A post with no pictures.

Good golly! I hadn't realized just how long it had been since I last made a post. I guess it's time for an update! Life has been going all too fast these last few weeks! I can't even believe October is halfway over. So what have we been up to?
Well we squeezed a lot into the last few weeks of summer and we had a blast. I had my birthday....big 27! lol, I feel like its way closer to 30 than 26 was. We had cake with some friends, then went boating the next day. We also hit up Edmonton that weekend and did some shopping.
We have had lots of our family come and visit us, and it has been so wonderful. I love living close to family again. When we lived in Toronto it was almost a year before we had anyone come visit us, and then we had my parents and Mikes parents each visit once. So we have loved being close to family again. Don't get me wrong....an 8 hr drive in a car to Waterton, with three kids is no walk in the park, but it is much more affordable than trips to and from Toronto. We have made it down there 3 times in the last 6 months so we are doing pretty good. We have also loved having people over for visits, games, and food! We love food here....both making it and eating it!
We did a bit more boating, a few days at the spray park, and a few more days outside in shorts.....then fall hit. Don't get me wrong....I love fall.....but after fall comes winter...which I don't love. Therefore fall isn't my favourite season. But with fall, came Mason starting school (which he loves) and I love that it is an even closer walk to school than we had in Toronto. He loves going and coming home and telling me all that he has done and made.
October came and with it came the start of volleyball for me, thanksgiving and preparations for Halloween. A good friend of mine came up with a proposition for her and I. We both want to get back in shape, so we have given ourselves until May to lose our goals of 15-20 lbs. If we are successful....we get to go to Vegas together! So I am extra motivated to get in shape. I have loved playing volleyball again, and I may not be the star player on my team, but I am having a blast. I have also started working out at home again. We took before pictures, and hope to have some killer bods for our after pictures. If I get confident enough one day I might post them. For now I am way to embarrassed to show anybody!
Thanksgiving was awesome, we had two days of back to back delicious food! Hmmm....guess weight loss and eating lots of food don't go hand in hand, but I guess that means I have to work out extra hard these next few weeks! :) We still had a great time visiting with friends and family and remembering all we have to be thankful for.
The weather is getting colder now and Halloween is coming. Mason changes his mind daily about what he wants to be. I guess we need to narrow it down so we can figure out a costume in time.
Jaxen is now 7 months old and he is crawling all over the place. I can't believe how big he is getting some days. Aubrey enjoys her time at home with mom while Mason is in school. It's great being able to play dolls, paint our toe nails and bake together. I love having a little girl!
Overall we have been doing really well. I am thoroughly enjoying my life right now and I am excited for the future too. I still can't believe how fast time has been going. I promise I will have some more posts up soon....with pictures!

Hanging Pictues

     So it's only taken us a month and a half, but we finally got some things hung up in our house to make it feel more like home. A few weeks ago we picked up our new table, and I love it. We had just gone to "window shop" for tables when we saw it, so I snapped a picture of the info and planned to keep it in mind for later. That's when the sale lady came up and told us she would check to see if it was on sale.....I am a sucker for sales, and it was like $300 off!! We couldn't turn it down so we made our purchase and it arrived a couple days later....I was even more in love with it once we had it set up and realized it came with a leaf that easily folds under the table.

      I love the chairs because there is no fabric on them....hello I have small kids...that would be a recipe for disaster. So I am really happy with everything about it!
      Now back to hanging pictures....I felt more inclined to do it now that we had a nicer looking table to finish the room. We picked up a mirror and a new frame for one of my paintings, and hung them up to finish the space. We have few other ideas down the road of things we would like to add....but little by little it will all come together.

I painted this about 10 years ago, and my mom had it for a while.. then we had it...then it was in storage....now it's out! We decided to get a new frame since the old one was broken.

This mirror is bigger than it looks....we couldn't even get it in our car! A nice stranger in the parking lot offered to bring it home for us!

I like the room and how it came together.

