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H1N1 and How to Help Your Family
It was one heck of a flu season with the H1N1 here at my house for much of November. The only one who escaped the misery was my husband, which I suppose is good for him, as there needs to be one healthy individual in every household. In our immediate circle of friends and family many were impacted this year severely. My brother and his family all got the bug. They live in Toronto and have a one-year-old. My brother’s flu bug evolved into bronchitis while the rest of his family quickly got better. My daughters and I also got the human version of the swine flu. And while I…
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High School Musical 2
From preschooler to preteen and everything in between – every girl in the London area will be thrilled over this news. If you and your kids haven’t already seen it, High School Musical 2 by Oakridge Secondary School, plays all this week. I took my daughters to see the preview performance of the show Friday night. Despite a couple of small complaints the show was fun. Sharpay played by Mandy Mates was a highlight and the orchestra was amazing. Choreography and dancers were remarkable and every child there enjoyed the show. Afterwards the HSM 2 cast signed autographs and the kids went wild. Fulton it should also be noted stole several scenes. Emily Soti…
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Five Favourite Holiday Traditions a la Schuck Casa
Like my attempts at Spanish? Well so Twitter Moms issued a challenge and contest this morning and I thought what the heck I am up for it today as I am really procrastinating doing any actual work I am supposed to do. (For your chance to win a $100 Amex gift certificate visit http://www.twittermoms.com/ )So here without much fanfare at all are our five favourite things to do at Christmas. 1. Gingerbread House: Every year my girls love to build and sneak bits off the top of our gingerbread house. It is fun with a capital F and it is our tradition. 2. Get active: We love to sled or…
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Dinner With Princesses and Superheroes
This is who came to dinner the other night and frankly that’s more than okay by me. This is my Ainsley, five-year-old girl superhero. I love all of her many sides, the kickbutt girl who charges through a room like a bull in a china shop and the scared toddler hidden just beneath the skin unable to control her reactions to the world and her place in it. The fearless fish who plunges into six foot deep water and races across the pool like mini Michael Phelps and the kid with sensory processing disorder who screams – perhaps to shut out the other sounds that annoy her and cause her…
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Christmas Traditions
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 sisters one that breaks apart so each sister has a…
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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
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 a pair of dollar store binoculars so she could be…
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Gifted
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 has been doing and I quickly realized today’s post was…
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Jackpot
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 has been particularly hard hit by economic woes and one…
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One finger salute to H1N1 and Pneumonia and the Car Dude
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. And you know it’s even suckier if you had to…
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Payback, Press Conferences and Special Needs Parenting
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 is a regular thing a couple times a year. But,…