Can we use your bathroom?

About 6 months ago, our ensuite shower stall began to leak... into our basement. Being the procrastinators we are, we chose to leave it until we had more money and we moved next door and began to use the main bath shower. About 3 weeks later, we had a much larger leak into the laundry room in the basement. Fortunatly we have a third bathroom in the basement. We meant to get at it sooner, but life continued, and Christmas came closer and we said, we will take care of them after Christmas. As you know it is now that time, so we have torn apart both showers and are now going to redo both with new cement board, plumbing and tile. So every day, I get to look at these two beautiful scenes. I do not do well with mess and scenes like this. I really hope this moves along quickly. I will post the after pictures very soon I hope.

Fancy Nancy... I mean Katie!

I don't know how many of you have heard of the Fancy Nancy books, but we have a Fancy Katie. The books tell of a little girl who is always dressing up fancy. This is what we see Katie doing every day! Most often Katie is dressing up as a bride which is what is pictured here. She comes up with many different wedding outfits, with no help from us. Please don't ask us why she is so focused on being a bride. We just blame my brother and sister in law. Katie thinks that was the most beautiful day!

Crawling

A little over a week ago, Luke began to officially crawl. Although he had been doing an army crawl (very slowly) for a while, he only just figured out the faster way to move. He also discovered in the last week, that he can not only crawl, but that he can pull himself to standing. I thought this would take longer to learn since the crawling was slower in coming. O well. This just means that I now have to remember that just having items off the floor is not enough anymore. I don't remember Katie being into so many things....ever! Is this just a boy thing?

Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. We hope that everyone had a great time with friends and family. We had a great time in Alberta this year! We arrived there on the 21st and were able to stay until the 29th this year. We have found that the kids have actually caused us to slow things down a bit when we visit, so it was a relaxing trip. On Christmas Eve we opened gifts. Katie was the star of the night and was extremely spoiled. Actually, we all were!! Luke is old enough that he enjoyed all the paper and wrapping and he was very diligent in taste testing each of his gifts and the boxes they were wrapped in. On Christmas Day all of my Mom's side of the family got together for a turkey dinner. This year everyone was able to attend, it was great to catch up with everyone. Last year, my Dad and Grandpa rebuilt an old sleigh, and with a few last minute touches we were able to take a ride on it on boxing day. We didn't have any work horses so we made due with just plain horse power. It was a sunny day and we had a great time riding it through the field. It was surprising how smoothly a sleigh rides. Katie was also able to go for a ride on my cousins horses again. This time she was able to ride on Sugar and Duke and even rode alone a bit (of course someone was leading and holding Katie's back). Thanks Haley for taking her! Before we came home we spent a night in Calgary at the Sheraton which has two water slides and a couple pools. We had hoped that Katie would enjoy the waterslides like her Mom, but it isn't the case. She did go down once but that was not to be repeated. O well, we had fun taking turns. As you can see we are now back home. It is always a bit of an adjustment after Christmas for me. There is so much anticipation and preparing and chaos, and then it is over. I find I need to step back and remember what it is about, or else I get slightly depressed. It is now a new year and I wonder what this second decade of the 21st century will hold.