Thanksgiving Weekend 2011

Thanksgiving weekend was a little crazy for us. Jeff headed down to Cardston with Clara and Donovan on Friday night to spend some time with his family. That left me and Elliot all alone. When I woke up Saturday, I cleaned a bit and then admittedly, I was so bored!! It's crazy how going from 3 kids to 1 can be a huge adjustment! So I dragged my parents to the mall with me and went shopping. That evening I left Elliot with my parents and headed to one of my best friends (Alysha) houses for a surprise birthday party. It was great to see her, as we certainly don't see enough of each other. It was a good night, and I sure love that girl.
When we woke up on Sunday, I packed up and we drove down to Cardston to join Jeff and his family. His whole family was there at one point (minus 2 grandchildren, one who is on a mission). It was a big weekend for the family because it was a sort of reunion before Jeff's parents head on their mission for 18 months. They leave this Sunday and are going to the London, England mission. We are very excited for them, but words can't even describe how much we will miss them.
The weekend was very busy. Imagine having 11 siblings, their spouses and 34 grandchildren all in one house at a time. Thankfully the weather was nice so we weren't confined to being inside the whole time.
I love Jeff's family, and I am thankful to be a part of it. I am thankful for so many cousins for my kids to play with, they love seeing them and look up to the older cousins. I am thankful for so many sister in laws that I can rely on, and I am especially thankful for the ones that I have become such great friends with. I am also thankful for Jeff's parents. They do so much for the family. Imagine having 36 grandchildren (and more on the way) and remembering birthdays and special events. I feel so blessed that my kids love their grandparents and have such a strong attachment to them.
It was a bittersweet weekend. It was great to see everyone, but it was sad to say goodbye to Jeff's parents as it was the last time we will see them before they leave. We spend a lot of time with them and that time is very important to our family. Clara and Donovan were so sad to say goodbye and cried on the drive home until they fell asleep. We used it as an opportunity to teach them about missions and to teach them about blessings that come from sacrifice, but it was still a tough drive. As much as we will miss them and especially during special events, we look forward to hearing their stories and learning from their experiences. What a great example they are to their family. Jeff's mom has said a few times that this is the hardest thing she has ever had to do, but she knows it will be worth it.

In all the hustle and bustle of the weekend, we didn't get to do Thanksgiving with my family. We haven't forgotten about them, we will make up for it this weekend as we celebrate Thanksgiving and Elliot's first birthday. It's crazy to me that my baby is 1 but if the next year goes as fast as this past year has gone, I figure Jeff's parents will be home in no time!!

10 Years!!!

 It was 10 years ago today that I married the love of my life. We have had an incredible journey so far and I am excited to see what the future holds for us. Here are some highlights of our marriage.

- The most obvious and most important, we have 3 beautiful children who bring us so much joy. They add so much excitement to our lives

- We have moved 10 times in our marriage, so it's not a good thing that we are moving one more time next month! 11 times in 10 years!

- The first place we ever bought was an apartment condo in Rocky Ridge, we lived in it for maybe 6 months...who would of thought that that $5000 down payment would turn into the house we are moving into now?! Good luck finding anything with a $5000 down payment now! I think that condo cost us $125,000. Crazy how times have changed!

- We had a dog, Sabey, she was a crazy dog, but she was a good dog. We had to give her back because our lives weren't suited for her. It was a very sad day. It was the first time I ever saw Jeff cry.

- We have been to Mexico twice without children. Once was our honeymoon but we have no pictures because our camera was stolen.

- Jeff completed 1 year of university before we were married and 3 years after. He worked like a dog. Full time in university and at one point he held 2 jobs, neither were glamorous. Thankfully he landed a job at First Calgary part way through his 2nd year of university.

- We got a rejection letter from the U of C business school after his second year of university. We had no idea what we were going to do with ourselves. Luckily, a few weeks later they couriered a letter of acceptance to us!

- Jeff completed his designation as a CA and it has been an incredible blessing to our family. He has been blessed with great jobs that allow him to be home with the family instead of drowning in work.

