marriage

we had a date night last night, jamie and i. {courtesy of one spectacular kelley myles who is a genius at getting children to stop freaking out and go to sleep!}
we went to my favouritest place, mishmash. it was jazz, blues and rock night. just a chill evening where they play everything from BB King to The Stones to Dizzy Gilespie and Pearl Jam. they played black magic woman which i totally grooved to thanks to guitar hero enlightening my sometimes limited music awareness.
it was a nice, quiet night out.
{also i really like that at night, people smoke shisha and it smells absolutely delicious. the grape flavour always smells the best.}
on the drive home we talked about each other and other people and both agreed that while we could have married other people, no one would really even compare to each other. maybe that's arrogant, but i think it's probably an arrogance that more marriages could stand to have.
and it makes me happy that we're both happiest with each other.
almost 8 years of marriage {and almost 13 years together!} and we still think we picked the best.
i'm thankful to God for bringing us and keeping us together. {and for the so many people that i know still pray for us and have since our wedding day.}

*in hindsight and after someone's comment, arrogance isn't probably the best choice of words. but somehow it communicates a certain...vibe for how we feel about each other. like "we got the best out there when we married each other. sorry world, but you lost out."

date night and big Sunday brunch

so we had our first date night since moving to kampala.

we went out for dinner and a movie.

and i took a boda boda. at night.

it was terrifying. 

i honestly do not want to do it again.

and there is no way i will willingly let noah or jude take a ride on one.

absolutely terrifying.

my legs were like jello for a couple hours afterward.

but i digress.

we got there safely and quickly and a lot more cheaply than if we had taken a private hire (taxi cab). 

dinner was delicious, i laughed out loud (a lot) in the movie and we got to chat about a lot of things.

and yesterday was Sunday which meant that we had big Sunday brunch!

it was delicious. i love big Sunday brunch. trevor said to me that he doesn't know which is more exciting; Friday pizza night or big Sunday brunch. i couldn't pick either.

we had bacon and cheesy scrambled eggs with banana muffins (for the kids) and coffee banana scones. yum!

next week i'm making these. um, i'm really excited.

after brunch, while we were at church i was getting pretty frustrated with the boys. they were fighting with each other and up and down and not listening and  i could feel myself getting angry.

angry at the boys. angry at our church for not having children's programs that start at the beginning of church and just angry that i didn't get to have a peaceful church experience. 

as we sang (i forget the song), the thought of sacrifice and picking up our cross and following after Jesus struck me. hard. 

motherhood isn't easy breezy. 

but it isn't the easy breezy things in life that conform us to the likeness of Christ, is it? 

nope. 

so i lowered my expectations, prayed for patience and love and moved through and forward to choose to have joy. 

and church finished early! 

i was thankful for that. (is that wrong?)

we're just over 6 weeks into life here and it's pretty good. my next goal for myself is to make up a monthly curriculum plan for noah including games, crafts and reading/writing. hopefully by the end of the week i can have something made up.

happy Monday to you!

lately

There's been a lot going on lately.
This post may bore you as I'm writing mainly for my future self to remember some of these smaller details that are quite easily forgotten.

We're moving out of this house as of May 1st. We'll be living with my parents until August when we move to Uganda. So now our landlords have started showing the house. Have you ever tried to get a house presentable to be shown when you've got 2 young kids? Yeah. That. But hopefully they've found some people interested in renting once we move out.
We've been selling loads of our things - some on Kijiji (oh wonderful, wonderful Kijiji) and some to friends and people we know. The two big things I want to conquer next are the garage *shudder* and the boys toys.
The garage has just gotten progressively worse as the winter has gone on. It's a disaster. I will divide and conquer.
The boys toys are another issue - which toys do we keep and store? Which toys do we sell? Which toys do we bring? I'd like to bring as few toys as possible as kids can really make toys out of anything and I really only want to keep/store the ones that are timeless (like metal cars, trains, some puzzles, wooden play food) and sell/chuck the rest.

Yesterday we went into Toronto to the travel clinic for our travel consultation and first set of vaccines. The boys were a bit stir crazy, but we managed. And they did relatively well with their two needles (each). I felt bad about not warning Noah - he really freaked out. It's so hard to know with him - do I warn him and possibly make him even more reactive or do I just let it happen and deal with the freak out then? He has a super quick recovery time for the most part so we did alright this time. He has one more needle to get before we go.
Jude, on the other hand was not as quick to recover and didn't even want his chocolate "prize". (So I ate it.)
He wailed and wailed and wailed and was pretty angry about the needles. He started wailing just from the swab being rubbed on his arm before the needle. This kid, man. D-R-A-M-A.
And $600+ later for vaccines we walked out with 2 bouncy balls, 6 sore arms, 1 kid hyped up on gummies and chocolate and some knowledge about malaria pills and family planning (among many other things) that will be tucked away for future reference (on my part).
As we were walking back to the car (we parked a short walk away so as to avoid paying the parking toll) I mused in my head that a part of me wishes we were living downtown Toronto with no car and taking the public transit everywhere. Perhaps one day. I absolutely adore the country side and even living in Guelph is wonderful, but there is a City Girl that owns a part of my heart.

Then last night I got picked up by my brother Keven who took me out on a date as my Christmas present (this year my family drew names and he picked mine and his gift to me was a date with him, all expenses paid by him). While I'm pretty sure that he ultimately left it to the last minute (perhaps not, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if it was) I'm so glad he didn't just go out and buy me a gift card or give me cash. He gave me the gift of time and relationship and I honestly can't remember the last time he and I talked one-on-one for a longer period of time.
We went downtown to Wayne Gretzky's restaurant where I had some pretty amazing baby back ribs and then we went next door to The Second City for my first ever (and Keven's, too!) comedy show.
I found myself laughing pretty hard at some of the social commentary that was weaved into their sketches. Too funny. (You know it's funny stuff when you laugh to yourself the next day just thinking about it and then ruin it by trying to reenact it for a friend who wasn't there. Oh well.)
Plus I got to talk and catch up with Keven for the whole drive back to Guelph. I had a really great night and got to get to know my brother a little better - and he's a pretty great guy. Also, he got pulled up onto the stage at the Second City which pretty much made the night a complete winner in my opinion.

Anyway, so there's lots going on these days. My goal this week was to renew Noah's passport and get one for Jude but tomorrow is Thursday and I haven't even started. So, we'll see how that one goes. Perhaps tomorrow should be passport picture day. Or something.

And I'm keeping at my half marathon training although it's only going so-so.

And my eating habits are total crap, but I'm just doing what I'm doing and trying to make healthy choices when I can. I've also decided to give up sugar for lent but there's a whole blog post coming on that one (for reals. It's currently a draft right now.).

If you made it this far, well...bravo. Thanks for hanging in there, friend.
Bon nuit!