Life at Our House

Painting, unpacking, painting, cleaning, and more painting. The paint fumes in this house are insane. But it's much better than what the house smelled like when we bought it. We're getting lots done. We're finished painting in the entrance, living room, dining room, and kitchen. It's been a lot of work. And I'm actually getting stuff put away and finding a "home spot" for them. It's really starting to look and feel like home.

We had some helpers come over for a painting party.
And Kinsey was so excited when Mommy finally gave her a paintbrush!

There was so much paint on the floor. :)
And we're exhausted. But loving our new home.

Now I'm off to scrub the floors and stuff a turkey. Happy Thanksgiving!

Getting Settled!

Well we're getting settled. Got a TON to do still, but it's coming along. Still working on cleaning, unpacking, and painting. Some days the house looks like a complete disaster! But we're loving it. I was surprised how quickly Kinsey is adjusting. It was only the first 2 nights that she asked to go and sleep in "Kinsey trailer" and then we got her room set up and she loves her new bed. Anyone that comes to visit she asks "You see Kinsey room?" And she's loving that we found all her toys again...it's like Christmas. haha

We went to the parade for the Jaffray Fall Fair! Kinsey got way too much candy. We didn't stay for long cuz it was freezing and we had to go to town that day and pick out carpet for our new house.
Way too happy to have her Dora couch back. Felt like "home" I suppose and she fell right asleep.Kinsey can't get enough of her new big corner bathtub. She loves it. I have a very hard time getting her out. I keep asking her if she's done and she replies, "My still swimming Mommy!"She was very helpful when I was trying to put all her clothes away. And occasionally I find her hiding in there with the stuff all pulled out of the bottom shelf.We love the island. I want a bigger one (one day) but for now we love love love having an island. And Kinsey loves eating her breakfast up there while watching cartoons. (Just like at Auntie Jenn's house.)Having cousins near by is THE BEST! And we're working on the potty thing. It's coming. Some days are much better than others. :)And we got to go to "Jayda and Parker School" and join them for the Terry Fox Run.
So the house is getting put together. We're so happy. Took us a week and a half before we got our satellite tv to work. Too many trees around here to get a good signal. But we finally found a clear shot and it's wonderful to have tv again (just in time to watch Grey's the other day). And last night we finally got internet. Wohoo! I'm painting the living room and kitchen today. I'm so excited.

To me it doesn't quite feel like "home" just yet, but I'm sure that'll just take a bit. Cuz living in Jaffray really feels like home to me!

Moving In!

The other day when we went to my mom's house to get our trailer and move it to our new house, I realized that I didn't take one single picture of our "house" for the past 5 months (which is so not me). We parked up by the barn and even had our own driveway.

This is how close we were to Mama & Bupbup's house. Kinsey loved living so close to them. And Tim and I feel so blessed that they let us stay with them for so long.

So we just got possession of our new house. We have a lot of work there that we need to do. Mostly cosmetic - so that's good. I figured the easiest way to show you our house is to go room by room (when we get each room done). We started with the living room.

Our very first project was get rid of all the window coverings and old carpet. Kinsey thought this was fun!

Kimmy & Kamry came up and helped us clean, clean, and more clean. And then helped us put away all our kitchen stuff.

Tim and Brendan ripped out the carpet in the hallway and bedrooms.

And the living room!

New carpet in! Ahhh! I love it and it makes the house smell so good.

Now to get all our furniture moved in and then I'll work on painting and more cleaning and organizing. Sounds fun!

Goodbye Stirling!