- We have traveled to Disneyland or Disneyworld 5 times with our children and I see many more trips to come!!

- 5 years after giving Sabey back, we were in a better position and found Bella. I swore we would never have a dog, but caved and I am so glad we did because she brings a lot of happiness to our family.


- Jeff had the opportunity to work for a company that took him across the world many times. He was able to travel to Singapore on numerous occasions, and Paris twice with this company. He always said he would take me but never did. In all fairness the timing was never right. I have told him he has to take me there at some point in our lives.

- We have been very fortunate to travel with my office a few times without kids. Once on a Caribbean cruise, once to Las Vegas and once to Victoria. We have an amazing family who is so willing to help us out so we can take advantage of these amazing vacations.

- As a 10 year anniversary celebration we took our kids on a Disney cruise with my parents and his parents. Turned out to be THE BEST VACATION ever!! I do need to blog about that trip so I don't forget about what an amazing time that was!

- We bought a timeshare in Fairmont, which we haven't used yet, but we are VERY excited to use it next year!

For my 10 year anniversary gift he spoiled me and we upgraded my diamond in my wedding ring. It's not like I ended up with a 2 carat diamond or anything, and its not something that will get noticed, but it is something that means so much to me!

 As you can tell, we have both gained some weight since our wedding day...what can I say, we were young then and I love my husband even more now then I did then. We were so young when we got married but I am so happy we have embarked on this journey together. There is not one other person I would rather spend my life with and I am so grateful for this man! He is an amazing father and an amazing husband. I could not ask for anything more in my life!

SOLD

Our house is SOLD!! That means we have sold 2 houses in 1 month!! We feel very fortunate to have had this happen, and are very excited for this new chapter of our lives.
We are headed to Langdon and have bought a house that is not too far from the school there and that will be a great house for our family.

Here are a couple of teaser pictures of the new house...you will have to come visit to see the rest.

 
The house is listed as a bungalow with a loft. It's a pretty interesting layout. The house has a huge main floor with everything you would expect on the main floor, including a decent size laundry room with a sink! Which if you know me is a huge plus. I LOVE having a sink in my laundry room and think of it as a necessity. The main level also has the master bedroom with a nice closet and decent en suite. The en suite has a large shower with 2 shower heads! We are pretty excited about that. The walk out basement is unfinished and I am pretty excited to develop that the way we would want it done. Where are the kids bedrooms you ask? Well, there is a small upstairs in the house. All that you find up there is a full bathroom, 2 bedrooms and a small loft area. Perfect for the kids. They have their own level. I see no reason for us to go up there except to put the kids to bed. Although we do plan on putting 2 bedrooms in the basement to eventually move Clara and Donovan down there. I guess Elliot will have a whole floor to himself, who would complain about that, right?
And then there is the yard. We can't complain about that, it's huge! The house is on a lot that is just shy of 1/4 of an acre, which is about what our house is on now. This house has not much front yard, so that land is all back yard. I wish I had a better picture, but I don't. Even more reason for visitors! I do want to point out the huge stamped concrete patio. We first saw this type of cement patio at Jeff's aunts house. I thought it was cool there, and now we get to enjoy it at our own house.

The house has some interesting features about it that you wouldn't pay extra for, but we are pretty excited to have them. Jeff is excited about the underground sprinklers. We don't have them in our yard and he struggles to water our yard cause it's so big there is no water pressure by the time it gets through the hose to the sprinkler in the yard. I am excited about the cool blinds the house has on the huge windows. I am excited that our master bedroom is on the main level. I am so excited for my laundry room sink and a bigger kitchen. I love the look of the rounded corners in the house, such a simple thing that usually costs too much to be worth paying for.

We will definitely miss Chaparral. Jeff has a brother here and we are good friends with their family. It is hard to leave that behind and it was the hardest thing to overcome when making this decision. We love the people in our ward and we love having a lake. We have great neighbours and it's scary to trade them in not knowing what we will be getting. Clara is so sad to leave her friends and her school. I sure hope this works out for us because I will feel really bad if we end up hating life in Langdon. I don't anticipate that happening, but we won't know until we get there.

