Church Improvements

This morning, John and I became members at our church.

We had been asked to officially join the church months ago, but at that point, our hearts just weren't in the same place that they are now. Many major changes have taken place in our old church in Saskatoon so that we no longer feel connected to it, and we are finally starting to see some positive changes being made in our own. So we decided to become members for whatever length of time that we are still here.

We each had to give our testimonies, which strangely enough, I wasn't nervous for at all. 10 years ago I would have been panicking about any type of public speaking. It helps being in a small church where literally "everybody knows your name". It's a small crowd and most of them would be more nervous about getting up to the front than I would!

Another positive thing to note about church today. We took a vote regarding a pastoral candidate that came last weekend. It is a young couple and we are very excited about the possibility of them moving here and helping to revitalize our church!! Only 22 votes were cast this morning but we were 100% unanimous on the decision to pursue this option. What an answer to prayer!

So now we wait to hear if this couple is ready to make the move (from Canmore of all places!) and come serve at our church. Our denomination is pairing up with another similar denomination to help pay for a full-time pastor, otherwise this wouldn't even be an option.

Where's The Bar Of Soap?

I fear that I may need to resort to pulling out the bars of soap in my bathroom soon.

The girls are discovering new phrases in their vocabulary, complete with the correct tone and everything.

I guess the phrase itself is not THAT serious, but it's certainly not something that I want to encourage or allow to continue.

The phrase that they have learned?

"Shut up".

Yep, my sweet little girls are now yelling at each other to shut up.

How lovely.

The first time I heard it was on Saturday. We were driving to a friend's house and the girls were bickering in the van. All of a sudden Ella yells it out. So I whipped my head around and said "What did you just say?!?!?" She was ordered to apologize and I went on a small lecture of why this was not something that we are going to say to each other.

Later on that night on the drive home, I caught Brie saying it back. Thus I proceeded to give lecture number 2 and she was also ordered to apologize.

I'm guessing they must have picked this up from a movie, because it's not something that John or I say around the house. I'm not sure which movie, but I will be on the lookout for it now.

Thank you Disney. Shall I send you my bill for emotional trauma?

The Story Of Us: Getting Married

Welcome to Part 4 of my "The Story Of Us" series.

If you have missed any of the other stories so far, here they are for your convenience:

Part 1: The Beginning
Part 2: Dating
Part 3: Getting Engaged

I had easily planned out the first 3 parts of this story, and I also have stories to follow after this one, but for some reason part 4 is becoming a challenge to create. Since I can't leave this large of a gap in my story I feel that at least something is better than nothing. Although I wouldn't want to change anything from our newlywed stage, I don't recall anything much of interest. So bear with me....more good stuff is coming in parts 5 and 6!

John was away at his second year at CBC in Regina for the year that we were engaged. Most of our wedding plans were made over the phone or through letters. I remember sending him a sample copy of a wedding invitation as well as a tape (wow! a tape makes us sound quite old!) of some music to choose from. I recall from my year at CBC that packages were always highly coveted and what better to send then reminders of our upcoming wedding!

John, unlike a lot of husbands-to-be, wanted to be very involved with our wedding plans. He was quite annoyed with our photographer who would ALWAYS ask me the questions, as if it was only me who was getting married. Being involved is just John. This is one of many reasons why I chose to marry him!

I was quite opinionated about many details of our wedding, and most of those details seem so silly or mundane to me now. I'm not sure why I was quite so adamant that we were NOT having a wedding cake, especially when a family member offered to pay for it. I guess you could say that I'm a little bit "quirky" at times.

But we got married on a wonderful summers day in August. It was everything that I had hoped it would be. I walked down the aisle to "For The Love Of A Princess", which was from John's favorite movie Braveheart, as well as the movie that kind of started it all for us!

We had a wonderful honeymoon, visiting Bed & Breakfasts in BC, from the Okanagan to White Rock to Ucluelet which was amazingly beautiful! It was a great time to spend together before we settled into our new little home.

