Christmas is coming

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...