Wow... I hadn't realized...

Just how stressful traveling during Christmas had been till recently.

So this holiday season we opted to only go to one of our sets of parents for the actual Christmas holidays.
Due to scheduling we won't get to do late Christmas with the Kasurak side until February, but I have to say I don't miss the stress of all the driving. Next year we switch and we will be doing early Christmas in November with the Hare side and spending Christmas with the Kasurak side.

To put things in to perspective.  Since William turned one we have been doing in 7-10 days (depending on where the holidays fell), Waterloo to Ottawa to Orillia to Waterloo (or Orillia to Ottawa).
This means we never really spent more then 3-4 days with our families with full days of driving in between.
This was incredibly hard on me physically between the pilonidal cyst (now gone!!) and the fibromyalgia.  Not to mention taxing on Andrew as well since he has to do all the driving... and traveling that far with a young child is not fun.

It feels very surreal not having to pack everything up and drive off to the next visit or try to figure out how to fit everything in the car or worry about weather.

William seems to be enjoying himself.
It's also so much nicer now that my Mom's business is out of the house and the house is now a home only.  No more sleeping in the living room and having to put the bed up and down each day.
William has a place to play where he can be as messy as he wants and not be in the way.

It does suck not getting to see everyone during the holidays, but the lack of stress and physical strain is a pretty good trade off.

8th Annual Christmas and Yule Party!

Seriously.
We've been doing this 8 years?
Yes, yes we have.
Hard to believe something that started as a mid sized gathering to get people together because our circle of friends had finished school and started moving away.
Sadly, my husband is still a student... though he is on his PHD now.  Could be worse, he could still be doing a degree.
I didn't feel as rushed or that things were as much a blur in years passed.  I actually got to visit with people pre and post turkey!
The Turkey was done on time! And very tasty.  Thank you James for being my partner in crime with the turkey while my husband pieced together the gingerbread creation.
First year the turkey was done on time and nothing else was!
This was probably the most eventful party for mishaps..
Oven gloves are useful, too bad James's doesn't have any and has a blister on his finger to teach him the err of his ways.
The stove catching on fire while trying to make gravy also taught James that remembering to clean one's stove from time to time is a necessity.
One of the guests lost his wedding band and thought he'd lost it putting stuff (the turkey carcass) in the garbage which resulted in a house wide search.  The good news is that he did find it in their car later when they went home.
The gingerbread was awesome, still doesn't top the Pirate ship.  I'll get picture up at some point when I get the pictures from Andrew.  I also believe there is a video of the smash.
The gift exchange was pretty decent.  It was weird having my husband come away from it with the game I put into it (Pirate Fluxx).  I ended up with Bananagrams!  There were other things like wine, beer, stainless steel vampire fangs bottle opener, a variety of DVDs and a bunch more games.
There were some of the usual faces missing from this year's party.  You were missed, but we know you will be back next year!

Good friends, good food and lots of laughter.
A great way to finish off the year.
It has been one hell of a year for good or bad.

Thank you all who came even for a time.  It was wonderful.

My Battle to Lose Weight

Since 6 weeks after William was born I have stayed roughly the same size and weight.
Anytime I succeeded in starting to lose weight my pilonidal cyst would rear it's ugly head and all my hard work would be reduced to nothing as I had to take it easy and not do to much for fear of aggravating it to the point of it needing draining.
Short of starving myself I couldn't lose more then a couple of pounds.

So after trying Weight Watchers' over the summer and struggling to see any results the moment I was unable to exercise I was ready to give up.
Then finally I got a referral for a surgeon to have the pilonidal cyst removed.  It was removed in August.  What little weight I had lost I gained back and then some because of the nature of the healing process I was reduced to only being able to walk and even then I had to be careful.

