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Thursday, November 19, 2009

you call that a snack?

Yesterday was a bit rough for our youngest three . . . So before bed, I prepared this snack for them:

P1020704 Obviously, you can figure out the homemade pumpkin pie with whipped topping, but what’s with all the pills and the glass of water???

Let’s see . . . . the big one, that is just ½ a pill, is Vitamin C to put in the glass of water, P1020707 and the smallest one is a chewable multi-vitamin. We’ve been on a “keep away the H1N1 virus” kick around here lately . . . . drinking lots of orange juice, taking our vitamins, washing our hands in warm water with soap (and counting to 10), trying to keep our fingers off our faces and out of our mouths, and Mattias is even following numbers 3 and 4 on this list that was sent to me by a friend:

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):
1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications).
2. "Hands-off-the-face" approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless you want to eat, bathe or sleep).
3. *Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don't trust salt). *H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/ nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don't underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.
4. Similar to 3 above, *clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water. *Not everybody may be good at Jala Neti or Sutra Neti (very good Yoga asanas to clean nasal cavities), but *blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population..*
5. *Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C (Amla and other citrus fruits). *If you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.
6.* Drink as much of warm liquids as you can.
*Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.

The other 2 pills (the purple ones) are Children’s Tylenol . . . these 3 did get the H1N1 vaccine today. It was an agonizing decision to make, but in the end, the opinions that weighted on me most heavily were those whose children have actually had the swine flu and they said it was absolutely horrible.

So, today, the 3 youngest have sore arms . . . but so far, no other reactions to the vaccine.

In other news (I use that phrase a lot . . .) . . . I had a bit of a breakthrough with Sofia on Wednesday evening . . . After cleaning up the dinner dishes, and waiting on the pies in the oven, I was heading downstairs to do laundry when Sofia came and stood against me. I figured she wanted a hug because her arm hurt, so I wrapped my arms around her. She started sobbing so I picked her up and rocked her and tried to comfort her (still thinking the problem was her arm). Then she said through her tears, “If I tell you, you’re going to be mad.”

?????

Eventually, I coaxed her into telling me the problem: she had broken her Christmas figurine (I had just bought the 3 of them some inexpensive Christmas trinkets because they’d been such good sports about the shots). So, she went and got it, and I glued the legs back on . . . “See?. It’s okay!”

If you’re wondering why I think this is a breakthrough, it’s because, in the past, Sofia has never told me if something has broken . . . I come across it by accident, and then have had to deal with it – that we need to take care of our “stuff”, especially other peoples’ stuff. (She has never purposefully hidden something, it’s simply been that’s it’s never occurred to her that it’s a big deal when something breaks). Anyways, this time I think she “got it”. The figurine was important to her and she was sad that it was broken . . . she wanted it fixed . . . I told her how happy I was that she told me about it so that we could fix it.

One more bit of other news . . . I’ve discovered using Windows Live Writer to do my blog posts . . . Have you noticed the nifty things I can do with photos??

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

not again

P1020702 My car is dead again. You would’ve thought 1155€ would do the trick, but no . . . . Do bad Toyotas go to heaven?

Monday, November 16, 2009

worth its weight in gold?

Last week was a bad week . . . a lot of things went wrong . . . we had a health scare (turned out to be nothing) . . . we had dog poop smeared around the house via the bottom of a shoe (right as I was trying to rush out the door to a music lesson) . . . and my car broke down.

Tuesday night, as I was driving to work it stalled. I started it. It stalled again. Rinse. Repeat. I had to phone Stefan to come get me and drive me to work. Luckily one of my students was able to drive me home.

The car was towed away on Thursday. Today it was ready for pick up.

You know how
labour at the mechanic shop is always a hard pill to swallow? I was charged 143€ in labour (that's about$224 Canadian/$ 214 American).

That's not the worst bit.

See this little part?

This puppy set me back 1010€!!! ($1581CAD/$1511USD). I thought I was going to throw up when the guy said the total . . .

(btw, LG73 did rule . . . in 1984).

In other news, I thought Sofia's hair looked really cute today:




Friday, November 13, 2009

sugar and spice and everything nice


Woo hoo! I got an award! Dear, sweet Ondrea let me know that she gave me a shout out on her blog and passed this award along to me. If you've never visited Ondrea's blog, it's something you should do. This southern gal has such a heart for orphans!

What this means for me is I have to tell you 10 random things about myself and then tag 10 other bloggers. So, here goes:

