Weekends go by so quickly

On Friday (Oct. 24th) the Gospel Music Association held it's 30th Annual Covenant Awards at our church. We didn't attend, however, this morning the band Carried Away led the worship part of the service. They also sang some of their hits including "Alive". They sound incredible...I love the way they harmonize. After church we went to purchase their newest album and because Trevor happen to bring the camera to church Kamden was able to get a picture of them. So this is her first encounter with a "Rock Band".

Kamden with Christian Pop/Rock Band Carried Away

Left to right : Tyler Seidenberg, Pam Walker, and Christine Prankard

This morning at 9:00 am Simon had his very first soccer game with his team, The Dribblers. Unfortunately, I had to miss it because I had Sunday School to teach. I figured that there has been so many things that Trevor had to miss because of work that Simon would appreciate him being there. Besides this was only the first game (well actually 2nd, but the coaches were not informed about the first so everyone missed that one) and there will be many more to come. When the gang got to church at 10:45 am I was informed on how the morning had gone. Apparently Simon had kicked the ball more times in that game than he did all of his outdoor soccer season last spring. Simon said he had a lot of fun, which is really all that matters. Simon said that the score was 6-5 for their team. Here are some pictures that Trevor took...

Almost forget...Saturday we spent the evening at "Boo at the Zoo". We had a lot of fun and even some fun scary moments through the "Walk of the Dead". I took a lot of pictures, but will wait till after Halloween to post pictures. That way I can get both Trick or Treat and Boo at the Zoo pictures in one slide show.

Some Life Lessons Learned this past week

Way back at the beginning of October I had an assignment due for my course, Fitness Program Design. Since I had plans on the actual due date I made sure to send the assignment a few days early to my instructor via my Mount Royal e-mail address as instructed on the course outline. I had sent it along with a delivery and read receipt request. I received the delivery request immediately. A week passes after the assignment was due and I still haven't received a read receipt. At this time I begin to think that my instructor is probably just on holidays as it is a long weekend here in Canada. Another week passes and I now I am starting to wonder what is going on. Usually the instructor are really good about marking papers and getting them back to you fairly quickly. I decide to email the instructor but hear nothing from her. This is really weird. I go to the MRC website and look at my courses. I am not sure why I went to look at them as I printed off a hard copy of everything that was on there on September 8th the day they posted the information and the day the course began. I printed off the course outline, instructor info, modules, and assignments..what more did I need??? Anyways...somehow from September 8th to now the info on the Course Outline has changed. It now states that all assignments are to be submitted via mail. OH NO!!! I go into panic mode. I quickly print off my assignment and I type out a letter stating the circumstances and why my assignment has not been submitted by mail, but rather by email. According to the rules there is a 2 mark penalty per day that the assignment is late. At this point my paper (post dated that day) would have had a deduction of 20 marks and the paper was 36 marks. I did what I could and sent the paper away and had it post marked. That night I had the worst sleep ever. I was so worried that I would end up failing the course because of the misunderstanding and the change of information on the course outline without any warning to myself. This past Tuesday I went to the mailbox and there it was...my paper...I was scared to open it...did I fail??? Turns out I didn't get any deductions for late marks...Yeah. I managed to pull off a 94%...phew...that was a close one. The lesson learned is that I wasted so much energy and time worrying about something that didn't even happen. I should have just done what I could and let it be. I wish I could just not worry about anything anymore and just let everything go..life would be so much easier. I guess that is another skill that I'll have to work on.

Today I was at the school all day. This morning I was in the library putting away books for a few hours (volunteering) and then I was off to work for one of my teachers. During lunch supervision in the class I was eating the lunch which I prepared for myself. It was a ham, Jarlsberg cheese, and mustard on a cheese bun. I bit into it and realized right away that I had Simon's sandwich instead of mine. You see he had regular mustard on his sandwich and I had the hot and spicy mustard on my sandwich. I could go to his class and trade sandwiches as I was supervising kids and I couldn't just leave them. When it was time for lunch recess I happen to pass by Simon's class and him and another boy were still in class eating. Simon had to stay in for lunch recess until he was done eating. He was having trouble eating cause his sandwich was too hot. Too funny. I told his teacher what had happened and she just laughed. I guess I will have to double check every one's lunches from now on.

