterday of course was Halloween.  Normally that would mean lots of walking as we take the kdis aorund.  Fortunately Dak came through again and he took the kids around our little town collecting their candy.  Grant and I went over to the Side Street Cafe and sat and had Coffee and supper with mom.  Sitting up for long periods of time is still painful for my foot and ankle and I was getting antsy and ready to leave after little more than an hour.  Keeping my feet up is the most comfortable position even if I am having difficulty staying off my feet and home in bed.

So the week went better than I expected for getting out and getting things done even if I had to pay for it with Toradol and Tylenol 3's afterwards.  I am more functional than I thought although the trade off is me being a little short tempered.  I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful husband that is able to run after the rug rats and pick up after them and allow me to have my feet up and my knee iced even though his back is also in a painful condition this week.

I am really going to have to rely on some self decipline to keep up with my RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation).  As my knee is feeling better I am ready to ditchthe awkward crutches and do more.  I do have some projects that require me to sit planned as sitting up becomes less uncomfortable, so we'll see what the week brings.

The Daily Grind

15 years ago in a skiing accident I tore three ligaments in my knee and really messed up the stability of it for life.  6 years ago while tripping over a toy, avoiding stepping on the puppy playing with it and carrying a baby, I damaged the cartilage and the ACL ligament.  14 months ago, I jumped out of our boat, sunk my foot into the sand and had my unstable knee slide forward and retore my ACL ligament.  In 6 days I will be undergoing surgery to have it repaired/replaced for the third time.

Injuries never happen when they are convenient.  The first time I was in Junior high and had a whole year of plans.  The second time I had work and kids and puppies and by the time I had the surgery, I had a two week baby at home to care for.  This time I will be virtually laid up for at least 6 weeks with 5 kids, horses, dogs and winter around the corner.  Not Optimal.

Right now the deadline that next monday represents is looming.  The chill in the air and the crispness to the weather is a secondary ticking timebomb.  On an acearge or farm there is always so much to get ready in preparation for winter.  Toys and leftover project materials that need to be put away, the yard that needs cleaned up, the animals that need to be moved/groomed/bedded down ect in preparation for the months of cold.  Normally we have more time to prepare everyone for this but this year I won't be walking at the point that winter starts to really set in...which gives me 6 days to have everything and everyone ready.

There are outbuildings to clean out, straw to purchase and spread around for horses to bed on, waterers and heaters to place, storage that needs organized, outside garbage, toys, bikes, tools ect that all need to make sure they have found their winter hibernation spots.  It leaves the inside of my house looking fairly neglected by comparison so once the outside is finished there is always more than can be done to do inside. 

My kids are usually great, well behaved little monsters BUT they are like little whirlwinds.  Everywhere they go they leave something behind.  Almost every project started leaves something left to put away.  Every book read or in the process of being read left in a nice easy to reach spot.  Homework, back backs, socks, clothes, dishes, shoes ect are rarely put back in the places they should be.  With five kids 9 and under living in this little house I often feel as though I either need a live in maid or a recording saying "Put it away"  "Pick it up" "It belongs somewhere else" "put one thing away before pulling out another" ect.  There is only one of me to clean up and five of them making a mess.....

Fortunately I am married and I do have the benefit of having a husband at home most of the time helping raise the kids and take care of the kennel.  He is a huge help with seeing the construction done and projects finished.  He is wonderful at chores.  He is going to have a lot of extra things hitting his plate in the next couple weeks.  Things he wouldn't normally be in charge of will become his deal as well.  Making lunches and getting kids off to school, laundry, dishes, floors, and the dog chores...plus...plus....plus....All the things that keep me running from 7am to midnight most days and winter is still coming so the construction and projects will still need to be completed.

Fortunately it's not my butt that is getting fixed and I will be able to still fold the clothes, take care of the baby, groom the dogs respond to emails, man the phones, do the marketing, update the websites, manage pictures and still do most of the office things so he won't have to take that on as well.

