The Legges

Another Year

2011-04-17T19:46:00.002-06:00

It is hard to believe that it has been another year since I posted. Rebekah just had her 3rd birthday last week. I'm finding it hard to accept that my littlest baby is 3 already. In the fall she will be starting 3 day a week pre-school. She is so excited to go to preschool. I don't think I have to worry about first day jitters with her. Not that any of my other kids had a problem. I told her before Christmas that if she went pee in the potty and wore big girl panties she could go to preschool. She very gladly took me up on the offer and when Santa brought her panties for Christmas she refused to wear diapers. She succeeded though, so now we go to a parented preschool one day a week, and she loves it. It is so cute when she sings along in the class, as she sings her own words whenever she feels like it, and louder then everybody else.

Hannah turned 6 back in December. We had a swimming/bowling party with some of her school friends. It is amazing how independent she is getting. I can often rely on her for help now, and can trust her to do things on her own. Sometimes it is difficult to let her go, but when I give her my trust she generally does even better then I hoped. She is enjoying Grade 1. It was a rough start to begin with. She was really tired by the end of the day, and while she was loving going by the time we saw her at the end of the day she was a bit of a grouch. Things are better now though, and a earlier bed time has helped with waking up in the morning. She is doing amazing in math, and reading. Struggling a bit in talking french, but her teacher has assured us that, Hannah is just being lazy. She has an amazing french vocabulary, but generally chooses English because it's easier. Personally I can barely count to 10 in french, so for me what she knows already is amazing, and she gets great amusement out of listening to me try to read her books.

M has been with us for almost 2 years now, in fact it will be 2 years at the end of April. She turned 4 in December, and is currently going to a preschool 5 days a week. We are hoping to hold her back a year, so next year she will be going to a modified kindergarten so that the year after she can do a full kindergarten before attending grade 1. She loves going to school and is doing great there. We work on learning the alphabet and counting at home, and she is starting to be able to recognize her letters. But while she doesn't really like sitting to learn her alphabet she loves running around. M has the most fun when moving, whether it is running from one end of the house and back, pretending to be a horse or just jumping on the couch, she loves to move. We joke that she's going to be our Olympian. Soccer starts in a couple of weeks for all the girls, but I'm confident it will be M who will enjoy it the most.

Sara-Lyn will be 5 in December and she has already told me her birthday party is going to be at Stir Crazy. I'm not sure if that will work out for her, but she can always dream. She is absolutely loving preschool, and is looking forward to going to kindergarten next year. She is doing really well with her speech and we no longer worry about her at all. The speech therapist that we are working with this year has assured us that Sara-Lyn wont even need to see anybody next year. She has caught up to her peers. She has started learning how to read, and I am always shocked by how many sight words she has. She is just starting to be able to sound words out, but she has 100s of sight words and can read many books by herself.

Our last one is J, he has been with us 9 months now, and will soon be leaving us. He is being adopted and should be moving from our home by mid-May. We are going to miss him, but it will be good for him to be with his sisters and forever family. He has recently figured out how to move chairs around to reach things that he shouldn't have, and I have to say for the first week I am just going to enjoy not having to put the chairs on the table after each meal.

Drop-side cribs banned...

2010-12-15T18:30:00.002-07:00

Drop-side cribs kill 46 kids over the past 10 years and they ban them (millions upon millions of them), while the CDC reports that 77 children aged 1-3 died between 2000 and 2007 from accidental firearm discharges and every American is still allowed to own a gun... Why not put the onus on the companies that manufacture the sub-par rails and guides to provide quality parts, perhaps by getting rid of the cheap plastic and go back to good old fashioned metal? And where does a parent's responsibility end? We had a guide break on our crib (right around the time of the recall, and after 3 kids had already outgrown it) because I leaned on it with most of my weight while trying to get Rebekah out of the back corner. What did we do about it? Took the side with the broken rail off, used the crib as a toddler bed and ordered a replacement part for when the next baby came along... There are so many things wrong with this new "initiative" that I'm not even sure where to start...

We have recently been considering our impact on our world and have begun following The Story of Stuff and I can't help but think that somewhere, somebody is more worried about how they can force people to buy new cribs instead of buying them from garage sales, hanging on to them for generations, or passing them on to other new parents
I also am forced to think about how widely the same poor quality plastics that created the broken guide dilemma are used in other consumer products and how much of a backlash it would cause if they forced crib manufacturers to use a higher-quality (read as more expensive) replacement, both in terms of increased manufacturing costs and in terms of consumers realizing that there are options to the cheap plastics that have become pervasive in consumer goods...
Wondering about the intelligence of forcing new parents (who already may be struggling to make ends meet) to go buy a brand new crib because they can't get a used one any more...

Summer 2010

2010-11-07T17:13:00.004-07:00

Our summer started with Sara-Lyn's 4th birthday in June at Riley park. We had a pit of confusion to start with as the pool we had initially chosen was under renovations. But it all got sorted out and we had a great time wading in the pool and then playing at the part. Thanks to everybody who came out to celebrate her birthday with us.

I'm in a bit of shock that Sara is 4 already. I am not ready for her to be starting her second year of preschool already. Her speech has been doing great and she is loving her gymnastics. Her first year of preschool went great and she is sad that it is over and that she has to say goodbye to her teacher.

Summer was very busy for us, I can't even remember everything we did. I made a few trips to the farm with just me and the kids, and we made a trip to the lake as a family. It was a busy summer but a memorable one.

Fall is now here and everybody has started school again. Hannah is in grade one and doing great. In fact she is doing better about it then I am. I am having a hard time with her being gone all day. Some days I am glad for the quite but I wish I had the opportunity to spend a little more time with her. But she likes her teacher and the friends she has made. She is also making huge progress in Reading and Writing French and English. In fact now we can send the other kids to her to have a book read :)

Sara-Lyn is loving her pre-school again. She goes 3 afternoons a week, and wants to go everyday. She is also taking speech through her preschool. They've gone on their first field trip already to the Calgary corn maze, and Sara was in heaven to get to ride a school bus like the other kids.

M has been doing really great as well. She is going to a special needs preschool 5 days a week and has been really enjoying that. In fact she probably asks twice a day on the weekends when her bus is coming. She is getting help with socializing and speech here at the house once every two weeks. She has been making a lot of progress with expressing herself.

Rebekah is going to gymnastics along with the other kids, while she would like to go everyday I'm afraid she is stuck with just once a week. She wants to go to her own preschool, and we've made a deal that when she pees in the potty she can go to school. Her speech is amazing she has such a big vocabulary. Unfortunately many of her words are difficult to understand and she may have some of the same problems as Sara-Lyn. At this point I'm not going to worry too much as I'm confident she isn't as bad as Sara was. She is also my very stubborn girl, who definitely likes being the baby of the family. After all everybody has to cater to her every whim. While she likes to be the baby she is also very determined to be a big girl, she swings in the big swings, goes down the big slides and tries to climb everything at the park. There is no holding her back.

Our newest addition J came to us in July and he was 6 months old. He is now 10 months old. He is crawling, and getting ready to start walking. Hopefully he will be moving on from our home to his forever home in the next few weeks. This would be very exciting for him and we are all waiting anxiously to find out what the plan for him will be.

Happy Birthday Rebekah

2010-04-08T06:26:00.002-06:00

2 years old already... It doesn't seem like it was that long ago that we welcomed our third bundle of joy into this world, but alas, it has.

Rebekah seems to be growing up a little more each day. She now has enough words that she can effectively communicate most basic needs and wants, which is a welcome relief. I think her favorite work right now is probably "HEY!", which we hear whenever something she wants get put away, or whenever she wants something another kid has, or when somebody new walks into the room

30 years in the making

2010-04-07T06:37:00.002-06:00

Well, it's official. I'm no longer a twenty-something. Looking back on the last 10 years, I can definitely say that I am happy with how things have turned out so far. I have been married to the love of my life for nearly 7 years, have 4 beautiful children, am working at a job that never seems to run out of new and interesting challenges, and am living in one of the most amazing, family-friendly cities in the country. As my 30th year on this world begins, I remember how I felt 5 years ago on my 25th birthday, when I was far less happy about getting another year older. I had begun to realize that time was passing at that my childhood (and what I thought of as my youth) was officially over. 5 years later, I have come to grips with the fact that, like it or not, I am now an adult, but also that "youth" is not something that can be tracked on a calendar. It is how we feel about ourselves. It is about how we interact with the world around us. We choose to feel old. As my children begin going to school, and we move into yet another new phase in our family, I am looking forward to the challenges ahead.

Christmas is coming

2009-12-02T05:45:00.002-07:00

It's hard to believe that Christmas is almost here again. It has sure been a busy year.

Hannah
- Finished pre-school
- Finished her first dance class, complete with a recital at a big fancy theatre
- Started French Immersion Kindergarten, complete with a really exciting first day that found her in Grade 1 by accident
- Started Sparks
Sara-Lyn
- Completed her first round of speech therapy and is doing much better
- Started preschool and dance class and seems to really enjoy doing all of the big kids things that Hannah gets to do.
Rebekah
- Continues to grow like a bad weed, and is starting to use a few scattered words
Carmen
- Continues to be active on our Community Association board of Directors
- Has become a Sparks leader
- Has been working with her sister and mother to build up their sweet little startup: Bedard Creek Acres

As many of our faithful readers are already aware, we have started working with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Calgary as Foster Parents. We received our first placement within days of our home opening, a beautiful and charming little 2 year old girl, who has been with us ever since. Unfortunately, I can't say too much more due to privacy regulations, but feel free to catch me online or drop me an email and I would be happy to tell you all about her.

As for me, I haven't had much of a chance to do anything other than work for as long as I can remember. A few movies with the kids here and there, and few quick trips out of town to visit family, but otherwise not a lot new. On the topic of work, things have been good. My job continues to provide me with enough of a challenge to keep things interesting while affording me the latitude necessary for me to be an active participant in our family. Despite the sagging economy, CGI has done a lot to try and keep their employees engaged and happy, and I am happy to say that I am still glad to be working there today.

