Some might say I am a groupie, I say I am a fan!

I know some people probably look at me and think I am nuts, maybe I am!  I look at it as an escape, a time to just be me and to enjoy travelling to new cities with my husband.  We started travelling last year to watch our favourite band, Pearl Jam play. 

We leave the kids at home with their grandparents and not feel guilty about it.  I gave them a solid 4 years to my kids, where I devoted everything I had to them.  Probably my biggest mistake because then I hit rock bottom and realized that this mom was in desperate need of taking care of herself.  How could I be a good mom and take care of them when I was not well myself? 

I knew they were both old enough to leave.  Yes I know there are people who leave their kids as babies, but remember above, I was not that!

We made the first real trip last spring to see Eddie Vedder perform solo.  We took a road trip in my husband’s red sports car and it was exciting, just the two of us.  No kids fighting in the backseat.  I even slept for part of the trip, it was heaven.   My poor husband, I can’t seem to go for a long car ride without falling asleep!

Once in Albany we checked into our hotel and headed to the pre-party.  Yes I said pre-party, these Pearl Jam fans are hard core!  We enjoyed a little dinner and then walked over to the venue where we picked up our tickets and we were 4^th row centre.  We were so excited, we got great seats!!  Pearl Jam has a club for their fans called the 10 club.  They give preferred ticket purchasing to them and have lottery draws to the best seats in the house. 

There were some fans hanging out at the side door waiting to meet Eddie, we wanted to find out how to get a drawing that our son drew for him to him so we headed over too.  He thought that asking us to do that would have been an easy task, not knowing we were not good friends with his idol Eddie! 

We started chatting with some great people and found out that he was sitting on the tour bus parked right there, we knew he had to get off at some point so we hung out.  Met a great guy with a little baby; he was local and just popped over to see if he could meet Eddie.  He didn’t even have tickets to see him play.

And then all of the sudden the bus door opened and off he came.  We could not believe that Eddie Vedder was standing right there in front of us.  I felt like I was in high school!  He looked so different up close and in person.  He was handsome, and so nice.  He took the time to come say hello and shake every person’s hand.  He had such soft hands!  I snapped photos and my husband gave his body guard Kal’s drawing after telling Eddie how much he loved him.

We were amazed that all just happened and headed in to watch him play from our amazing seats.  You could feel his spit we were so close.  Don’t worry I am not that much of a crazy fan, later I did wash my hands and spit covered clothes!

It was a great trip, and we had amazing memories.  We could have not asked for a better way to start this adventure of travelling together, to see a band that has brought so much to our life and relationship.  I was a fan when Pearl Jam first started, even before, and I turned my boyfriend (now husband) on to them.

I learned through these new found adventures that we all need different ways to recharge ourselves, and that having a busy plate as a mother, wife and very hard working entrepreneur these trips are essential in healing my spirit through one of the greatest mediums I have ever known – music.

Later that summer we saw Pearl Jam in Toronto, and then hopped on a plane to see them back to back in Chicago.  Three concerts in 5 days, it was crazy but an amazing trip.  We were tourists in Chicago, we took hundreds of photos, and we took tours, ate in many restaurants and shopped the Magnificent Mile.  We also met a great group of friends that we will be friends with forever now.  We look forward to seeing them again in a month when begin another adventure as we head to NYC for 4 days to see their next tour.  But that is after we take another road trip in our new “magic bus” to see them play in Buffalo.

Through all this, we have realized the importance of “keep on rocking in the free world” my 3 year old daughters favourite song (Neil Young/Eddie Vedder) 

Where will the Jam take us next?  New York City for the long weekend, to see 2 concerts.  Yes I know we are crazy!

I can make a minivan sexy, right?!

For the past 6 months I have been looking at cars, I knew the lease on my SUV was coming up soon and I needed to decide what I wanted next. For years I had wanted a minivan, but then I started to wonder if I really did.

I mean I only have 2 kids so I don't need it for the seats.

There was only one minivan that I wanted, one that I would drive and call my own, I wanted to buy it 4 years ago when I bought the SUV but I could not stomach the cost of it. I had a toddler, was starting my business and really making no money, and I was pregnant so making more money wasn't an option. So I was practical and bought the SUV for much less a month.