Sunday Fun day

Had the usual Sunday morning starting the day off at 7am. Today I decided instead of eating breakfast at home that I would go to Tim Horton's and indulge in an extra large coffee and a banana nut muffin (my favorite muffin ever). I got to church at 8:20 am (10 minutes before I am supposed to be there). Today I ended up with 9 kids. This year I have about 3 kids that are really shy. It takes them a little while to open up, but they are all great kids. I am really lucky to have them for an hour and a half a week. Met Trevor and the kids in the lobby at 10:45am and checked our kids into Discovery Land. Today the sermon was titled "Faith at Home" we had a guest speaker from a church in California, Mark Holmen. It was about how your kids/spouse learn about Faith. He said that Faith in not something that can be out sourced or taught. Faith is something that needs to be caught...meaning that if you want your kids/spouse to have a stronger faith...it starts with your faith. You can't pass something along that you don't have. He also talked about a survey which was done entitled...

Significant Religious Influences
Completed by teens aged 12-17 from
a religious background...regularar church attenders

Main Influences/Male/Female

Mother/81%/74%
Father/61%/50%
Pastor/57%/44%
Grandparent/30%/29%
Sunday School Teacher/26%/26%
Youth Group/24%/25%
Church Group/20%/28%
Retreats/11%/17%

If you are like me then these results are pretty shocking. Honestly, you would think that the biggest religious influence would come from the Youth Group or Church Group, but it doesn't. The biggest influence is us...the parents. Today's sermon really opened my eyes.

This afternoon I went to my friend's place for a Card Workshop. I learned how to do a technique called "heat embossing". Heat embossing, also called stamp and heat embossing, is done by stamping an image on a piece of paper, sprinkling powder over the stamped image, and applying heat. The result is a raised pattern on the object you are embossing. It is a really awesome technique. My next investment is definitely going to be a heat gun.

The first two cards which you see are ones that I made from a sample cards created by my friend who is a Stampin' Up Demonstrator. They actually ended up resembling the sample cards quite closely, so I was quite happy with that. The third card is one that I came up with myself using the embossing technique.

Halloween is just around the corner

This evening Trevor was off to his 2nd last Stampeders football game of the season. The kids and I had the evening to ourselves. I wanted to do something fun with them and this morning we got the Michael's flyer with the paper and the kids seen some Halloween crafts which they wanted to get. So off we went to Michael's to do some craft shopping. We were too late...the items that they had wanted were already sold out. However, I encouraged them to find something else and that they did. We managed to find some "Craft Pumpkins" and some sticker kits, which are made for the pumpkins. The kids picked out their favorite and off we went. Oh yeah...Kamden picked out some dress-up girl, which was on sale so of course "monkey see...monkey do" Simon grabbed one as well. Now we had a lot of fun planned for the evening.

After supper we started on the craft project. The finished product was wonderful. They did such a great job on their pumpkins and they had a good time and that is all that matter.

Simon's on the left
Kamden's on the right

Oh Boy!!

I got my first unfriendly comment on my blog re: my last post. Surprise, Surprise...it was anonymous. I suppose that I should be happy as this person took the time to visit my website and then proceed to visit my blog..so this is for you ANONYMOUS...

I can't believe how quick this week has gone by. The kids only had school on Tuesday, Wednesday and today. I met with both of their teacher's today and so far they are doing well...no problems. I am really proud of both of them. Good Job, Kids!! Tomorrow they have the day off and we don't have any concrete plans except for tomorrow night when we are off to our Life Connections Group. So the plan is to pick up Trevor from work and head over there for dinner for some pizza and some fellowship. We just started a new book called "Laying a Solid Foundation", which is a book about marriage. I am a bit behind on the reading, but will get that done before I go tomorrow.

On Sunday I am off to a card workshop at my friend's place in the afternoon. Sunday is usually the day for my long run, which is a 12 miler this time around. I haven't quite decided if I am going to be doing it tomorrow or on Saturday. Either way I am not looking forward to it as I feel like I have missed quite a few workouts recently and it may be challenging.

Can you say Rudeness???