I think the single biggest event, other than essentially becoming new parents again, is that my parent's celebrated their 30^th wedding Anniversary in November, and my Sister, my aunt and I (well, Carmen really) put together a little surprise party for them back home. It was really great seeing so many of our family members and our closest family friends come out to celebrate. I want to send a special shout out to the Swartz family for helping pull the thing off and to the Yaehne family for their help and (more importantly) not whisking my parents off to Las Vegas on a last minute flight.

I am sure that there was lots more that happened this year that was blog worthy, but with facebook, twitter and more recently Google Wave blogs seem to be less and less of the place of choice for people to to stay connected. Hopefully with the new year, we can muster a new sense of commitment and start keeping our faithful few more up-to-date...

Neglected Blog

2009-07-30T08:40:00.001-06:00

So how sad is it that it took me until today to realize that my birthday post for Sara-Lyn was only saved as a draft? It seems with all the business of life, and the convenience of Twitter and Facebook, we are never on our blog any more. Just out of curiosity, how many people are still checking us out over here? (Please leave a comment)

Happy Birthday Sara-Lyn

2009-06-17T08:31:00.002-06:00

So Sara-Lyn is 3 now. One more of our babies who is no longer a baby. It's a little scary how fast they are growing up. We went to Calaway Park on the weekend with Katy and her family along with another family that Carmen is friends with through Calgary Moms.

For the record, my children are all absolute adrenaline junkies - Hannah and Sara-Lyn have both begun showing a major preference for the more intense rides, all of which require them to ride with an adult: ME (I have also discovered that I can't handle those rides as well as I could when I was younger...)

As icing on the cake, Auntie Kerri and Uncle Jay sent a balloon-o-gram today, and as luck would have it, Sara-Lyn was the one to answer the door

Happy birthday Rebekah

2009-04-13T22:16:00.000-06:00

I know Rebekah actually turned one on Wednesday, but I am in denial. I don't want my littlest baby to be one already. We had cake on Wednesday for her, and she had a blast mushing it between her fingers, and then she opened a few presents on Monday. We have pictures, and I will post them soon. Just not today.

Busy month

2009-01-29T22:29:00.003-07:00

It has definitely been a busy month for us, well more like two months, but whose counting. The holidays were great, I found them a little overwhelming this year with all the traveling we did, but it was well worth it to get a chance to visit with everybody. Hannah has been absolutely obsessed about Christmas since the beginning of December when people starting turning on their Christmas lights. Everyday she asked if tomorrow was Christmas for pretty much the whole month of December. Even on her birthday, the birthday barely distracted her from the goal of Christmas. I had hoped that when Christmas was over the onslaught would end, but it hasn't. She has been making decorations for next year's Christmas tree since the day we took this year's tree down. It doesn't matter how many times I try to explain how far away next Christmas is, she wont be deterred. I'm hoping valentines day may provide some relief. I find it hard to believe that Hannah is 4 already. Ever since her birthday it seems like she is growing up so fast, of course it probably doesn't help that I registered her for kindergarten the other day. Now I have to face the reality that in six months she will be off to school. It seems like too much for my little girl to handle. She is loving pre-school so much that I know she is going to love everything about kindergarten. She is even excited about getting to ride a school bus.

Sara has had a very exciting month as well. She enjoyed Christmas as well. In a different way then her sister though. Sara has been really enthralled with this Santa guy, even now she talks about Santa bringing her candy. Of course it probably doesn't help that Hannah is still jabbering on about Christmas. I think Sara's most exciting news for this month is that she is now officially a big girl. Complete with a big girl party at chucky cheese. We started potty training her last friday, and she was pretty much done within a week. Tomorrow will be two full weeks, and she is doing great. She is very proud of her new panties, and takes great pride in showing off the pictures on each pair. Of course Sara has to add her own brand of independence to everything, and she has already decided that she doesn't need help going potty anymore. When I try to help her she either tells me to go away, or that she wants privacy. While I am proud of her for being so independent, I just don't know if I am ready to let her handle the bathroom all by herself yet. Sara has also started speech therapy this month. It has been an interesting experience. The speech therapist was really impressed with how much Sara had improved from when she was assessed back in November. While she was labeled as severe at the assessment, she is almost into the moderate category now. It is difficult though going to the classes and watching Sara struggle so much with something that should be so simple.

Rebekah is a completely different baby from the last time I posted. Christmas was a big time for her. Over the holidays she perfected sitting by herself. she cut two teeth, and started making attempts at crawling. She still isn't crawling quite yet in the typical sense, but she is fully mobile now, she either pulls herself forward on her belly or scooches herself forward on her bum. Rebekah has also moved into the world of table food, and with a vengeance, she has become a very picky eater, and only wants what we are eating. Unfortunately she also doesn't like some of the typical finger foods you give to a baby such as cheerios, so sometimes finding her quick snacks can difficult. I pretty much have to cook a whole meal just to feed her. In the last week she has figured out how to pull herself into a sitting position from her belly, and she thinks it is very amusing to sit up and push on the bars of her crib, when she should be sleeping.

Me and Dan are doing great. I think the most important thing happening with us right now, is that we are finishing our basement. In the last 2 months we have put down a subfloor, framed in a bedroom, an office, rupus room, utility room, laundry room, and what will one day be a bathroom. We are also two thirds done the electrical. So hopefully we will be able to start putting up drywall soon, and then the fun really begins.

Happy Birthday Hannah!

2008-12-10T22:40:00.004-07:00

It's hard to believe that Hannah turned 4 today. We had princess pool party for Hannah this weekend that Kara, Kelly, Elizabeth, Katy, Jayda, Noah and Nana all came to. It was a real splash with everybody:

After that we went back to the house for cake and the princess part of the princess pool party - All in all, a really good day, but looking back, I still can't figure out where the last 4 years went...

Speech assesment

2008-11-06T08:41:00.002-07:00

Sara-Lyn had her speech assessment on Monday, and they diagnosed her with a phonological disorder. This is most likely the same thing I had as a child, but they didn't have a name for it back then. Essentially it means that her brain has difficulty organizing sounds into words. She has an amazing level of comprehension, she started getting the questions wrong when they were asking questions from the 5/6 year old set. But her spoken language skills are really low, she estimated that only about 10% of what Sara says is understandable by anybody other then me. Normally a 2.5 year old should be around 50% intelligible. She was pleased with how much Sara was attempting to talk, even if it wasn't understandable. Anyways they put her down as high priority for therapy and she should be starting in January.

Personally I am having a hard time with this diagnosis, I was really hoping to be able to go the speech assessment and have them just tell me that she was a little behind but not to worry she would catch up. Now I have to face the reality that there is something wrong, and while she will one day talk, after all I can talk, she may struggle for a long time with it. Personally I started speech therapy when I was three, and continued until the end of grade 4. I was still having difficulty pronouncing certain words well into highschool. I remember the frustration of not being understood as a child, and then mocked as I got older when I mispronounced words. This is something I really don't want Sara to have to go through. But it seems that I have very little choice in the matter, and she will most likely face the same scenarios. Especially seeing how I went and named her a name she that will probably be one of the last sounds she is able to pronounce correctly.

Halloween

2008-11-03T22:35:00.002-07:00

Halloween was a success at our house this year. Hannah and Sara-Lyn both made it all the way around the block and through both cul-de-sacs, filling two full buckets of candy each. So they both now have a gigantic bulging bag of candy. Hannah went to her preschool Halloween party as Cinderella, and had fun decorating cookies, and eating them. Sara dressed as Snow White, and we went to a drop in gym time, where they had a halloween theme. Then of course we went trick or treating. For Trick or treating Hannah wore her Cinderella dress and a pretend pony on top of that. We had decorated pumpkins a couple of evenings prior to halloween, so I will post some pictures of those and their costumes.

six month stats

2008-10-08T18:31:00.001-06:00

Rebekah weighed 16lbs and 3 ounces, and is 26 inches. She is in the 75% for everything. A rather boring appointment, the Doctor suggested we slowly introduce fruits and a few vegetables high in sugar to help her adjust better, and then introduce grains much later.

Six months already

2008-10-08T10:22:00.004-06:00

It is hard to believe but Rebekah is six months old today. It is amazing how much a baby changes in six months. Her favorite things to do right now are jump in her jolly jumper and blow spit at everybody. She also really likes to say "dat dat dat dat" over and over again. Particularly at 6:00am when she should be sleeping. She is rolling over easily now, although she doesn't really like spending time on the floor, she doesn't get as much practise as she probably should. She loves pretty much anybody but both Hannah and Sara can get a giggle from her just by stopping to say "hi" or making a funny face. Our biggest concern with her right now is introducing solid food, we started about three weeks ago and have had nothing but problems. I'm hoping the Dr. can give us some suggestions this afternoon at her six month appointment, because at the moment I am at a loss as to what to try with her. The only thing I am giving her right now is pears because they are supposed to be high in fibre, and easy to digest, but even the pears seem to be making her sick. She loves to eat though. She eats two large meals a day, and if you even think about skipping them she gets a little orniery. She is definenitly a morning person, and wakes up each morning (way to early) with a gigantic smile, then she sticks her tongue out and blows some great bubbles. But I am off to pick up Hannah so we can go to Rebekah's apointment.

more firsts

2008-09-18T09:10:00.004-06:00

At Rebekah's appointment she weighed 14 lbs 7 ounces, which is exactly average for her age. She was also exactly average in length and head size as well. Otherwise she was perfectly healthy as expected of course. Sara has decided that she needed to have a first this month as well, so she took it upon herself to go to the potty all by herself, twice in two days. My goal is to have her potty trained in time for preschool next sept. so I definitly think we're on the right track. Sara has also discovered that she can turn the light on in her room, so bedtime has now become a new game, where instead of coming out of the room a dozen times, she gets up and turns her light on, and if we don't check her and Hannah will play for hours. I think that is everything for now, and I'll post some pictures just to make everybody happy.