When I think about being out of commision for even just as short a time as I will be it makes my head spin with how much there is to do and how much that we get done on a regular day.  We are fortunate that my surgery is a prescheduled and planned for event that we are able to prepare for and get some things out of the way before they happen.   It would be so much more difficult to cope with an unplanned for emergency/injury.  Thank God this one is not. 

The daily grind taking care of five kids, the house, the kennel, and the animals and preparation for winter does not stop because we might want it too for a few weeks while I recover.  So the planning and busy-ness continues as we prepare. 

The Celebration of Life

September is a busy month for a lot of families. For us it tends to be crazy.

We have the normal ruckus of the back to school rush. New school supplies, clothes, shoes and outlooks for the upcoming year. We have the daily barrage of paperwork coming home with each child asking for money to this thing or that thing....Magazine subscriptions, Terry Fox, Book Orders, Lunch programs, pictures, and on and on and on. This is all normal stuff that either fades or becomes routine within a couple of weeks.

Our family as has three birthdays in September. My son is on the 13, my second daughter on the 24 and my oldest daughter on the 26. The standing joke in the family is that Christmas was the only day we had off work and Voila.

My kids are the best thing that has ever happened in my life. They are my reason for getting up every morning. They are my reason for doing everything that I do. Somewhere along the way I lost myself and became a mom and I haven't looked back. We don't just celebrate the day they were born, we have a celebration that they are with us. We celebrate their lives.

That's a lot to do in one measly little 24 hours. Especially when you can't tune out the real world and some work and chores must be done...and then those cut into our celebration time...and well...that doesn't give us enough celebration time. So we invented

The Birthday Weekend

One whole weekend where the kid in question gets to call all the shots...how we spend our time...where we eat...what we watch...whatever. It's their weekend to know how much we appreciate them being a part of our family. Since our girls bdays are only two days apart, one of them gets to have a weekend before their birthday. For three weekends in September we are celebrating.

Needless to say it's our kids favorite month of the year...we go swimming and to playgrounds we might not always make the time to stop at during the year. We eat out to much and drive to much and love every minute of it. Our kids feel like they are 10 feet tall because they are in charge.

We tend to have a forth weekend dedicated to a school friends birthday party. This year we rented a pool and the three kids were allowed to invite their friends for a pool party. Another celebration with family and friends so that they know other people really appreciate and love them and are happy that "X" amount of years ago we were happy they came to be with us.

At the end of each weekend we are exhausted but happy.

At the end of the month we don't want any more birthday cake.

It's fun but crazy.

The end always seems to come right at the brink of "to soon" and "it's about time".

But we love it. The kids love it. We love them. It's only once a year that we can go all out and let them know that even though there are five of them...each is so special and loved all on their own.

Each of them is worth Celebrating.

I Need Sleep or Hating while Embracing the Sun.

One of the things I like the most about winter is the days are so short. It's not much, I admit. But when you have such a cold crummy temperature outside, slippery walkways and roads, biting winds, ect at least God made the days short.

Why would I be reflecting on this at 8:00 am on a beautiful bright and sunny morning? Why, because this beautiful morning is exactly the reason! The sun beating into the windows so early has only one purpose. It wakes up the baby. I could be happily sleeping right now. Four of the kids are over at Grandmas house enjoying a camp out in the yard and all I have is the baby at home. It would be a great day to sleep in and get caught up on some rest, but no, the sun shines in the window and she is up at 6:30 and I have instead spent over an hour trying to convince her to go back to sleep.

I have never been a morning person. I prefer to spend my time up with the stars. Probably more so now that I am a mom. The peace and quiet that comes over the house once all the little ones are asleep becomes my time. It's quiet enough to hear the TV. It's calm enough to read a book. No new messes are being made. If I didn't enjoy this time of night so much I might actually go to bed some night before midnight instead of so often later. If I didn't enjoy it so much, waking up early in the morning wouldn't be such an issue but I like to stay up late and I like to sleep in.

