Everyday Chatting & Waffling {2023} Let's get to know each other!

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I have been babysitting (I do it four days a week), and I have to say how blessed I am to be able to do this :) I love spending time with my grandchildren, even on rough days. There is nothing like the feeling when a little child's eyes light up with delight and almost knock you over when they run to hug you. I feel so fortunate.

When hugging Bruce, I always say, "I'm such a lucky nana!" He has apraxia, so he is unable to form a lot of syllables. I can understand a lot of his language. He sometimes calls me his yucky yaya. It makes me laugh.
 
Lynnie - Austin didn’t talk at all until almost 3, not even typical baby babbling. We had his hearing and ears checked so many times. The very first time he spoke was on my birthday and he did the I uv ooo. I sat down and bawled. Uncontrollably. I was always the only person other than Alexis that could understand him. Huge hugs.
 
Firstoscartgrouch said:
Lynnie - Austin didn’t talk at all until almost 3, not even typical baby babbling. We had his hearing and ears checked so many times. The very first time he spoke was on my birthday and he did the I uv ooo. I sat down and bawled. Uncontrollably. I was always the only person other than Alexis that could understand him. Huge hugs.
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Bruce is four and only those of us who are around him all the time can even remotely understand him. He has Childhood Apraxia of Speech, which is a relatively rare disorder where the brain is unable to tell the mouth how to make the correct sounds. We have come to understand his speech with the missing consonants (yaya for nana, ay-ee i-ah for baby sister, ah ee for daddy, ah ba for grandpa (he can make a sound in between a p and a b)). He also signs. He is pretty bright and has been known to write NO when he doesn't want to do something. It is a difficult diagnosis and we are struggling getting the speech therapy for him. He is on the list, since the diagnosis, but it has been months with no contact and we have called and called and called.
 
Lynnie - you need to do a page about being yucky yaya! The cupcakes look delicious.

We got sad news today. We lost the offer on the house we wanted in Calgary. Our home hasn't sold and now it looks unlikely at this point so we released the contract as they had another buyer interested. Our home is large and expensive so in this terrible housing market, many are looking for smaller, cheaper homes. We'll leave it on the market for now but will pull it off in Dec/Jan and list again in the new year. Hopefully next spring it will sell. I really want to get out of here.

But, on a good note, we will be leaving for our Mediterranean cruise in a few wks. I booked a ton of excursions and we will have some wonderful adventures.

We are trying to stay close to home these next few wks as to hopefully not get sick before the trip. Flu and covid season is ramping up here so we're trying to be extra cautious.

I have been binging Netflix Firefly Lane and love the two main characters. I'm halfway thru season 2 now.

Hope everyone is well. Time for more coffee, get some CT work done and head out to the dog park with Remi.
 
Rae, enjoy your vacay and good luck with the house sale. The housing market can be such a drag. Have you staged your home?

We had a good weekend... wedding on Saturday (and yes, the girl child looked lovely. Randy didn't even recognize her at first!!!) On Sunday, Randy and I went to the Ren Fest. We went specifically at the day and time for the Steampunk Costume Contest, but it wasn't anything too special. Randy had a better Steampunk costume for handing out Halloween candy than anything we saw on stage. But we still had fun walking around and seeing everyone all dressed up. But sheesh... by the time we left, it was 104 degrees... in OCTOBER! Enough, already!! I'm ready for fall!!

I'm supposed to take the annual Christmas photos for my brother's family tomorrow in Wichita. But that branch of my family really struggles to get their schedules organized. We have a family wedding next month and I suggested we do it that day since we'd all be in one location and dressed up. But apparently, they are allowing their youngest to not attend so he can play with his team at a soccer game. Umm... okay? In their family, there are 9 people... five live in one house, four live a couple of miles down the road (and that includes the toddler and the baby). So they need to figure out their schedules and get their act together. Randy gets frustrated because they expect me to drop everything and come to them. He said the road goes both ways! LOL! But it IS easier for two adults to travel the 2.5 hours than it is to travel with little ones. But it's also expensive with the fuel and the fees on the toll road. I had hoped I could combine my work event with the family pics and just make one trip. But doesn't look like that's the case. Ah, the joys of dealing with family. Randy suggested that they could hire a professional photographer this year at professional photographer prices. Can you tell he's feeling a bit salty these days?

I've also been fighting with Adobe Bridge this week. My program was telling me it was out of memory. So I did a search and learned about cleaning out the cache. I worked on that a bit last night after work and lo and behold, that did the trick. I was able to run some of the AI filters I was wanted to do on some of the photos. I feel like I'm very, very far behind on where I want to be with scrapping my photos from this year. I still haven't even made a dent in the photos from our trip back in February!