Firsts

2008-09-11T16:12:00.002-06:00

My poor neglected blog, I think it was starting to feel a little abandoned. Well I haven't given up on it yet, I just took a little break while our life was so hectic. It has been a months of first for the kids. Hannah started her first day of preschool on Monday. The Friday before was a brief 1 hr long orientation where I stayed with her, and she pretty much ignored me. I was the parent standing off to the side awkwardly looking around wondering what I was supposed to do with myself. Of course better that then the parent desperately trying to unglue their child from their leg. Monday was her first day by herself, and she did great, she was excited for me to leave, and excited when I came and picked her up. I feel a little bit sad that there wasn't a little bit of a moment where I could be the loving Mom and reassure her that preshcool was as much fun as it promised to be. But I guess I am glad that she has the self-confidence to run head long into each new experience. Hannah also had her first day of dance school today. It was perhaps an even bigger event as we had to buy a whole dance outfit and two pairs of shoes, so she has been waiting for dance school all week. I would have loved to stay and watch her for the dance class as I just know she was adorable in her little outfit, dancing with all the other pink princesses, but the class has a strict closed door policy, so I have to trust Hannah's big smile to say that she had a good time.

Rebakah has also had a few first this month as well. She rolled over two weeks ago for the first time, she was on her stomach one minute I looked away and there she was on her back. It was quite exciting other then the fact that I completely missed it. She has also started spending sometime in her jolly jumper. She is growing like crazy, she has her shots tomorrow so we will find out exactly how much she has grown.

I'm feeling bad for Sara-Lyn that there isn't a whole list of things for me to say about her, but I'm afraid she isn't in any exciting classes, and as she has achieved all the majoy milestones already there isn't much I can say. Of course that doesn't mean Sara isn't doing stuff. She is learning words everyday, and is starting to use them in a very forceful manner. Her favorite expression right now is to cross her arms, stick her lip out, and go "hmphf" with this ridiclous frown on her face. She is becoming a little dare devil at the park. She makes me cringe lots, when she insists on following Hannah up everything.

Well I guess that is everything, perhaps if I remember I will post the results of Rebekah's shots tomorrow, or maybe some pictures.

2008-07-23T10:46:00.002-06:00

Back to work

2008-07-16T22:29:00.002-06:00

Dan went back to work last Monday. So it has just been me alone with the kids for the last week and a half. It actually hasn't been as bad as I though it might be. I've actually ventured out of the house a few times. I've been to the mall twice, for Dr. appointments, and we went grocery shopping, and the park twice. Really I think we're doing pretty good considering I am now outnumbered. I've been meeting with people for my dayhome, so hopefully I will have some more kids soon to add to the numbers. Then it will really be an adventure to get out of the house.

Summer Vacation

2008-07-16T22:21:00.002-06:00

We went to little bear lake this year for our summer vacation. We were lucky enough to gets lots of hot sunny days, and only one really rainy day. The girls had a blast hanging out at the beach, and playing in the dirt at our campsite. And when we got tired of playing outside we were lucky enough to be able to retreat to Grampa's cabin for some edible food, and television. It was great visiting with everybody who made it out to the lake. We even got adventuresome one day and took Hannah and Sara tubing. They both had a great time and I wish we would have had more time to take them again. Sara unfortunately got dunked when we were forced to abandon ship. She seemed to recover pretty quickly though and I bet she would get back on again. Rebekah mostly just hung out in her car seat and took lots of naps, but I guess that is what babies are supposed to do, so no surprises there. She did however capture every bodies hearts with her constant smiles and giggles.

Happy Birthday Sara-Lyn

2008-06-17T14:14:00.003-06:00

Sara-Lyn is two today, and there is no denying that she is a two year old. She is becoming more and more independent everyday. One minute demanding that she do everything herself, and then next wanting to be picked up and cuddled when things don't go quite as planned. Sara loves to take care of other people giving out lots of hugs and kisses to those she deems acceptable. Sara loves to be a big girl, and to do everything the way Hannah does it. From eating with a spoon to climbing the play structure at the park. Her favorite toys right now are her babies, and sneaking Hannah's jewels whenever Hannah puts them down. Her newest words are butterfly and flower, and she is learning new ones everyday. She likes to give Rebekah hugs and wipes her face with any blanket on hand.

Dan's Personality/Intelligence Profile

2008-06-16T16:35:00.002-06:00

Pictures

2008-05-30T12:49:00.003-06:00

Congratulations Angela and Marc

2008-05-27T15:34:00.000-06:00

Six weeks already

2008-05-27T15:22:00.003-06:00

Wow, how time flies. I can't believe that Rebekah is six weeks already. And it has been a very busy six weeks. I think Rebekah is probably one of the most well traveled six weeks old babies out there. We've travelled to Edmonton, stayed at a condo on the Shuswap, and then travelled on to Vancouver to visit some University friends and Dan's cousins. Then the weekend after we arrived home we packed up again and headed off to Edson for the long weekend. We're off to Edmonton this weekend and then Edson again on the 21st for Dan's sister's wedding. After which we will make our way to Saskatchewan for some camping.

Somewhere in all of this we had Rebekah's six week appointment and she is doing great, she weighs 10 lbs 12 ounces. and is 21.5 inches long. Her neck is getting stronger everyday and she is starting to smile at anybody who looks her way, at least when she isn't sleeping.

more pictures

2008-04-20T17:54:00.003-06:00

Since coming home

2008-04-12T14:53:00.002-06:00

It has been a rather hectic couple of days for us. I got home with Rebekah on Wednesday and we started to get settled in. On Thursday just as we were started to get settled in, the public health nurse stopped in for her visit. She decided that Rebekah looked a little jaundice and sent off a blood sample to the hospital. By 8:00pm on Thursday we were back at the hospital so Rebekah could go under the lights. It took a full 24 hours for her levels to come back down to a safe amount so we just got back from the hospital last night. Sara has been sick with a fever since Monday night. It bounces between 100 F to 104.5 F. So things have been a little rough for her over the last few days. And as she seems to have a tendency to puke whenever her fever spikes, Dan has had a lot of fun cleaning up puke, while I have been at the hospital. So we're hoping whatever it is that is causing Sara to be so sick will end soon so we can really get a chance to relax and find a routine that works for us. That pretty much sums up what has been happening here since Monday, I can definitely say it has been an exciting week.

Pictures

2008-04-12T14:47:00.001-06:00

Birth story

2008-04-12T13:59:00.002-06:00

On Tuesday morning around 8:00am my water broke. Thankfully by a whole bunch of coincidences Dan was only 5 minutes away from the house on his way to work when I called him, so he made his way back here, and I called our babysitter. Around 10:00am I was having contractions so we headed off to the hospital. I got a bed in triage and hooked up to the monitors around 12:00pm. The monitors showed that I was having contractions about every 10 minutes, but the babies heart beat was dropping off occasionally with the contractions so they were worried that the cord was pinched. They decided to keep me hooked up to the monitors to make sure it didn't get worse. Unfortunately this meant that I couldn't get up and walk around so the contractions I was having stopped. Once the contractions stopped the babies heart rate stabilized so they let me get up and walk around, which we did.

At 7:00pm because my contractions hadn't started again, I was given the option to go home and try to get them going again, but I had to come back in at 7:00am to be induced if they didn't start. Or I could get induced right now. I really didn't feel that going home was going to get the contractions started so we decided to get induced right away, with the stipulation that before they started the cytosine they would do an exam to make sure there wasn't a pocket of water. They did the exam at 8:20pm and found that I was 4 cm dilated and had a pocket of water, which they promptly broke. They agreed to wait another 2 hours before starting the cytosine to see if rebreaking the membrane would start labor naturally. At 11:00pm my contractions were getting to be intense but they were still 5 minutes apart, and the nurse really started to push me to start the cytosine to get things moving. I eventually agreed but I wanted to get the epidural put in first. So at 11:45pm I got my epidural, immediately after getting the epidural my contractions moved to being a minute apart, so we didn't end up using the cytosine after all.

At 12:45pm the babies heart rate starting dropping with each contraction again, so they did an exam to see if I was ready to push and I was 9.5 cm dilated, but the heart rate was becoming a concern so I was put on oxygen and an internal monitor was put in, we then started trying various positions to get the heart rate back up. We eventually got the heart rate to go back to normal by having me stay on my hands and knees. Shortly after getting into this position I started to feel the urge to push, but as they figured going back onto my back to push would cause the heart rate to drop again, they wanted to wait for the baby to move down more on it's own, so I stayed on my hands and knees for another 40 minutes while we waited for the urge to push to become pretty much unbearable.

At 1:35am I announced that I couldn't wait any longer and that this baby was coming out now. I rolled over and started to push pretty much right away. Things got a little hectic here, as she came a lot quicker then the nurse expected and after only three pushes the babies head had not only crowned but was out. At this point the nurse started calling frantically over the intercom for the somebody to get in there now! She also discovered at this point that the cord was wrapped around the babies neck and was causing the babies heart rate to drop. So while I think she might have wanted to take a quick break at this point and give the Dr. a chance to arrive we had to get the baby out right away. So the pushing resumed and she was out just in time for the Dr. to run in and catch her. She let out a big cry right away to let us know she was okay. So Rebekah Lauren was born at 1:45am, 7lbs 12 oz and 21 inches long.

She was perfectly healthy, except for being mucusy from being born so quickly, and she had bruises on her face because she was facing up when my labor started and in the process of turning she got some bruises on her face.

Off to the hospital...

2008-04-07T08:50:00.003-06:00

Apparently this baby has a mind of it's own and doesn't want anybody to tell it when it should come... my water broke this morning, so we will be off to the hospital soon. Check back soon to find out about baby.

baby.. baby.. where are you?

2008-04-03T15:58:00.002-06:00

Oh wait I remember now, still in my stomach. I saw my Dr. on Wednesday and she feels that I will probably go into labor any day. She even went so far to suggest that Friday worked well for her, as she is on call that day. But if I don't go into labor soon, when I see her next Wednesday she will break my water, and I will be off to the hospital. I am excited to have an end date to this pregnancy as it seems to be dragging on forever, but I can't help but hope that her first prediction that it would be sooner rather then later was true. So for those who haven't put in a guess yet for the birth of this baby, I just narrowed the field so you might want to throw a day out there before they're all gone.

Ultrasound

2008-03-29T13:05:00.002-06:00

I know some people are actually wondering about the results of my ultrasound on Thursday so I guess I can take the time to write it down. The baby was measuring exactly average for how far along I am. They are guessing around 6 and 1/2 lbs, although ultrasounds are plus or minus a pound so really that weight means nothing. I am actually very happy to hear that this baby isn't ridiculously large like the last two were. I was getting worried that I was going to end up delivering a 10 lb baby. Of course the bad news is, that so far this pregnancy has been exactly average, which means if I continue on this trend of averageness I wont have this baby for another two weeks. I think I will go crazy if I have to wait another two weeks, or even possibly longer. I have officially carried this baby one week longer then I did with Sara and it feels like I should just have this one any day now.

