the stain

few days ago my kids were eating strawberries...they do love strawberries, and they are very healthy for them lots of vitamin C and other goodies, besides they do taste great!

While I was busy upstairs Bilal decided that it would be nice to share the strawberries with the carpet! MY WHITE CARPET! he squished the strawberries into my carpet with his feet in few different spots! MY WHITE CARPET! Ziad AKA telltale...he reminds me of little me! I used to wait until my brother did the smallest thing and go tell my parents...came running and told me of what Bilal did

I did not even panic! I do have my trusted spray carpet cleaner. Bilal did get a time out for five whole minutes in his room, where he has his books and some of his toys! But he screamed for the whole five minutes! I do not get kids! It is his bedroom where he spends lots of time, not a jail! I got my spray carpet cleaner and within two minutes my carpet was all clean like magic!

My carpet has been through so much! Once Ziad decided that paper is not good enough so he drew on the carpet with green and black crayons and red and pink markers!!!! My trusted carpet cleaner got them out, while I was yelling at Ziad like a mad woman! It was during Ramadan and I had guests coming in less than an hour! poop?? yes it got it out with no stain. Cranberry juice?? Yes it also got that! Chocolate milk? not a problem!

surprisingly I could not get stains this easily out of the dark grey carpet I had in the apartment in Saskatoon or the coloured carpet I had in Amman. Weird eh? everyone keeps on saying how we are idiots for picking white carpet for our house, but seriously after living with darker carpet I would pick the white again! We shampoo it once is a month or as needed..and for spot cleaning I have my trusted spray cleaner and it looks OK , much better than the dark ones in my apartment in Saskatoon or at my parent's family room! In a couple of years we will be getting hard wood installed downstairs, but when we are done through having kids inshallah...I am not a fan since I have lived in my parents hard wood floored house for years and hated it! But it is preferred by buyers so we have to get it done eventually...eh?

cookie (baskoti)

We finally got the kitten...she is adorable and so cuddly!

Her name is cookie in english...Baskoti in Arabic and nick named pospos..

Ziad is still scared to hold her ,but he plays chase the rope with her. Bilal is picking her up bas ya haram he is not gentle with her at all!

a new member in our family!

No no no..I am not pregnant and I did not have a baby!

We are getting a kitten!! My first pet ever! Ok I had a bird named Ziko once (whome I am accused of killing just because I was the last person with him hmmmmmmmmm, it might have been a girl..why did we assume it is a boy all these years..makes u go hmmmmmmmmmmmm eh?) and I have had few fish, but a cat is different, it is a real pet. It will not be harder than taking care of kids eh?? I mean I do not have to wakeup at night to feed her,read to her, not go to bed until she is sleeping and so on... and I can go out and leave her at home so it is 1000000000 times easier than a baby! I already had two babies and they have survived so I guess I did ok sa7?

I am off to buy cat stuff today, a scratch post, a bed, a litter box and scoop and the stuff you put in a litter box, some toys and food! I hope I am not missing anything.

Hopefully we will pick her up today! I want to name her cookie...Ziad wants to name her Ahmad, why Ahmad, you ask, I have no idea, but she is a girl so we can not name her Ahmad no matter how much of a fight Zozo put up, besides the fish we have is named Ahmad!

O speaking of the fish...Zozo is such a cutie. He wanted a cat for weeks now, but then we got the fish so he stopped talking about the cat for a while. I asked him if he wanted to get a cat still and he answered "Cats eat fish, we have to wait until Ahmad and Tamara the fish die and then we get a cat!" Tamara did pass away, but Ahmad is still alive and swimming! I told him that not all cats are like Tom (Tom & Jerry) faj3aneen and they will not want to eat the fish, gosh I hope that is true! So now he stopped worrying about the fish and wants a cat more than anything in the world! Speaking of Tom and Jerry, do you think our new cat will like watching that with us?? or maybe I shouldn't, I do not want to give her any ideas eh?

bye bye snow!!

yay! In a week or so all the snow will be all gone! I am looking forward not seeing any white stuff anymore!!

This is my official shortest post ever! :)

A drive across canada

Yay Hubby is on his way home ,he is going to be driving for a bit over 36hrs!!!


He left yesterday morning...drove for almost 12hrs and slept in Kenora, he is driving across Ontario as we speak, he will drive for 12.5hrs then he will spend the night in a town/city called Wawa! what a name eh? Maybe Haifa bateekh was singing about it...boos elwawa..ya bayi ma aznakhni!!!:o/ (Haifa not me)...Tomorrow morning he will leave Wawa and drive 12 more hrs and get home...

He should be here tomorrow night inshallah:) He is going to kill me! My new daily shopping expiditions have changed, instead of clothes, shoes and other accessories I have been buying stuff for our house, a new mirror, new vases, new this and new that, I still have so much more to buy, a new rug, new curtains, some more art work, a TV, and o so much more!! Well you can not blame me, after living in ugly houses and not being able to buy fine things for over two years I have all this built up need to buy house accessories! But my house is starting to look nicer, it just needs to be painted, but that has to wait until the summer! My last purchase was a black mirror and plastic plant/tree(I can not get a real one because Bilal will kill it within a day!), and they look so cute! I can not stop looking and admiring them! I know I am weird!

Yeh back to hubby coming home! What should I cook for him?? ma'loobi?? m7amar jaj? kabseh?? ah decisions, decisions!

