O Canada!

I love Canada Day.  In fact, I love any holiday!  I love any excuse for a celebration!  Although I spent many Canada Days outside of Canada, one of my favorite memories from the years we spent in Canada was going to the parade and fireworks.  Alas, Calgary does not have a Canada Day parade.  I suppose because the Stampede parade is only a week or so later, and it's just more difficult in a big city.  So, every year since Jeff and I got married, we have headed out to Drumheller for their parade.  It brings me back to my childhood.  Sitting in the front yard of a family from the Church (whose name sadly escapes me at the moment!), having hot dogs afterwards, and of course, collecting the candy.  I still love collecting the candy!  You might say, I'm like a kid in a candy store at the parade.  :0)  Sorry for the lame humor! But seriously, I love sharing this little piece of my childhood with my boys.  And watching their excitement as they wave their flags and run into the street to collect candy.  Well, Zach doesn't run into the street yet, but he would if he could!  Making memories of our own, that hopefully we'll carry on for years.

We decided to be brave this year and stay out and camp in Drumheller for the weekend.  The rest of my family has done it for the past couple of years, but we haven't been able to, for various reasons.  So, we loaded up Jeff's truck with our tent, way too much food, way too many clothes, toys, and a whole lot of firewood - seriously, it looked like we were moving! - And off we went to brave living together with a busy toddler and an equally active 9 month old, in a 20x20 canvas house.  (You'd think that in all my many moves as an MK, I'd have mastered the art of packing light.  Nope.  Not even a little bit.)  It went remarkably well.  In fact, the boys loved it!  The first night, Cole said, "We should go camping more often!"  When we came home, he said, "No, no, go back to the campground!"  They both loved being outside, and the freedom that comes with that.  And Cole loved being able to sleep with mommy at night.  Although, getting them to go to sleep at night was another story!  We kept ourselves entertained playing at the playground, swimming, going out to the playground at the Tyrell Museum, and visiting with family over at my aunt's house.
After the busyness of the past month, moving and settling in to our new house, it was wonderful to have a break together as a family.  We came home tired and stinky and ready to sleep in warm beds that wouldn't deflate on us, but very happy and thankful for the break, and with some wonderful memories.  And a whole lot of pictures! :)

Settling In

Today marks one week since we moved into our new home.  Aside from the boxes that are still all over the place, to me, it feels like we've been here a lot longer.  The boys have settled in much better than I expected them to.  Cole has not had any sleeping issues.  He has a couple of times said that "this isn't home, this is Valley Ridge," though, so I guess he doesn't quite feel like this is his home yet.  However, they have made themselves right at home, and our family room already looks like Toys R Us threw up in it! 
We have gotten out and met a few of our neighbors, and they all seem to be very friendly.  At least 3 of the neighbors bordering our yard have young children, and several have dogs, which Cole is very happy about.  Leaving the neighbors we had become good friends with in Bridlewood was one of our biggest regrets about moving, so we are happy to see that we have several neighbors with young children here.  We are on a cul-de-sac, and it seems like everyone knows everyone else and it is very family-friendly.  They have an annual bbq, which is at the end of this month, so we are looking forward to getting to know everyone better.  We have also had a chance to explore our neighborhood a bit, and found that we don't have to go far to find a lovely walking path through a green, wooded area.
And we are loving our new 1/4 acre backyard!  Well, Jeff's not such a big fan when he has to mow it, but otherwise, we think it's wonderful! We think we have a couple of apple trees back there!  And we have all kinds of ideas of how to develop it in the future!  Now if the weather would just get nicer so we could spend more time playing back there!

Moving Day!