Normally this isn't a problem. She often wakes up before I am ready to get up. She sleeps in the bed with us and is a nurser so I would normally just roll over, feed her and that would buy me an extra hour or two in dreamland and I am happy. Except this last week I have been weaning her. Her night time feedings had crossed the line between feeding out of necessity and just sucking because it offered her comfort. Most of the time I can happily sleep while she nurses but it doesn't make for the most comfortable sleeping position. So rather than being used for her human soother, I have opted that it is time for the little one to be weaned.

I have watched enough Supernanny and Nanny 911 to remember that the easiest, fastest way to wean a kid off something is going Stone Cold Turkey. One day it's there - the next, it isn't an option anymore. This might take less time, and it is the way I have weaned the kids before but it does account for the extra tiredness I am feeling this week. Cammie doesn't seem to realize that it's the best way and that she isn't supposed to be waking up wanting to nurse or sleeping so restlessly while she is doing without. Last night was considerably better, but I am still suffering from a lack of sleep and her waking up this morning wasn't very welcome.

So go away beautiful sun. You do not need to rise at 6:00 to make me like you. I love you sun. Come out at 9:00 in the morning and you would have an even bigger fan. I do not like the tin foil covered window look that I have used in the past to keep my babies sleeping soundly in the morning and block out your intrusion. I do not have the heavy drapes the hotels use to keep you out while still insisting that check out is 11:00am and you can't sleep in anyway. What I have is a little window over the back door that allows your entrance into my house and shine right into my babies face. Don't you realize it is summer vacation and the best time of the year we can sleep in? Go away. Come back in a couple of hours.

In a couple of hours I will be well rested and ready to spend the days basking in your rays. We are on the final countdown to the beginning of school. 5 days until we are back to the early morning rush of trying to get three little ones out the door with matching socks, homeworks, lunchkits, and clothes that preferably match. 5 days. 3 of which are going to be work and travel days. Of the last remaining two days, one will be nice, the other only so so. So we have today to go out and embrace the sunshine and the warmth of summer one last time before it is officially fall and the responsibilities of real life once again intrude.

It won't be the last lake day before the snow flies, but it will be the last summer day. Every boat day in September will start to have the crispness to the air, the chill to the water, the view of the leave changing color and the heavily foreboding that the winter is not far from settling in. We may come out some days after the bus drops the kids off for a couple shorter days of sunshine. I am sure there will be a couple of weekends where work will not intrude and we can head to the lake. We will probably go equipped with the fishing rods to hope the fish will bite better than they did in the summer heat. They will be fun. They will create the memories and family time we want our kids to grow up having but they will not be the summer.

Even while I sit here and wish the sun was not up and beautifully shining in the window while Cammie plays her "make a mess" game I am loving every moment of it's heat on my back. We will be going and picking up the kids for a picnic and beach day. We will take the boat out on the lake. We will make a fire and cook smores and hot dogs. We will play in the sun with frisbee and football. We will eat to much. We will pick saskatoons and raspberries on nature walks. We will watch the kids learn their new tricks on the playparks. We will tube. We will swim. We will laugh. We will embrace the sun for what could be the last day beautiful day before school starts. Even though I am tired, some days are too precious to sleep in.

The beginning of Something good? or why Blog? or This is me.

So could this be the beginning of something good? I guess that is what we are going to find out over the next little while. How will we know? I guess the frequency and quality of posts and whether anyone reads them will be the answer to that.

So why Blog? Why even start this train of thought at all? I haven't figured out that one myself yet but daily I find myself with a collection of thoughts and no where to put them. So why not here? Why not Blog? What kind of thoughts are running around in my head? Guess you'll have to follow me to find out.

My name is Jaye. I have a pretty crazy life on a farm a couple hours away from the nearest city most people today do not understand. I have five kids currently aged 1-almost 9. Four beautiful girls each with their own personalities and idiosyncrasies that make my eyes cross some days. We also have one beautiful boy who can attest that growing up with 4 sisters is it's own crazy life and has made a very unique individual. This blog will also be their blog as I try to capture some of those moments that will surely be forgotten otherwise.

Throw into the mix a collection of animals (Some horses, ponies, and a dog kennel) and an extended family that also create humor, choas, and confusion on a regular basis and you have us. Welcome to my crazy life.