In other news we celebrated Dan's birthday last night by having a few friends over, it was fun although it seemed that this has been a long week for everybody so we kept it pretty mellow. And well let's face facts I'm as big as a house how much fun can I possibly be. Sara and Hannah are doing great as always. Sara is starting to slowly expand her vocabulary. Although I have to admit that her grunting is amazingly effective. Hannah is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the baby, which she has nicknamed 'Tickely'. She has predicted that Tickely will arrive on Wednesday. I am predicting Saturday the 5th. Anybody else care to wager a guess....

Easter Weekend

2008-03-24T10:14:00.003-06:00

Well Easter is officially past, and I am still pregnant. I really thought that I would have had this baby by Easter, but it appears that this baby has decided it needs to be full term. I will officially be 37 weeks pregnant tomorrow, which is considered a full term baby. I am glad that I made it this far, because it means that we don't have to worry about any complications from having an early baby. However I am starting to get a little impatient and I would be just as happy to have this baby any day now. I have an ultrasound on Thursday to check on the size of this baby, seeing how I have a tendency to have really big babies they want to check and make sure this one isn't going to 10 lbs.

Easter was fun, we had Dan's sister and her family visit us from Edmonton. So the kids did the easter egg hunt in the morning, then colored eggs. The weather was beautiful so we made our way to the park in the afternoon. I cooked a turkey complete with stuffing and everything. Last Christmas I made a pre-stuffed turkey, so this was my first attempt at doing turkey and stuffing completely from scratch. And I think it turned out pretty good. Next time will be better though. The kids had a great time finding eggs. and then eating them of course. Hmm well I can't think of anything else of importance to write about, and to be honest I'm kind of tired today after all the excitement over the weekend so I think I am going to go back to sitting on the couch like a big lump.

Preschool Registration

2008-03-10T13:07:00.002-06:00

It is preschool registration night tonight, and Dan has been nice enough to volunteer to go register her. This is actually a bigger deal then it may seem as we live in a city that is growing much faster then it's infrastructure. So Dan is going to go stand in line at 5:30pm for a registration that doesn't even start until 7:00pm just to ensure that Hannah actually gets into the program of our choice. We actually have it easier then most people as we are trying to get into a location that is opening for the first time in September, which means that after the preregistration for siblings of already registered kids, there are 11 spots open, and not the 2 or 3 that most locations are boosting. Well wish us luck.

sleep please ...

2008-02-22T09:57:00.002-07:00

I think at this point I would gladly pay to have one night of completely uninterrupted sleep. Tuesday night I woke up at 3:00am to the sound of Hannah puking, two hours later and another two puking episodes I finally got back to sleep only to have Dan's alarm go off. Wednesday night I woke up at 4:00am because of Hannah coughing. And for those who have experienced Hannah's coughing you already know that to ignore her is just asking for another puking episode. So I was up getting her propped up on a pillow and waiting for her current coughing fit to subside. This of course woke Sara up who then decided that getting in and out of bed until 5:30am was a good idea. So finally at 5:30 with Hannah no longer coughing and Sara asleep I went back to bed, and then Dan's alarm went off. Last night at 3:30am Hannah woke me crying because her stomach hurt. I tried to calm her down for 20 minutes in her room, succeeding in mostly just waking up Sara. Finally I woke Dan up and sent him downstairs to watch the fire with her. Unfortunately though Sara would have nothing to do with going back to sleep without Hannah, so we all ended up downstairs. 40 minutes later Hannah's stomach finally stopped hurting and we were able to get both of them back asleep in their beds. Of course it was now 5:00am, and does anybody want to guess what happened at 5:45am. A big gold star for anybody that guessed that Dan's alarm went off. I have to admit that I am starting to have violent feelings towards Dan's alarm. Well anyways that has been my last few nights, lets all hope the weekend goes a little better. On the bright side Dan's alarm wont be going off.

All In!

2008-01-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

Well last night was certainly fun! Carmen and I got to participate in my Company's annual No-Limit Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament at the Stampede Casino last night.

Despite a good start, I had a hard time making hands and was pushed out sometime around 7:30, surviving longer than about half of the other competitors. After some well timed heckling once I was out, I won a gift certificate to the local malls as a door prize. But that's none of that is the fun (or really all that interesting) part.

Carmen was the real star of our household (and the show in my not-so-objective opinion). When I was pushed out, Carmen was the short stack at her table, and we both were thinking "Oh well, at least we had a fun evening out"... And then Carmen started winning. Within about 30 minutes, she had massacred half of the table, leaving a trail of shattered dreams and wounded pride as she eliminated player after player, sometimes two at a time...

Before all was said and done, she was the last woman in the game, she was at the final table and she was one of the final two to not have gotten up from her seat even once. (considering the fact that she is six months pregnant, I think she should have won a prize for not even needing a bathroom break). Her run of good play lasted for a while, but as other tables started paring down, a few big stacks joined her table (which hadn't seem any new blood, er chips all evening) and the sudden shift in play, combined with a run of mediocre cards, starting eroding the big stack.

In the end, Carmen placed 6th out of 71 people, taking home a purse of $100, so all-in-all, an evening well spent :)

Ultrasound

2008-01-22T16:40:00.001-07:00

We had another ultrasound today, and everything is fine with the baby. We finally know the sex of the baby after waiting what seems like forever. I'm feeling a little mean today though so I'm not telling what it is. You'll have to phone us or wait another 10 weeks to find out. I didn't get any pictures from this ultrasound because the baby was positioned with it's feet up by it's head so the pictures all would have been a mess of random limbs. Baby was measuring exactly average for size, which really doesn't surprise me, because Sara measured exactly average as well until I was into 34 weeks then she all of a sudden grew like crazy. But at least I can still hope for a small baby this time.

Our Weekend

2008-01-21T10:09:00.001-07:00

We have had very busy weekend. It started with Hannah's sportball lessons with Dan on Saturday morning. Me and Sara decided to tag along as we were going to stop at home depot on the way home in order to pick up paint for Hannah and Sara's bedroom. Well of course as much fun as Hannah was having playing sportball Sara was not happy to sit and watch so we left the gym to wander around the rec center, possibly stopping at the library. Unfortunately we never made it to the library because I was unfortunate enough to fall down a set of horrible scary looking concrete stairs. It was a rather nasty fall too, as I was holding Sara in one arm and the railing with the other hand. I fell forward, which means that I fell forward and into the railing, as I wasn't letting go of the railing for anything. Unfortunately though without another free hand to catch myself my forward momentum continued to propel me forwards and downwards. So I was forced to let go of the railing as I continued my trip down the stairs in a very awkward backwards sideways somersault. Anybody who has ever fallen while carrying a child knows that absolutely no attempt can be made to save oneself any pain as all effort is being put into stopping your child from cracking their head on the horrible scary not rounded stairs. So while I may have managed this trip down the stairs without any injury to myself had I been by myself, I have to console myself with the knowledge that by some amazing miracle I did make it down the stairs without injuring Sara.

What amazes me about this whole experience though, and perhaps the reason why I have decided to post about it, is the absolute indifference that other people showed to our plight. There is one person in particular who I am wishing at least three weeks of bad karma on. This is the person who passed us on the stairs just moments before I fell. This man actually continued on his way exiting the building while I was still laying at the bottom of the stairs trying to figure out if I was going to pass out from the incredible pain coming from the back of my head. I heard two sounds as I assessed my situation, Sara crying, and the click of the door at the top of the stairs opening. Some people may of course excuse this guy's behavior with the assumption that he wasn't aware that I fell down the stairs, but I have to dismiss this as I let out a small audible yell as I began to fall, and there is no way a pregnant women and a toddler gracefully fall down a set of stairs without making a sound, and come on, the toddler was screaming. So anyways I have to wonder how it is that anyone could possibly ignore a pregnant lady carrying a toddler who has just fallen down the stairs, I always thought that the image of motherhood was supposed to evoke the utmost generosity in people. So anyways enough about that guy there was a nice woman with a child of her own coming from the other direction who stopped to ask if I was okay, and so I hope she has a really good three weeks, and for the other half a dozen people who looked right at me sitting at the bottom of the stairs with a screaming toddler and didn't stop I wish them two weeks of bad karma.

Just to reassure everybody I did go to a medicenter mostly because my head hurt like you wouldn't believe and well I am pregnant and I did roll down a set of concrete stairs. Of course I later discovered that the reason my head hurt so bad was because I had hit it not in one place but three, and I just couldn't narrow down the sources of pain until the main one started to subside. So I have two goose eggs on the back of my head and a bruise above my one eye. and of course more bruises then I care to count going from my shins all the way up to my head. But hey Sara doesn't have any!

After this whole excursion we decided not to attempt to paint the kid's room on Saturday and instead finished organizing our basement after the kids went to bed Saturday evening. But Sunday we felt a little at a loss as what to do with ourselves so we went to home depot and picked out the paint for the kids room anyways, and I am glad to say that it is over half way done. Hopefully we will have it finished tonight and the kids back in their room by Tuesday night.

Swimming Lessons

2008-01-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

Hannah started her swimming lessons on Wednesday and she seemed to really enjoy them. I have to say that I do not envy the instructor for a class of 6 three year olds. There was a few moments where he a little difficulty keeping one or two from wandering off. Hannah enjoyed the splashing and floating on a kick board and can't wait to go back next week. Me and Sara paid to go to the Parent and tot swim time which was available during Hannah's lessons so we got to go swimming as well, and Sara really enjoyed swimming, although she seems to have no concept of her own safety. She ducked her own head more times then I can count, first when she was using the kick board in the shallow water, and then when she was walking in the deep water. The whole outing was a success anyways and we will definitely continue to take advantage of the parent and tot swim time during Hannah's lessons.