Thank you for providing a safe place for me to vent and to stall. Now I need to get back to my tasks and my daunting to do list so I can be ready for my meetings this week. Hope everyone has a wonderful day!! :)
 
Thank you all for your nice comments about the cakes, cupcakes and cookies. I have a printer that prints the images with edible ink on edible paper. The piping and whatnot is all mine :) It took a while, but not as long as I thought it would. I had so much fun doing it. I want to make things for Rand's 70th birthday, too. James will be here. I am going to do a batch of practice cookies before then. My cookies did not hold their shape as well as I thought they would. I don't know if it was because I used unsalted sweet cream butter instead of regular unsalted butter. I haven't had that trouble before.

Rae, so sorry about your house :( I know you were hoping to get that all sorted. It only seems like a week or two since you moved :)
 
Well... in case you didn't already see it on FB, I'm the Queen of Clutz!

O.M.G!, so now nothing else can go wrong with the wedding cuz I did it, right? Walking into work yesterday and the back of my flip flop got caught in the threshold of one of the front doors and stopped me dead but my body kept going and I fell. My right knee-shin first, then my right forearm, then a full-on FACEPLANT! Yep… scratched and bruised my nose, wrecked my shin, but NOTHING broken! Thank GOD! Right before the wedding!!! Cried a bunch, sore as ****! Hopefully Lacy and Anne have makeup that can cover the bruise and make me look presentable, geez!

It really looked worse yesterday. Really small bruise, a bit red. I'll still need makeup and I don't DO makeup. LOL. Bruised my ego more than anything else! Today, I'm just SORE and stiff and a little headachy. smh.
 
Oh no, Carla…. Hope you’re doing okay. And yes… they DO make products that can cover bruises. And if all else fails… Photoshop!!!
 
A mid-week HELLO to everyone!

Oh no, Carla! I'm glad you are OK! And Shana is right about the makeup and Photoshop. :)

I'm just cruising through this week, not doing very much, LOL! I'm excited about Saturday (The Ren Fest) and all of us wearing our costumes. I'll make sure we get plenty of pics so I can scrap them. :)
 
Carla, I wish I could give you a big hug!! Be grateful you did not break anything. If you remember, a week or so ago, my dear friend faceplanted and broke her shoulder and has gouges and bruises everywhere that can't be covered with makeup!! Well, maybe the best makeup, but that would not help the swelling. You will look lovely at the wedding and you will look back and smile at the remembrance of your grace and elegance :)

Ane, I am really looking forward to the Ren Faire pages :)
 
Made it to Vegas and the girls are ready to COVER me up! LOL. Lacy was so sweet and more worried about me than my face. It's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Thank goodness. Thanks for all your kind words. Watch FB for pix after Sunday!
 
Carla - glad the face injury isn't as bad as you thought. Enjoy the wedding and looking forward to pics soon.

We are showing the house today so fingers crossed we get an offer. I am getting ready for the cruise now, only 2 wks to go. I booked all our excursions finally. The only one we won't get into is the Vatican, it'll be a holiday so closed to the public on the one day and the next day we decided on the colosseum/Palatine Hill instead of the Vatican. We'll be exhausted by the time we get home in November but what a wonderful trip this will be, especially since we can bring our daughter and share this journey with her.

My break is over, time to get back to tidying up the house for the showing this afternoon. HAGD everyone.
 
Hi all. I'm back home and so happy for that fact. Didn't sleep well at the hotel. I think it was spending 7 hours in committee meetings having to pay close attention and take detailed minutes. My brain is not designed for that. Good thing our meeting room didn't have a window, or I would have been completely focused on whatever was going on outside. LOL!

Had a great time with family last night. No.. didn't take family photos. No... didn't make it to the youngest nephew's soccer game. The middle nephews kidnapped me instead and we ended up going to a Korean BBQ place. Our table had a grill in the middle and the waitress brought out trays of raw meat and veggies, and then we were responsible for cooking it up. It was actually a lot of fun and tasted yummy. I will pull the photos off the camera, but not today. I'm going to go to bed early tonight and get some real sleep. Yay!
 
I am back from whirlwind trip to California, too much to catch up on here but wanted to say how wonderful Lynnie is in person, I so wish we lived closer! Scrapbook page coming soon cuz of course we took photos!