  1. I love Hawkins Cheezies (only available in Canada, so I believe) to the point that when we get some here, I usually hide them and don't share with the kids - how mean is that? (ok, I share some, but not all.)
  2. I love reality TV - Survivor, Amazing Race, Top Model, SYTYCD, Project Runway and so on and so on . . . I had been going through some withdrawal since we moved here - they do air these shows, but they are behind and the programming is hit and miss so I don't always get to see all the episodes . . . but recently a friend found a online site to watch these shows and it's been awesome (depending on how you look at it). Yesterday I watched 3 episodes of SYTYCD . . .
  3. I love travelling, but hate flying. I often will check out different holiday destinations dreaming about a vacation, but will feel physically sick at the thought of flying.
  4. I loved being a teacher to the middle years. They have such a great sense of humour at that age! As frustrating as it could be at times, I consider it a blessing that I was able to have a positive impact on someone's life. I love that some of my former students have stayed in contact over the years!
  5. I was an extra on an episode of Macgyver back in the days when it was filming in Vancouver.
  6. I have a bit of a "my way or the highway" attitude, which I know I need to work on . . .
  7. I seem to know a lot of useless trivia . . . the problem is that it takes up too much room in my brain . . . I'm running out of storage space for the important stuff. For example, I completely forgot about parent night last night at Sam's school, but I know that Kirk Cameron was on Growing Pains, and his sister is Candace Cameron Bure (she was on Full House) and she's married to Valeri Bure whose brother is Pavel Bure who played for the Vancouver Canucks back in the early 90s.
  8. I don't really like bananas . . . I'll only eat them when they have just turned yellow . . . so I get really grossed out when my daughter will eat the ones that have gone almost completely black . . .
  9. When I was little, I used to think I was a country girl. But now that I live in the sticks, I know that I. am. a. city. girl.
  10. I am blessed beyond belief, but too often don't see it . . .
Now, I'm gonna pass this along to 10 blogs that I enjoy reading (there's more, but I'm limited to 10). Please hop on over and visit them:

Jackie, at Life in the Fishbowl
Phyllis, at The Beadle's New Russian Adventure
Kate, at from russia, with love
Stacy, at Adventures with Aidan
Nicole, at Journey to our Empress Ladybug
Becky, at Controlled Chaos
Amy, at To Russia - With Love
Carolynn, at Finding Malibu
Tammy, at Our Russian Adoption
Sarah, at From Russia With Love

I would've also liked to highlight Gillian, but I think she's got too much on her mind right now to post things about herself. Right now, Gillian and her family need our prayers. Their daughter, Polly, is facing 2 brain surgeries - the first is scheduled for December 11th. Please visit her blog and leave a message of support. If you have a blog of your own, please consider adding the Praying for Polly button so the word gets out to as many prayer warriors as possible!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

lost in translation

I'm not sure if you can appreciate how funny this was . . . but I'll try to tell you a story of something that happened to me last week . . . .

First off, our coffee maker stopped working. Since there's no place close to buy a new one, and I couldn't decide what kind to get, we spent about a week boiling water and then pouring it through the filter basket into the coffee pot sitting on the stove top (did I mention that we had to apply pressure to the filter basket because our old coffee maker had the auto-stop feature? ya know, so if you remove the pot from the maker while it's brewing, the coffee stops flowing . . .).

Anyways, last Wednesday, while in town for violin lessons (not mine - Mattias'), I finally picked out a coffee maker. When we got home later, I excitedly unpacked the box, dug out the instruction booklet and started reading what I needed to do to get a cup of good coffee. Fortunately, there was an English section. In the section entitled "BEFORE USING YOUR MACHINE FOR THE FIRST TIME" (and it really was in capital letters) it said (and I quote):

Remove all packaging.
The water filter holder and DuoFilter cartridge are located inside the water tank during shipping.
Remove them before using the appliance. fig. 1

Well, when I looked in the water tank, there was nothing there (I even got a flashlight to scrutinize better). Then I started getting mad. Stefan was getting ready to go out to a meeting . . . He came over and said "Let me look.", etc. I told him I wasn't stupid . . . I'd know if a part was missing or not . . .even told him "it's probably still in the factory in China" (btw, Ann - can you look for it?). So, I grumbled a bit more and then packed it all back into the box and set it aside.

On Thursday, we went back to town for Sofia's Russian class, and while she was there, Joel and I went to return/exchange the coffee maker. The lady at the counter sent us through to the coffee maker section where an employee was waiting to help us. I explained that a part was missing and he dug out the instruction booklet and started reading.

Here's where things get really confusing . . . I can tell from his name that he is Finnish, but the 2 of us were having the conversation in Swedish . . . .

After he reads through the Finnish section in the book he says:

Him : You have to buy the part separately.

Me: Really!?

Him: Yes. But we don't have any in stock now.

Me: Is it a necessary part for the machine to work?

Him: No, it's only an extra water filter.

So, after confirming that indeed the machine will work, I head out with the coffee maker I had bought the day before.

On the way to the door, Joel says, "Aren't you going to buy any jam?"

Me: What? Why do I need jam?

Joel: The guy said you needed to buy jam for the coffee maker.

That was the funny part . . . the word "separately" in Swedish is "skild" (pronounced something like "shild"), but the guy pronounced it like "silt", which sounds very much like "sylt" - the word for jam in Swedish. Then, when I had said "Really?!", it confirmed for Joel that the guy was telling me to buy jam for the coffee maker. Too funny.

The Holms

Denmark Road Trip

The outskirts of St. Pete

background

St. Petersburg

Saint Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburg, Russian pronunciation: is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd (1914–1924) and Leningrad (1924–1991). Founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia on 27 May, 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1713–1728, 1732–1918). Saint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. Celebrating the 300th anniversary of its foundation, Saint Petersburg was selected as the main motif in a recent Finnish commemorative coin, the €10 Mannerheim and Saint Petersburg commemorative coin, minted in 2003. The reverse of the coin features a view of Saint Petersburg, with the Peter and Paul Fortress and its three turrets. In the coin the words "St. Petersburg 1703-2003" can be seen.

Map of Russia

Map of Russia

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