Now last week I get an invite from our local Honda dealership to a special sales event. I have bought 3 of my last 4 new vehicles from them and they knew my lease was coming up. This time I didn't throw the invite into my recycle bin, I made an appointment when they called me. My husband and I headed over, interested in looking at my dream minivan or the new version of my SUV. My husband immediately started talking about the Odyssey, crunching numbers, and pushing them for a better deal. Good thing I have him to do that for me!

What was going to be a short trip to check out numbers, ended up being 5 hours and I was the proud owner of a Honda Odyssey minivan and I was actually excited about it! How could I not be, I had wanted one for years, and look at it

is it not the sexiest minivan?!

Ok I know, it is a minivan and they can't be sexy, but I can make it sexy and cool, have you seen my shoes?! I can love driving it and everything it offers.

I dream of trips to IKEA and all the stuff I can buy and bring home. I dream of taking Hamma with us to the zoo and not having to take a second car. I dream of long road trips as a family and making great memories. We already have plans to drive it to Buffalo for a Pearl Jam concert in May, and I have already made my rules for the 4 other adults who will be going with us.

Moms (and Dads) who drive theirs and love it tell me how happy I will be. Now if I can just wait for it to be sitting in my driveway. It feels like forever that I have to wait for them to either find the colour I want, or for the other option to be delivered. Do they not know that I don't do well with waiting.

I feel lost, and don't know what to do.

I came here to share, to type out something but I just can't get out the words. I can't get past the first line...

So instead I will share points.

1. My son has been dealing with some pretty serious fears the last couple of weeks and it is taking its toll on all of us. He became seriously scared a few weeks back when we were at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We went on the amazing tour and he loved it. But that night he came screaming through the halls of the condo we were staying in, he was more terrified then I had ever seen before.

2. Now we are home, and he is terrified to be alone. He won't sleep in his room unless we are there with him, and most times he ends up in our room. We tried everything; music, special stuffed animal, light on, etc. Nothing works...

3. It is so bad that one night when we tried to get him to stay in his room he got so upset that it took an hour to calm him down.

4. It breaks my heart that I can't help him, that he doesn't feel safe in his own home. I tell him that we would never let anything happen to him, and to trust me, but he doesn't, and that brings tears to my eyes.

5. I have talked to friends, I have searched the internet, I have looked into every book I own (and I have many parenting books), I talked to his teacher to see if anything is different at school - it isn't. I will keep searching, asking and thinking until I find something to help.

To my dear sweet boy, I am your mom and my job is to take care of you. I am trying, I might make mistakes along the way, but you and your sister are my everything. I promise you that I will do something to make things better.

Now I will go finish watching the episodes of Parenthood that I PVRed and fight back even more tears.

How we almost got kicked off the plane

We book a late night flight to Florida, hoping the kids will sleep or at least watch Treehouse the entire way. Little did we know that things were going to happen before our flight that might make this perfect plan not so perfect. Lets rewind to a week ago Friday when my normally happy (ok not happy, but 3 year old stubborn and independent can do everything for herself cutie) little girl started getting not so happy. She was crying and upset and saying her ears hurt. I knew something was up, she is never sick, has never had an ear ache, had no fever so if it wasn't for the nonstop crying I would not have known. I take her to the urgent care clinic where we wait for hours, while she screams her head off... not fun. Doctor confirms she has an ear infection, and says that she should be okay to fly by Monday night.

Now lets get to Monday where mother nature finally decides that we need some snow and gives us a nice snow storm, just as we are trying to leave for warmer places. The drive to the airport has me on edge. My father in law was driving, and not that he is a bad driver, just that I don't like anyone but my husband driving my babies around in bad weather. We get to the airport with time to spare. We had planned on getting dinner before but the roads around the airport were so bad we knew we didn't have time so we figured we would just get something there. Through customs and security in record time, really I have never been through that fast or seen so few people there. We hit the "new" second security check and my son gets all upset when he looks over and watches them do the weird wipe on my hands and all of our belongings. So upset that nothing will calm him down. I can understand, it was a little much!