So yesterday I had my appointment at the hospital with the occupational therapist. I've been actually looking forward to going to this appointment since I booked it a few weeks ago. One of the major downfalls of treatment for me is the interruption of my daily workout routine. I usually go to the gym right after I drop the kids off at school, but with all my appointments generally being at 9 or 9:30am I end up missing my workout, which I can't stand. I dropped the kids off at school at 8:30 am and headed to the hospital. I got there about 5 minutes early. I get super paranoid about being late for appointments because I find it super disrespectful when people are late for appointments with me. 9 am rolls around and Michelle the OT comes out and says. I am so sorry, but I am going to have to re-book. I have to lead a group and there is no one else that can cover with me. As soon as she says this I am pretty much just flabbergasted. She completely blew me off. At this point I am more than ticked off. She then pulls out her day timer and sits down next time me to re-book. Me being the nice person that I am scheduled another meeting with her for today at 1pm...Why???? I am still asking myself this question. I walk out of the office and then I just can't hold it in anymore. I am in tears. The thoughts that go in my head now are 1) no one gives a crap about me 2) Maybe I am not worthless and should not be respected. As you can see a little alter in my day really messes with my head. I'd say it was something little, but to me it was a big thing. Things like that put me into depression mode, which just makes me want to go out and binge and get back into the crazy cycle. Today I debated whether I should even show up for the appointment or if I should skip it altogether. The thought went back and forth in my head a million times. Well I ended up going. I got there early as usual at 12:55 pm. 1:05pm on the clock...still waiting....1:06, 1:07, 1:08, 1:09.....finally 1:10 she comes and gets me. Again I am just blowing up inside. Are you serious??? Maybe she should go see someone for time management skills. Anyways the session was shit because all I could think of is how much I don't like this person. She could see that something was really bugging me and I let it all out and let her know how I felt she was disrespecting me. She apologized (which didn't seem very sincere) and then somehow turned the whole thing into me not being able to handle little changes in my schedule well. Asking me questions like "So why do you think it bothers you so much when your schedule get interrupted" and on and on and on. It was the longest hour of my life. Needless to say I will not be seeing her again.

On a happier note I made another quick card today for a co-worker. Her son is in Kamden's class and he just got new running shoes last month, but outgrew them already. She asked if Simon would like them. Simon goes through shoes like crazy. He is a bit of a foot dragger and wears down his shoes. So now he has a pair of "new" shoes. Isn't that nice?! I made her a thank you card. Here it is:

Masterpieces???

As promised here are the cards which I have made this past Saturday. I am pretty happy with the way they turned out, but I must admit that it took a lot longer to make three snowman cards then I could have imagined. I believe that from start to finish it took me about 2.5 hours to create these masterpieces. Mind you a lot of that time consisted of coming up with some ideas and figuring out how I was going to go about making it. This is the finished product...






So today instead of going to the gym to work off some of that turkey and pumpkin pie from yesterday I decided to make yet another card. I guess when the creative juices flow they flow and all you can do is create. I am happy to say that this card took around half an hour to forty-five minutes to make. The coloring in of the bear with chalk pastels and cutting and measuring everything is what is time consuming. I must say that I really enjoy making the cards. I find it extremely relaxing. What do you think of this one?


Fortunately I know when to put the crafts away and do some work. I put away the craft supplies and got out the homework and finished my assignment in about 4 hours. It is due tomorrow, so I didn't leave it till the very last minute, but close enough. Trevor always reads over my assignments before I send them. Sometimes a second set of eyes can catch some of the mistakes (hopefully there are none).

At the beginning of the school year I told the kids if they do well in school and do their homework without complaining and do their chores I would let them choose an outing once a month. This time around they chose the Science Center. We had a lot of fun. Here is a little something for your viewing pleasure...

chillaxin'

Today in Canada we get to enjoy our Thanksgiving long weekend. Yesterday after church we headed over to my parent's place for some turkey, ham and pumpkin pie. It was a nice afternoon. The only downfall is the diet sabotage. Oh well I suppose it does not really matter as we are off as a family to the gym for a workout. Trevor has a football game to go to this afternoon and I have a paper to work on for school.

On Saturday Trevor and I went to a friends house who is very crafty with cards. She is actually is a Stampin' Up demonstrator. I ended up finishing 3 cards, Christmas cards, and they actually look pretty good. I will take a picture later on and post them.

