• Parenting

    Christmas Traditions

    November 22, 2009 - By 

    I have a holiday tradition started when my babies were each so tiny they couldn’t even say the word Christmas and it is one I maintain each year. Sometimes realtives also get in on the fun as I do. Every year I buy a Christmas ornament – started with Baby’s First Christmas and then Baby’s second Chistmas and so on. My daughters are now five and eight and they love to periodically get their own Rubbermaid Christmas ornament containers down and peer at each of the ornaments they’ve been given. Each one holds a memory. There’s precious granddaughter and a Hallmark…

  • Giveaways

    It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

    November 17, 2009 - By 

    While there may not yet be snow, there’s an awful lot of Christmas-y stuff going on lately to herald the season. London’s night time Christmas parade was last weekend and, as you can see here, we attended the annual kickoff to shopping season. Despite a few glitches, gaps in between floats, and cars somehow not following the traffic barricades and dangerously driving down Dundas Street prior to start of parade, it was a hit. The temperatures, which hovered around 10 to 15 degrees Celsius all day beat last year’s hideous snowstorm that we foolishly braved. My daughter this year purchased…

  • Parenting

    Gifted

    November 13, 2009 - By 

    Maybe it’s the time of year, closing in on Xmas as we are right now. Maybe it’s the adult onset ADHD I seem to be developing. Maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve been sick and am now feeling overwhelmed by all my blessings. I started out today thinking I was going to blog about bargains this weekend, or maybe the Santa Claus Parade in London tomorrow night. But then I started doing email and I began chatting with someone I hadn’t really talked to in a long time. I started telling them about all the wonderful things my eight-year-old…

  • Uncategorized

    Jackpot

    November 10, 2009 - By 

    Now this is the kind of story I love to read. An aboriginal couple has won Canada’s second largest jackpot ever $50 million. Not only is the couple incredibly deserving of good fortune, but reports indicate they spent essentially their last $10 to get the winning ticket. Kirby Fontaine, 40, of the Sagkeeng First Nation told Canadian Press he suffered a stroke one year ago and felt very fortunate to have won. His wife Marie, 36 works as a personal care attendant and they are reported to have two children as well. The area where they live north of Winnipeg, Manitoba…

  • family

    One finger salute to H1N1 and Pneumonia and the Car Dude

    November 8, 2009 - By 

    You could probably say it’s been a really sucky week at the Schuck house. In fact, I’ll go one step further I think we’ve redefined the sucky week here at my house. You know your week is sucky if you are finally getting over the H1N1 and feeling better slowly and then doofus driver guy pulls a U-turn from the righthand side of your vehicle, swerving directly in front of your van so that you jam brakes on and slam into doofus. You know your week is sucky if you spent a whole day getting lovely insurance crap worked out and rental vehicle in place.…

  • press_conferences
    FASD - Parenting

    Payback, Press Conferences and Special Needs Parenting

    November 5, 2009 - By 

    Many days special needs parenting is a challenging proposition. It’s weighing do I go to work out of town for the day and Some of you may know I went to Toronto for a speaking thing yesterday at a press conference. Sometimes I do this when someone calls me to advocate for an issue I care about then I do go out of my way to attend press conferences. That meant my husband took my kids to and from school and took the day off work. I went to the event – not my first rodeo. Press conferences and speaking…

  • Uncategorized

    Survey Moratorium

    November 4, 2009 - By 

    Okay so this is me saying I’m quitting surveys for at least one month because damn if I haven’t had it. I’ve been surveyed to death lately and even on the train home from Toronto tonight (with me registering a full six on a scale of one to five with five being dead exhausted and six being near comatose and one being super crazy about surveys) the Via Rail lackey shoved a survey in my face before turning to person across from me and sticking his ass a wee bit too close for comfort. And frankly I am a polite person…

  • family

    H1N1 and courage

    November 2, 2009 - By 

    The most horrific thing imaginable to most parents is the death of a child. Perhaps that’s why so many of us were deeply saddened and worried by the death of Evan Frustaglio, a 13-year-old hockey player who fell ill and died of H1N1 shortly after visiting London last weekend for a hockey tournament. The handsome looking young Toronto boy, scarcely old enough to have been called a teenager fell sick so fast and deteriorated quickly, then he began to come around again  – only to die in his father’s arms during a bath at his home. Today was the funeral for the young man…

  • Parenting

    National Adoption Month – Food by Wendy’s, Underwear by Jockey and a Speech or Two

    November 1, 2009 - By 

    I did a quick search on twitter this afternoon for something called the NaNoWriMo because there was so much chatter on the topic and I found out that this is a rally call for National Novel Writing Month. This is, for various reasons, not something I will partake in. I have a bit of trouble with the let’s write as fast as we can just to spit a novel out school of writing. Call me uncool. Don’t care. There is also a NABOPOMO in reaction to this which is national blog posting month. Closer to my heart is what I…

  • family travel

    Disney’s New Cruise Ship

    October 30, 2009 - By 

    What could be cooler than a Disney Cruise? A Disney Cruise on a ship with an onboard waterpark. That’s essentially what Disney’s newest cruise ship Disney Dream is offering. Beginning next month cruise ship lovers and Disney fans (count me in) will be able to experience this latest adventure courtesy of Disney. While I’ve not been on the ship and may frankly never be able to afford this I had to show thriftymomma’s fans this amazing creation, the first time a waterslide has ever been done on a cruise ship. This one is dubbed the AquaDuck and as you can…