      Since we were in the process of hanging things anyways, we decided to hang up a bunch of our other pictures. My living room is the farthest room from completion, but it needed something in there to stop it from feeling soooo blah! We have a pretty good idea of the new couches we want in there, as well as an area rug and new entertainment centre. A small desk too eventually....and some bookshelves...like I said it needs a lot of work. But I knew that with all our plans, the pictures we wanted to hang would still work. And if I need to change it...we can worry about that down the road.
     I decided to do a gallery style display this time around, and I came across this brilliant idea on Pinterest. Simply lay out your design on the floor, trace the frames and where the nail marks go....hang your tracing, nail the nails and hang your pictures. Excited to try it I dug through my drawers and assembled my things. The only difference was...I decided to use parchment paper instead of wax paper.
     Rookie mistake.
They aren't joking when they say non-stick paper....the tape wouldn't even stick to it. Too bad I only had about three feet of wax paper left. :(   So the project went on hold over the weekend so I could go buy some more and set to trying again on Monday night! Success!!!!

Sorry its dark....we did it late at night!

It worked like a charm and Mike was a big help!

 And I love my wall now with pictures of our family!

     We need to get a few updated photos, and print some of the ones we have and eventually hang some more pictures elsewhere in the house, but I am excited with how things are starting to come together! Once our living room looks more exciting I will add some pictures of the full room too.
      p.s. Still LOVE my kitchen!!

I can finally blog again!!

     I am so excited to be back to blogging....I have missed it! What a CRAZY couple of months it has been for our family! Lets do a little re-cap here.....at the end of Feb. I was busy getting ready for a baby, and planning a birthday party and packing a house/organizing a move across the country, and still walking(waddling) almost everywhere! At 38-40 weeks pregnant....this was all pretty exhausting. But I did it!
     Then came a baby.....but not at all how I planned! You can read that full story here if you wish! :) Needless to say I was not prepared to be recovering from a major surgery with only 5 weeks until our move! How was I supposed to pack up a whole house when I wasn't supposed to lift more than 10lbs? But with some help of friends, and an amazing husband, we did it! Packing up a house to move across the country with 3 small kids and an incision in my abdomen wasn't so fun, but getting to hang out with all my amazing friends before we left was. We were trying to cram so many things into that last week, we were crazy busy, but it was worth it! I made so many INCREDIBLE friends in Toronto, and I miss them all so much! Thank goodness for Facebook!
     Then there was the actual move. Things went soooo smoothly on the Toronto end, I was sure things were going to end well. Once our things were loaded into the truck we were told it would arrive in 7-10 days (ahem..cough..cough...try 50!!!). So here we were living in a basement suite in Edmonton with  a very few things. We had a dozen or so boxes of thing that had been kept in storage at my moms while we were in Toronto. But boxes of games, movies, photo albums and craft supplies don't do you a whole lot of good when you are trying to settle into a place.

You can see the pile of boxes we lived in for a month.

      We had about a weeks worth of clothes in suitcases, and our queen size bed(which was also in storage) our kids slept on a borrowed foam mattress, we bought a few dishes/utensils and made do for over a month! I literally could not have survived if it weren't for my sister! She lived upstairs and daily I was borrowing things! A pot or pan, a toaster, a strainer, bowls....really anything from the kitchen....also band aids, toilet paper, toothpaste....you name it,   I am sure at some point we borrowed it. We would also come upstairs and borrow a table to eat our meals sometimes, or a couch to sit on. We did share a lot of meals (especially when both our husbands went off to Toronto for Mikes convocation) and our kids had a lot of fun playing/fighting with each other!! :)

 Mike and Jordie in Toronto at Mikes convocation.