I hope you all have a happy Monday!!

weekends

I just want to briefly discuss our past few weekends, which have truly being how a weekend should be and that is spent relaxing and not getting caught up on things that need to be done or getting that 3 hour "fun" workout in or our long run done on Sunday. The past 2 weekends in the Oseen house have been fairly relaxed and actually fun. Yesterday we spent a good chunk playing Wii and enjoying ourselves and just having a lot of fun as a family. Today I went to church early for my usual "Discoveryland" duties and then met Trevor and the kids at 10:45am with tea in hand for Trevor and myself to enjoy while listening to the service. The first Sunday of every month our church hold a brunch from 10:30am to 1pm. Since we haven't tried if before we decided to go and see what it was about. It costed $32 for the four of us. The buffet brunch consisted of yogurt, granola, fresh fruit, muffins, buns, cinnamon bread, sausages, scrambled eggs, pancakes, and a waffle bar with blueberries and whipping cream and an omelet bar. MMMM...it was pretty good. Thank goodness that is just once a month or that could do a lot of damage. So as it turns out we ended up staying a church way too long and now are taking yet another day off of the gym. Mondays are my scheduled off days, but have become my long run days, so tomorrow I will be enjoying a wonderful 10 mile run, which is okay cause I have actually begun enjoying running. I am so thrilled that I am injury free. I think I have to constantly remind myself that I am injury free as I don't know about you, but I definitely take that kind of stuff for granted.

I got a wonderful idea from one of my readers who made a suggestion for a meaningful idea. She had suggested that I make some cards of encouragement with my new stampin' up stamps and deliver them to the children with cancer in the hospital. I think that is a phenomenal idea and I am thinking I will do that. They definetly can use the encouragement and it would be good for me to do as well...thank you, Tracey, for the idea.

Other-than-that life is still moving forward and I am doing okay. The only little thing right now is my ring finger on my left hand, which Simon stubbed with a ball on Friday. It is too swollen to wear my ring on it. But if that's it then I'll consider my life to be in a happy place as of this moment.

Hello...Hello...Hello

As you can probably tell life is still busy with me. A lot is going on, but I am surviving and hanging in there. My very first assignment for my Program Design course is due on Friday, but because tomorrow night I am busy I worked on it for 4 hours yesterday and a bit today and finished it. I get to go to Calgary Olympic Park for some dinner and fun for staff appreciation for Foundation for the Future. I am looking forward to it for the most part, but being in a room with a people that I don't know stresses me out. I will know the people from my campus, but since there are 6 campuses there will be a bunch of people whom I have never meant. Usually I don't allow myself to be in this sort of position, but I am going to step out of the box and go for it...who knows? Maybe it'll be fun.

Training is going good. I had a really bad week last week and actually missed going to the gym 3 times. This week has been a lot better, thankfully. Funny how my workouts determine how I feel. If I have a crap workout I feel awful and even sad. Last week was terrible and I was getting really depressed. It was a nasty cycle for me. I didn't want to go to the gym 'cause I was sad and I was sad 'cause I didn't go to the gym. Fortunately, I was able to get out of that cycle and am back on track with everything.

On Monday I went to see my doctor (psychiatrist). Talking to her is always therapeutic for me. She really has helped me tremendously. One of the good things about being in treatment for an ED is that we (patients) have a bunch of resources free of charge (well Alberta Health Care pays for it). One of the HUGE benefits of living in Canada. I have access to a dietitian, recreational therapist, and occupational therapist. It has taken me 3 months to finally make an appointment with the occupational therapist, but I did it and I will be seeing her on October 14th. I had no idea what all an OT does, but OT framework includes:
Self-Care: Independent Living Skills - shopping, cooking, planning, budgeting, finances, housing, social skills, community resources, transportation
Productivity: work (find, maintain, cope with, change); school; volunteering; time management; structure; balance; life transition/change
Leisure: meaningful activity in life; spirituality
I am looking forward to hearing what she has to say about time management. Also, I would really like to figure out a meaningful activity in my life. I just want to find something that I have a real passion for...don't we all.

Right now I am enjoying So you think you can Dance Canada...Man, we have some impressive dancers. So I will talk to you all later and go and watch some more : )