Snow Sucks

I know the kids have been kind of looking forward for some snow to play in because I think they forget the snow comes with cold weather. This weekend we came back home to Calgary after Braydens baptism to a fresh coat of snow. Since scraping the front windshield of Ryan’s work rig will be a HUGE pain in the butt, Ryan put together a tarp cover to protect it from snow and frost. This is how he gets it on:

BAPTISM

What a big day today. After an interview with his Bishop Brayden decided to be baptized by his dad! We made the trip down to Lethbridge so that it would be easy for all our family to join us and some of Braydens friends from primary would also be able to come. It was a nice, quiet time where we able to get together with most of our favourite people and enjoy Brayden. Such a proud moment as a parent to have him make such a good decision. He's such a great example to his sisters and to Ryan and I and he was so excited about it. Uncle Dustin gave a great talk about baptism and gave Brayden his own pocket knife which was followed by Brayden's baptism. While Ryan and Brayden got dried off and changed we watched a few Mormon Messages that you can find on the lds.org website and then I gave a brief talk on the Holy Ghost before Ryan confirmed him a member and gave him the gift of the Holy Ghost. Then we all pigged out on yummy treats and enjoyed a few moments together as a family before having to clean up. It was a perfect evening! Thank you to everyone who came and was a part of such an important day for our little family. I just love this boy so much.

Our Pirate is Eight

Today Brayden is 8 years old! Wow, eight is one of those numbers that seems so big. When did it happen, how did we get here and why did it go so fast? Brayd wanted something to do with pirates so we made some eye patches, captain hats and printed off some crazy looking pirate characters for cupcake toppers. Being away from most of our family my sister and Matthew were the only ones that made it over but that enough for Brayden. It was a school night anyway so we didn't have a lot of time for hard core playing and we're going to Lethbridge this weekend when he'll be with the whole family so the quiet evening was fine. He enjoyed it and had some good presents to unwrap which is one of the most important parts of a birthday when your eight anyway.

Brayden is such a great kid. He's compassionate, and such a caring older brother. He love to impress us and does every day. He is amazing with his hands, loves to build and create and rarely grows annoyed with his two sisters who are always trying to be a part of what he is doing. I am so proud to be a mother of such an incredible boy! Brayd, we sure love you and happy birthday.

Calaway/Beattie Thanksgiving

This thanksgiving weekend is a busy one for us. We’ve barely been able to get everything unpacked and in a functioning place and we’ve got our first group of visitors. Ryan sister came up earlier in the week to visit with Parker in the hospital, the rest of Ryan’s family will be joining us at our house for Thanksgiving dinner (that’s 11 adults and 13 kids) and then the next day my folks will be coming over for Thanksgiving dinner and to tour the Calgary Temple. I’d have to say I am having mixed emotions that go from super excited to very overwhelmed. It Is the perfect way to break in the house. The dads took the older group of kids to Calaway park in the morning which was awesome. I have one kid that LOVES rides, being flipped upside down and spun around at high speeds, and 1 kid that hates it. It is my goal to break in that 1 child that hates it so that I can justify a trip to Disneyland sometime in our future!

Brayden was forced to endure the pain of the rollercoaster, to take on the spins and hold back the sickness and rewarded with embarrassing video’s proving the pain he went through. Thankfully he seemed to warm a little bit as time went on and possibly even claimed to enjoy parts of it! Maybe Disneyland will be in our future after all.

Calgary Alberta Temple

Tonight as a family we were able to go and tour the LDS Calgary Temple. It opened it’s doors for tours to the general public last weekend before it’s dedication later this month. This is a pretty big deal because once a temple is dedicated, only members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who live their lives to a certain degree of cleanliness (no smoking, no alcohol, no drugs, etc.) can enter the building which is a House of the Lord. We’ve been able to attend and give tours during the Cebu City, Philippines temple but it’s always nice to take the kids through a temple and show them what it’s like inside and give them the opportunity to see what the room where Ryan and I were married in looks like. It was such a beautiful temple and there were so many people there to see it, even in the negative temperatures and snow as we walked under tarped tunnels to keep us dry and safe from the wind. It ended up being a later night then we thought but it was worth it.

Happy Birthday to MY Man

Today we get to celebrate Ryan and he's definitely worth celebrating over. He's the best father ever, always taking the time to play with the kids and making them laugh and squeal in delight. He hates sitting around and being idol which means we are always doing something together as a family and making the most of our time together. He's always trying to figure out ways to be a better husband, bring home flowers or telling me how much he cares. He works so hard and is so motivated and driven to build something he can call his. He wants to continually learn and grow and is such a great example to me and the kids, we just love him so much. So happy birthday to the main man in our lives, he one of a kind and he's all ours.

Horse Play

We share our driveway with one other family and they have a couple of horses. The horses are allowed into our part of pasture to eat the grass and keep it somewhat mowed. They seem quite curious about the kids and today the kids were brave enough to call them over and feed them some grass. They are really quite timid, a female and her son and they entertained my kids for over an hour as they ran to find some tall green grass for them to eat. So much fun!

New School

Today was a pretty big day! First day of school in Calgary. I think I was more nervous then the kids were knowing they tend to be on the shy side and unlike in Lethbridge, they wouldn't know anyone. They also were starting almost a month later then the rest of the school (they started 2 weeks before classes in Lethbridge). We were able to easily find their teachers and classrooms and off they went leaving Madison and I to figure out what to do with the rest of our day. Madison was quite upset about being left behind so we spent our day outside enjoying our big yard.