At the end of August I gave up Weight Watchers and switched to a program called Body Visulas -Body by Vi.  I started the program the second week of September.  I am paying slightly more a month then what I was paying for Weight Watcher's after you factor in they are supplying me with one meal a day in the form of a protein shake thing. 
I was skeptical, but I saw the changes happening in my friend who introduced me to the company and I figured I would give it a try.
I started at 224 lbs.
Without being able to do any useful exercise by Thanks Giving I was down an entire size in pants.
I still haven't been able to get back into exercising the way I was during the summer pre surgery (swimming every Saturday), but I have been walking lots.
My measurements at the start were as follows:
Waist =41.5 inches
Hips = 50 inches
Bust = 43.5 inches

My current measurements are as follows:
Waist = 40.5 inches
Hips = 47 inches
Bust = 41 inches

And according to my broken scale I weight some where between 208 and 210 pounds.

After 3 years of being stuck at the same size and shape I am through the moon.

And this has literally been achieved by starting the Body by Vi and a little bit of exercise.
Now that my shoulder is nearing completely healed I plan on starting back to swimming once a week in the New Year and riding my exercise bike more often.

Money may be tight, but I am not willing to give up being on this program when I am finally seeing results and I feel good.
Not just good because I lost weight, but healthier.  I am less tired even on the days when sleep was elusive the night before.  I hurt less and my craving for sugar (Chocolate) has diminished significantly.  Now I only find myself craving it on days where I am really really stressed instead of daily.

I can finally see me getting back to my post pregnancy weight and then losing another 20 pounds on top of that to reach the weight I feel is healthy for me.  According to the BMI I should be aiming for 120 pounds, I will be happy to get to 150 pounds.  I was happy with that weight.  I haven't been that weight since working for the day care from hell and I was biking 12 km each day to get to work.  I expect to take time to get there, but now I don't feel like it is so elusive anymore.

Toliet Training Maddness The end is Near!

So it's been a rough rough road potty training William.  He actually started consistently going pee when he was 21 months old.
Then he regressed.  It was frustrating.
Then he decided at 2.5 he wasn't going to wear diapers and tear them off.  He was going pee in the toilet/potty 75% of the time and #2's once a month if we were lucky.
At the end of June we went on holidays and I told him flat out he was only getting pull ups at sleep times and long car rides he was just going to have to deal with the messy underwear.
He came home fully pee trained.
Getting him to do #2's has been horrid.  He would go hide and do it and then not tell us until one of us caught wind of him.
We tried stickers, we tried treats (welsh's fruit chews and smarties), we tried sitting him on there about the time he normally went with one of our iPods.
Nope.  Nothing.  Two minutes after getting off the toilet/potty he would go hide and make a mess in his pants.
We thought we had nailed it when we started bribing him with quarters. 
At least he was now going 3 days of 7 instead over every other week, but still he didn't want to go in the toilet.  And actually stated plainly he just didn't want to.
BUT he wouldn't wear diapers.  If we put him back in one he literally tore it off and shredded it.
And then peed in his bed deliberately.
After sparaodically earning quarters from September to late October he got to go to the dollar store to buy something with them.  Suddenly he took notice at what he could buy and slowly but surely he started to get more consistent about going in the toilet.
Then he regressed again.
After the visit to Great Gramma Jean's he started to become more consistent again.  There was a pattern to his going in his pants linked with being mad at either his Dad or myself.
Since the 1st he has only had 3 accidents.  Since the 5th he has had no accidents.  He even went so far as to go all by himself minus cleaning himself up this morning (he still wants grown up supervision for clean up).
Today he got to go to the dollarstore again and spend his hard earned quarters.  He was ecstatic!
Slowly we're going to phase out the quarters and replace them with if you go 5 days (marking them on his calendar) without accidents he gets a loonie etc. and then stretch the amount of time between gaining the money.  Once we are confident he is completely established we are going to set up a chore chart for him to continue to earn money and start teaching him about saving.
He isn't staying dry consistently through the night yet.  He is young and he also has a loft bed and I think it is more a timing issue of getting down out of bed and to the bathroom in time.  That will come with age.

We started 19 months ago and I think we finally may have reached the end of the road.