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How we got the biggest Christmas tree known to man (hint: we used a Honda Odyssey)

Extra big thanks to Honda for sponsoring this adventure.

We always get a real tree and we always get it home by carrying it from a nearby parking lot in our arms. And by “we” and “our arms,” I clearly mean Ed. I’m just there for moral support and to helpfully call out things like, “Are you okay?” and, “Watch out for the curb!”

When I found out I was going to get to try out a Honda Odyssey for a week in December, though, I knew this year would be different. That’s right $20 Ikea Christmas tree with the $20 off coupon to be used in January, we were coming for you!

Three kids Honda Odyssey

 

The three kids easily fit in the second row which is SO NICE because it frees up the third row for more passengers or extra cargo, ie. $20 Ikea Christmas trees. It is also nice because there’s nothing worse than a kid whining at you from the third row and not being able to reach back to shut them up, er, I mean, lovingly hand them what they need.

Before I tell you about the Ikea midnight madness sale that I had no idea was happening and because of which I used up all my will power for the year resisting a half-price fridge that we could totally have fit in the minivan (maybe, I’m not sure), let me tell you about the drive there. It was amazing! While I always appreciate the extra space that a bigger vehicle provides, I usually kind of hate driving them. The Odyssey, however, handles super easily and it didn’t feel like I was driving some giant monster vehicle.

So we get to Ikea and the midnight madness sale and end up with two questionable shimmery/sheer curtains that will maybe one day go into the girls room but avoid walking out with a fridge we don’t need, so win. We then go to check out the trees which are all bound up and the same price no matter their size which you can’t tell anyway because they’re bound up. Did I mention that they’re bound? I’m thinking that $20 usually gets you a pretty skimpy little tree at most places so I eyeball a tree that looks a little fatter than the others and say that’s the one. When we’re carting it off to the van, the Ikea guy tells us, “That’s the biggest tree I’ve seen all year and I’ve seen over 8000 of them.” I figure he’s trying to impress the kids.

We fold down the third row of seats, easy peasy, and the tree fits nicely in the back.

HondaOdysseyChristmasTree

 

We finally lugged the tree inside and it weighed, like, a million pounds. We fit it into the tree stand and started cutting off the binding. Oh my. That is one big tree. It still needed to settle before we could fully appreciate the insanity of it, but I knew right away that we could kiss our dining room table goodbye for the next few weeks. When Ed measured it the next day, it was seven feet tall and EIGHT FEET WIDE. Our house is only about fifteen feet wide. Oops.

But onto the highlight of this story. As you may have heard, the Touring model of the new Odyssey comes equipped with a built in vacuum cleaner. Cue the singing angels; it is Christmas, after all. I once bought a crappy little hand vac for the dust bunnies on the stairs and it made my year. Imagine what I could do with a vacuum in my car?! Actually, we don’t have to imagine, because Christmas tree needles. Yikes.

Honda vacuum

 

I could have cried for joy, you guys. The clean up was so easy. It literally took me less than five minutes to vacuum up the needles. I was tempted to try to reach the vacuum nozzle over to our actual car, but I thought better of it. (Who am I kidding? I totally would have except I was freezing.)

As for the tree. Well, it’s a presence.

Biggest Christmas Tree ever
This post was generously sponsored by Honda, but the opinions and images are my own. For more information, visit honda.ca/odyssey  

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10 “Better her than me” reasons you’re happy not to be engaged

I hear it’s engagement season. By which, of course, I mean I read it on Jezebel.

I can only imagine how hard times like this must be in the brave, new era of social media. Back in my heyday, you could enjoy months of blissful ignorance before hearing about your ex’s engagement to that skinny bitch from work. You only had to deal with your good friends lording their diamond-laden fingers over you while you were actually with them. And you could honestly not give a shit about casual acquaintances because you never had any idea what they were up to and we were all better for it.

But rather than pine for a time that has come and gone, it’s far better to to take a page out of the sour grapes playbook and think to yourself, “Better her than me.”

Here you go: The “I don’t want to get married and start a family anyways,” guide to why you are over the moon about being not engaged this year. Take it from me: I got married at 23 and now I have three kids.

1. Everything about him instantly becomes annoying. There is no bigger downer on a relationship than realizing you have to live with this guy’s inability to recap a tube of toothpaste for the rest of your life, so help you god. You do.

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Preparing for the holidays

Not yet Christmas

I was looking for the big, winter floor mat to put down by the back door, so I moved a big box of Christmas ornaments out of the basement closet. The kids found the box and, delighted, went about “decorating” their playroom for their “Christmas party.” There are now Christmas ornaments strewn across the basement, mixed in with toys and probably broken in pieces in the corners.

They are feeling the holiday spirit, those kids. I am not.

I should probably just pick them all up and go get a tree to decorate, but I don’t want to. Not yet.  People are making polite and gentle inquiries into holiday plans I’m supposed to be organizing, and I’m getting annoyed. Can’t they wait?

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Christmas magic

Excited to kick off my role as a Sears Mom Ambassador just in time for the holidays!

We must have been up past two in the morning that Christmas.

We came home from celebrating with my in-laws late on Christmas Eve and put the kids straight to bed. I ran around picking up the stray toys and wrappers and assorted clutter. I brought out the secret stash of Santa gifts and sorted out what was for who. I set out some milk and cookies and took a bite of one. Okay, maybe I had more than that.

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Can we talk about how crazy we’ve become about food?

First, a daycare worker in Manitoba followed a well-intentioned, if misapplied, policy to ensure that children are given a well-balanced meal and the internet broke. Ritz crackers as a grain?! How stupid is that!