We have just over a month to pack up the house and move into the new place. I am SO excited!!!

Teacher Gift

First, I just have to say that today there is reason to celebrate!! I never have to make lunches for Clara in grade 1 ever again!! Tomorrow is a pizza lunch for the school and Monday is only a half day, so no more lunches!!! I know there are some people out there who understand...I can't be the only one who hates doing it, can I?

We finished Clara's teachers gift and I am so happy with it. I have to tell you how much I appreciate Clara's teacher. We started the year with a different teacher and while she was a great teacher her teacher as of January has really left a lasting impression on Clara. It was hard not being able to get out and volunteer in the class. So much of me wants to do that and be involved in Clara's school life, but with Donovan and Elliot at home, it's just too hard. The one thing I loved about this teacher was that she always kept in touch with us. Teachers always say to email them, but when you do, you never hear back. Not Mrs.MacKenzie. She always emails back and often within an hour or so. Even on weekends she will answer questions. She has always offered me feedback and always made me comfortable with how Clara is doing in class. I finally had an opportunity to volunteer last week and I got to see her in action. After watching her as a teacher, I can see why Clara adores her. So I wanted to do something special for her and thought this was the perfect idea for her.

We made her a book. It is titled "What will Mrs.MacKenzie Do This Summer?"

"She might...get a coffee"
There is a Tim Horton's gift card
"and read a book."
With a gift card for Chapters
"Maybe she will make crafts" (cont'd below)
There is a gift card for Michaels on this page.
"while eating ice cream."

"I hope she won't forget about me,
I know I won't forget her.
Love, Clara Kearl"
Then Clara glued a wordle to the back. Mrs.MacKenzie taught her class how to do these and now my kids are addicted to them. It definitely made sense to add one to her teacher gift. Now we all know this is not a professionals job, but Clara is in grade 1, so I think her teacher will be thrilled.

I know I have already said this, but I am so very grateful for Clara's teacher. I am so lucky that we have some one so great in our lives. It takes some one special to be a teacher but it's amazing when you get some one like Mrs. MacKenzie! So thank you Mrs.MacKenzie!

News

Well....I have so much to catch up on but I figure I will start with the new stuff and work my way backwards. My mother in law informed me the other day that I don't update my blog enough, so I figured it was a push to do so.

We have lots going on in our lives right now. Our biggest news....in a month and a bit we will officially be a 1 house family!! I can't believe it, we FINALLY sold our Tuscany house!!! I can't even tell you how good it feels. It was a stressful sale, but it worked out in the end. The purchasers low balled us in the beginning but our realtor held strong and got us really close to our asking price. We were very happy. Then they had a home inspector that was a little bit ridiculous. He took 8 hours to complete the home inspection. We already knew this house was a wild card with a home inspection, the last thing we needed was an extremely thorough inspection! (Good for purchasers, bad for us). Well, they emailed us after the home inspection asking for $38,000 off the price because that's how much work the house needed. (Turns out it didn't, they were just trying to scam us). We figured we were back to the drawing board and told them to take a hike. Well, literally, 5 minutes before the offer was supposed to be void, they decided to sign the waiver at the price we originally agreed on. Can you believe it? We had already accepted that we were not going to sell the house and we were going to be stuck with it forever, and then they pulled this! So thankfully, come August 5, the house will no longer be ours!!!

So long Tuscany!! We will miss your 3 car garage and my favorite kitchen we have had so far, but not enough to want you back!!!

