I pull my tired butt out of bed. Feeling good, refreshed. It is still dark outside, the days being shorter, crisper, cooler. The kids now wear long sleeves and sweaters on our outings around town.

Nine weeks.

That is all I have to prepare my family to move back to our country, home.

I am struggling to be super mom, super organized, super wife, super friend, super blogger, super packer.

I do not want to miss a thing. Ethan will be 6 months old next week. SIX MONTHS. He sits on his own, he has started to eat one meal of breast milk flavored oatmeal and ate a few peas last night. The teeth forever torture him but refuse to make an appearance. He sits in the tub, smiles and entertains us endlessly. I cannot miss this.

Becca is reciting her alphabet and beginning to recognize letters. She is drawing excellent pictures of people and things, that are not completely abstract. She is a struggle and a joy everyday. I cannot miss this.

I need to have days like yesterday. We all went to Music and Movement, story time at the library. We walked through the Farmer’s Market, purchasing organic, locally grown apples and pears for Ethan, cucumbers and honey sticks for Becca. After quiet time, Becca enjoyed a movie while I sorted and priced things for our garage sale. Ethan played on the floor, watching both of us. In the evening I steamed apples and pears, prepared them for freezing so my baby eats only the second best, after breast milk.

Can I keep up these expectations of myself?

Thanks to everyone for the great tips. I will be choosing winners and sending out emails this later weekend. Watch for the Silks contest mid next week. Have a fantastic weekend.

Ok sorry. Wow. Parenting a baby & a preschooler then trying to organize an international move in 10 short weeks is ummm hard. Totally worth it. Not complaining. Just trying to find my groove.

So I went through my meager book collection to discover I have quite a few that I would like to share with you. Parting with books is something I find extremely difficult to do, however knowing these books are going to such good home eases the pain just a little. The deal is, when leaving a comment please put the number corresponding with the book you would like to win (more than one is fine too).
1. Wicked by Gregory Maguire - I so enjoyed reading the “rest of the story”.

2. Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor - Book Club

3. Good kids, Bad Habits by Jennifer Trachtenberg - Great read

4. Eating Well When You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff - Ok Recipes, nice advise

5. The Complete Organic Pregnancy by Deirdre Dolan and Alexandra Zissu - Really Enjoyed!

6. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares - I needed an easy read, good story.

7. Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner - Not sure where I got this one, have not read it.

8. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant - Started it but it bored me to tears, many people raved about it though

9. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - OMG GREAT BOOK…Holly introduced me to this one, I have forced many to buy it

10. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding - Spotted it while traveling in a second hand book store, perfect plane book.

In order to qualify your entry for the book(s) of you choosing please share with me your best garage sale tips by Thursday Midnight. Be it from a seller’s point of view, buyers or some random tip you Googled We are hosting a garage sale this Saturday to lighten our load back to Canada, so you input would be put to great use!

I will be choosing and posting winners by the weekend and sending out the books by the middle of next week grr the coding on the numbering of the books is not working out … there is ten books …. code hates me lately.

Well, as I have alluded to earlier I am about to announce an ongoing, multi-prize contest that will run throughout the month of October. Five fabulous weeks of prizes, all to celebrate our return to The Great White North (aka Canada).

First off, I wanted to thank everyone for becoming part of our world. Blogging has become a way for me to never be far from home and to always be a part of something. Moving to a new country, even one as close culturally and proximately as the US is a challenging feat. I have lived outside my home country for almost 2.5 years. It has been an adventure that I will never forget. It has sculpted me, changed me, and inspired me. The people I have met both in reality and virtually have left imprints on my heart forever.

Halifax is no where near our family & friends. It is about as far away from them as we can get while still in populated areas of Canada. In fact it is farther in distance than we are now. However, there is a sense of safety and security knowing we will be in the same country.

Each week, readers will have the opportunity to enter to win some cool prizes. Since I have commentors from all over the world, I shall be open to winners from everywhere, although it is my contest so I will be honest, there will be preference to those who regularly stop by Crazy Thoughts. If you don’t like it … don’t enter

Now for the goodies . . . When I was thinking of contest ideas, I knew we could not do anything outrageous being it is coming out of our pockets. Yet I wanted to share somethings that are personal, therefore I chose prizes that are just that, personal favourites that I think would be cool to win. Somethings are for kids, or Moms however not all prizes are. Some are new and some will be things I enjoyed first (reuse!).

Thank you for celebrating our journey back to Canada.

This first week, I will be awarding a few books. Some from publishers that have kindly sent me books to review, others I have enjoyed along the way.

Week Two will be a chance to win some hand dyed Silks! My kids love them, Ethan will instantly stop crying if handed a silk, and Becca has been a super hero, covered her cat and made forts a plenty!

Week Three you can try to win one of two hand knit Market Bags! I am glad you thought the one I posted the other day is so pretty because that is one … the other one is in production

Week Four … A Bombtown T-Shirt! w00t! You know you want one!

And Finally … the Grand Prize …. One Year Pro Flickr Account!!! If you already possess a Pro Account an additional year will be added on! I adore my Flickr account (did you know that pre-Yahoo buy out Flickr started out as a Canadian company?)

So there you have it … Five glorious weeks of celebration and party time Ahhh yes, how does one keen Crazy Thoughts Reader enter the contests? I will be asking a series of questions and all I ask is you to answer the questions in the comments. No need to link to the contest since really it is a special celebration just you & the clan

Ok seriously people! If you are having troubles reading and commenting you have to tell me! Thank you MommaBee, Michelle & Cori, I hope this is an improvement!

I did a quickie redesign in hopes of solving the issues. Please please leave me a comment if the design makes your computer choke up.

In all fairness I do test all my designs in IE, Safari, and Firefox. Even our old PC loaded the site fine, so I was totally in the dark.

Now if you really want to optimize your blog reading buy a Mac. Really. Mac’s are Sexy.

If you cannot *~stubborn~* buy a Mac, please download Firefox. Or at the very very least upgrade to IE 7 (the closest IE has ever gotten to allowing proper code).

Ok I will hop off my geeky soap box, for now and remind you that this week I will be announcing some fun contests to celebrate the Soodz Clan’s Return to the Great White North (aka Canada)!

HE DID IT!

~

J Got the job in HALIFAX …

WE ARE GOING HOME!

My heart races every time I think about it.

J starts his new position, January 1, 2008.

That gives us approximately ten weeks to pack up (doesn’t it feel like we just got here? Oh wait, we DID!) and hike up to Canada.

I couldn’t be happier.

I will give you all more details in the weeks to come, about the job, Halifax, how we are moving … you know all the juicey stuff!

We are going to have a celebration here on the blog so watch for it come Monday! A whole MONTH or more of contests! I am so excited!  While I was waiting for the news I had formulated a few ideas for give-aways for the next few weeks.

OMG.

I am in shock.

I had no doubt J was the right guy for the job.

We are finally going home.

What a journey.

Home.

By Christmas.

Sweet.