At the same time, there is this New York Times article on rich Manhattanites hiring an exclusive nanny consulting service to teach their nannies how to cook healthier and more sophisticated dishes for little Imogen and Atticus. Mr. Leandro, one of the founders of the service, was quoted as saying, “Some of these nannies already do the cooking in the family, but they’re throwing chicken fingers in the oven, or worse, the microwave — they’re doing the bare minimum.” And feeding children the easy way is clearly not good enough for one mother featured in the article who “wanted her daughter to adopt a more refined and global palate, whether it’s a gluten-free kale salad or falafel made from organic chickpeas.”

So, pretty much: The poor people I pay to take care of my children are feeding them poor people foods!

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New solution for Toronto’s overcrowded daycares!

Rob Ford goes on record saying, “I have more than enough to eat at home.”

The birth rate plummets.

 

 

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Our favourite things

This post is part of the YummyMummyClub.ca and Fisher-Price® sponsored program. I received compensation as a thank you for my participation. This post reflects my personal opinion about the information provided by the sponsors.

There they were, two mops of golden ringlets bobbing up and down on the living room carpet. Sisters. My heart was awash in maternal pride to see them playing together. I was also thrilled they were so into the Fisher-Price Little People Fun Sounds Farm that had just been delivered. Hey, this Fisher-Price Favourite farm rocks out sing-along songs and animal sounds. Of course they loved it. This sponsored post was going to be a breeze to write.

I tiptoed closer, camera phone in hand.

“No, Mary. I was playing with that. Give it to me!”

“WHAAA!”

“I had the cow first. Here. You play with this hay.”

“Stop dat, Weenie! Stop DAT!”

There was snatching and grabbing. Pushing and shoving. Somebody kicked the farm right over.

“Give your sister back that cow right now,” I said. “You will sit up and play nicely while I take some pictures or I cancel your birthday party. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

So I think it’s fair to say that they really like the Little People Fun Sounds Farm. My kids can’t get enough imaginative play and they loved exploring the farm with the farmer and his animals. The doors open and close to music and animal songs and sending hay up with the tip-up baler and then dropping it into the silo was lots of fun. Mary loved assembling and reassembling the fenced in area too. The cow, in particular, is a big hit.

But, really, when I think back on my childhood memories, all my favourite games and toys are tied up in a mess of emotions that involve fighting, sharing and otherwise negotiating with brothers and sisters, cousins and friends. I remember sitting in the basement with my Raffi album playing on the Fisher-Price record player, lyrics in hand, when my kid brother raced in and tried to change the record, scratching “The Corner Grocery Store” irreparably. I remember running around and around in circles, trailing my Little People School Bus behind me until an older cousin staked his claim to it. I remember sitting in my grandparents’ living room, quietly waiting for my turn to play with the Fisher-Price house. It was the one with the bell that rang if you hit the red button hard enough.

It was the one that my grandmother still has and that my children still play with, elbowing each other out of the way until they examine every last moving part and move on.

Our favourite toys are the ones we play with most, sure. But they’re also the ones we lose our cool over. We jockey for position and stand our ground, and sometimes finally even learn to share.

Ahem. And by “we,” I clearly mean the children. They’ll be fighting over that Fisher-Price Little People Fun Sounds Farm for years to come. (Because in all honesty it’s an awesome toy for toddlers and, apparently, their five-year-old sisters.) It’s probably for the best.

Read more product reviews on Fisher-Price® Favourites and new Fisher-Price®  toys for every stage of development.

 

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Motherhood is not …

 

In “really, freaking obvious things that Rebecca is still trying to wrap her head around” news, I scrawled out some thoughts about motherhood on an actual piece of paper yesterday. I was having one of those moments in which having the best of both worlds really feels like having the worst of them. Or, rather, it feels like I’m just doing a shitty job all around.

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How to talk to your kids about our crack mayor

It was easy enough to sweep the whole “the mayor smokes crack” angle under the carpet when it was just Gawker and, uh, the Toronto Star who had seen the video. But it’s getting kind of tricky now, parents of Toronto, isn’t it? Now that the chief of police has confirmed that there is, indeed, a video of the mayor smoking crack cocaine and making racist and homophobic statements, and now that two major daily newspapers have also reported in detail on a night of extreme drunkenness and abuse, it’s kind of hard to keep this from the children. It was already on the Daily Show which means it’s only a matter of time before it makes the Sesame Street news. We basically have to sit down and talk to them about this or monitor their screen time. And, well, let’s face it, we don’t want to talk about anything else anyway. UPDATE: The mayor admits to smoking crack! All the more reason we need to talk to our kids.

I did what I always do when I need parenting advice: I turned to the internet. Several Google searches for “talking to your kids about the mayor doing drugs,” however, didn’t yield my desired results. So I’m going to have to take the six pieces of advice listed in an article on PsychCentral titled, “How to Talk to Your Kids When You Think They’re Using Drugs,” and tweak them to fit our needs. It should work.

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Done like dinner

A super-big thank you to Just-Eat.ca for sponsoring this post!

You know that feeling of satisfaction you get from coming home after a long week and scraping together a barely passable meal out of the dregs of your refrigerator to feed your family? Or how about the sense of achievement you earn spending an hour catching up on dishes and scouring pots and pans? No? Me neither.

Takeout is never a hard sell around here. As much as I truly and honestly do value home-cooked, nutritious food, I’ve also learned that I can’t always do it all. As a work-from-home mom who has a habit of biting off more work than I maybe should, my workday sometimes spills into the after-school hours and I find myself working on the computer when I should be spending time with the kids. It doesn’t feel fair for me to then continue to ignore them for another 45 minutes on those days while I try to get a meal on the table. So we order takeout and I get to help with homework, read stories and admire craft projects brought home from school. It’s not much, but it’s important.

But, man, do I get sick of the same-old pizza and burgers. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to order something different? Maybe something even a little bit healthy?