august twenty-nine :: 87 weeks old

Sean is 87 weeks old today.

This morning I got a fabulous package from my Secret Pal in the mail!

First up, my mouth dropped when I saw this - Hand Maiden Sea Silk. Oh. my. god. My fave colors, and I just love this yarn. I'd never had some before Jenn got me some for my birthday back in June, and I'm super glad I've got more. Just need to find the perfect pattern now. Oh, it's heaven. And the colors in this skein I just got are superb. I believe it's the Glacier colorway, though, I'm not 100% certain as the tag is not marked, but from Ravelry, that's what I gather. It's just gorgeous.

My secret pal also sent me Let's Knit magazine which is European (UK) as well as 2 books, The Naughty Sheep and The Treasure Sock.

My pal also sent me a TON of gum, which I love. It's my fave kind of candy, etc. Since I'm not really a fan of chocolate.

I also got a cute sheep magnet (which is already on the filing cabinet in my office), some Wool Fat Soap, and a tin can that contained.....

... a ton of fun beads!

She also sent a really nice towel type piece of material which I assume is from her local knitting guild. I know my pal is from somewhere in the UK, so this must be where she's from. It's pretty neat. I plan on ironing out the creases and maybe framing it for my office.

Oh, but wait - there's more! Some knitting clips, 2.5mm DPNS (which are a fave size for me!), some sheep point protectors and a knitting CD-rom.

She also sent me some leftovers for my blankie project! Thank you so much SP. I love everything and cannot wait to use it all!

My SP sent a card, which I've put away. It has her reveal information (I'm assuming she's a she). Though, because she had to send one parcel by surface mail (by boat to cross the ocean), I don't want to know who she is until that package arrives (which we're hoping it does before SP12 ends on September 30th). So I've saved the card for then. Will power! I don't want the surprise ruined.

Some updates from my garden from this morning:

I really think my sunflower will open up any day now...

I picked a TON of tomatoes and a cucumber to take with us this weekend to my sister-in-law's place as well as the two zucchinis (below) that were ready:

And by the time we get back we'll have a cucumber ready to be eaten too!

And my pumpkin is doing well!

Early afternoon we left the house after it took 45 minutes to pack the car. The car was shoved packed to the rim. I swear, you name it, we had it. It's crazy to pack up TWO young kids for a weekend trip. Almost impossible to pack light. I don't know if I'll do this again for a long time, let me tell you! We finally left the house around 1:15 (after opening the garage and starting to load the trunk around 12:30pm). We picked up lunch, which we ate in the car. We stopped to pick up bagels for my sister-in-law (as per request). I needed to go to the bank and that took only a few minutes, and next door I popped into the pharmacy to get a new bottle brush as I had to throw out our last one, but needed one for our trip.

It then took us an hour and 45 minutes to get off the island of Montreal. Traffic was sick. Yep, labour day weekend and everyone seemed to be going away, early afternoon.

Our 3 and a half hour drive, ended up being 6 hours. We got to Jamie's sister's place around 7:30 pm. It was a VERY LONG afternoon. We had to stop half way for a bathroom break and to change both kids' diapers. Mack was not happy to be in his car seat, and was very unhappy for most of the trip (and let us hear it). Sean napped for about an hour (when he usually takes 3 hour naps - which we were counting on) and was restless in the car as well. Let me tell you - it was not fun. It also didn't help that there was traffic just about everywhere you looked. Finally it did clear up about halfway there and the rest of the actual driving was smooth sailing, though, not very pleasant with two unhappy children.

We were glad to finally arrive in Beauceville, Qc.

Sean ran around my sister-in-law's property and was super happy to have land to run free on. He missed his cousin and was really happy to see him as well. It was still light out when we got there, so I was able to snap a few photographs outside before it got dark.

We're all settled in now, and my boys are wearing matching PJ's. How cute. I know. Mack's not happy here in this photograph because it took about 10 minutes to get Sean to actually sit for a photo, and by that time Mack was like "take the picture already"...! I had to bribe Sean with the drum to sit still for a few minutes. All I wanted was ONE photo! But Sean was wired and wanted to run around and play with his older cousin.

We had a lovely dinner, I worked on my crazy socks that I started in the car on the ride down (when I actually had my hands free to myself for a bit, and wasn't feeding Mack or putting a Suss in Mack's mouth (though he's not so fond of the suss, so I'm not pushing it), or passing Sean snacks or a drink, etc...) I'll post my crazy socks tomorrow and tell you all about why they are so crazy!

The country air is making me tired. I'm off to catch some Zzzz's! Hope you're all having a wonderful long weekend.