Moving - ugh! And moving in the rain - double ugh! So you haven't heard from us much as September has been soooooo busy. Our house didn't sell this summer. :( And it's getting too cold for us to live in our holiday trailer much longer (our furnace runs all night long). So we decided to rent out our house in Stirling. I so didn't want to do the landlord thing. But we had no choice really. Well that is if we wanted to stay in Jaffray. So we did. Within 45 mins of posting our rent ad on kijiji we had a ton of people call me. And I think we've found some good renters. (fingers crossed)

Kinsey and I spent almost 2 weeks down in Stirling packing up and doing some cleaning. Tim came down on the weekends and we loaded him up. Now the pics I have here are deceiving cuz it looks like we had nice weather for moving. But we didn't! It rained so much! Everything had to be tarped. Sheesh! Anywho, the packing was a lot of work (and bonehead me only had flipflops to wear for carrying and loading all our stuff) and a lot of trips back to Jaffray for Tim. And then we had to store all our stuff for a few weeks until we got possession of our new house. Ugh! But we got all our stuff to Jaffray (we have way too much stuff). Every time Tim would head off to Jaffray and leave me and Kins in Stirling Kinsey would cry and say that she wanted to go to Jaffray too. So finally when the day came that we handed the keys over to the renters and we driving to Jaffray Kinsey says, "Mommy, my go Jaffray now?" I said "Yep, we're driving to Jaffray now!" And she replies, "Good! My love Jaffray!" I love Jaffray too!

TRIP #1

No stores would save any boxes for us so we had to buy all these bins (almost 70 of them) to move our stuff. Kept things nice and organized though.

And made it to Jaffray with the 1st load.

TRIP #2

My uncle happened to be in Stirling for the weekend with his trailer so we loaded him up and sent a load home with him. Trying to keep it out of the rain was a bit hard. The upright deep freeze didn't fit in my dad's garage.

Half in - Half out! (I'm so done with all this rain!)

TRIP #3

This was my other uncle's stock trailer. We loaded it to the tip top! I forgot to get a better pic of it. It was so full of all our "must not get wet" stuff like beds, tvs, furniture, etc. Stored it in my dad's barn for a while. :)

TRIP #4

Last trip! Had to get the hottub!

Inside of the car and truck were also plugged. Poor Kinsey had to squish in the back with all that stuff. haha But we're all done now. Well....we're done phase 1 of the move. Phase 2 - move into our new place.

GOODBYE STIRLING HOUSE!

Kinsey's 2nd Birthday Slideshow

This is the slideshow that I made for Kinsey's birthday with pics of this last year.

Happy 2nd Birthday Kinsey!

My Kinsey turned TWO! Can you believe it? I sure can't. However, I suppose when most people hear how well she can speak and that she can easily carry on a conversation, they usually think she's older than 2. But to me it's still a shocker. My baby can't possibly be 2! :-)

We had two parties for our Kinsey - a family one and a kid one. I love the parties! We had fun and Kinsey loved the parties. She totally got it this year and KNEW it was her birthday. She spent the day saying "It my berday!" So cute!

We decorated fishy cake #1:Loved everyone singing "Happy Birthday" to her:Actually knew how to blow out her candles this year:And then we did fishy cake #2 for the kid party. Here's our birthday girl at her fishy birthday party! (Can you see her fishy shirt?)The fishy decorations!Showing me how old she is!We put the Happy Birthday sign and asked her what it said. She said, "Ummm, Daddy love me!" heheSome of Kinsey's friends at her party! We decorated fishy cookies. Fun & messy!She was really excited about the presents and kept saying "Oh thank you. More present!"
The kids watching Kinsey's slideshow.
So there you go. My sweet little girl is now TWO! She's so much fun. Totally my best little buddy. We love doing everything together. Love her to pieces!!

HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY KINSEY ANN!

Six Years Later

Wow, six years! Have we really been married that long? Sometimes it seems like only yesterday that we were there. And yet, I can look back at all the amazing things we've done together these last years and it seems like it's always been US. I'm so glad I have you to go through this journey with. I wouldn't want to do all life's ups and downs with anyone else. You're my absolute best friend and I feel so blessed to be able to say that. You're the best daddy Kinsey could ever, ever ask for. She adores you as I do. Love you forever and ever!

Six years down - Eternity to go!!!