Christmas Summary

2008-01-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

I know Christmas was a month ago, but I can't help but feel that it is important enough to warrant a post even if it is ridiculously late. We started our Christmas holidays by traveling to Edson to relax for a few days and then celebrate Christmas. It was of course enjoyable with lots of good food. Hannah had a blast as she got into the Christmas spirit, she enjoyed Papa's lights and took great offense when the blowup figures weren't turned on. She decorated cookies and of course was ecstatic with the phone call she received from Santa on Christmas eve. Sara was a little more mellow about the whole Christmas thing, mostly wanting to play with other people's toys rather then open her own presents but she enjoyed torturing her cousins, looking for cars out the window and riding on her dump truck that she got for Christmas.

We then traveled on to Saskatoon where we spent the rest of our holidays celebrating two more Christmases and New Years. Once again we really enjoyed ourselves in Saskatoon. Hannah really enjoyed playing with her two aunts and well opening more presents. Sara continued torturing her cousin, and her two aunts. Me and Dan got to play lots of board games which always puts us in a good mood so the whole visit was a success.

We headed home on New's Year day and spent the next two weeks relaxing after our vacation.

What a night ..

2007-12-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

I went to check on Sara-lyn last night around 11:00pm and discovered that she was having a really difficult time breathing. I have never heard anything sounds so horrible before, she was wheezing with every breath and when she would try to make any kind of noise it would just come out as gasp. So we called health link and they listened to her, and told us to take her to the Alberta Children's hospital because it was probably croup and because she was having such a difficult time breathing they would want to give her something. So off we went at midnight to the childrens.

The health link nurse was right about it being croup and the triage nurse gave her some corticosteroids and gave us a bunch of papers on what to do with a child with croup. We then waited in a little room for just about two hours to see the Doctor who gave us some corticosteroids to take home and gave her some ibuprofen for her fever which had been slowly going up since we arrived at the hospital.

The poor girl is still sick this morning, although at least she can breath today, so I guess we will be taking it easy for the next week until this clears up.

Hannah's Artwork

2007-12-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Hannah

2007-12-11T17:11:00.000-07:00

2007-12-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

Christmas Naughty or Nice List

Christmas Naughty or Nice List

You are on the The Nice List
After checking the North Pole database we found you had :

2,402 nice entries
198 naughty entries

Check your name on the Christmas Naughty or Nice List at JokesUnlimited.com

Christmas Spirit

2007-12-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

We're getting into the christmas spirit at our house, what is everybody else doing?

Gingerbread house

Tree Decorating

And off to the Zoolights

2007-11-22T16:24:00.001-07:00

Ultrasound

2007-11-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

We had our 18 week ultrasound on Monday. And baby is doing great. We saw the babies heart, and spine, hands and feet. Got some great pictures, a few you can actually see the babies nose, and chin. It was a pretty routine ultrasound I'd have to say, Dan came with me, so that was nice for him to get to see the baby, he kind of misses out because he doesn't get to hear the heartbeat during my monthly trips to Doctor. I'm still waiting to see my OB to find out what I can expect for delivery of this baby, seeing how Sara got stuck. My family Doctor has already said she thinks I will need a c-section but I'm still holding out hope that the OB will be a little more relaxed about it. Anyways my next appointment is early December so hopefully I see the OB shortly after that.

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T16:42:00.000-06:00

My daughter is amazing

2007-10-29T09:39:00.000-06:00

I have often thought that Sara is above average in her ability to manipulate things, For example she has been stacking blocks long before most other kids her age, and she builds lego towers that are as high as she can reach. I have up to this point thought that her ability to do this is because she watches Hannah and so she thinks to do things sooner then other kids who don't have somebody to copy. But today I am convinced that Sara is just amazing. She ate her whole breakfast this morning with a spoon. I think this is absolutely amazing for a 16 month old. We have been giving her cereal with milk in it for about a month now, And up until today she has always eaten with her hands, which is kind of messy, but today she ate every bite in her bowl and then seconds with her spoon. Dan saw her using the spoon yesterday but I didn't see it, so I didn't understand how good she was actually at it, but the whole bowl of cereal including milk, and she only spilled a few drops. Now I would like to believe that this means she will always eat with a spoon from now on, but as I have a three year old who still occasionally decides that her hands work better, I know better.

playdate

2007-10-18T11:48:00.000-06:00

well I just hosted my first play date since moving, and I have to say it went better then I thought it would. I was a little worried that with it being so open on the main floor, that with 15 kids and 6 adults that the noise would be a little overwhelming. But it actually worked out well as the kids spent most of their time in the playroom, and I moved the rug and some toys out to the living room for the babies. With the food on the island it was actually a really efficient layout for entertaining. I think though if it had been any bigger I would have had to open up the upstairs to send some of the bigger kids up there, which actually isn't a problem for me, the biggest issue is the kids getting around the gates as we keep gates permanently installed at both the top and bottom of our main set of stairs. Well anyways it went well, Hannah and Sara both had a good time, and once again I get to enjoy other people's baked goods for a few days, hmmm .... brownies, and cupcakes.

Our announcement!

2007-10-15T16:38:00.000-06:00

Well, I figure I will finally make it official and tell the whole world our news.

We're pregnant!

I think we might have actually told most people already but for those of you who didn't find out in person, I apologize, but we have actually been pretty low key about this pregnancy only telling people in the last few weeks, and in most cases we have only told people we have actually seen in person. But anways on with the details. We are 13 weeks pregnant now, and happy to be out of the first trimester. I heard the heart beat a fews ago at my 11 week appointment, it was 160 bpm. So far this pregnancy has been absolutely miserable and has been more then enough to convince me that this will be our last pregnancy. I have been suffering from really bad morning sickness which seeing how I have two other children to look after I have been heavily medicating in order to be able to function. Unfortunately the side effect of the medication is drowsiness, which leaves me in kind of a constant daze. But I have hope that the morning sickness will end soon and then I can start feeling normal again, at least until I start being the size of a house. I am actually showing very little with this pregnancy with Sara I was in maternity pants by 8 weeks, I just started wearing maternity pants the other day, and to be honest it was more of a lack of clean laundry then anything else. I will admit they are more comfortable, so I will probably stick with them, I do have a few pairs of regular pants that were still fitting fine. hmm... what else to say, we are planning on finding out the sex of this one so wait for the post in about 5 weeks. Hopefully the baby will cooperate and we can get a good look.

Potty training

2007-10-01T16:49:00.000-06:00

Well I think I can safely say without jinxing it that Hannah is finally potty trained. Well at least pee trained. She has been doing so good with going to the potty for pee. Although she has a habit of waiting until the absolute last minute to say anything, so she ends up just standing there with her legs crossed saying she has to go to the potty. It is actually quite comical. Unfortunately poop hasn't been going so well, and to be honest I am at a loss as to what to do next. I have done a lot of reading on potty training recently and the general consensus is that poop training is easier because 1. kids poop on a regular schedule, and 2. most kids have visible cues such as squatting in a corner that they are pooping. Well I think after doing this and watching her like a hawk for two weeks I can safely say 1. Hannah has absolutely no schedule, and 2. She has absolutely no visible cues. She could be going poop at absolutely any moment of the day, and the only sign is the smell. So anyways seeing how I never know for sure when she has to go I am completely reliant on her telling me honestly whether or not she has too, and well that isn't going so well. At the moment I am actually attempting to bribe her with icecream if she goes on the potty. Well anyways that is my current frustration.

Doctors appointments

2007-10-01T16:46:00.000-06:00

I took the kids to our family doctor the other day just for a quick checkup, and well nothing is wrong with them, but it was interesting to find out that both Hannah and Sara weigh exactly 11.9 kg (27 lbs). Hannah is 90 cm tall, and Sara 81 cm.

Moved in!

2007-10-01T16:36:00.000-06:00

Okay we moved into our new house over a month ago, but better a post late then never. The move went off without a hitch. (At least a month later I can't remember any) Thanks everybody for all your help. We are really enjoying out new house. Hannah loves the park that is so close, and our company is enjoying the fact that we actually have a spare bedroom. The kids are doing well sharing a room, in fact since we moved here, Sara has started sleeping through the night. Before we moved she was waking up at least twice and I was giving her water one time and some milk the second. The open floor plan and high ceilings means that everything tends to echo, so there are not too many parts of the house that are actually quit when the kids are awake anyways. I love having a dishwasher. I don't know how I survived so long without one, seriously I think I have already forgotten how to wash dishes. But my tetris skills have probably improved. It is great being so close to a superstore here, I never realized how much time I wasted driving to and from the grocery store at our old house, but it is great having both a Sobeys and Superstore so close. I haven't really had too many opportunities to take full advantage of our 4 piece en suite, I'm afraid the tub is probably feeling a little neglected since we moved in. But I do have visions of one day actually relaxing in our huge soaker tub. Well anyways that pretty much sums up our life in our new house.

2007-08-16T17:38:00.001-06:00

back from our vacation

2007-08-16T17:12:00.000-06:00

we're back from a week long camping trip at little bear lake. It was great to get a chance to visit with family and the kids had a great time playing at the beach, and going boating. Well Hannah really enjoyed the boating anyways, Sara fell asleep. Hannah was actually pretty unwilling to go into the water mostly because it was too cold, but nothing could turn Sara away, she ventured in every chance she got. The only problem we have now is that every time we drive by a lake Hannah decides she wants to go play at the beach. And funnily enough Calgary is full of little lakes. I showed Sara how to pick blueberries on our last day, and as we were packing up, she sat in a blueberry patch just munching away. Perhaps I will post a few pictures when I track down our camera.

Since we got back I have been slowly packing, unfortunately it is going slower then I would like, thankfully next week I will have a some help looking after the kids. I got around to getting our utilities switched today, and if anybody wants to hear a long rant about incompetent people just ask me about that. But for now lets just say it took two hours, and not because I was on hold the whole time, and I still have to phone back in a couple days to confirm that the gas will be hooked up for sure. We're debating whether or not we should switch to Telus when we move, because it is cheaper and we can get a plan that is a little more attuned to what we need, but unfortunately we have had some very back experiences with Telus in the past, so if anybody is currently using Telus and can give us their opinion on the service, please do leave a comment. In particular we are wondering about their internet service and the new tv programing they are offering. (we are currently using shaw for everything).

W bought a house!