So...now that Tuscany is out of our lives, we need to shake it up a bit, right? We decided we wanted a clean slate, and now we have listed our Chaparral house. The hard thing about leaving this house is leaving the yard. Our yard is AMAZING!! It is so big. You just don't get a yard like this in the city very often. So we decided that if we want to trade our house without trading our yard, we would look in Langdon (a small town east of the city). I feel very good about this decision. We have taken a lot of thought and prayer to come to this decision. I do think that Jeff does not feel the same about this move as I do, but he is not great with change, and I hope that's why. So...if we do sell our current house, we will be moving to Langdon. I've heard it all, "why?", "are you crazy?", "do you realize how much driving you will have to do?" . In answer to all of these question and any you might have, YES, I realize it all, we have thought this through. We would not pick up our kids and move them to a small town, away from their favorite cousins, all their friends and our excellent ward if we didn't think it was the right decision for our family. There are lots of kids in Langdon, there is a K-9 school with another school opening next year, the lots are HUGE, every person we have met there is nice, the ward is different, but we think we will like it and it's not that far from the city! We aren't moving to another country, it's only 25 minutes from our current house. Plus, Jeff's sister lives in Chestermere which is the same ward as ours. They live in his parents house while they go on a mission, so if they leave, hopefully his parents come back after their mission. Now, of course this move will only happen if we can sell our current house, so who knows?!

Clara is almost done grade 1! I can't believe it. She is growing so fast. She loves school and has lots of friends there. That's what gives me hope she will have no problems making friends in the new school. She auditioned for her school talent show that is this week and she made it! She's doing a dance routine and I am very excited to see her show the school her talent. She really is a great dancer, very poised and very graceful, plus she can drop down into the full splits (which is what I think separated her from the other kids in her class that auditioned and didn't make it). She is definitely a performer, that's for sure. She does very well in school, she reads well, she listens well, she is very creative. I sure am proud of her and I am excited to watch her grow and learn.
This is her after her dance recital which was last weekend.

Then there is Donovan, he's a ball of fire and he's my sidekick. He is so ready for kindergarten and has been for a while. He is dying for that social interaction. He waits all day for Clara to come home to play with him. Sometimes he tries to get Elliot to play with him until he realizes all Elliot wants to do is eat his toys, not play with him. Donovan is a good big brother though, he takes such good care of his baby brother and he helps me around the house so much. He doesn't always listen and you often have to tell him something 3 times before it actually sinks in, but it could be worse. He's an excellent reader and speller. I think he's almost as good as Clara is, and she is a pretty good reader herself. He's a lot of fun to have around.


Good old Elliot. He is 8 months old now. He is one busy boy. He's been crawling around for at least 2 months now, he's climbing the stairs, he tries to climb the ladder for the kids bunk bed and just yesterday he was trying to walk. He's crazy. He holds onto the couch, lets go and tries to get to the other side of the couch. Of course he just falls, but then he gets back up and tries again. I hope he gives up on this ambition soon, I don't think we are ready for him to start walking because I am pretty sure I won't be able to keep up with him. He's funny though because he will do something naughty and look over with the biggest, cutest smile and it makes it hard to do anything but smile back. He's a lot of fun and I am so glad we have him in our family, he sure adds a lot of excitement and happiness to our lives.

No matter what happens over the next few months for us, we are so blessed. I feel so fortunate and so grateful for what we have.

Elliot

*I wrote this before we left for our trip but must have forgotten to post it...oops





I sometimes wish we could freeze time. Elliot is 5 months old today and it's just crazy to me how fast time has gone by.
We sure love him and can't imagine our family without him.
We got off to a rough start with him. He was a very difficult baby for the first 2 months. He cried a lot and nothing could stop it. I will be forever grateful for the family that helped us out. My sister in law Stacey, who took Clara to the bus every morning for me and picked her up and brought her home. She took Donovan so many times so I could have alone time with Elliot, which was so wonderful. I am also grateful for my mother in law. She came over many times to just hold Elliot. There were times that I had enough of holding him but it broke my heart to hear him crying. I am so grateful for her. One day she even came over just to bake bread for us. We love her bread and my house smelt so good too!

Then one day, Elliot snapped out of it. It was so sudden. He became the best baby ever! I do have to admit that from day 2 Elliot slept 6 hours every night. He has always been a good sleeper, for that I am very grateful.

