Well, you may remember that we had a snowy blustery blizzard two weeks ago. Bad enough that we didn't leave the house for the day! I have some great pics of the kids in their bathing suits playing in the mud they created this week! I've heard that Alberta weather strongly resembles a woman with bad PMS, and since I am a woman, I can say this without fearing retribution! (not from the weather!) Both kids had feild trips this week as well. Mikaela went to "Leduc number one" to learn all about Alberta oil and Jacob went to a small ranch to have a picnic of sorts. Both kids had a blast! Jacob managed to win the sack race and the egg and spoon race and Mikaela came home with much more knowledge of the oilfeild than I have. But I think the highlight of Jacob's week was changing the winter tires for the summer tires and changing the oil with dad. There is nothing quite like doing things with dad!

We have a foam map of the world that we use as a mat on our living room floor that has worked very well as a play area for the kids. But the thing they use it for the most is a stage for all forms of dance. They dance with abandon to a myriad of songs on my ipod playing through the stereo. On Sunday night both kids were particularly creative; Jacob with his dance moves, and Mikaela with her costume changes and different types of dance. Jacob used a mixture of hip hop and pop and lock and I could really tell how much he has learned this year through the dance class that he has been in. Mikaela started with hip hop, than she changed into a tap dress with tap shoes and did a tap dance, than she changed into her ballet clothes and danced the nutcracker, than she slipped into her jazz shoes to do a jive! It was quite entertaining.
Than yesterday the snow hit! You know, the obligatory May snow storm that we must have in order to truly have spring around here. The roads were terrible so we stayed home from school, doctor's appointments, and violin lessons and played in the snow. The kids were thrilled because it was "sticky snow", the kind you can actually build with. We don't get that kind of snow very often and so the chance to build a snowman or snow fort is rare. Or in Mikaela and Jacob's case, snow kings and queens and snow skidoos that will take them to other planets where they can discover new "species" of animals and aliens!
I also took a cute pic of our cat, princess hiding among the fronds of our household fern.

I keep wanting to write in this blog like it is journal, forgetting that the whole world could delve into my thoughts if they wanted...
Another week! I just read a very interesting book that John found at the dump (a great red neck place to shop!). It is a fictional book written in the sixties based on the way Denmark handled WWII, particularly the Nazi attack on Danish Jews. I lent it to my father-in-law, who is Danish, to read otherwise I would post the title and author (of course, I forget :) but the book is well worth the read. I knew so little about any of the more intimate realities of the war for the Danes and I found the book very interesting. They managed to get most of the Danish Jews out of Denmark to safety in Sweden before the Germans could round them up and send them to concentration camps. And the Danish Red Cross kept such a close eye on the Danish Jews who were found and sent away to concentration camps that most of them survived. There was no looting of any of the Jews homes or possessions. In fact, the government took car of their homes, sometimes even their pets and their plants! It is really an incredible story and it made me wonder what it was about their culture that guided them to act in such a way? The book was fairly horrible in it's realities but the beauty of almost a whole culture coming together to protect people they considered to be Danes, just the same as they were and worth risking their own lives for out weighs the awful descriptions.
On a family note, we are getting some answers about Jacob's continuous coughing....I took him to the hospital yesterday and they outfitted him with puffers and are refering us to the pediatric athsma clinic. And I wondered....why did I avoid this? I think, to be brutally honest, I didn't want Jacob to be labelled as someone with asthma because it may hold him back unneccessarily. Kind of terrible... Today, he was almost completely over his cough! He has never gotten over it this quickly before. So, on the athsma journey we go! Thankfully Uncle Kris is going to be a great role model for him as someone with athsma and allergies who hasn't let it hold him back! Also, Mikaela performed in her school musical this week at horizon stage. I'll try to post a little video for Grandma if I can make it work!

