An Ending

Usually I like to post on Monday’s and start the week off right for ya’ll who read this rambling blog of mine. However this post took me a couple days to be able to write and even now it is hard but needs to be on here because that is what she deserves. Our beloved Mika passed away on the weekend. On Sunday her body started shutting down and on Monday, after 12 hours of seizures and her being in a semi-comatose state, we decided to take her in to the vet to end her suffering. She came back to us on Monday morning before the vet visit however I firmly believe that this was to say goodbye to us for one last time and for us to not remember her the way she was in those 12 hours. She was ready to go and we had to say goodbye.

She is buried on my parent’s property in their miniature pet cemetery that they inherited from the previous owners but will soon also hold our family pets who are currently buried in another location. Brian dug her grave and wrapped her in a Canuck blanket. She will always be in our hearts and our house is just not the same without her. I miss every routine that we had but especially her enthusiastic welcoming that she would give whenever we came home from work for the day. I took this photo a couple hours before she started shutting down. She was outside enjoying the sunshine while watching Brian build our new deck.

Mika_May25'14I hope that she is running like a puppy along the irrigation canals and swimming until her heart is content. Rest in peace Mika Pika.

 

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In case you are curious, this is our new deck (so far)

DeckIt is a lot bigger than we were planning but yolo right?

I’ll have more upbeat stuff coming at ya this week but I needed to get this post off my chest.

 

xo T

May Long 2014

Well helloooo!!!

Yesterday was a long weekend here in Canada so today I am back in the grind after a 3 day weekend! Brian had a really tough week so after work we went over to my sister and brother-in-law’s house for the guys to have some drinks and for Windy and I to eat cookies and watch movies. For the first time ever in our relationship I outlasted Brian! That’s how tired he was, poor guy. Saturday I went over the dark side and said goodbye to my iPhone and got an android phone (I got the Galaxy S 4 in white). So now Brian and I have matching his and her phones (his is black) nyawww! At first the phone felt WAY too smart for me (Brian has had his for a year and still has yet to play on it so he was no help) but eventually after lots of googling I sort of have an idea what I am doing now.

Sunday we were invited over to our friend’s house for our first backyard barbecue of the season! They have an amazing backyard with a gorgeous waterfall that unfortunately coupled with the fact that Baby B was sitting super low that day, and resulted in me peeing every 20 minutes. The barbecue inspired Brian and I to get a move on with our backyard plans finally though! We either wanted to extend our deck or make a patio and we somehow ended up agreeing on something in the middle of that? I don’t really care how he decides to do it I am just excited to be able to fit more than 3 people on our deck at a time!

This weekend I also went and saw ‘The Other Woman’ with my Mom. I actually really enjoyed it! One thing that stood out to me was when Kate Upton was running in slow motion on the beach and she jiggled! They actually allowed a female in a film to be jiggly! I thought it was refreshing and she is a gorgeous girl (obvi). In my opinion there should be more movies where women are allowed to have jiggly bodies.

bunsosteelI might have been super body conscious already though because before the movie I went looking in Ardene (a teeny bopper store) like an idiot. At one point I actually tried to convince myself that I could get away with a super loose tank top with a bandeau and my giant belly. It was such a weird feeling being in a store and knowing that I can’t get away with wearing 90% of the items. Ahh oh well. Next summer 🙂

Two things I learned this weekend:

1) Having an elderly dog is a great segway into having a baby. Especially with getting your stomach ready for cleaning up bodily functions. Mika has a hard time standing up by herself lately so we have to prop her front paws up first and then grab her hips to get her on all four legs. Well I did this to help her get more comfortable on her bed and 5 minutes later I realized that some poop had squeezed out of her when I did that. I must have hit a specific spot on her stomach or she had a really full colon. Then this morning while I’m doing my makeup she projectile vomited all over our bedroom floor. Twice. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she didn’t keep gagging the entire time I was cleaning it up.

2) I had a really random craving for Chinese food last night and so Brian and I picked some up for dinner. It was our first time EVER ordering Chinese take out. We both just never think of it/are never in the mood for it. Well we learned that our little family is not a Chinese food loving family. Brian is really sensitive to sodium so he could only eat half of the items, and I just didn’t really enjoy it all that much and then got really sick from the MSG. #cravingfail whomp whomp

Tell Me: How was your long weekend? 

xo T

 

 

 

 

 

Mother’s Day Weekend

Hi Everyone!

Did you have a good weekend? Mine was really good! Friday night Brian and I just hung out and watched a (new to us) show on Hulu called Chicago PD. We are giving it 4 episodes to reel us in and so far it isn’t too bad! We had a summer meal of BBQ hamburgers and fresh Greek salad for dinner which was delicious. We both went to bed early though because Brian had to work on Saturday and my sister and I were getting up bright and early to celebrate Mother’s Day with our momma. We decided to do it a day early because we really wanted to hit up the farmer’s market which only runs on Saturdays.

