Do Good, 2011

Lisa, over at Burrito West Blog had a fabulous idea and I decided to spread her wise words.  Let’s all make an effort in 2011 to help others.  Lisa is right, how powerful would it be if we all made 2011 the year we give back. 

Giving back doesn’t have to cost you money if you don’t have it.  Give time.  The time you give doesn’t have to cost you much either.  A couple of hours a month can make an enormous difference to a non-profit struggling to do the work that they do.  Those few hours can be made even more enjoyable if you find a way to donate a few hours doing something that you excel at. 

If you don’t have time, then give money.  Money always helps. 

I am very passionate about volunteering, but I also believe that you should give of yourself only what you are capable.   If you’re not having fun, reassess and give back in a way so you DO have fun.  Look to give back to organizations that you’re passionate about, and in ways that use your mad skillz.  Trust me, you have mad skillz.  We all do.

Currently I am president of a local environmental group that focuses on watershed conservation and restoration.  That sounds like a full time job, doesn’t it?  It isn’t.  My main job is to chair our monthly board meetings and help ensure that we have the proper information to vote on board items.  I had to learn how to move a motion.  For someone who trips over her own damn name, learning how to properly move a motion wasn’t as easy as you’d think, but look, I learned me some new mad skillz!

The people that do the “real” work are our (rather poorly) paid staff.  Chairing the board meeting takes about 2 hours every month, plus having to read some emails.  2 hours.  I bet you can spare 2 hours.

Since finding reliable volunteers is the struggle of just about every non-profit I know,  I also maintain our website.  This takes up a considerable larger chunk of time because I am not that savvy on the web - probably around 6 hours in a slow month.  A task that would take a savvy web person about 2 hours.

AND since we have yet to find a replacement Secretary to fill the position I vacated when I accepted the position of President, I rather grudgingly still type up the minutes.  This takes another 2 hours (however, I believe I may have found someone to pawn this job off onto.  Can I get a HELL YEAH?!  HELL YEAH!). 

What I’m getting out here isn’t that I’m super woman, I’m not, a lot of that work never gets finished, or takes a back seat until I can get to it or find someone else to do it.  What I’m saying is that organizations like this one need you and a couple of hours a month can make a huge impact.

Some ideas to get you started: many non-profits are always looking for directors to sit on the board, volunteers to do things like maintain websites, update the social media sites, help prepare brochures, help with fundraising, help with proposal writing, photography, web article writing and editing.  These same groups then need volunteers to do the core work of the organization as well.  In my group that includes things like being a volunteer steward in the estuary, beach seining, water testing, setting up our booth at fairs, etc.

Alternately, like Lisa mentioned, you can forgo the usual gift-giving for the 8000 gift giving occassions that we celebrate in this country and ask family and friends to make a small donation to your favorite do-good society.  $5 from all the people that love you can add up quickly and could mean you save a rescue animal, dig a well, or implement an educational project that protects your watershed.  It might mean organizations like my own could get enough core funding in place to actually pay our staff a reasonable salary.

Let’s do it.  Let’s make the world a better place in 2011.

hi.

I did not intend to take a 2-month blog-cation but there you have it.  The tick-tock of life just got in the way.  November and December were ridiculously busy in their usual way but then add to that Anna cutting four teeth (Oh. My. God.), runny noses, preschool, running and poof!  November and December disappeared and I never checked in here.

I’m still struggling to get Anna to bed at anything resembling a decent hour (typically she isn’t asleep until sometime between 10 and midnight – this means I’m very close to dropping over the edge into insanity.  Tread carefully people.  Tread carefully.). 

That said, I will be in this space fully in the coming week.  I have so much to share!  But first I have to finish my Christmas newsletter and address the cards and finish making a pile of Christmas presents that need sewing up (they are cut and ready to be sewn, but I have yet to be able to get out my machine!).

I can’t even upload a picture because I’m on the wrong computer and there is a baby attached to my boob.  I suck as a blogger.

summer lovin’…

Considering that I had five entire days where The Toddlers were on a road trip with Papa to Calgary (why yes, the man IS insane) it’s pretty pathetic I didn’t update.  I was too busy drinking several bottles of wine and dancing naked down the hall.

Actually, turns out my littlest wee one takes up the majority of my time. The Toddlers just happen to be a lot louder and are mobile which gives the illusion of taking up time but it really doesn’t.  I can hear them and see them just fine while I do other things like cook dinner and fold laundry.  I have yet to master the skill of  baby carrying/breastfeeding/diaper changing and doing something else so even though the house managed to stay clean once I cleaned it because little hands weren’t wildly touching every surface, I didn’t get much else done.

Although I suppose I could also breastfeed and update the blog.

I do have several blog post ideas bouncing around in my head, and one in the works to post over at a friends blog (details to come) so don’t go!  Please stay!  Check back!  I’ve also toured locally!  There are blogs to come, I swear it.

Sadly, tomorrow is my last day of “maternity leave” and I’ll be doing the part-time, work-from-home thing I was doing before Anna was born which might mean I’ll never post again.

Why yes, this is just boring filler to make you think I’ve posted when really all I’ve done is tell you that I’m going to post.  I imagine that’s annoying. 

There might be something to this family bed thing

We spent our Father’s Day weekend camping about 5 minutes from our house.  In a tent.  With a group of preschoolers and their families.  You want to be me right now, don’t you?