2007-07-19T17:01:00.000-06:00

Well we actually bought it two weeks ago, but I have been shockingly lazy the last little while with posting stuff, but anyways it is a three bedroom two storey house in the Coventry area of Calgary. It was built in 2005 so it doesn't have a finished basement, or a finished back yard. So I guess we're going to have a little bit of work over the next few years finishing it off. We're moving on the 25th of August, so if anybody is available that weekend and wants free food, we would really appreciate the help.

In other news, Sara is almost walking she will take 5 or 6 steps away from furniture quite often, she is also becoming my climbing dare devil. She can climb up the slide part of the slide in our back yard all by herself. I find this a little scary, since Hannah has difficulty accomplishing this, while Sara can get up there in a matter of seconds. Well anyways lots has happened in the last few weeks but I am feeling a little lazy today so maybe I will write about it some other time.

Happy Birthday Sara

2007-06-18T13:55:00.001-06:00

I can't believe it has been a year already. Every time I look at her she is changing in some way. She started crawling up the stairs a couple of weeks ago, and has been cruising around furniture for about two weeks. She has more and more sounds, and is starting to communicate what she wants quite effectively. When I watch her play I am always amazed by the new things she is trying. Today she put the rings onto the pole of one of her toys, last week she started stacking blocks. But her favorite thing is to rock her favorite doll. She gives it a nice hug puts it in the rocking chair and then goes off and plays, but she always comes back to check on her doll every 15 minutes or so.

happy thoughts

2007-06-01T10:45:00.000-06:00

Today I have decided to write about two things that happed this week that made me glad to be a mom. I could probably think of more then just two but two is a good start. The first one was when I picked Sara up a couple of days ago and she gave me a big hug complete with patting me on the back. The second was yesterday when I was walking down some rather steep stairs with Sara on one arm, and holding Hannah's hand with the other. When I trip and started to fall down the stairs, in an attempt to not smash Sara's head into the concrete floor I caused myself to fall backwards onto my butt. Unfortunately this caused Hannah to fall down as well, and severely twisted my ankle. As I had pulled on Hannah's arm rather hard I fully expected her to start crying, so I turned ready to offer my comfort, when she looked at me quite earnestly and said "Oh no! Are you alright" she then promptly offered me a hug and kiss, and asked if I was all better.

Well those two things made me happy this week and I wrote about them because I am actually having a rather bad week this week, but I'm afraid if I write about how miserable I am I will continue to be miserable. So here is my best attempt at remembering why this was a good week. And of course it is promising to be a nice relaxing weekend here in Calgary with beautiful weather, so hopefully that will go a long way to improving my mood.

Dork

2007-05-23T16:52:00.000-06:00

I can admit to being a dork, I read the owners manual for our van from start to finish. I may have quickly scanned a few areas, but in general I read every word. And to be honest I think it was time well spent, I would recommend it has a good read for everybody who has a relatively new vehicle. I found out some really interesting things about our van that I never would have known otherwise. For example

- you can roll all 4 windows down/up using the key and the drivers door lock.

- you can also roll all four window down using the remote

- you can program the auto lock/unlock

- if you hold down the eject button for a couple of seconds you can eject all six cds automatically

- the same applies to loading

- the auto defogger uses A/C - even if your using the heat

- so yes you can have both the A/C and heat going at the same time

- Our window wipers are speed sensing

- The auto scan button 0n the radio remembers your hometown stations so you can autoscan when your away from home to set you preset stations, and then go back to your original settings when you get home.

- The passenger airbag turns off if somebody who weighs less then 60 lbs is sitting there. - and there is a light that tells you it is off.

- Our seatbelt indicator is really annoying, if either you or your passenger doesn't put on their seatbelt it beeps every 15 seconds until you do it up

And that is just some of the things I found out from reading the owners manual. I'm sure some of those features would have taken me years to figure out, if I ever did. The only problem I have now is that my head is full of so much information about the million buttons in my van that half the time I don't use them because I can't remember what does what. But I'll get there eventually. For now I'm enjoying playing with the auto open doors. I get great fun in opening the doors to the van from inside the house.

"NO, me do it"

2007-05-19T18:31:00.000-06:00

If you come visit me, I'm sure you will hear that screeched at you at least a dozen times. I am not liking this new phase. While I'm glad Hannah wants to be independent, she is trying my patience. And I think I have pretty good patience, so if I'm starting to lose it, you know it's bad. The simplest thing takes forever as I first have to convince her she wants to do it, then I have to wait while she does it herself. And yes watching her try to put on her own diaper for 20 minutes before bedtime is really frustrating. But god forbid if you should attempt to help, as this will bring on instant meltdown. The type of meltdown that takes 5 minutes of hugging to recover from, then another five to convince her to put her diaper on, and then your back to 20 minutes of watching her try to put it on. and that is just the start, she has to do everything from getting dressed, to climbing into her carseat, turning off the tv, to putting her own diaper on all by herself.

If anybody has some spare patience lying around they should send it his way because I am very much in need of it.

A fond farewell

2007-05-16T19:39:00.000-06:00

As many of you know, we have been nursing our `95 Ford Windstar along since shortly after we moved to Calgary. No really serious problems, just a frustrating string of small problem after small problem. The most disturbing of which has been an intermittent stalling problem that has come and gone with the summer heat. The most likely culprit is a slowly failing fuel pump. Last Saturday it had a really bad stalling episode on the first really hot day of the year. This after we had just had it serviced a week or so ago... With both kids in tow, we made the decision that perhaps it was time to let go. So on that note, it with a heavy heart that I must announce that, with 239237 Kilometers on the odometer, our first baby has been retired...

Now for the exciting news, photos of our new baby:

Here you can see a couple of our favorite features:

Dual power sliding doors
Sliding door windows that roll down
Onboard DVD
Power moon roof

Here's a head on view of the new addition to our family (Please pardon the bugs, we've already taken it for a highway joyride).

And yes, it is a Honda:

We looked at the different North American models, I really tried to convince myself that they were just as good.... But the GM vans (Montana/Uplander) didn't have the towing capacity that we were looking for, the Grand Caravan interior just didn't line up with the price tag and while we really liked the Ford Freestar (no surprises there), Ford's announcement that they are dropping out of the minivan market after the 2007 model year does not bode well for long term maintenance...

So at that point we started looking at the big players in the import market: Toyota and Honda. The Toyota Sienna offered the option of all-wheel-drive for a steep price and I wasn't terribly fond of the body styling, which left us with the beautiful machine that eventually selected...

We did it! We did it!

2007-04-29T22:34:00.000-06:00

Sing the above title to the theme song at the end of Dora, and you know what the inside of my head sounds like right now. For the first time since me and Dan got together we actually filed our tax returns on time. Of course the only reason we got it done on time this year was the threat that we might actually owe money. But we didn't so Yippee not only is it done on time, but we actually have some unexpected money coming!

Last Weekend

2007-04-27T21:55:00.000-06:00

I know it has taken me a week t write about last weekend, but I think it is worth posting about so here it goes a week late. Last Saturday Dan's parents came down so me and Dan could go out for supper and then to the opera. We went to a restaurant called "The Belvedere" It is rated as one of the top restaurants in Canada. And I now know why. The food was so good, I can't even adequately describe how good it was. I have never had anything that even compares. The only dilemma I seemed to be faced with now is that I feel completely uninspired to do any cooking myself because I know it wont even register on the same scale. But I guess we all have to come back to reality eventually. After supper we went to the opera "Carmen" We had a great time there as well. Before going to the show my knowledge of the plot was that it was a tragic love story. And while that describes the plot in one sense it really doesn't do it justice, so there as actually some surprises in the story line. They had a screen at the top of the stage that translated what the actors were saying so it was just like watching a movie with subtitles. So that was our night out.

My kids have good taste in clothes

2007-04-19T17:12:00.000-06:00

Easter holidays

2007-04-15T20:51:00.000-06:00

Well we are back. From a week long holiday to Saskatchewan. We did a tour visiting family, eating turkey and collecting baskets of chocolate. We started our trip in P.A. visiting my Mom, Hannah had a great time playing with Crystal and Arianna, and Sara decided that Hayden was a great prop to help her stand up. Hayden was not impressed. We went to a rec center and tried out bowling and bumber cars. Everybody enjoyed bowling, and Hannah loved the bumber cars. She had absolutely no fear. She sat on my lap, and there were times I felt things were getting a little rough, but she just laughed. We went to Choiceland next to visit Great Gramma and Grampa. And I'm sure Gramma and Grampa had a blast visiting with all three of their grandchildren at once. From there we headed back to P.A. to visit with my Dad. Where Hannah continued her tirade on Angela's poor dog Gizmo. Hayden started trying to crawl to keep up with Sara, and his progress in one short week was remarkable. Our last stop was back to Saskatoon where we went to a consignment sale. Both me and Angela entered items into the consignment sale so we could get tickets to the presale. And I have to say I will never waste my time attending a public sale again. Absolutely everything worth buying was gone within half an hour of the presale opening, and main sale open to the public wasn't even until the next day. I bought Hannah a tricycle ($15), a Snuggli (like new $10), a toy bar ($7) and 12 outfits ($50). I got some awesome deals, and the best part is that I probably made at least 50$ selling my items, so the stuff I bought is already paid for. Next time I go to something like that I will definitely bring somebody with me though. I found some great clothes for Sara but by the time I got to Hannah's size, all the great stuff was gone. Well anyways I think I am going to go play our new Wii ...

Happy Birthday Dan

2007-03-31T15:51:00.000-06:00

In honor of Dan's birthday today, we had some friends over for supper last night. It was a very enjoyable evening, with good food (thanks to me) and fun board games. Okay the board games may have taxed some of our brains a little (he he). Today has been a pretty quite day, so far we went for breakfast this morning, and then Dan went and picked up an outdoor play gym that a co-worker was nice enough to give us. Hannah had great fun until we dragged her inside for nap time. Unfortunately our yard isn't really designed for a play gym, because it is a rather steep hill, so I keep on thinking the poor thing is going to fall over. Oh well, we may have to do some work later this spring to level the yard a little. Well anyways, Happy Birthday Dan.

Eject! Eject! Eject!

2007-03-26T11:34:00.000-06:00

So I went skiing at Sunshine Village with some friends from University this weekend...

It was a whole lot of fun and really good exercise for me.