Our first home was a basement suite that we rented from a couple that we knew from church. It wasn't an attractive place with the green and orange carpets, but it was a big size and the price was excellent. We first lived underneath some quiet university girls, but when they moved out, some other newlywed friends of ours moved in. It was a neat experience for the most part. We lived there for 3 years before saving up enough for a downpayment on a house of our own.

Both John and I were working. I stayed on with the bank, and he was working with a machine shop, originally doing labor and eventually moving into a purchasing role. In our down time, we spent most nights either helping out with stuff at church (music, youth, etc) or vegging at home. (Now that we have kids, I truly wonder what on earth we did with most of our time!!)

We moved into our first house and continued to do the same things that we always did. We managed to do a couple of cheap renos to the house; replaced the warped lino in the kitchen and painted the front rooms.

After several months in the house, we decided that it was time to start a family. Little did we know that it's not always as easy as it sounds.

Cheering Myself Up

This week I am suffering through a nasty cold, so I thought I would write up a post that would help to cheer me up.

Last Friday I had a Luscious Bags purse party. It was a great time and I was almost overwhelmed with the beautifulness of it all!

Luscious Bags is a fairly new Canadian company that does home parties without catalogues. The sales rep brings about 300 items to each party. No two items are the same. So whatever you see and like, you buy and take home right away. They sell mostly purses, but also luggage, sunglasses and jewelery.

Here's a few pictures that I took while the sales rep was setting up. Keep in mind that this is only a fraction of what she had on display here and that most of this is before all the purses came out of her van.

I have never had a "fun" purse, so I decided that this was a good way to meet up with some friends and also ooh and ahh over all the nice stuff at the same time.

You should have seen how excited my girls were with each load of stuff that came into the house. If there was ever any doubt that I have girly girls, this was squashed on Friday night. They loved "modeling" the purses and trying on the jewelery. I think they had just as much fun as us adult women did!

There is currently only 1 Luscious Bags rep in Saskatchewan (the company was started in Alberta) and she is very busy, but she loves to travel around and spread the word. Obviously she hopes that someone else will want to start up a home business with this too and they can share the wealth, so to speak. Currently you can't order online, only through a sales rep. I highly recommend hosting a party!

Here's the 2 purses that I got for myself. The red one was free, with hostess credits.

I also got a free beach basket that contained martini glasses, an ankle bracelet and the makings for bruschetta mix as well as pina coladas. All just for hosting the party! Yum.

Swings and Slings

This afternoon our family went for a nice brisk walk. The girls enjoyed watching the trains closeup and we all had fun running and chasing each other

Unfortunately upon our return to our home I made the poor decision to help Ella jump over the sidewalks cracks by lifting her up by one arm. She ended up with a partially dislocated elbow and was in a lot of pain.

We quickly grabbed the keys to the van and drove to the nearby hospital for assistance. After an x-ray (which I sobbed through, by the way) the doctor came in and fixed her up.

It was a horrible scream-filled experience. Ella is such a brave little girl and it takes quite a bit to make her cry. I had a hard time trying to keep some composure while talking to the x-ray tech, as well as the doctor. I just wanted to take away her pain and felt responsible for it in the first place.

I have 2 nephews who have experienced this same injury before, but you never fully understand until it is your own child in pain.

Lesson to self: Never EVER swing children around by their arms. (Which I rarely did in the first place because of my nephews)

Ella is back to her chipper self, chatting away at 10 miles a minute. She has her arm in a sling, but I don't think it will last long. She keeps trying to prove that her elbow is okay and that she can use her arm just fine.

Now I just need to recover.

Fall Festivities

It is certainly beginning to feel like fall. I would really like to know why there was no weather transition from summer to fall this year. As a person who is "solar-powered", I really need to know when summer is coming to an end. Of course I know to watch the calendar, but seriously? It has been so frickin cold lately!!