      Once our stuff had arrived we decided there was no point in unpacking it, because we found out we would be making yet another move. Mike accepted a job out in Edson, two hours west of Edmonton. In a sense it was the easiest move because most of our things were still packed up, but it was also the hardest, because I was not planning on moving so soon, and especially not planning on moving to Edson. But we are here and we are adjusting!
     Finding a place was no easy task either. Rentals are REALLY hard to come by here, and we lucked out when friend of friends were moving out right as we needed to move in. They were hoping to sell the place but we weren't in a position to buy...yet...so we came to agreements and we are renting for a few months and will be buying the place as soon as we are able. It a three bedroom townhouse/condo. I have an upstairs, main floor, and basement. And I have an AWESOME kitchen! I couldn't be happier, we have so much space! Now we just need to get a few more items of furniture to fill it and we will be set.

LOVE my kitchen!

     We also managed to celebrate Aubrey's 3rd birthday, bless Jaxen, visit my Mom and Dads several times, and take 2 trips down to Waterton. We banked a lot of time in the car!

YAY for road trips!!!! 

     The second trip we managed to hit a deer on the way down, or rather it hit us. Traveling 110km/hr we amazingly drove away with barely a tiny dent on the drivers side door. I'll spare you the picture of the deer! :) And to add to the crazy trip we were actually down in Waterton when the flooding of Southern Alberta happened. The water levels in the town site rose crazy high, but I don't think there was much flood damage to any of the buildings.

    

No sign of any beach here.

The docks were very flooded.

     It was very crazy driving back up north after and see all of the damage and water that was still around. We were glad we didn't get caught in it. It really has been a crazy last couple of months. It really has been a whirlwind, with a lot of emotionally straining things happening, but I survived. I am so grateful for such an amazing husband and family that kept me mostly sane through it. Mike can vouch for my crazy times I am sure. :) We are feeling blessed despite it all, Mike loves his new job, and I am excited to see what life will be like post grad school! Things will settle in and we will find our new groove and life will go on!

Mike did it! 6 years of school down, a lifetime of work ahead of him!! So proud of him!

Bad Night

So one of the "perks" of living in U of T student family housing is the cockroaches. Did I say perks? I meant....one of the most disgusting things ever! I really feel for the most part that we keep our house really clean. I have tried to do everything I can to reduce our chances of getting them too, like making sure there is no cardboard laying around,  keeping food tightly sealed, keeping food messes cleaned and not letting the garbage sit. Sometimes we go a long time without seeing these creepy little crawlers. But sometimes it is out of our control. I would like to blame it on the neighbors....or maybe changing weather, but I really don't think it has anything to do with us. Luckily our building also does regular treatments for said roaches at no cost to us. Not so luckily the treatment we get has no effect on baby cockroaches.....which turn into adult cockroaches. The baby ones we get are a little bit bigger than a fruit fly, and those I can kill easily. It's the big ones, half an inch to an inch that I can't handle....Mike has to kill them, and if Mike isn't around, then one of Mikes big sturdy shoes has to do the job.
So why such a bad night you ask? Because I have to get up in the middle of the night to pee....it happens every night right now, sometimes twice, but that isn't what ruined my night. Nope, what ruined my night was walking into the bathroom to see not one, not even two.....but FOUR cockroaches scurrying around. They were ones that were on their way to being too big for me to kill, and had it been daytime, I would have called Mike, but I was trying to be nice and let him sleep. Now the other thing about cockroaches....they are fast.....and they don't like to die. It was traumatic for me. I did get them, and then flushed them down the toilet to be sure. But when I went to crawl back in bed, I COULD NOT SLEEP! All I could think about was how many more might be in my house at that moment.....I couldn't stop itching either. My restlessness woke up Mike....he tried to comfort me...I was still itchy, and still could not stop thinking about cockroaches crawling all over my kitchen, and bathroom, and maybe even my bedroom.....it was a good solid hour before I drifted into a cockroach dreamland, which obviously wasn't very restful either.
We just got our apartment treated last week.....I might need to call them again.....I need my sleep.....

p.s. did I mention that I HATE cockroaches.

I'm Back!!!!