We eat and head to the gate. Our plane is there so I think this is a positive thing. Bathroom breaks for all and I give my daughter he antibiotic and some Tylenol just in case there is any pressure on her ears while flying. We sit and wait for a while, our departure time comes and goes and we still sit. They tell us the flight attendants have to get off and go through security before we can get on. So an hour late we finally board. I get into my seat and get Miss E all situated, Mr K and Daddy are in the row behind us. I motion to the flight attendant to ask if she can mention to the pilot that it would be great if he could ease in on landing to help reduce any pressure on Miss E's ears. Well that was a BIG FAT MISTAKE!

She comes back and tells me that the pilot is not comfortable with Miss E flying and is putting in a call to Med. I tell her the doctor said it was fine. She says it will just be 10 minutes, well 15 minutes later they come and wanted to confirm our bag tags so they could pull them off the plane, just in case. By this point my husband is pissed off, at them and me. We sat there for 45 minutes just ready to be kicked off the plane. How would we explain to the kids that we are not going to Florida, no seeing the ocean or Disney, no NASA or swimming pools?

Thankfully they came back and said it was okay and that we would be leaving. So now we head over to de-icing so they can pour toxic chemicals all over the plane. By this point it is over 2 hours after we should have departed. The planes TV's are not working so there is no Treehouse for the kids. They are still awake, at 10:30pm. I am exhausted, but I have a 3 year old sitting beside me so I have to be on my game. No falling asleep for this mommy!

A few hours into the flight she finally falls asleep when I realize that the Tylenol that I gave at 7pm has well worn off and she starts to fuss. Crap I think... now what do I do. I can't get her to take her souse (a pacifier), or lollipop, or more drugs. The flight attendant hears her and brings me a warm towel to put on her ears, and says to have her drink water. I finally get in her souse and she falls back to sleep in my arms.

We land and all is well. It is after 1am and we have to wake up both kids and make the drive to the coast. After getting our bags, the rental car and making the drive we finally got here at 4am. What a day!

Oh and do you think the kids slept in the next morning? Of course not! All you parents know that we could only be so lucky.

So I learned my lesson. I am going to give Advil this time, for its 8 hour lasting power. I am not going to say anything to the flight crew and if she cries landing in Toronto I will just be "that" parent on the plane, you know the one with the kid who everyone wishes was off the plane. Or maybe it is better to tell them, they will say we can't fly and we are stuck in Florida for another week... how bad could that be!

Talk to me in a few days, our flight departs here at 7am. Crazy I know!

Is she trying to tell me something?

My 3 year old daughter decided this morning while I was making chicken soup to do some drawing, and she wanted to draw me. I looked over and was amazed at her picture of me! I was proud of her, she just turned 3 on the weekend and until this point you have not been able to really make out what she is drawing. But this morning she got it right, she gave me legs, and I had a face. I was so proud and smiling until she started drawing Daddy!

I am the one in the middle, Daddy is the one on the right and she is the one on the left.

So when Daddy got home from dropping of Kal I told her to show him, I was still proud of her drawing, even if I was 10 times the size of him. He asked if that looked like mommy and she held the picture up beside me and said yep. I asked why mommy was so round, and she said "because you are fat"!!!

My husband was sweet and added that Mommy is probably going to the gym this morning! I have to laugh at it, because I am the furthest thing from fat. My husband is bigger than me, sure he is all muscle, but he trains at the gym for 3 hours a day 5 days a week, and he didn't have 2 kids.

Maybe I should ask why Mommy is not smiling...

Crazy Urban Dictionary Name Definitions

So people on Facebook have been doing this silly name definition thing on urbandictionary.com so I decided to do it too. I normally don't do these things, but I was intriged to see what came back for me. Mine was surprising, and would be great if it was true!

Lindsay

1. a girl who is hotter than the flames of hell
2. the marvelous and mysterious temptress from the land of eternal joy
3. a girl who is smarter than albert einstein but as gorgeous as helen of troy (you know the one whose beauty started the epic war)
4. this girl is in NO way affiliated with Lindsay Lohan. Lohan simply stole this girl's name.

See that smoking hot amazing girl over there? Yep, she's a Lindsay.