During this blustery spring evening I am sitting here with my tea in a quiet house pondering all the thoughts and activities that have happened in the last few days. The blizzard outside makes me think of the storms in "The Little House on the Prairie" books where the wind is blowing the snow so thickly and wildly that you can't see two feet in front of you! But the lovely drops of moisture on my windows fill me with joy as that means that the extremely thirsty ground is finally getting some relief. Though it is hard to believe that this morning it was beautiful, sunny and warm!
We celebrated Easter this year in a wonderfully low key way. We had a nice meal together on Good Friday and than on Sunday we had a fire and a wiener roast outside for lunch. We hid 7 little Reese's pieces Easter bunnies for each kid down by the trampoline. It was just enough of a treat that they were satisfied but not too much that the candy lasts until the next holiday!
Another very exciting event in the life of Jacob was his decision to purchase a light sabre with some of Grandma's Christmas money. After several different trips to different stores and some studious research, he decided on a blue one that made all the authentic sounds (with batteries :). Low and behold, John managed to fix the old light sabre we had bought at a garage sale last year by rewiring it and so now we have two working light sabres! Thus, many light sabre battles have ensued in the past few days and I'm finding it to be quite a humane weapon as it keeps the kids relatively far from one another and they don't seem to hurt each much! Bonus! Jacob was quite funny when he told John during one of their epic battles,"DAD, it is really RUDE to cut off some one's head!" I agree, extremely rude. Jacob looked pretty cute on Sunday and I wanted to take a picture....but I didn't :( He decided he wanted to wear his white button down shirt with his tie, his black jeans, and his spiderman runners! And mom forgot to comb his hair.... so there he was in all his finery with his hair sticking up in the back of his head! Oh well.
This week I spent Wednesday making a meal for a family from our school who just lost their baby. It has been kind of strange and sad because there were three of us moms pregnant in the school and the other two have both lost their babies, one at 19 weeks gestation and the other at six months. I am the only one still pregnant. And every time I see them I think of how hard it must be for them to see me still pregnant and how hard it will be to see me with the baby, if all goes well. The mom that I brought the meal to showed me some pictures of their little boy. He was so incredibly tiny and yet perfect. His tiny little head with a little wisp of hair, his fingers with their little fingernails....The kids have had a lot of questions about why the baby died and if that could happen to our baby so you can tell that they are thinking about it.
Mikaela has her school musical performance next week so I got to be part of making the costumes and the practicing today during my teaching day! It is really neat to hear her singing the songs around the house getting all excited about performing. It reminds me of the excitement that being part of musicals always gave me as a kid....And it is cool to hear from other parents how beautiful her voice is and how good she is at remembering the words and actions to the songs! And I am just glad to see that her memory works for something.....certainly not spelling or grammar. But hey, if I put the spelling and the grammar to music, maybe she would remember it!
She has been doing remarkably well with our first sojourn into journalism for language arts. She wrote an article in the third person about being scratched by the cat last week and she really enjoyed it! I was thinking afterwards that journalism would be a career that would really suit her extroverted, curious personality.
Who knows?

After an eventful week, we are having a blissfully uneventful weekend. Just working on the house, kids playing and fighting in turns....church yesterday and tommorrow....nice and quiet. I've needed this, a chance to regroup after a hard week.
A highlight was I took Mikaela and Jacob to Beaners this week for the first time to get their hair cut. I have been hearing about it for a while from many other moms and I've been fighting going there becuase I didn't want to "cave"! I mean, what is wrong with the 10$ cut at the mall? But I finally took them becuase Jacob wants to grow his hair to his shoulders and it really needed cleaning up so that it can grow that long somewhat nicely. And Mikaela hasn't got her hair cut since she cut it herself when she was 3 or 4. They loved their hair cutting experience! They got to pick a vehicle to sit in while they got their hair cut and they watched "The princess and the frog" while getting it cut. And Mikaela got glitter in her hair! Her smile almost stretched off her face!

On Wednesday Mikaela had an experince that made her decide that she definitely DOES NOT want a dog! One of our neighbors dogs, a black lab, got out and came up to our place while the kids were outside playing. Mikaela was worried about the cats because she knew that they hate dogs. So she went to get one and I went to pick up the other. Just as she picked up Catty, the dog ran towards her and Catty freaked out and scatched her face trying to get away. It was very scary for her and one of the scratches was deep enough to make me wonder if it would need stiches or not. We were able to see a doctor in Onoway (on his last day before he retires:( ) and he cleaned it and put steri-stips on it instead and it seems to be healing pretty well. But she was very self concious about it thinking it made her look like she had a white mustache and everyone would laugh at her. Traumatic day for her and I, though for different reasons.
Last night we decided to have a special dinner for Easter complete with some decaf coffee for Mikaela with whipping cream in it! Her excitement knew no bounds! She got to drink "real" coffee!