         Not that I was an exceptionally frequent blogger before, but I was pretty much MIA all summer from this here blog, and now I am back!! I have high hopes to be on here a lot more this coming fall. I have so much to write about. First of all I need to do a catch up and let you know what we did all summer long...there are probably a million pictures to go with that. We have some new exciting news that I will be talking about a lot on here, though I am sure if you have been on Facebook you already know what that is! :) I turned 26 this summer, Mason starts school, Mike is on his VERY LAST YEAR of his schooling(YAY!!!!!!!!!!) and Aubrey cracks me up daily!
        To start.....we have been in Toronto for a year now!!! That seems so crazy to me! A year ago this time we were cluelessly wandering the city trying to figure out where we were and which direction we needed to be going! I can't believe how fast it has gone, we have done so much and made some AMAZING friends and memories! I can't wait to see what else is in store for us over the next 10 months! I will be sure to keep you posted and I promise I will catch you up on everything in the near future!!

Hiatus!

It has been a while since I have been on here, and it might be a while still before I have somewhat regular posts again. My beloved computer crashed! :( I am currently using Mikes, but he needs it for a lot of his school work, so I don't get on the internet as often. I can still check my mail and Facebook off of my iTouch, but it would be absolutely ridiculous to try to write a blog post off of it!
I am not sure if my computer will be able to be fixed or not, it is 5 years old and has crashed on us once before. Either way we don't have a lot of extra cash to go and get it fixed or get a new computer or iPad. So for now the posts will be few and far between!
SAD DAY! I miss my computer!
I have a few blog posts that I need to write up, but I am not sure when I will get to them. Hopefully soon! So in the meantime don't forget about me, I will return!!

A Little ALARMING!!!!

More than a little alarming actually......quite loud and very alarming. Our buildings fire alarm went off last night. We aren't talking the little beep beep beep beep of most regular house alarms. We have one of those in our apartment that goes off when something from the stove starts smoking. No this is a really loud, wake you up out of a dead sleep, make you children start screaming, loud whooop whoooop whoooop sound. It lasted at least 5 minutes.

At about 3:45 last night it went off, and shortly after fire trucks started arriving. Not quite sure what to do, not wanting to yank the kids out of their beds if I didn't have too, hoping it was a false alarm, I sent Mike to head downstairs to see what was going on. I tried to keep the kids

from crying while I also ran around finding pants and coats and hats and mitts, and some of our

most important things like all our identification. I kept checking out the window there were at least 3 fire trucks. Right after Mike left for downstairs they announcement came over the loud speaker to stay calm and wait for further instruction!

I called Mike about 2 minutes later and he told me

there was no fire that they were aware of and that it was a false alarm.

Now we were left with a family of four unable to get back to sleep. Mike stayed with Aubrey for a good 45 min before she fell asleep, Mason was still awake when Mike came back to bed at 5:00am. I was awake that entire time and remained awake for a little while after. Thankfully my kids slept until 8:00 this morning!

I am glad that it was only a false alarm and that we still have a house, but it sure made for a long night!

This is the lovely sign we have plastered on the inside of our door!

Mikes Birthday

Mike's Birthday was last Sunday, Jan. 8th. Birthday's don't seem to be too big of a deal for Mike. Usually we have his family come over, eat some cake and that is about it. Well being here in Toronto this year....it was highly unlikely that his family would be making it out to his birthday. I know that he loves his "little family" here, but I still wanted to do a little something for his birthday. On Sat. we dropped the kids off at a friends house, then went out for some lunch and a bit of shopping. We got a little cake from a bakery for dessert!!

It was delicious!! We came home ate some, went and picked up the kids and called it a day. I wanted to do something on his birthday though. I thought it would be nice to have some people over, but our place is so tiny I knew we would have to keep our numbers few. He didn't mention wanting to have anyone over for his birthday so I took matters into my own hands and decided to throw a "mini surprise party" for him.