I decided to pull up my kids names too. My daughter is Ella and I laughed when I read hers:

Ella

n. The epitome of all that is wonderful.
adj. a style that involves combining strange items, e.g., wearing dogtags, a tiara, knee-high purple boots, and large sunglasses all at the same time. {this is totally her, have you seen this?! http://twitpic.com/11efnk My little girl is all about dressing herself and she is very eclectic in her outfit selections, something I love about her}

v. To dance around madly and uncontollably, often while singing loudly and off-key, associated with eating too much sugar and/or chocolate.

n. That girl is a total ella.
adj. Wow, that skirt is so ella!
v. The girl was ellaing in the middle of the common room and scaring quite a few people

My son's was so off that there is no point in even posting it here! It talked about him being a slacker at school, he is only 5 and not a slacker by any means. Oh well it can't be correct all of the time.

I love this time of year

There is something about Christmas that gets me. I am not sure if it is the decorating, or the music, or the stories, or the movies, or the baking - okay I think it is all of it! I just love everything about this season (there is still a little magic for me) and normally I spend my holidays running around to make everyone else happy and not enjoying anything. The joy of having divorced parents, and then adding in-laws (thankfully my husbands parents are still together because I could never 4 celebrations). Sure some might think I am nuts, but for me I have lived my life going here and there for days on end that I don't think I ever got the chance to sit down and enjoy it, watch a great holiday themed movie or just hang with friends.

Well this year is different because most of our family has decided to up and leave us and the kids and take off to warmer places. Jealous? Yes I am! I am jealous that I am here in the cold and they are somewhere warm. I am also sad that they don't want to see their small grand kids open their gifts on Christmas morning. Pissed that we have had weeks of holiday celebrations where my kids have opened presents from them. Really, every weekend this month has been gift opening. My kids don't have the same excitement over Christmas morning now because they have all of these new toys already. And some that were coming from Santa were bought from them so my husband and I spent the last week frantically trying to find other toys. Sucks when most stores were out of stock on the items we wanted and they would not be restocking until after the holidays. Will never happen again, my kids will open those presents on Christmas morning or after, just like I did when I was a kid.

My mom and stepdad are coming here for traditional roast beef dinner tomorrow, Christmas Eve. They will enjoy our first year of our new traditions that I have not been able to do with my kids because we have always had to make sure everyone else was happy that we never thought about ourselves. We will eat a nice dinner, open one gift (Christmas pj's) and watch a Christmas movie (this year Santa Buddies for the kids). This year we learn that Christmas is for our kids, I want them to experience the magical excitement that I have always yearned for. And next year if the rest of my family decides they want to go back to the way it was before, they will learn that I am going to be selfish and make this for my kids. Sure they can celebrate with us, they are more than welcome to come on over of Christmas morning and witness the kids open their gifts. They can stay and enjoy a delicious turkey dinner with us. This year we are going to do it for ourselves, even though it is only the 4 of us, and my kids don't eat anything we are going to all cook the entire meal and enjoy it just the 4 of us! I am looking forward to spending the day cooking with my kids.

Sure I didn't get my outside decorations up. I didn't bake as much as I could have and I didn't get my holiday card done. OMG I know, how could I, designer of amazing cards not do one for myself. Long story short, I had photos taken of the family in October to use for my card, and the CD of those photos just arrived this week, so I ran out of time. At this point, sure I could still do a card but I am burnt out. I would rather have no card, then have something I don't love. There is always next year!

The past couple of months have been so busy with my business, Grace Announcements, I have received some amazing press and orders have been flowing like crazy. A product of mine that my great friend Candace at Name Your Tune sells was featured in a couple of major publications and it made for a CRAZY couple of weeks. The Grace Announcements family (thank goodness I got some more help just before the features came out) was working our butts off for a few weeks filling those orders and taking care of the normal holiday card rush. This year it was an amazing rush! You would all be blown away if I told you just how many orders were pumped out of here the first 2 weeks in December.

Even with all of the craziness and letdown I am ready to go. Food is bought, gifts are bought, some baking is done and I am feeling relaxed and ready to enjoy. If only I could get off the couch and wrap some presents... hmm there is always tomorrow night!

Happy Holidays everyone. I hope your holidays are filled with family and friends and you create some wonderful memories.