Now Elliot smiles and laughs all the time. It brings me so much happiness to see that huge wide open mouthed grin of his. His smile is so contagious. I just love it!

He rolls all over the place and I am sure it won't be long until he is crawling everywhere. He loves his tummy and getting up on his knees. I just hope he holds off for 3 more weeks. It will be no fun having a crawler on the cruise.

The kids love him. He loves them. They love to make each other laugh. Seeing them together makes me so happy. What a great family we have!

Then there is Bella. She LOVES Elliot. She is so curious and puts her nose in his face all the time. I will often catch her trying to lick his face (GROSS). When I tell her to stop, she moves to his feet. She loves to kiss his feet! Every time he cries, she runs to him. She lets him grab her face and he has a very tight grip. (I would know because his favorite thing to grab seems to be my hair) It's sweet how much she loves him. Who would have thought that a dog could bring so much joy to a family!

I love watching Elliot grow, but it's sure sad all at the same time. This time is so precious and I am loving every second of it.

Our Flights Are Booked!!

I am so excited, we have finally taken the plunge and booked our flights for our March trip!! It is a trip meant to replace our 10 year anniversary trip since it will be pretty hard to take a trip with a baby next year, so we decided we would bring our whole family along. It is a surprise for the kids, they will find out at Christmas. To make it even more exciting, they ask at least once a day when they can go back to Disney, so I can't wait to tell them we get to do it sooner than expected!! (Jeff has promised Clara she can go to Disneyworld again when she turns 8, so that's what they think they are waiting for).
We will be able to celebrate Donovan's birthday one our trip which is really exciting, as we celebrated Clara's birthday in Disneyworld one year and Clara still talks about it. In fact she brought it up again this morning, so I am happy Donovan will get to experience that as well.

Anyways, we get to start our trip out visiting here again

It's been a long time since we have been here. As you can see, Donovan is quite small in this photo. We will be there with my parents again as well. We have been to Disneyworld 3 times since this trip, I can't wait to see Disneyland again.

We will also be visiting this place

This is new to us. In all our trips to California and Florida, we have never taken the time for Universal Studios, so this is exciting.

Then we get to visit here again

Granted, this photo is Seaworld in Orlando, and we won't be going there, but we will be visiting Seaworld in San Diego. Mostly because Donovan just LOVES Seaworld, he talks about it often and tells us how he loves the dolphins and whales, so I can't wait to take him here again.

Think this is all exciting? Well after all of this, we get to check into here!!!

That's right! We are doing a 7 day Mexican Riviera Disney Cruise!! I can't wait! This is honestly a dream come true for me. I can't wait for it and I am really excited for the kids as there is SO much for them to see and do on this boat.
Including a sweet kids pool area, kids clubs, parties, fireworks and lots of chances to meet characters!! This means shorter line ups to meet them which makes Jeff happy too!!

We get to visit Puerto Vallarta
Seems like a good first stop since this is where we spent our honeymoon. Afterall, it is our 10 year anniversary trip.

Cabo San Lucas
and Mazatlan

Not sure if we will do much in these ports with the kids, but I do hope that we get the chance to visit with some of these.

This is a dream of Jeff's, but it is always too expensive for us to do. We will see if we take the plunge this time, if not we will just hang out on the beaches and enjoy ourselves.


After our cruise we get to spend a couple of days with Jeff's parents here in Newport Beach

Actually both of our parents will be joining us on the cruise, which is really exciting.
I do not plan on weather this beautiful, but I will dream of it and pray for it.

All things must come to an end, and unfortunately this will be the last of our trip, but, I am sure after 2 weeks away from home we will be ready to come back.

I can't wait for this trip! I know it is going to be a lot of fun and a great experience. Even Jeff told me that he is kind of excited for this trip...which says a LOT! I can't wait to see the look on the kids faces when we tell them that this is where we are going, I know they will be SO happy.

The countdown is on...only 97 days until we leave for our 10 year anniversary/family vacation!!!