I have been trying to come up with ways to keep my oven on each day, as John is quite opposed to turning on the furnace this early. Baking isn't really a great method either, as it means that I will eat it, which I'm trying to avoid

Well, here are some good things about fall beginning...sob...sob...sob:

Brianna has started dance again. She ABSOLUTELY loves dance and everything related to dance. She is beyond thrilled and I'm glad to see her so excited to participate in something she loves. It was quite a challenge just to get her to hold still so I could take a picture on her first day. Her class is called "Movement To Music" and is designed for 3 and 4 year olds. They learn the very basic ballet movements and have lots of fun marching and dancing to music.

Last year we had tried putting her in dance and skating with the intention of finding out what she really likes to do and continuing on with that activity in the future. Our plan is to only do 1 activity and 1 music per child. That's it. Some people can race around and take their kids to several activities. Not me...I would lose it somewhere along the way.

Fortunately last year, skating only lasted 3 weeks for Brie before she broke down in tears and said that she didn't want to do it anymore. So we definitely know that she doesn't like skating. Which is quite okay, because both John and I don't skate either.

I'm waiting to hear when Brie is going to start piano. This will be her first year of lessons and we are all quite excited. My plan is to take lessons also, but with the teacher's advice I'm going to wait until part way through the year after watching and gleaning information from what she teaches Brie. She is in the Suzuki program, which is essentially learning how to play by ear rather than reading music at this age. We listen to the Suzuki CD a lot these days! I'm sure that John could have told me the order of the songs before we ever played it because his mom is a Suzuki teacher also. He has heard it a LOT over the years!

I also will be teaching another session of Music Pups. It's not going to be a very large class this time, but I'm confident that we will still have fun anyways. I'm losing a few kids to the preschool music program, where the new teacher is using the Kindermusik program. I think this will be the first time that Ella will fully participate in class without me having to give her the evil eye as she strays from class or refuses to sit still. I always could count on Brie to sit great and participate without prompting so I will definitely miss her in class this year, but I'm glad that she will be having fun at pre-K instead.

Ella is going to feel a little lost this year, without her big sister around in the mornings and going to her own lessons for piano and dance. We are considering enrolling her in gymnastics here so give her something that is completely her own. She loves doing somersaults and everything related to jumping so I think she would have a great time. I know how it feels to be the youngest child who can't do stuff that the big sister can, so it would be nice to give her a fun activity that she doesn't have to share.

It will be nice to get back into a regular routine, although this one will be the busiest yet. I'm looking forward to it. Well, mostly. The weather could stay +20 and I would be happier!!

Labor Day Meme

For some reason, us women seem to find some sadistic pleasure in listening to other horrific labor stories. We compare, we compete, we really are insane!

Shannon over at Rocks In My Dryer has blogged about her labor experiences with her 4 children. Fortunately, I only had to go through labor twice. Both were VERY different experiences.

How Long Were You In Labor?
Brie: 15 hours
Ella: 4 hours

How Did You Know You Were In Labor?
Brie: my water broke
Ella: contractions started very quickly. In fact I was staying in Saskatoon after Christmas and John was at home working like crazy. I called him at 5 am to say he should make the drive to come have a baby and then I went to have a shower. 3 contractions later (in the shower!!) I called John back and told him to hurry! He met me ( and my mom!) at the hospital.

Where Did You Deliver?
Brie: hospital
Ella: hospital

Drugs?
Absolutely! The epidural didn't take well with Brie so they tried it a second time. With Ella, the epidural had JUST started to work and she was born.

C-Section?
Fortunately, nope.

Who Delivered?
With Brie, my doctor had been working the previous night but as it was Jan 1 when we went to the hospital she was off that night. There were 3 babies being born at the same time so we only had an intern for most of it. It was a horrific, pain-filled hour without any baby being born. Finally the OB-Gyn came in and tried the vacuum for another 15 minutes and Brie was born.

With Ella, my doctor was on her way to work in the morning and thought she would just check my progress. Shockingly she said "I guess I will be late to work this morning" and we delivered Ella soon after.


Feel free to play along and create your own Labor Day Meme! You can post the link at Rocks In My Dryer.