Yesterday we moved out of the house where we have lived for the past three years.  It's a good move.  We're moving to the north end of the city where all our friends and family live.  We've felt a little isolated the past 3 years, living at the opposite end of the city, a 45 minute drive away, in good traffic, from family and friends.  It makes it hard to get together with people when we all have young children and bedtimes and naptimes to worry about, adding a 45 minute drive in there!  It's kept us from being in a small group and from many church activities too.  We are now just a 5-15 minute drive from pretty much all our friends and family and all our activities, except Jeff's work.  We like our new house.  It has beautiful hardwood floors and granite countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms.  And the backyard is HUGE and beautiful!  Exactly what we wanted for our boys! Plus, we have 2 great playgrounds in walking distance and we're just a few minutes from Bowness Park.
But, there was some sadness too.  Jeff and I built this house together before we were married.  A lot of time and stress went into that house!  Everything in it was chosen by us.  We custom-designed our kitchen, and man, I loved my kitchen!! (Even though being pregnant and having young children the whole time we lived there, I didn't spend as much time in it as you might have thought!)  The day after we moved into the house, we found out I was pregnant with Cole.  Our little miracle baby.  I thought it would be years before that happened, if it ever did at all.  We brought two babies home to that house.  I spent many, many nights sitting in our green Safari nursery, nursing babies who didn't want to sleep through the night. (The youngest one still doesn't!)  Last summer, we got to know our neighbors well, building a fence together and barbequing.  We were blessed with wonderful neighbors and we will really miss them.  In three relatively short years, we formed a lot of memories in that house.
I got to thinking about it too, and realized, 3 years is one of the longer periods I have spent living in the same house!  Like most MKs, I've moved around a lot.  I've said goodbye to more people than a lot of people have even met in 33 years.  You`d think it`d get easier, but it never does!  I guess deep down inside, there`s a longing to just be settled.  To not have to say goodbye anymore.  Of course, I know that`s not real life.  Life is made up of hellos and goodbyes.  Of new experiences, and changes.  But hopefully this move will mean the end of goodbyes for a while.  We plan to stay in this house for a long time.  We want our boys to be able to stay in the same school once they start, and to grow up together with the friends they are starting to make even now.   It`s hard to leave the house where we started out our lives together, but hey, we`re only 3 years in!  Our life as a family is just beginning and there will be many, many wonderful memories to be made in this new house.  I can`t wait to experience them!

Our life lately

Once again, it has been awhile since I have made a blog post!  So, this will just be a general update on our life the past little while.

We have sold our house and will be moving up to the north end of the city on May 28.  Under 3 weeks left! We're both excited about the move.  We moved down to this end of the city because I was working south of the city, but since I'm no longer working there and all our friends, family, and most of our activities are up in the north end, we've been thinking for awhile about moving back up there.  After talking about it for over a year, we decided to just bite the bullet and do it.  The neighborhood we're moving into is on the edge of the city, very close to our church and not far from my parents and sister.  Our house will be a little smaller than what we have now, but the trade off is that the back yard is huge!  The kids will be able to have a big playcentre, we'll have room to entertain, and they'll have lots of room to run.  Cole is quite excited about the big yard he is going to have!  Selling the house was quite the pain.  I won't go into detail, but it was stressful.  Jeff was very, very happy to be able to put that sold sign up!

Packing is coming along pretty well.  We've got most of the non-essential stuff packed and are pretty much down to things we will have to pack in the last week, like kitchen items and toilatries.  I think the boys have been sensing that something's up, because they've been a little unsettled and not sleeping so well at night.  Well, Zach hasn't been sleeping well for a while, I think because of teething, but Cole's been having a harder time falling asleep and has been waking at night too.  He knows we're moving and is excited, but I don't think he quite gets what it means, and I'm sure all the boxes and packing make him a bit anxious.  Hopefully he will adjust well to the move.

We welcomed a new niece to our family in early April.  Little Isabella is beautiful!  She is only the second girl on my side of the family, so we were very excited to have another baby girl!  We're looking forward to the addition of another member of the family any day now when my brother and sister-in-law have their first little one.  This one was shy, didn't like getting his or her picture taken, so the gender will be a surprise.  Which really, is the most fun anyways!