We didn’t give her any hints as to what we had planned just that she had plans from 8:30 am until 2 pm and to meet at my sister’s house in the morning.

msg**She ended up not eating her allowed one cracker and instead we picked up something to nibble on at Starbucks

Our first stop was Starbucks for drinks, and then we hit up the farmer’s market for the first time this season. A lot of the crops weren’t in yet so there wasn’t a whole lot of vegetables but there were still tons of vendors and Windy scored some ah-mazing coconut cashew butter. Since our brunch location didn’t open for another hour we decided to hit up Value Village and browse. We ended up going a bit nuts on baby clothes and pretty much bought Baby B his baby wardrobe including adorable blue suede moccasins! While there, we received a random act of kindness when a lady saw how much baby stuff we were buying and she hands us her 30% off coupon to use! Thank you karma for coming back to me 🙂 We ended our Mother’s Day morning with brunch at a local restaurant.

photo 3(9)

The next day while out running errands Brian treated me to a soon-to-be Mother’s Day lunch. We then had a relaxing rest of the day reading and chilling with our puppy. Mika is doing a lot better this week and we finally have her insulin levels evened out! She can now get up and down the front stairs without any assistance (it’s about 8 stairs) and overall she seems to be in a lot better spirits than two weeks ago.

photo 1(10)

 

In baby bump news, Brian and I had a little game going with Baby B last night! Brian would either tap his fingers and pat my stomach to a beat or drag his fingers across my belly and if we waited and watched we could see Baby B react and move my whole stomach with his wiggling! It was such a neat experience and of course Brian let him punch him in the face a few times too just to feel close to him 🙂 We also figured out that Baby B loves it when Brian hums to him (success judged by how fast he hits him in the face once he starts). Already he has such a little personality in there!

Tell me: how was your Mother’s Day weekend? 

xo T

Hard Times

So last week was one of the hardest times that Brian and I have had….ever. For a few days we were not sure how we were going to manage financially in the next month or if Brian would even have a job. It was very difficult and hormonal pregnant tears were shed because of all of the uncertainty. Add on top of that that our fur baby Mika was not doing well at all. To the point of not being able to walk unassisted, peeing all over the house uncontrollably, and not being able to sleep through the night without crying. Last week I was at the Vet’s office twice and each time was not good news. We actually had an emergency appointment on Saturday (why does this kind of stuff always happen on long weekends?!) where we thought we were going to have to say goodbye to her. Among other things, the biggest thing that we found out is that Mika is diabetic and now has to receive insulin shots twice a day. She can now walk for short periods of time with help from a towel around her hips and if you go slow (she has a limp on her right front shoulder as well), but believe it or not this is huge progress compared to just a few days ago when it would take both Brian and I to help her go to the bathroom.

I understand that she is almost 14 but Brian and I wanted to be positive that we did absolutely everything we could for her before we took that final step. So far this is paying off and her body is recovering from all the craziness that it was going through last week. As most dog owners can relate, Mika is like our child and a goodbye is never going to be easy. The best we can do is make sure that she continues to have a good quality of life, which she still has.

mika1

So needless to say last week was a bit of a write-off for housework, socializing, reading(!!), and blogging. Now that everything is (finally) starting to look up for us I feel a lot better. It was one of those things where you know there is a reason everything is happening at once but it is so stressful you don’t realize why you had to go through what you did until later. Brian and I had to have a lot of hard conversations about both situations and had to really support each other when we both needed it. If anything last week made me extremely grateful for Brian and the relationship that we share.

This was a pretty heavy post, so how about I share with you something that made me LOL (very unattractively I might add) at work:

batman_dance

You’re welcome.

 

xo T

Coffee Date

I love coffee. The smell, the flavour, the nostalgia it creates when you smell it first thing in the morning…ahhh. So since it is Friday and it is a long weekend, lets have a coffee date and have a chat. Grab your coffee and let’s begin (really any beverage will work, it is Friday after all so why not grab some wine or a cocktail? #yolo Since I am at work I will just stick with coffee though ;))

coffee_date1

 

So what has been going on with me lately? Well since get back on the workout wagon my legs are now screaming at me today. It’ll get better though I know it is just because they got lazy. I still haven’t decided if I am going to push for a run tonight or not as I ended up running a 5 km last night. I may do some strength and make use of our makeshift weight room in our basement and give my knees a break.

weights

 

My parents are hosting a family dinner this Sunday so I get to make pumpkin pie again! Yay! I just hope it turns out as well as last time and that it wasn’t just beginners luck.

This face makes me smile every single day.

mika_pika

 

I am really happy that this weekend is a long one because Brian and I have a lot to do around the house. We both really want to organize our storage room because it makes us both angry every time we have to get something out of it. And in the past this is where the mice would make their homes in the winter so we want to make it as inhospitable as possible for them. Speaking of mice, my car got an oil change this week and apparently I had mice living in my air filter as it was filled with mouse poop. I am just glad they didn’t chew through the wires or anything :/

Brian and I leave for Phoenix next Friday morning so we will probably be leaving late Thursday night as we are flying out of the States and there are too many variables if we wait until Friday morning to drive 3 hours and go through the border. With that in mind, next week is only a three day work week! Pretty excited! But being away all last weekend has made it clear that we need to start meal planning for during the week. We were scrambling to have enough for lunches this week and ended up eating out a couple times because we didn’t get a chance to go grocery shopping. In order to save money I think I will start meal planning on Sundays for the week so that I have an idea what to take out and what days I need to compensate with lunches. It’ll work out better for our budget I think. So do you have any tips on meal planning for me? Maybe I will turn it into a weekly post and we can all share meal ideas for the upcoming week 🙂

And I am still obsessed with the Vampire Diaries. It really is good! Give it a couple episodes before you judge me too harshly.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

 

Also, my sister just sent me this link and it definitely made my morning: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbellassai/the-40-greatest-dog-gifs-of-2012-6z51

So what is up with you? What beverage did you end up grabbing? In my mind this was a Starbucks date but I will take other suggestions too 😛

xo T