But you know what? It wasn’t that bad.

It was our preschool’s weekend camp-out and it was nice to get to know some of the families a bit better, get to know some people in our little community better, and get to sit beside a little pond and splash around with our kids.  Steve and I are terrible about getting out and about in this little place of ours, so being a part of the preschool has been good for us.  Maybe we’ll even venture out to our local farmer’s market this coming weekend and be able to say hi to people.  Maybe we’ll even talk to them.   Whoa.  Wild.

Actually hanging out with the preschooler’s families isn’t what was scaring me as I prepared for the weekend.  It was all 5 of us sleeping in a tent that had me petrified. 

I have a confession to make: Steve hasn’t slept in our bed since Anna was born.

I bought two twin sized beds just before Anna was born for The Toddlers but my real intent was that Steve wouldn’t sleep in our bed for a little while.  Steve is not a nice person when he is tired.  One might say he’s a bit of a jerk.  That one being me.  The man is a jerk when he’s tired so I much prefer him well rested.  Babies don’t typically allow for well restedness (I don’t care if that isn’t a word, it makes my point well so I’m using it).   I can’t make Steve suddenly be all rainbows and lollipops on 5 hours of sleep so I decided that he would sleep elsewhere.  He very happily agreed to this arrangement and has been bunking in Callum’s room on the spare twin bed and relishing the fact that Callum doesn’t snore so he doesn’t have to wear earplugs.  Callum LOVES that Papa is there first thing in the morning and he can start talking right away! (Callum doesn’t yet care that Steve is Mr. Grumpy first thing in the morning, he just starts talking.  I find this hilarious.).

Since this new sleeping arrangement has been so well received the thought of getting into a tent with Steve, The Toddlers and Anna was daunting.  That’s a lot of sharing after two solid months of sleeping in a queen sized bed with a baby that just hit 9 lbs.  I wasn’t convinced it was something that would end well.

But it did end well.  The Toddlers sleep like champs anyway and once asleep stay asleep.  Anna got to cuddle in my sleeping bad so she was problem free, and Steve just pulled out the old earplugs and all was well.

The only drawback to this experiment is that he’s decided that we should once again start living life as a married couple and moved himself back into my bed. 

Or rather, our bed.

Christmas Recap

My Christmas, in a word, was blissful. Besides the guilt of not sending out the packages or my Christmas cards on-time (eh, I haven?t sent them YET to be honest), I couldn’t have asked for a more enjoyable holiday.
Christmas Eve Callum finished up his gifts (post to come), and then Mom, Fearthainn, Steve, the kids and I went skating. After Mom and Steve took the kids around the rink a few times, we picked up my Grandma and all of us went back to our place for home-made clam chowder, biscuits and salad. There were a few hiccups along the way but Fearthainn and I are Domestic Goddesses and it all came together. I had planned on fresh baked bread but instead of making the bread the old fashioned way I relied on my bread maker, and well, the result was a bullet of yuck. It didn’t rise and it tasted horrific. Thankfully, I am related to the World’s Best Biscuit Maker (Fearthainn) who whipped up a double batch of amazing biscuits. Is there nothing more awesome than biscuits fresh from the oven with honey? I think not.
Then after I finished putting together the salad I realized that I didn’t have an ounce of salad dressing in the house as salad dressing is now one of those items I no longer buy. We managed to make up a batch of Ranch dressing with what I had on hand that was pretty tasty so possible catastrophe was averted!
Yes, no salad dressing is a catastrophe. That is how hard my life is.

Our evening was low key; the kids got to open a gift, put on their Grandma-made pyjamas, read ?Twas the Night Before Christmas, and then off to bed to eagerly await Santa. The adults had a tonne of fun putting together the toddler piano and giving it a whirl.

Christmas morning had me up early to get the cinnamon buns on the go, and truth be told, it was quite enjoyable. Everyone slept late, so by the time they were moving I had made fruit salad, had the cinnamon buns ready for their last rising, and enjoyed a cup of coffee and eggnog. It was so fun to watch the kids see what Santa left for them.


Fearthainn and Mom came over for 9, we opened our gifts and then feasted on pancakes, home-made blackberry syrup, cinnamon buns, fruit salad and eggnog lattes thanks to Mom bringing her latte-making machine with her. Pretty damn awesome.
The rest of the afternoon we did next to nothing. We didn?t even tidy up. One enormous advantage to not using paper wrapping anymore is that the mess is a lot easier to deal with as you just fold the bag up. I was so proud of my family because there were only two boxes that were wrapped with wrapping paper instead of either a reusable bag (or one my Mom created from the endless Christmas flyers) or box. Fearthainn and I were talking about how we still think it feels weird to not rip the wrapping paper off your gift, but my Mom pointed out that Callum thinks presents just come in bags. It?s his norm, even if it isn?t ours yet. He?s spent the days since Christmas wrapping everything in site in a tea towel and placing it under the tree in order to re-create Christmas.

Dinner found us dressed up in our Christmas finest and heading to my Grandma?s house, where we feasted, yet again. The kids were wild by 8, though, so we had to call it a night.

Although the season has been packed (I even PUT AWAY Christmas before sending out the packages and cards, I suck), I?m probably going to be blogging about it all week. A week?s worth of Christmas Craft Blog Posts. I?m sure you?re giddy.