Zoo Day

Today the kids didn't have school and so my sister took her flex day at work to join us at the zoo. All summer long in Lethbridge we had been driving by the billboard on Scenic drive telling us that the penguins were at the zoo and they were waiting for us to come and visit them. We were excited to go and check out the new exhibit and see what all the fuss was about. We had a lot of fun watching the penguins jump, dive and swim in groups. The kids loved finding the different types of penguins they had just seen in the movie Happy Feet and pointing out every time one of the penguins would dive into the water. There was a group of three buddies that followed one another in a line along the edge of the water until the end, dive in one after the other and swim to the other side where they would get out and start again.

Once we were finished with the penguins we had to map our where we wanted to go from there. Madison seemed pretty set on checking out the zebra's and cheetah's, while Brayden and Sydney took their time studying the map to figure out which direction to take. We made our way to Africa first and walked through the misty jungle to find the gorillas. I love watching them and the way they interact with one another. We caught them at breakfast and watched them pick away at their broccoli. Some of them were playing around swinging on the ropes but for the most part they were watching the people as if we were the ones on display. The kids weren't as impressed as I was so we moved on only after a minute or two.

It was a busy day running from animal to animal only stopping for lunch. We saw everything there was to see except for the Hippo. I guess one of the Hippo's died recently and they were getting a new one next week from Quebec and until them the solo hippo was off display. I love the hippo's so that kind of sucked but I guess it will save something for next time. We learned about the pregnant elephant who will have a 2000lbs baby in March and saw the not so tiny tiger cubs hanging out with their mama. We were able to find some zebra's after some hard searching but sadly for Madison there were no cheetah's. She seemed to get over it when we found the snow leopard and found herself a new favorite animal for the day. At the end of our zoo day we went back to Kaits house so Brayden could get his first guitar lesson from Matthew. It was such a long day on our feet I was so impressed by the kids and how they handled it without any whining. It was home, dinner and off to bed so they would get enough rest for their first day at their new school!

Goodbye Lethbridge - Hello Calgary

Today was a big day! We loaded a bunch of belongings on a trailer, strapped them on and took them all to Calgary. A new beginning. The Seely's came and met us to help unload all our boxes off the trailer and then my sister came over that afternoon to help me unpack. We were able to get a lot done, enough for the kids to feel settled and for me to be able to use the kitchen. The house we are renting is furnished so that helps out a lot. It was also a nice day so the kids spent the entire day outside playing on the little playground set up in the front and jumping on the trampoline in the back yard. It's 4ish acres so there is a lot of room for them to run wild and thats exactly what they did. They loved it. They were excited to sleep in their new bedrooms and had no problems settling in for the night, I just love how kids are so easy to adjust and take things in stride. It makes all the changes we put our kids through so much easier. They have so many new things coming up in the next week I think that feeling like they have a home to come home to helps deal with everything else. That, and love.... and we sure love them. So, here's to the next challenge! Hopefully this will be a good move for our little family, time will tell.

Back To School

Summer vacation is over. Today is the first day of Grade 3 for Brayden and Grade 1 for Sydney. Summer went way too fast and now we're back to getting up early, making lunches and homework. The kids were actually pretty excited to get back to school and play with all the friends they missed over the summer. Sydney is so excited to be in grade 1 and be able to eat her lunch at school for the first time. She couldn't wait for all day school. I'm just glad we had the summer that we had. We had a lot of fun and did a lot of different things, hopefully the kids will remember a lot of the things we created and I can brainstorm all year long to get a new list together for next summer.

Summer Vacay - Day 67: Rip It Up

We have been trying to get the house ready to rent before we move to Calgary in a few weeks. Our yard has always been a source of embarrassment to us because I've never spent the time needed on the huge flower beds and they end up looking like an overgrown jungle. We've always talked about simplifying it and levelling out the yard a bit and getting rid of a HUGE gravel pile/dog run in our back yard but nothing had motivated us enough ... until now. We borrowed Ryan's dads bobcat and scraped out everything and started from scratch. Got rid of all the gravel and planted grass seed, levelled out the yard and made some nice simple flower beds. Our yard looks so much cleaner, I love it! I wish we had done it years ago but in our defence, when you live on the other side of the world and don't have to look at your house you don't care as much.

Summer Vacay - Day 66: Park Day

One of my kids favourite games to play is "daddy is a monster." He roars, chases them around the house and tickles them until they almost pee themselves. Fun, right? So much fun because it's right before bedtime and they scream until my ears ring and then they are so hyper there is no way they are going to settle into bed. BUT, that's what the fun parent is for, to bring fun into life so it works for us. Today after church we took this game to the park down the street where they could run all they wanted, scream as loud as they wanted and I would remain completely sane! I think out of the four of them, it's Ryan who will be sleeping the best tonight.

Summer Vacay - Day 65: Girls vs. Boys

Today Brayden got to go to Waterton on a boys motorbike trip. They joined Ryan’s dad and younger brother. I was a little bit nervous because that’s quite a long time for Brayden to have to hold on but he was totally fine enjoying his man time. They spent the whole day in Waterton and were thoughtful enough to bring back his sisters a treat! The girls were a little sad they didn’t have any special trip planned so I called up my mom and invited her to join us for a girls matinee of Brave at the Movie Mill. I figured a princess movie would win me some big bonus points and if Nana came, that would seal the deal. It was fun and I’m not embarrassed to admit I cried at the end, Disney gets me every time! The kids really enjoyed the movie too although at one point it got a little scary and I was happy to have my mom there as an extra lap or I would have had one kid on each knee until the moment passed. If you haven't seen Brave yet, you should.