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Friday Finds and a Santa Claus Parade
It’s time once again for London’s Santa Claus parade. This is my family at the parade last year. The year before that I think it poured rain and I took no pictures but hid under an awning and shivered. Saturday night Santa Claus will make his way down Dundas Street as usual. The night parade starts at 6 p.m. London Transit is offering free bus rides to those headed to the parade. TheMet will be open serving hot chocolate and having a bake sale. Don’t forget a can of non perishable food and mail carriers always take the letters to Santa straight to the North Pole. So bring those too. Remember…
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Invisalignteen and a $7,000 Smile Contest #Giveaway
True story: I had braces when I was about 12. On the upper teeth only – which was more than enough. I had quite an overbite for most of my childhood and I also had eye teeth that stuck out of alignment with the rest of my top teeth. It was a super costly and painful period of time. I remember being outfitted with the braces and having them cemented on to my teeth. I still don’t like that idea. Anyways every month I would walk after school to the orthodontist and have those cute little elastics changed and the wires tightened. It hurt. Not like root canal hurt, but…
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National Adoption Awareness Month Series – Our Story Part 1- and a #Giveaway
We are a family formed by adoption and most of my readers know that I often write and blog about child welfare and adoption issues. November is National Adoption Awareness Month. I have a series of posts on adoption scheduled to happen each Monday of this month. This is the first of those posts and lucky for all of you, Jockey has reached out to me to offer one special reader a giveaway. So read to the end and follow the directions. This is our story: One decade ago we became parents. Hard to imagine it has been that long. We were married nine years before we got the game-changing,…
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The Fine Art Of Finding A Babysitter When Your Child Has Special Needs
I found a new babysitter/ respite worker. Happy clapping. See for your average family finding a sitter might be hard enough, but we are far from average. My little one has special needs. So it was never even remotely possible that we could hire the teenager next door. Or the granny across the road. My little one would chew her up and spit her out while laughing maniacally or raging and trying to tap dance on the stove. We had a wonderful student from university for a few years. She was fabulous and grew to love our daughter as if she were a little sister, or something like that. Then…
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Happy Halloween and Moments That Fly Too Fast
Tonight my kids will dress up and go out like so many legions of little goblins, Mario bros. characters and Disney princesses. This year I will probably be the one at home handing the surprises out to those who venture to our door. Kindersurprises this year will be a big hit, I imagine. But this year I can’t help thinking where has the time gone? I also can’t help remembering Halloween adventures in the past. My kids are now ten and seven. I love them madly still – most of the time – even when girly girl actress daughter is trying on teenage snark for size. But I can’t help…
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Monday Mingle Halloween 2011
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Sending Virtual Comfort and Hanes
Every woman knows someone who has been touched by cancer. And if you know someone right now struggling with the incredible challenge of a health care battle that is so emotionally and physically draining you know it’s not always easy to find the words that say what you mean in light of the terrible daily reality. There are cards and presents and flowers. And they all have their place. Nothing is as meaningful or helpful to a family dealing with cancer as real acts of support such as offering child care, or bringing food or driving a loved one to their doctor’s appointment. These days, with families being so scattered around the globe…
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Weekend Warrior BlogHop
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And then She Lost It…
If you are a parent to a child with special needs, then odds are you are familiar with this level of exhaustion. Dog Tired. Yup, that’s me this morning. And every morning lately. But this morning, well it was epic in its bleary-eyed beauty. This morning, before I could find the Visine eye drops my charming child turned to me and said:”wow, are your eyes ever red.” And yes they were. Because I am tired, the kind of tired that comes from shivering for a week without a furnace. The kind of tired that is show week for oldest daughter, when the culmination of running back and forth three nights…
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Are Little Girl’s Halloween Costumes Too Sexy?
My seven-year-old thinks outside the box. She is mostly a hands on kind of gal. While my ten-year-old was dreaming of princesses at her age, my youngest well she was climbing trees and sliding into home plate ripping holes in all her jeans. I love their differences and think it’s kind of great to have a kid who doesn’t care to be a pretty pink princess. This year she is Batman. She loves her costume and has worn it every day after school for the past week. On the weekend she showed the furnace repair guy that she was Batman and then she showed the furnace sales person and so on.…