Cole and Zach continue to grow up too fast.  We have been fortunate to have a pretty healthy spring, with only some minor coughs.  Zach is 8 months already!  I can't believe how the time has flown.  He started sitting up at 5 months and is now crawling and starting to pull up on things!  Before I know it, he'll be walking!  Yikes!  He has his first tooth and his second is trying very hard to push through.  He's a little chatterbox.  He's still quite good natured, but I think he is going to be more introverted than Cole.  He doesn't seem to enjoy big groups of people the way Cole did, and still does.  He's very much mommy's little boy, and mommy loves her snuggles with him!
Cole continues to develop his speech really well and amaze and amuse us with the things he comes out with!  Yesterday, he was standing on a kitchen chair, which he is not supposed to do.  Jeff asked him if he was supposed to stand on the chair, and he said, "no."  Jeff said, "so what are you?" (I think he was maybe going to say what are you supposed to do?) and Cole said, "In trouble!"  We all cracked up, and he didn't end up getting in trouble! He shocked us a couple of weeks ago by counting to 12 for his grandparents!  We had no idea he could do that!  He can say his alphabet and is learning his colors too.  He enjoys singing and often, when he is supposed to be going to sleep, I can hear the sweet, off-key strains of  "Baby Bayuga" (Baby Baluga) coming from his room.  We've been struggling a bit lately because he has started to get a little aggressive with his baby brother - pushing him over and headbutting him with no provocation.  That has been our main issue of late.  We've been using time-outs, but they don't seem particularly effective, so I'm not real sure what to do about it.  If anyone has any suggestions, we're open to them!  Other than that though, he's a very affectionate, funny little guy.  He certainly has a mind of his own, and you can tell he's 2, but so far, the terrible twos haven't been too terrible! :)

On Saturday night, my cousins from Saskatoon were in town, so we all got together at her sister's house for a barbeque.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn't the greatest for it!  It was the first time we'd had all our little ones together at once, so we had to get a picture of them all.  I like to think our grandma and grandpa Hansen were looking down at all their great-grandchildren and smiling!

Well, I think that's about it.  I guess I should get started on some packing or cleaning!  Lots to do!

First bath together!

Now that Zach is sitting up so well, we decided that he was ready to try out his first bath in the big tub.  His big brother needed a bath too, so I decided to try giving them a bath together.  It was great!  For the first few minutes, Zach pretty much ignored Cole and was just busy chewing on a toy.  But then Cole splashed, and I said, "splash" and Zach thought that was great, and started splashing his own hands!  Then Cole started throwing toys and saying "splash" and Zach thought that was absolutely hilarious!  He was screaming with laughter!  It was so cute!  They are really starting to take an interest in one another now and interact with and play together.  It is so sweet to watch!
It's hard to get good pictures while I'm concentrating on making sure Zach stays upright and Cole doesn't land a flying arm or foot in his face, but here's one that came out pretty cute and doesn't show anything inappropriate!

Easter cookies

Holidays are so much fun now that Cole is old enough to start getting into the celebrations.  We made Easter sugar cookies on Monday.  It's quite a messy and time consuming pursuit with a toddler!  But so much fun.  Of course, the most fun part is how excited he gets about it.  And he loved his special time with mommy that little brother was too young to participate in. 

We had to lose the shirt, it got too much flour on it! Baby brother looking on.

Decorating a cookie.

Daddy helped out when he got home.

Big Boys!

Cole and Zach had their 2 year and 6 month check-ups today.  Both boys are doing great!  Cole is 27 lbs. 12 ounces and 35 3/4 inches tall.  He wasn't too thrilled to be at the doctor, but he did pretty well.  Although he wouldn't let the doctor look at his throat.  The doctor was quite impressed with his speech and the fact that he is putting 7-8 word sentences together already.   Zachary is 16 lbs. and 25 1/2 inches tall.  He has a little congestion in his chest from a cold, but otherwise, he's doing great.  He is still exclusively breastfed, because he does not want to eat solids!  We've tried oatmeal, which makes him sick, pears, peas, and sweet potatoes.  All of them get a turned up nose!  He's growing well and is a very happy little boy, so I guess there's no rush.  It's just quite a difference from Cole, who was so eager to eat solid foods!  He is sitting like a pro and getting more and more mobile.  It probably won't be too much longer before he's crawling!
I feel so very blessed to have two healthy little boys!