Catching up

Well, we have had a busy couple of weeks! WARNING this is a fairly long post with a lot of pictures! Two weekends ago the fire department where Pat volunteers had a pancake breakfast with Santa so the kids and I went to that. I didn't think Gabe would go near Santa but because his sisters were there too he put on a brave face and sat on Santa's lap for a picture.

The girls eating their pancakes and sausages.

Last weekend we went to some friends of ours birthday party for their little girl who turned one.

Then we went on a search for a Christmas tree. We hiked up to the power lines behind our house and found one there. Pat cut it down and Gabe "helped" him drag it back home while the girls and Stella did some sliding :)

And then we had to decorate it of course. I was pretty proud of myself cause usually I get all worked up and frusterated when it doesn't look "perfect" but I just held my tongue and enjoyed watching the kids do their thing and guess what? It looks wonderful!

Next on the agenda was finishing up gymnastics for the year. I am so proud of my girls, they are both improving so much and they really enjoy it as well. Gabe and I got to go down on the floor and watch and participate a little (usually we watch from a waiting room upstairs) and Gabe had a blast on the tumble track.

TA DA!!

And TA DA!!

On the Thursday night before the last day of school, Nyla and Cady's school had a Gingerbread house making night for all the families. We all had a wonderful time making our little creation, inukshuk and all!

And last but not least, what last week of school before Christmas would be complete without a christmas concert? Gabe's preschool had a lovely concert where the three year olds sang 3 songs ( which is what Gabe did) and the four year olds did a little nativity play. They were all sooooo cute! Especially our little handsome man in his "weddin" suit. 

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas holidays! Merry Christmas!

Christmas card

Snowflake Wishes Cranberry Holiday

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The end of "Movember"

I am so proud/disgusted with my husband and his lovely "Movember" moustache. If you are unaware of this phenomenon a short explanation might be needed. Here is a link explaining why http://ca.movember.com/about/ 

I forgot to get a before picture, but here is a recent one and pre-haircut and shave so he looks super scruffy. The disgusted part of me just does not like the look or feel of a mustache on my man, but I can certainly tamper down that feeling for a month especially cause I'm proud of him too :)

A long lost post.... supposed to be in early October

Yesterday I had to make a couple dozen cupcakes for Nyla and Cadence's Family Fun Night at their school. So while I was getting everything all together Cady and Gabe decided to have a tea party. Of course they were fighting over who got to have Cady's tea set so I took out my set which they had never seen before. Well Gabe just fell in love with it and has been playing with it almost nonstop! Even though it is porceline he is so careful with it, it is so cute :)

A windfall of cheese and butter!! (and various other things)

Will you look at all this food! Isn't it awesome especially since most of it was FREE! I can't tell you how excited this makes me especially right before the holidays. So here's the story: On wednesday night Pat's dad, Dennis, called me and asked if we had any room in our extra fridge in the basement. "I think so," I say, "why?" "Well," he says, "we have some extra cheese and butter we'd like to share with you." "ok, sounds great, thanks!" I reply. 

Well I clear up the fridge and the next day run over to their house to pick up the goods. Holy Doodles!! there are bags upon bags full of butter and cheese and yogurt and chip dips and cream cheese etc,etc. "How in the world did you aquire all this stuff?" I ask Bev (Pat's stepmom) Well I guess what had happened was that on Tuesday night (i think) the compressor for all the fridges and freezers in one of our local grocery stores, kicked the bucket and died so all this food was sitting there going to waste. By law, the store is not allowed to sell or donate all the food (because it was sitting there for a few hours "unrefrigerated") so they had to dump thousands of dollars worth of meats and other such foods. When Bev went down there Wednesday and asked where all the food was, she was told this story as well as the fact that there was a bunch of things out by the dumpsters. Well she went to check it out and technically the things were "thrown out" but there were nice neat stack of eggs and various other foodstuffs in, on top of, and around the dumpsters. I should add that the temperatures outside around here have been certainly cold enough to keep foods refrigerated if not frozen! So she basically rolled up her sleeves and got to work gathering various foodstuffs and helping a few other people who had joined her. Crazy huh? But thank you Bev and Dennis so much for your generosity and thoughtfulness!! 

Unsalted butter

Salted butter

Below are a bunch of packages of blueberries Bev recently aquired for us in a similar fashion. I'm going to be doing a lot of baking this year I can tell!

And here are just a couple of pictures of the rest of the fall decor that I am putting away today in preparation for Christmas decorations. Did you know Christmas is less than a MONTH away?!! YAY !! I love Christmas!

Well  I hope everyone has a super fantastic weekend, Bye!

First Snow!!!

Yesterday morning we woke to this sight out our windows! Of course the kids wanted to go out to play right away, so we hauled all the snow gear out of the closets (thankfully I had just picked up some winter boots for Gabe on Wednesday!) and they went out for about an hour and enjoyed the thrill of the first snowfall.

It was so nice watching the excitement on their faces and it reminded me of when I was a kid and every year we looked forward to that first day in the white stuff. It also made me so glad that we made the choice, almost six years ago, to move back here as I love the area we live in and how we get the full spectrum of every season, from a couple of feet of snow and skiing not far away, to 30 degrees and hot in the summer with the lake being not five minutes away to cool off. I love the spring and fall here too, lots of beautiful flowers and different coloured leaves.

Big Day for Stella!!!