Yay one more day of sleeping in bed alone! Ok not really the kids have been joining me in bed sometime in the middle of the night! It is so annoying! Little feet kicking me, little hands slapping me, comforter hoggers, I have four pillows on my bed, they have to use mine! they even use me as a pillow at times! It is parent abuse I tell ya! I am going to start locking my room!

My take on Jordan..

It is still March 12th in Canada! I have two more hours to publish this post! It is March break and I have been busy with the kids :)

Hmmm what to say, what to say! I have not read any other blogs today so I will not copy cat anyone.

Before 1998 Jordan was just a random country to me, I had never set foot in Jordan...Ok this is a lie I did spend a night in Amman when we too our first flight to Canada 20 something years ago! But it doesn’t count.

I married hubby, half of his family is in Jordan so naturally it became our yearly vacation spot, along with Syria.

On my first visit to Amman I fell in love with it! I did not know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised that it had lots of stores and brands I was used to, not as much as it does now! But after spending few weeks in Syria Amman was like Toronto! I loved how you can go to places and feel like you are in a western country, and go to other places and feel like you are in a different exotic world AKA downtown Amman, I love downtown Amman, it is a fun adventure!
I loved the Aqaba, it was very quite and serene! I loved the Dead Sea, Wadi rum, and all the historical places we got to visit in Jordan, I still have not been to Petra though!! (Annoying hubby! (*&^&%$#@QW$%R%&*))

In Jordan I felt that I belonged! Being a Palestinian in Lebanon was hell! In Jordan I was not any different from the rest, everyone talks the same way I do, and our family is called by our name, not the falastiniyi! *&^^%%$$! It felt more like home than anywhere else I lived in!

I enjoyed living in Jordan! The six months I got to live there were unforgettable! I loved every minute of it, except when I was crossing the streets and waiting for a taxi!

I will leave you with pictures of some of my favourite times in Amman. I have more pictures of our trips to 3ajloon and um qais I would like to share but they are on my other computer...I will leave them for the next blog for Jordan day! Enjoy...:)

Having lunch with friends at Macdonald's

At Dreampark

The Farm...so peaceful! Except for the dogs barking...!

At the Farm feeding the goats

Riding the horse in the Aqaba

At the Aqaba

Party at Wadi Rum

Cookie party! My yummy cookies!

snow in Amman

Dancing at the deadsea

Friday prayers, I loved the mosque in front of our house

Eid prayer..my baby is praying with them

snow, gym, driving ....

I have not posted for a while...I wanted to, but my complaints, rants and rambles (although they are all valid) seemed silly when everyone is posting about Gaza and more serious matters. But lets face it, I am not an issue blogger and probably will never beL


This morning my alarm went off at 6:45am, I have it set to 99.9fm so if there any school closure due to the weather I would know before I get up. We had yet another snow storm on Tuesday, but schools were open on Wednesday, it was still snowing on Wednesday morning. Transportation was cancelled so of course Ziad didn't go to school! Even I wanted to drive him to school I would not be able to; I had 20cm of snow on my driveway.


Since I have been back 1mo and 1wk ago I have had to shovel snow at least 7times!! My house is on a corner lot! It is great I get plenty of lights, I can see all directions from my house but I have a huge side walk to shovel snow off! AH my poor poor back! It took me two hours to shovel my single car driveway, while doing it I was thankful that we did not buy the bigger house with a two car driveway! So finally I had everything cleared, people will not curse at me when they walk on the sidewalk, no one will sue me for falling on my driveway and we are good!


Now I have a huge dilemma! We are expecting another storm on Saturday, 10-15cm of snow! Great no problem I am all stocked up on food and will be out shopping on Friday, shovelling the snow is no problem I am so used to it now , and it is a good exercise so no biggie! But I have a 4 foot pile of snow around the driveway! Where am I going to put the new snow???? Unless by some miracle a few inches of snow melt off those piles by Saturday shovelling snow will be even harder!


In this one month and one week I have shovelled more snow that I have in my 30some years living on this earth! I am so buying a snow blower! BUT I am sure once we buy one it will stop snowing! This has been one crazy year!


OK snow post is over...but I am not done "talking"


I finally joined a gym!! I joined on Saturday and so far I have worked out 2x! I figured I did not need to go to the gym yesterday since I got my workout from 2hrs of shovelling snow. Today I am super sore! My arms are sore from shovelling and my legs are sore from my lower body workout on Tuesday so I figured today I will rest my muscles. So yay! I am on a roll...I hope I can make it to the gym 4x next week! Although I have two kids to put at the small child minding room since it is March break next week, but it is ok.


The gym I joined is inside the superstore! Pretty dangerous for me considering that I am a shopaholic, so unless I need to pickup some milk or other groceries I am going to leave my wallet in the car! Ok yeh whatever! We are screwed!


Hubby is planning on leaving Saskatoon next Saturday! He is driving here since he has to bring his car, the million books we have there and other stuff. We are praying for good weather and please please no snow! It is a 3000KM drive I believe, about 30hrs driving. He will be stopping for the night in three different cities, driving about 9hr/day. I wish I could go there and then we drive together, but I do not want the kids missing too much school, they have already missed too much and I am sure my mom will be pulling her hair if I leave the kids with her for 5 days!:( O well...inshallah everything will be ok for him!