My New Nephew - Carson Nate

My sister Jenn had a beautiful baby BOY yesterday! We're all so excited to finally add another boy to our family. Parker was way out numbered. Carson Nate arrived at 3:10am on Friday 27 Aug 2010 (on his Mommy & Daddy's 11th wedding anniversary) weighing 7lbs 7oz with a lot of black hair like his sisters Jayda and Danyca. We love him to pieces already!

I can see clearly now...

....the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way!

Ya, I can totally see! I'm loving this no contacts or glasses thing! The whole reason I got the lasik eye surgery is cuz I could no longer wear contacts. I'd try wearing them for a few hours here and there and then my eyes would be so sore that I'd have to wear glasses for the next 3 days. And oh how I hate wearing glasses. So annoying at the beach swimming or if you want to wear sunglasses or any sort of working out. Ugh! Anywho, I've been having problems for over a year now with my contacts and my optometrist suggested I look into the surgery. I was going to have the surgery back in February, but it was one of those weeks when everything went wrong and I had to cancel it. So it was a spur of the moment thing this time. Tim came home from work and I told him I booked the surgery and I was getting it done next week. :) I'm so glad I did it!

I saw 20/20 the first two days after the surgery then things started to go kinda blurry. I was worried. But I had another appointment up in Calgary for a follow-up as my one eye was a bit inflamed, and they told me the blurriness was swelling that was causing halos around lights, computers, tv, etc. and it'll all go away! (The inflammation that I didn't even notice was cleared up too.) So tomorrow it'll be 2 weeks and I can sooooooo see! I have been able to see with no halos the last few days. It's amazing to wake up at night to check on Kinsey and be able to see the clock and where I'm going. Love it! And thank goodness I'm not an eye drop junky anymore and I can wear eye makeup again. My eyes feel great.

So if you've been thinking about it.... GO GET IT DONE! I should've done this years ago!! And that's my only complaint. :)

New Calling!

Relief Society 2nd Counselor! Ya, that'll be quite the change from my nursery calling in Stirling or from have the summer off here in Jaffray. hehe Looks like we're staying in Jaffray - house or no house!

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (Kinsey 23 mths old)

Kinsey LOVES to sing Twinkle Twinkle and she does all day long. She's really into babies right now and likes to sing them to sleep (don't know where she got that idea ;-) ). Love her!

Temple Day!

We went to the temple this weekend to see my cousin Jilly get married. Kinsey loves temple days! She loves to see the temple! It melts my heart! However trying to take a picture at the temple was a different story. She was not having it. She is sick, so I'm blaming it on that. :) But she did love her new princess dress!

I wear my sunglasses....

.....at night! And all day long! I totally got the lasik eye surgery! Yipee! I was a wee bit worried about having the surgery on Friday the 13th. But other than waiting for my surgery for FOUR hours, it went rather well. It totally didn't hurt (lasik doesn't hurt, but if you choose PRK it hurts BAD so I'm told). Well for about one hour after the numbing wore off my eyes felt like I had been slicing onions -- they'd burn and tear, but that's it. The smell of them burning my cornea was probably the worst part of the entire surgery. Ugh! But today I'm impressed! I had my surgery at 4:30pm yesterday and this morning at 8:30 I passed with 20/20 vision in both eyes! But I have the sweet sunglasses that I'm not allowed to take of even at night and I'm not allowed to touch my eyes for a week. And I'm totally an eye drop junky! I have so many different eye drops that I have to do that I'm putting drops in like every 30 minutes. But I can see!!!!

Kalispell's Ducks!

What's a trip to Kalispell if you don't stop and feed the ducks? It's a must on a Sunday afternoon after church with a picnic in the park.
Kinsey's getting brave. She'll let them take the bread right out of her hands now.
Love these 3 girlies!
We wish B and Alan were in this pic!
Someone forgot to tell Kamry that the bread was for the ducks. She thought she'd have a little nibble. :)
Gotta smell the flowers too!
And then Kinsey drove us all home!