I contacted a few of the friends we have met since we have been here, and made the arrangements. Someone was going to come watch our kids after we had put them to bed, while I took Mike out for one last "surprise" for his birthday. We went for a short walk, and drank our hot chocolate....everyone else snuck into our house, then the babysitter called to say that Mason had thrown up. Really it would have been a total success if I hadn't had one little slip earlier in the day. That got his brain thinking and wondering if I was planning anything. But I think by the time we were almost home, talking about cleaning up puke and what blankets we would use, I had his mind off it!!

I also told the babysitter that she could get the kids back out of bed right after we left. Mason was so concerned that we would have a party without him, I just couldn't leave him in bed. Of course they were ecstatic! Our guests had brought a few decorations and jazzed the place up and the kids were going wild with the balloons and streamers. I wish I got pictures of it all. But I was trying to quickly put the finishing touches on his cake and missed the opportunity. I tried taking a few later, but the quality of them was so poor they were not worth posting. I am working on my photo skills....I have a long way to go! But I will talk more about that another time.

We sang, had some cake and then put the kids back to bed. Played a few games then everyone headed home because of early monday morning! Back to school and back to work for everyone! I was really glad I could do a little something for my favorite guy! I think he was a little bummed at the beginning of the day....thinking not much was going to happen, but I think he had a good time! I took a few pictures the next day of Mike enjoying his left over cake. That is all I have to document his birthday this year!!

The cake I made was delicious too....but I am going to write a post about that later!! :)

Blog Brain!!

I am sure it happens to everyone who starts up a blog....you start thinking your day in blog posts!! Kind of like when facebook came out everyone was thinking in 3rd person status updates!! Carla Sommerfeld wants chocolate!!! Well I definitely have blog brain!!

I am constantly thinking of things throughout the day that I would like to blog about....only problem is that I sit down to write and can't think of a single one of my witty blog posts!! The other problem is just finding the time to

write!!! oye!! Even right now I should be getting that pumpkin used up in my fridge and make a wonderful dessert out of it...or I should stop my kids from the never ending bickering....which will probably only get worse as Aubrey learns to talk back!! Or I could get busy and sort the mail stacking up on my fridge!

But instead today I decided to at least write this

post.....oh blog brain! I am sure one day I will get up all the fun posts I want to do!! All the way from downtown Toronto!!

Date Night!!!!

Mike and I had a fun date night the other night. I love that the weather was perfect and we were able to go out and have a good time! I sure am one lucky wife!! He has blessed my life so much and I am so lucky that he loves me soooo much!!

Fathers Day's a Coming!

Three more days until Fathers day, and I am not sure what I am going to do for Mike......he's is probably reading this, or at least I am being hopeful that he might be the one and only person reading this right now. He already got his "fathers day gift" a few months early. Mike and I are bad at holding off for gifts. If we see something we want we usually get it and then claim it as an early gift.....I already have my birthday gift and my birthday isn't until August!!! I think we will just do a little something to try and make the day special for DAD but we won't be lavishing him with gifts this go around!

We sure are lucky to have such and amazing guy in our house!!! So he knows and so I can tell him here is a list of some of my favourite things about him!!!

1. He picked me!!! Out of all the other girls out there he picked me! And I am so glad he did!!

2. He is super SUPER easy to get along with!!! aka he often lets me get my way because he loves me so much!

3. He does the supper dishes almost every night after dinner!! I am one lucky girl! He also helps clean up and take care of the kids a lot!

4. He is an AMAZING dad!!! He may not think he is but I certainly do!! Mason and Aubrey adore him!!

5. He is a crazy hard worker and when he puts his mind to something he gets it done and he does it well!!

6. He has a huge soft spot for his little ladies!! Aubrey can melt his heart pretty darn quick. And I would like to believe I still do the same!

7. He loves taking Mason to the park and getting him little gifts. Namely cars and animals.

8. He sure loves his family and I think he likes mine quite a bit too!! I am so luck to have married into such a great family!!

9. He always makes me feel great about myself!! Who doesn't love to have a compliment here or two or three!!

10. I just think I lucked out and married the best guy out there!!! I couldn't be happier!

I hope he knows how much I love him.....I guess I will just have to sit down and make him read this come Sunday!!