There was a good mix of black, blue and green runs (at least for my taste) and we even did a little bit of glading (Skiing in the bush). We also developed a fun little slingshot maneuver to help Jen along flat spots - Kip and I would let Jen get ahead of us, then as we would go zipping by, she would grab our outstretched poles and get a sudden burst of speed to help her along...

The best wipeout for me had to be when I just about killed my good pal Mike (Kip) Kehler. The picture below was taken from the position where Mike stopped after I nearly ran him over. Jen (the girl in the right hand side of the picture), is holding up one of my skis from where they stopped. I was skiing between the trees on the right (only one is in the picture) looking for good powder and sweet jumps while Kip decided to go around the tree in the picture through the nice big opening visible just behind and above Jen. Apparently Kip saw a flash of my jacket and heard a quick curse as I slammed on the brakes to avoid running him over. Due to the foot of powder I was skiing in, my skis stopped a little too abruptly and ejected me from the bindings. This is where things get a little fuzzy for me. As near as I can remember, I clipped Kip's backpack as I was thrown from my skis. How I wound up face-first with my head uphill from my feet is completely beyond me.

If anybody knows how to do 3D Modeling and is looking for a fun side-project, I would love to see how this would have looked since Jen was too far back to witness the accident and Kip was too busy trying to stay on his own skis.

Me generous?

2007-03-24T16:38:00.000-06:00

Apperently I had a generous streak I didn't know about, as in the last 24 hours I have donated to over 25 different charities amounts ranging anywhere from $500 - $1200. I have complained a few times about Visa locking down my card when I have had transactions that vary from my usual pattern, but I was thankful today when they locked my card down after a mere $3000 dollars was charged to it, in a matter of minutes. The remaining transactions remained in limbo waiting approval from me. Of course poor Dan was stranded in Banff with no Visa. So anyways after going through a very lengthy list of purchases to confirm what was mine and what wasn't Visa will be refunding us for the approved transactions, and then investigating how this happened. So now I know why fraud protection is so important on a credit card, and I will never complain when my card gets locked down again.

Update!

2007-03-24T16:24:00.000-06:00

I apologize for my lack of posting but it has just been one of those weeks when nothing interesting is really happening. But I figure I will catch everybody up to speed on how Sara and Hannah are doing. First off Sara had her pediatrician appointment on Monday and she weighed 22 lbs and was 27 3/4 inches long. She was perfectly healthy and developing normally. She has been crawling for about a week now. She can go from her back to her stomach to her butt without any help. She does crawl around the room now, but she is still pretty slow about it, although I'm sure it wont be long and she will an expert crawler. She has got two teeth, both just poking out a little bit. I just noticed them yesterday, and was surprised that they had both already come through. Hannah seemed like she was teething forever before she got her first tooth. Where as I barely even noticed that Sara was teething. She had really red cheeks, and she was waking up a few extra times at night but otherwise she has been pretty relaxed. Hannah is learning new words like crazy, and starting to really enjoy more physical activities like running around in circle, and throwing and kicking balls. She loves going out for playdates, and gets excited whenever I mention that were going to visit our friends, or that our friends are coming to our house. Hmm I think that is about it, Maybe something interesting will happen this weekend.

Nap time

2007-03-18T21:28:00.000-06:00

Now being hosted in a basement near you:

2007-03-17T00:31:00.000-06:00

I have officially delved into the web hosting arena (well, on a small scale anyways).

I have just begun hosting my sister in-law's photography website on a server in my basement!

For those that are interested in the technical details it's not much of a server:

Processor:	Pentium II 333Mhz
Memory:	512MB RAM (Motherboard maximum)
Operating System:	Centos 4.4
Space:	18GB maximum non-redundant storage 2GB mirrored storage
Network	Single Dedicated NIC with a manual failover

For those not in the "know", CentOS is the publicly distributed, freely available repackaged edition of an Enterprise Linux distribution (I don't know if I can actually make the direct reference, so to be safe, I'm leaving it out...)

I have been running multiple OpenBSD boxes crunching SETI work-units for a few years now and have recently become somewhat experienced with setting up Red Hat Enterprise Linux through work so the actual install wasn't too tricky.

The only hurdle that I had to overcome turned out to be an overzealous attempt to max out the memory in the machine. Apparently the motherboard I'm using can recognize more memory that it can reliably use. As a result, whenever I loaded more than 512MB of memory into the machine, the memory read/write performance would tank - and yes, I did run a memory test using the tool provided on the CentOS installation media. This took me three days and a few phone calls to associates to figure out... Thanks Dave!

As a side note, I will be building a second, fail-over server that will be nearly a mirror image of the first (only with less memory and disk space....) so that any hosted sites don't remain down long in the even of a catastrophic hardware failure.

Not too bad for the low low price of $0, if you ask me... Everything is either retired personal or hand-me-down hardware, or discarded equipment from my days at 5D

P.S. Sorry for the crazy linking, but I'm hoping that I can boost the blog's Google rating and thereby improve Angela's new photography website's rating - Anybody that has ideas/suggestions on how else to do that, please leave a comment, Thanks!

Shopping Spree 2

2007-03-13T10:31:00.000-06:00

I'm afraid we are off to buy more pedialyte. Hannah started puking again on the way to her dentist appointment. So we're back home and watching cartoons.

busy, busy, and more busy

2007-03-13T10:11:00.000-06:00

It has been a busy week for us. On Thursday I hosted a playdate here. And it was lots of fun, started at 9:00 and went until 1:00pm. It was another full house with lots of kids running everywhere. Then Friday afternoon we headed out for a playdate. It was at a house we had been to before, and there is a really big dollhouse in one of the bedrooms upstairs. I had to hold Hannah back so I could get her shoes and jacket off, and then she just made a beeline for this dollhouse. It was rather cute, as usually Hannah makes a beeline for the food. Then Friday evening we headed to Edmonton, Saturday we went to the Mom Pop and Tots show, Hannah got to take a ride on the ponies, and bounce in a bouncy house. She had a great time. Sunday we went to the shriners circus. And then a barbecue before we headed home. But it doesn't end there, on Monday Hannah, Sara and I headed off to the zoo for the morning. I think that pretty much sums up our week. What did you guys do this weekend?

W00t! I talk good English!

2007-03-12T10:52:00.000-06:00

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

(And yes that was on my first try - with no cheating, either...)

Shopping Spree

2007-03-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

Items on the receipt from my last shopping trip: Children's Tylenol; Children's Motrin; Infant Motrin; Pedialyte; Pedialyte pops.

Restock The Diaper Bag!

2007-02-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

That is the note that I need to stick to our front door, in big bold letters. We decided to go to the Devonian gardens today and walk around a bit, let Hannah play at the playground, and then go to the OSF (Old Spagetti Factory) for supper. Well halfway through playing we realized that Hannah had a stinky bum. But whoops there are no diapers. But we can fix this right we're in a big mall. So we find a shoppers drugmart, and buy some pull-ups, walking out just as they're locking the doors. So now the trick is finding a washroom. Unfortunately there are no washrooms on the floor that we are on so Dan decides to take Hannah up the escalator to the nearest washroom while I wait with Sara, instead of tracking down an elevator.

Of course as they are walking off, and I study the map a little more, I realize that we have to walk right by a washroom on our way through the pedway system. But they are already on the escalator. Shortly after that I realize that Dan has forgotten the diaper bag, and therefor the wipes.

So Dan comes back from the washroom, rather annoyed and with Hannah barely cleaner then when he left. We head for the bathroom that I had located, and here I take over and change Hannah again. But it is now that I realize that, hey, we only have two wipes left. So I sparingly use one wipe, and figure we'll be good for the evening as both girls have already pooped once now.

We went off to the restaurant, and enjoyed our supper. As we're waiting for desert the inevitable happens. Hannah poops, and a really smelly one too. It is at this point that I have to admit to having used the last wipe to clean off Sara's face. But oh wait, we keep wipes in the van, all will be saved. So Dan runs out to the van to grab the wipes and another diaper. He comes back in with the nicest smirk and drops a brick of wipes onto the table.

I pick up the brick of frozen wipes, and head off to the washroom, which is of course down a very long flight of stairs which Hannah insists on walking down herself. We get to the washroom, I bend down to pick up her up to put her on the change table and narrowly miss putting my hand into a gigantic blob of poop, that has popped out the back of her diaper. There is poop everywhere, on her clothes, up her back. I turn my attention to the wipes hoping they will some how have magically melted, but they haven't, and the only thing I seem to be able to do with them is rip off little pieces of dried cold wipes. So I attempt to clean Hannah up with wet paper towel, and wet change table covers, that the OSF has nicely kept stocked in their change table. Needless to say I didn't do a very good job. and so we trudged back to the table with a still smelling Hannah, and me also smelling cause at some point I put my knee into a blob of poop that had fallen out of her diaper.

So that was our day. It was actually quite an enjoyable outing despite my complaining, but I think I might have finally learned my lesson about keeping the wipes and diapers stocked in the diaper bag.

Puppy?

2007-02-22T20:42:00.000-07:00

I'm sure every kid does this at some point but it is still cute. We had Macaroni and hotdogs for supper tonight. And you guessed it halfway through supper Hannah asked for more puppies.

We were supposed to go to a restaurant for supper tonight, but when I went outside to warm up the van, I accidentally locked myself out. So supper plans were ruined and I had to throw something together. So we had macaroni and cheesewiz with hotdogs.

In other news I hosted another playdate today. We all had a great time. It was a little bit smaller then normal, with only 4 other moms. I actually found it to be a little more enjoyable with the smaller group 5 adults and 9 kids is a little more manageable then the group I usually have. Hannah and 3 of the other kids spent about 30 minutes just running circles around our house, up the stairs in the kitchen, then they slid down the stairs at the entrance on their bellies and then back up to the kitchen. It was really great to watch Hannah actually playing with the other kids. Usually she just picks a toy and plays with it by herself. She is actually quite anti-social, but I guess that is pretty much normal for her age. Sara had a blast too, I put her in her exersaucer (so she wouldn't get run over) and she sat and watched all the other kids play. When they all came into the kitchen for snacks, she got quite upset. Of course some of the boys were kind enough to show Hannah that she could slide down the main set of stairs on her belly too.

Pay no attention to the monkey behind the other keyboard....

2007-02-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

First of all, yes.... I'm still alive....