So. I'm thirty today. I feel thirty today. Maybe I can have a nap later....I have been incredibly spoiled this year though. And all the facebook messages are very cheering! John brought home a wonderful cheesecake yesterday and put 30 candles on it and proceeded to light them with a blowtorch! Above you will see the progression..

You would think that going to Red Deer A.B. wouldn't be too exciting. BUT...with the right people and a pedicure and massage, it can be a sort of paradise! Well, that may be a stretch, but it was a fun weekend with Mir and Melissa celebrating, ruminating, and recalibrating (fun words). I had a wonderful time listening to CBC, "Quirks and Quarks" and another show which I don't remember the name of uninterrupted on the drive and met some interesting people at the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at and the spa we went to. It turns out that the woman who gave us our massages grew up on the Hoebbema reserve and it was very interesting talking with her about her experience growing up there and our experience being at Pine Ridge. I would like to see her again.....and not just to get another massage! Though I was pretty sore afterwards....I came home to a very sick boy and an extremely excited girl telling me all about how they got to watch the first star wars movie with dad and how GREAT it was! They also had some surprises for me which included some very hand made "foot rests" and "elbow rests", and "chin rests" made with a conglomeration of tape,fabric, felt, glue, and buttons! Lovely! Oh, and some flowers that were chosen by Mikaela (though Jacob thought of the idea) and some tums all wrapped up in the flower paper and a vase and a box of books that John found at the dump! I am spoiled rotten! I came home with a dress and pair of jeans and some Bernstain Bear books for Mikeala, and some hot wheel cars and books for Jacob from Value Village. All in all, everyone was quite delighted with their gifts :) Oh, and not to leave John out, I won a coffee for him at Tim Hortons, good wife that I am. And now we begin another week....This week I want to do some more research on how to grow vegetables and fruit with a higher nutritional content, try to find a new doctor in St. Albert that will not be so pushy about C-sections (long story), and of course do school, violin, dance, plug away on the basement, and turn 30!

I have to say, it has been a tough week. Neither John or I have been sleeping well. But after a sick day yesterday, Mikaela seems to be coughing less today. She came up with an ingenious way to make her journal longer. She figured that if she wrote "achoo" everytime she coughed while she was writing, her sentence took up much more space! I'm sure she gets this "cleverness" from her father. But because of the coughing she didn't go to school, violin was cancelled, and their dentist appointments were cancelled so things all of sudden were quieter! Oh, and she also couldn't show off her "curly" hair which she was very upset about. Hence the picture on the blog for Grandma to see :)It was nice not to have to run around too much today, aside from AWANA of course. Tomorrow is a run around day but it starts with an uncomfortable bladder and a family holiday to the ultrasound tech! Not every day starts like that.
This week has been a tough one, but the prevailing tone is victory, not defeat. We were real, we didn't turn to unhealthy things to assuage our anger and hurt, and God in his grace helped us out of the downward spiral. Not every week ends like that!

I am absolutely delighted that a load of laundry, with jeans no less, dried on the line outside in about 4 hours today. I will be happy to quit using the dryer again (most of the time :)! We had a great day of school, laundry, cleaning up our junkyard (oops, I meant yard :), more trying to get our driveway to drain and dry up, making cookies, building MANY lego vehicles of all shapes and sizes, making venison stew and whole grain biscuits for supper (yuuummmmm) and a bit of work on the basement. To name a few of the things we did....It was beautiful weather and I think I might cry if it snows again, though that is very likely. We started some pepper plants today as well. We'll see how that goes! We haven't grown them before and we'll have to really baby them.
Oh, and I forgot to mention I gave the kids their piano lessons today and Mikaela practiced her violin as well. Jacob is really getting into piano lessons.....for about 10 minutes! But he loves it up until that point. It is so cute to see his little pudgy fingers playing "Old Mac Donald had a farm" :)

"We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them-we give grudgingly."
Mark Twain