           Yesterday was a big day for our puppy Stella. After nearly six months of having her leg bandaged from her accident in the spring, we finally got the call, from our vet, saying we could take the bandages off!! It must have been a wierd feeling for her and I think it must have been very itchy because she immediately started licking her leg and nibbling it like crazy. I let her do that for a little while, but then I noticed her skin was looking really red and irritated and she wouldn't leave it alone, so I had to lightly cover it with a small bandage and put her cone back on ( she hasn't had the cone on for a few weeks now!) I think what we'll have to do is slowly, day by day, increase the amount of time she doesn't wear a bandage cause maybe it freaked her out a little having it off finally.   




Stella back in June when it first happened



Leg in bandage before we took it off.

Stella's leg sans bandages.

Licking her leg like crazy!

You can see pretty well in the picture without her bandage, the length of her scar. That cut was the reason she has had it wrapped up for so long because it took sooooooooooooo long for that cut to close up and heal. Her leg was actually fractured and there was some ligament damage, but those healed up by a couple months ago. Anyways, YAY and Hooray that she is almost out of the woods with all this!

Halloween Cuties

Cady "The Witch", Nyla "The Cook"
and Gabe "The Fireman"



I'm not sure why Nyla looks so grumpy, but these kids had a fantastic time last night! I could not believe the amount of candy in their bags when I got home last night. Quite a haul I tell you!! Unfortunately I had to work last night (which was so slow and boring!) so I missed out on the trick or treating, but Pat and Grandma took them around uphill in town and I hear they got to see a pretty cool haunted house and some pretty neat costumes too.

Now who wouldn't want to be saved by this cutie fireman! So serious!

And of course our sweet little witch.

So this week I'll be taking down all the Halloween decorations and be waiting impatiently to put up Christmas ones instead! I just love Christmas and I always start thinking about it in September so by November first I'm usually impatient for the next holiday to begin. *Sigh* oh well :)

I hope everyone had a lovely, fun and safe Halloween!!

Fall Busyness

Ok, I promised some pictures, so here goes! This, of course, is Nyla at her 8th birthday party. She had a slumber party with a few friends, hence the pjs she is wearing :) This is her second cake because, this was the saturday after her actual birthday, and of course we had to have cake on the actual day (which is pictured below). They had a grand time at the party, hanging out in pjs, watching a movie and, needless to say, doing a lot of giggling!

This is Cady with her crazy hair and the pet hamster "Spotty" who she adores and holds all the time.

This is actually Nyla's first cake. mmm lots of cake in about a months span!

The kids after their bath, notice the lovely mauve coloured tub? yech!! oh and there's a matching toilet and sink too! Who would pick this colour for bathroom fixtures I don't know.

Hahaha, this one makes me laugh!Cadence with her turkey drumstick she picked on Thanksgiving :) The thing took up her whole plate but she insisted she wanted it. We eventually convinced her to let daddy help cut some pieces off for her.

In between all the schoolwork and working I've been doing lately, I've made sure to have a bit of time for things that I enjoy doing, like scrapbooking :) This is some of my mess while making some Christmas cards. I'm so excited for christmas already it is ridiculous! I would love to just bypass halloween and just go straight to December. I know, I know, some of you think that is nuts, but hey thats just me, a little bit nutty :)

Cutie Gabe after his bath. I've been trying really hard to take lots of pictures again because they are all growing up so fast! Especially this one, my baby who is not a baby anymore and reminds me, daily, that he is a big boy.

Speaking of being a big boy, this little man turned three this month! We had a quiet celebration at home with family and cupcakes, yum!

Busy days and a new job!

Well things are still crazy and now I have a new job to train for. Tomorrow is Saturday and I plan to do an updated post with more pics, and what has been going on around here.
Sam

Fall Fun

Hi Everyone! Well it has been a long time again, and now it is fall. We have been busy with school starting, Nyla is in Grade 3, Cadence is in Kindergarten and I'm doing some upgrading of my maths before I do the nursing course, hopefully, next September. So, busy with that and both the girls are in gymnastics as well as Pat and I working and trying to get firewood, two birthdays and wedding to go to, it's a challenge just trying to keep up with laundry! Yesterday the girls had their family fun night with their school and of course we went and they all had a blast!

Nyla and Cadence icing the cupcakes we made for their family
fun night yesterday.



Cady waiting for the cake walk to begin
Both her and Nyla won a cake in the same
round!
Nyla taking her Bingo very seriously :)


And these are the "mommy can we PLEASE go to the PRIZE ROOM!" faces.

Stella's booboo

Our poor puppy Stella got her leg ran over by a truck so she has been stuck wearing the "cone of shame" (if anyone has seen the movie "Up" thats where we got that from). Her leg is in a splint and will have to be for the next 3-4 weeks still. :( But on a happy note, she is doing much better and is mostly back to her normal self.

A New Year and a look at the old year

So, I said I would have some pics on here soon, better late than never eh? Well I've been having issues with my photo software on our computer so it has taken me a lot longer than expected. I will try to get the issues sorted out soon so I can have more up.

We had a really great Christmas holidays and really busy too, the first weekend the kids and I went to Calgary to visit Sherry (Pat's sister) and her four kids. We all had a great time visiting and it amazed me how well all the cousins played together, there is quite the age differences as Sherry's eldest is 12 and youngest is 6, but they all had a blast. I had a nice visit with Sherry and her boyfriend (now fiance) Clint. Sherry and I even got a chance to go Christmas shopping by ourselves!! Can you believe it?


can you guess what Nylas favorite prezzie was?




and Gabes?

So cute!

Unfortuately our baby boy took a tumble on New Years Eve and ended up with this poor face. The poor thing, but a bonus is that it isn't broken!