The weather was gorgeous especially compared to fall at home and it was so wonderful to see and catch up with my son. I didn't realize how much I missed him until he hugged me, then the happy tears were flowing! I am such a big softy...LOL!

Coming home was effortless compared to other International trips except when we landed it was pouring buckets. We had to drive around the perimenter of the city to pick up our cat at the boarder's then I had a concert to go to. Sheesh, I didn't plan this too well but I made it with 10 minutes to spare and it was fabulous.

Today, I see that DSD is in full swing, hoping I can play some. Have a great day everyone!
 
It was LOADS of fun meeting up with Karen. Definitely not long enough, and she is WONDERFUL in person (as well as online!)

Carla, I am delighted your face is not as damaged as you thought it would be. :) The wedding will be wonderful.

Rae, fingers crossed for the showing.

Shana, that sounds BRUTAL. I had a lot of trouble focusing in meetings also. I always wanted to take a nap, or my mind wandered to all things unrelated, or out the window with clouds and birds and the like.

I am babysitting today. Yesterday was brutal. Poor Scarlett is teething, I think, and she was not her usual happy self, so I was walking around jiggling her for hours. I feel as though I got my exercise in for the day. It was rough getting Bruce ready for school, but Steven was taking care of most of that, so no worries. This morning, Bruce got up early, and we played. I got him dressed, and he had breakfast with no issues. Steven was on the phone, so I walked him to school. He was fine until he got there, then he had a meltdown. I had to carry him the last 50 feet to the gate and put him behind it. He was crawling trying to get out. Behavioural therapy starts next week; I hope that helps.
 
Don't forget Digital Scrapbook Day celebrations! We have a WEEK!!!

There is a sale in the store and loads of fun games to play :)
 
Sherri, it's so nice to see your posts in the forum!

Lynnie and Karen, how wonderful that you got to hang out IRL! FUN!!!!

Lynnie, thanks for the DSD link. I need to check that out!

There is not enough coffee in the world to wake me up this morning. Hubby and I cancelled plans to attend Octoberfest and Oz-toberfest celebrations friends. His stomach is not being kind to him and as a person with absolutely zero medical training, I am guessing the culprit is his gall bladder. So he did a lot of resting and I did a lot of chores as we are FINALLY moving into cooler weather.

Yesterday, I took senior photos of the five foreign exchange students who are in our community this school year. They were so much fun. At first, they really didn't understand the concept. None of them are from countries were senior photos are a thing. But once we started, they got into it and were so polite and started coming up with fun posing ideas. Which is why at one point I'm in the middle of a field surrounded by tall native grasses, and then we're over by a bridge doing a group shot, and then we're mucking around to get to a last patch of wild sunflowers, and then I'm laying flat on a gravel road to get the perfect angle for another shot. Oy vey! I was covered in dirt and burrs by the time I got home. Randy said it looked like I survived a tornado! Ha!!! I started to edit the photos last night, but stopped at midnight. I will try to get them done before I leave on my work trip tomorrow. I won't be back until the weekend, and I know the kids will want their photos before then. :)

Hope everyone has a great day. Now to go in search of more coffee....
 
For my fellow Canadians, Happy Thanksgiving Day. Our plans to go the in-laws was cancelled as my SIL is sick. We are just as happy to stay home to a quiet day as we have had alot of travel lately. The outside chores need some attending to and I haven't unpacked and did laundry yet since I returned from California.

LOL, I have been scrapping!!

Shana, sounds like a fun photo shoot with alot of help and the kids will be happy to see the photos.

Lynnie and I had a very nice visit but I wish I would have been able to spend a little more time there. We had a terrible time driving back to LA with the traffic being really heavy after we stopped at Laguna beach for a couple hours! My son had a concert (reason for going to California in the first place) and he missed the first couple bands but he wasn't heartbroken since the one he was there to see played last. We had to wait in the vacinity of the concert for 4 hours waiting for it to end. And then we had to be up for 4AM to get to the airport for our flight home.

Yes, I am thankful for some rest today.
 
Shana, You are as busy as ever! I am busy, but I am ever amazed by how much you manage to accomplish. We still have some coffee in California if you have managed to clear out the coffee in your state :)

Karen, glad you got home safe. I did not even think to mention the traffic heading back to Los Angeles. It is absolutely horrendous. It is usually worse coming this way, though. People work in LA and then drive back this way to where they live. I used to work in LA and the traffic coming home could last forever. I am glad your son made it back in time to see his main band. I wish you could have stayed longer and we could have visited more. Maybe next time :)

I have been seriously busy this last few weeks. I am in need of a vacation from retirement!
 
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