I have to say that, though I think this quote is true much of the time for us, the last two days have been filled with wonderful moments of "personal association" time. Finally two days where we weren't out in town all day for something and we could just hang out at home together. Sure, there was school work to do, but when it doesn't have to be done in a rush and can be savored a little more, the atmosphere is much more positive. Yesterday we were able to spend a few free hours outside doing some last minute sledding (before the snow is all gone :) and some gardening (in the mud with rocks as seeds), filling in mud ruts in our driveway, and concocting stews and spells out of sticks and muddy water (and all sorts of wonderful imaginary ingredients). We even had a snack on the porch and read some books in our lawn chairs! Today Mikaela came and walked with me on the Tri-leisure center track and than colored and did her math while I worked out. She even accomplished 16 equations in 6 minutes when there was a booster juice on the line! The kids jumped on the trampoline with John for about 45 minutes after supper and than the kids and I played games until bedtime. It has been quite an enjoyable two days. Even John's big conrete pour went good today. 80 something meters of concrete is apparently a lot, though I can't say I know much about it, but all is well on that front.
I can't believe our ultrasound is next week! It seems like we have been waiting forever for it and it is just around the corner. We will finally get to see those little features and fingers and toes for the first time. I think John is going to come from work and I am going to take Mikaela and Jacob so they can see their new sibling as well. I wondered if it was a good idea to take the kids in case there is something wrong with the baby, but if there is, they will have to deal with the consequences along with us and it may be better for them to know right away. I find it mostly doesn't pay to keep kids in the dark about things, at least in a general sense. So, something great to look forward to next week!

Every March I think that I should have been a dentist. Not that being a dentist interests me much....at all. I just end up giving so much of John's hard earned money to them and I wish that I could feel better about it by earning that kind of money myself! Oh well, toss some more money to the wind and watch it dissapear :)
I had an interesting experience at Mikaela's violin lesson today. There is another woman whose son has lessons at the same time as Mikaela. Today she had almost fainted just before we got there and was shaking and looking very unwell. She had phoned her husband to come pick them up and so I was holding her baby while she laid on the couch and tried to manage her other three little kids. The baby's diaper was soaking wet and he smelled really bad like puke. It was making my stomach turn and I was a little worried that whatever she had, her baby might have and might pass it on to me and harm my baby..... When her husband came he didn't bother to help her up or help with the kids at all, he just walked around looking at the instruments and than berated her for her being too sick to drive home. Of course, I don't understand the situation but I felt for that woman. She just had this overwhelmed, tired, beaten down look and obviously her husband wasn't much of a help. And it made me think of extraordinary people like Mother Theresa and countless others who would look at this woman and her children, maybe even her husband, with compassion and glory in helping them, putting their own health and certainly their own sensabilities on the line. I wonder how much they notice about the people that they are around, if they notice the smells, the appearance, the disease, or if they are desensitized? And yet their level of compassion is so great, they cannot be too desenitized. I've been in this situation before and the smells and the appearance of people did not bother me nearly as much as they did this time. I realized how safe a life we have lived since we moved to Edmonton, a far cry from Northern Saskatchewan, that is for sure. And maybe in my busyness I am starting to overlook those who are living like this.....

Beginning again.....

I am going to begin this most important blog post with....laundry! Everyone's favorite subject of course :) About 7 days allows a lot of laundry to accumulate and I am so happy to be able to make a dent in it. We are desperately trying to finish the basement before the baby comes because we know from experience how fun it is trying to do inside renovations with the dust and noise that comes with them with a baby in the house. So John and two friends of his were tiling the laundry/cat/furnace room floor and thus the machines were removed! But I am willing to sacrifice anything......even doing laundry....to get this finished.
I tend to think only about what we still have to accomplish but when I think about what we have accomplished in the last ten years....I understand why we feel like we are working all the time. So many moves, renovations, projects, busy busy times, building a house on our own, a fort for the kids, a driveway, a garden, homeschooling....and this list goes on. Sometimes it is very beneficial to look back at what has been accomplished in order to appreciate your own blood sweat and tears. The ultimate success of this venture is still unknown, but we've worked so hard! I think we all tend to forget this. It is easier to look at how far we have to go, than to appreciate how far we have come. Here's to more time spent celebrating past accomplishments rather than dreading future ones!
We'll have to see how often I post, but I have to say that I find this format much more fulfilling than facebook. With a verbose nature like mine, "facebook statuses" just don't cut it!