Secondly, I didn't believe that I could cut through the table... As scientifically minded people, we were simply testing an admittedly weak hypothesis based on Hannah's attempts to cut through our table with a plastic butter knife...

For the record, plastic utensils are no match for a 30 year old pine table...

Take a guess ...

2007-02-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

How long do you think Dan tried to cut through our coffee table with a plastic knife. He of course was attempting to prove me wrong after I stated that it couldn't be done as the knife would wear down to nothing first.

Six month shots

2007-02-14T20:19:00.000-07:00

Sara had her six month shots today. Yes, I know she is 8 months old. She weighed in at a whopping 21 lbs, and 27 inches. She wasn't even on the charts any more for weight. And she was in the 75th percentile for length. She is definitely my big girl. At this rate it wont be long and she will be heavier then Hannah. She took the shots well although her legs are sore this evening, and she was pretty tired.

Happy valentines day to everybody. Dan surprised me with a dozen roses this afternoon, and we went out for supper. Of course supper can't be too romantic with two kids, but it was fun none the less.

Life has been pretty routine around here lately so I haven't got much to say, we're heading out to a play date tomorrow morning, which is going to be great, seeing how we've been house bound for the last week, thanks to the snow. I will now take a moment to complain about the roads in Calgary. Their idea of snow removal is a joke. I went out last night and got a shot of adrenaline a couple of times, and it was only a 3 km drive. Not once on my trip did I find any gravel, not at any intersections, or on the huge hill that I came down. (You try stopping on a huge hill that is a sheet of ice without the aid of gravel) . Personally I love driving in Calgary, when the roads are nice, it is easily the best city I have ever been in for driving. People behave logically and the roads are fast. But waiting for the Next Chinook doesn't count as snow removal in my mind. But enough of that. Hope everybody had a great valentine, and eat lots of chocolate, it will get your endorphins going.

A penny spent, is a penny spent

2007-02-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

We learned an important lesson today, if you go to just check out something that sounds like a good idea, you will probably end up buying it. So with that said check out our new purchase.

This is Funny

2007-02-08T20:36:00.001-07:00

Poo warning, do not read if you are offended by poo.

Congratulations

2007-02-08T20:35:00.000-07:00

Congratulations are in order for Kelly and Kara Tuftin. If you want to know why, check out their website The Tuftins

Hint

2007-02-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

Question

2007-02-06T16:07:00.000-07:00

What does a dinosaur, Pokemon, Scooby-doo, the Letter W, Spongebob, Winnie the pooh, and a tiger all have in common?

Family photo

2007-02-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

What we did today

2007-02-04T15:49:00.000-07:00

company, feeling ill, bandaids, exercise and poker.

2007-01-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

The weekend before last weekend we had company. It was friends from way way up north. It was great to see them again as we rarely get to see them, and usually have to be satisfied with quick visits once or twice a year. They stayed the weekend and we got more then our fill of board games. We also took a day trip to Edmonton in the midst of all that to try Bridesmaids dresses on for a wedding this summer. It was a rather hectic trip as just me and Kara drove there and back with two kids in just one day but it was a fun day and worth the drive. (Thanks Katy for babysitting) Since the weekend, and well to be honest starting the weekend I have had a really bad cough. Dan got sick not far behind me, and unfortunately for him seems to be really taking it hard. He has had to take a few days off work. He did go see the Doctor today and got antibiotics and a steroid puffer. I will be seeing my Doctor on Friday so I guess I will be asking for antibiotics too. The doctor Dan saw said that without antibiotics this particular bug will takes the average person 60 days to run its course. (Yuck) So if anybody I've come in contact with in the last two weeks has a cough, just go to your Doctor and get the drugs. Onto to band aids. I discovered this week that 20 band aids for a kid is nothing. I though a box of twenty would last us forever, well I was wrong. Hannah cut her finger on Monday, quit badly actually probably should have had stitches, but since Monday I have gone through most of her band aids and a fair number of the non fun adult band aids. She insists on playing with it, but then gets mad when it falls off, so I have to go dig out a new one, I think we're going through 5 band aids a day. I joined an exercise program. It is very exciting and I am trying to make it there three times a week. Dan has been great putting Hannah to bed by himself so I can get out of the house at a reasonable time. I have really enjoyed the two times I have gone so far, although this cough kinds of suck. I'm not really interested in losing weight (although I wont complain) but I would like to have more energy, and just maybe get my ab muscles back. Apparently two pregnancies, turn your abdominal muscles to mush. and Last, poker, me and Dan were supposed to go to a poker tournament hosted by his work this evening, but well since Dan missed work, we couldn't exactly go to the tournament. It was kind of disappointing as I am sure I would have won first place. Okay maybe not first place, but I like to think I would have placed in the top ten anyways. (fifty people signed up) Oh well next time.

playing together!

2007-01-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

Pictures

2007-01-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

back to normal

2007-01-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

Well everything is back to normal, well as normal as it gets. Dan is back to work, and my house has been returned to its original pre-Christmas state, with the addition of a couple dozen new toys. Hannah and Sara have decided to bring in the new year by developing new skills. Hannah is learning new words like crazy, and Sara has decided that she can sit now.

New Years

2007-01-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

We went to the zoo for New years eve. It was a lot of fun, they have a huge walk through light show, and then fireworks at 8:30, Hannah really enjoyed the lights, and was mesmerized buy the fireworks. She almost made it to bring in the new year, but fell asleep at 11:45. A pretty late night for her, but she did remarkably well. Sara on the other hand slept through most of the lights and the fireworks.

christmas

2007-01-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

Well Christmas is officially over, and we had a great time, at all three of our Christmases. The kids got lots of clothes and toys, and me and Dan got everything we asked for. But more importantly we got to visit with lots of family, and eat lots of good food. Hannah was teething over the first part of Christmas so she was a little grouchier then normal, but the tooth has come through now, so she is feeling better. Other then that I think the first Christmas hosted at our house was a success.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

It is almost Christmas, only two sleeps to go. I am excited about this year, it is the first year in our own home. At least the first where we actually planned to be here. Everything is ready, the presents are wrapped, the food is bought, company is on its way. Well I don't actually have a whole lot to write about, so I guess Merry Christmas to everybody. Drive safe and eat lots of turkey

New Bed

2006-12-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

We bought Hannah a new bed over the weekend, and today I picked up new bedding, so tonight she is spending her first night in her new bed. We went to the store with the intention of buying a twin captains bed, but then we thought maybe we should buy bunk beds because we do eventually plan to have Sara and Hannah share a room. Of course then the thought came into our heads that we should purchase a double bed to accommodate guests. Hannah's room is quite large so it can easily handle a double bed and still have lots of room for playing. So this is exactly what we did we bought a double bed with a twin bunk. Perhaps a little over kill at this point. I was a little worried about the thought of moving my little Hannah to a double bed. But I actually am really glad that is how we did it. She looks really small in the bed, but there is lots of room for every stuffed animal she owns, and now when I sit on the bed or lay with her there is lots of room for me. And with all the stuffed animals, colorful sheets and bright yellow throw pillows we bought it looks like the perfect bed for a kid.

Bahummbug

2006-12-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

I am never doing anything nice for anybody again. At least nothing that involves downloading music anyways. I set out to download three simple songs that is all I wanted to do. I quickly tried the illegal route, and gave up deciding that three bucks was worth the hassle of not having to search for these songs. First I tried to use MSN music, this didn't work as MSN no longer provides this service and reroutes you to ZUNE, I couldn't figure out how to get songs from Zune without becoming a member, so I tried Yahoo Music. This was my big mistake I guess. I decided to try out Yahoo's offer of seven days free membership to their site, including unlimited songs. I entered all my information then attempted to download Yahoo Jukebox. But unfortunately the Yahoo site is broken and you can't download the jukebox. So Dan found me a version of the Jukebox somewhere else on the internet and I downloaded that. But now for some reason Yahoo wasn't recognizing that I was a member. According to my account I was subscribed but the actual music program didn't recognize my subscription. So after two days of fighting with this, I canceled my subscription and tried to buy the songs the regular way for a dollar a piece. Then I encountered the problem that every time I tried to buy the songs, it would ask for my VISA number and then promptly tell me there was a problem with the purchase, and my purchase would be canceled. ARGHHH, I was starting to get frustrated. I emailed Yahoo Customer care, and got a reply which was pretty much useless. So I gave up on Yahoo music and downloaded itunes instead. This was a good experience, at least to start with anyways. I got the songs I needed with little fuss, and was happily playing them on my computer. Unfortunately just listening to the music was not my original intention of locating these songs, I actually wanted to use the songs in another program. Well the program I was using doesn't recognize itunes songs as a music file. So after researching the problem on the internet we were able to burn the songs to a cd in MP3 format. (a complete waste of a CD) and then rip them back onto the computer. So finally after all this I got my songs. But the story doesn't end there. I went to uninstall Yahoo music and discovered that it was a hacked version. Which means I most likely gave out both mine and Dan's VISA numbers to who knows who. So today I phoned VISA and canceled our VISA cards, which means that neither one of us has a VISA for the next 5 to 7 days. And well as I am sure you all realize it is almost Christmas, and who doesn't use their VISA the week before Christmas. So that is my story, and my conclusion is that I don't like yahoo music, or itunes and I never want to have anything to do with downloading music again. (SO don't ask)

TV Day

2006-12-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hannah is sick again so today will be a TV day. She has a mild fever and a cough. Not the worst symptoms, but the fever seems to be making her really tired. So she will sit in front of the tv all day sipping on juice, and eating soup. Oh if only I could join her on the couch, but unfortunately with company coming this weekend I have too much to do.

Another playdate

2006-12-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

Well we just had another successful playdate, not quite as big as last time, 6 adults and 10 kids. Thankfully a 4 people canceled at the last minute or it would have been a madhouse in here. Hannah was a little possessive of her toys, but we have more then enough to go around so it wasn't too bad. And some how my house is actually cleaner now then before anybody arrived. well maybe not quite. Hannah had a good birthday yesterday, we had a little party with strawberry shortcake, and two gifts just from me and Dan. The big party will be next weekend when everyone comes to visit. Well everyone is sleeping so I think I am going to spend sometime relaxing. (sleeping)

Happy Birthday Hannah

2006-12-10T17:51:00.000-07:00