A Year in Review (2007)

I totally stole this from another blog. Loved the idea, so I wanted to do it here too. Here's a summary of our 2007.

January

Tim started his last year of school

Bought a new car

February

My cousin miraculously survives being in an avalanche

March

Rachel announced she's pregnant

Tim finished school & is now a Journeyman Electrician

Ashlee went to the ER with a kidney stone

Tim turns 27 years old

April

Tim sold his horse Felize

Camping at Fairmont Hot Springs

Tim bought a new Quad

Ashlee bought a new treadmill

Ashlee got her wisdom teeth out

Bought an old holiday trailer

May

Grampa had to go to an assisted living home

Camping at Writing on Stone

Camping at Lewis & Clarke Caverns

Tim fought his first house fire

Jenn announces she's pregnant

June

Camping at Waterton (Belly River)

Bought a new truck

Camping & Quading at Pole Haven

Britnee graduates highschool

July

We're Pregnant

Camping at Writing on Stone

Camping in Montana

Ashlee turns 25 years old

Trent & Tara announce they're pregnant

August

Attended my cousin Kyle's wedding

Grampa passes away

Our 3rd Wedding Anniversary

Attended my cousin Carlene's wedding

September

We lost our baby

Ashlee goes to the ER with fluid on her hip

October

Spent Thanksgiving in Castlegar with Kimmy & Brendan

November

New nephew Dallin was born

December

We're Pregnant Again

Celebrated Christmas in BC

Phew, 2007 has exhausted me! Here's hoping 2008 is AWESOME!

April Showers?

I thought April showers bring May flowers. April snow brings nothing but tears. I'm so ready for warm weather. Enough of this snow and crappy roads. My sister-in-law and I have to go to a funeral an hour drive out of town today and the roads suck! Tim is making my drive to his shop and switch him vehicles. He said I should take the truck with 4 Wheel Drive as it'll be safer on the roads. Too bad it's so dirty inside. Oh well, better safe and dirty than sorry and clean.

Tim's birthday/graduation party was a hit on Saturday. I'll post more about that later and add some pictures.

He Did It!

Last night Tim got a phonecall from his boss. The Alberta Apprenticeship Board has sent Tim's marks for his Provincial and Inter-Provincial exams to his employer. We already knew he passed his Provincial and we found out last night he didn't just barely pass as he suspected. He did awesome on it! And he also passed his Inter-Provincial. Yep, he's now got his Ticket and Red Seal. He did so well on both exams. I'm so proud of him.

Tonight I will take him out for dinner to celebrate...Chinese Food of course (Tim's favorite). Which will be better than yesterday when, at his request, I had to call him "Red Seal Journeyman Man" all evening long. Hey, whatever floats your boat right?

Oh Ya Baby!

Tim wrote his FINAL exam as an apprentice electrician today. He called me to say it was super hard and he passed. Which is AWESOME! We won't know his actual mark as they will mail that to us. They test administrators just tell you pass or fail. My husband is now a Journeyman Electrician. Sweet stuff! I'm so proud of him and all the hard work he put into his apprenticeship these last 4 years. Good job Tim!


So that's what Tim was up to for 3 hours this morning. And he had to go back again this afternoon at 1:00 for a 4 hour Red Seal (Inter-Provincial) test. When he passes that test he'll be able to work not just in Alberta as a Journeyman, but in any province in Canada, except Quebec of course. They've got their own "French" ways there.


Well, that's our good news! Tim's back to work on Monday with a 25% pay raise (yes, not only does he get his entitled 20% raise from becoming a Journeyman, but his boss gave him an additional 5% raise). Well, I guess we're on to Phase II of our lives now....

What's New?

Haven’t posted in a while...no good stories to tell I guess. We got our satellite installed last Thursday. If I wanted I could watch Oprah from 8:00am until 11:00pm (Oprah’s not my weakness, but for some that’d be awesome). I do love that I can watch Days of our Lives in the evenings now though. Way more channels and much clearer. We had three "snowy" channels downstairs in our living room and four "kinda clear-ish" channels in our bedroom upstairs. We’re really moving into this new age stuff. Tim has TSN now and loves it. Boxing is on all the time.

What else? I’m still working away. So nothing new there. Tim’s still at school and we’re surviving on one income (I guess it’s practice for when I’m at home with our baby). But all is well. At least he'll be completely finished with schooling when he's done this time.

We’d like to buy a new car. Actually a new, used car. We’re not sure that’s the wisest thing to do right now while Tim’s in school. But driving the truck 100 km every day for me to get to work is not so nice on the pocket book. Truck = 20 mpg and Car = 50 mpg....and you wonder why we’d like a car. However we would keep our truck as well cuz we have dogs and horses you know. The car dealership was trying to talk us into leasing a car (not so smart for us). Our families live out of town and WE live out of town. Getting to work and trips to see family last year alone was 32,000 kilometers on our truck. And we only lived out of town for 6 months. However we did drive to Vegas.

Tim’s super busy with the Fire Department. Not putting out fires...mostly just training and other courses. He was gone all last weekend and will be again this weekend. Not to count the meetings he has on Wednesday nights. In March he gets to start some of the EMT courses. He’s wicked excited about those.

And I made this matting for The Living Christ and A Proclamation to the World. Took me forever as I'm not too crafty. I ended up hanging them going up my stairs. They look pretty darn good. Except for the non-matching paper. I'm going to have to buy some paper to match the Proclamation and print The Living Christ on it. They look silly hanging on the wall two different colors.
And that’s that.

Merry Christmas

Well we had a very busy Christmas and it flew right on by. We had a good time though. We spent Christmas in B.C. at my parent's house. Before Christmas we made a trip up the mountain on my dad's snowmobiles. It was pretty fun, but super windy up there. And it was snowing so we didn't get a good view that day.

We also went on a hay ride around town to check out all the lights. The little kids loved it and we all about froze to death by the end. We saw some pretty amazing Christmas lights though.
On Christmas day we got some sweet gifts. Tim bought me a video camera and I got him satellite TV. You see out in Stirling (in the middle of no where) you can't get cable. The cable companies call it a "dead area". Tim tried putting up with the rabbit ears on top of our big screen HD TV, but I guess the three fuzzy channels didn't cut it. And I have been wanting a video camera for ages. We got many other super nice gifts from our family as well.

Now we're back home and working again. Those six days that I took just zipped by. Today is Tim's last day of work for the next three months. January 2nd he starts his 4th Year Electrical schooling. By the end of March he'll be a Journeyman. We're pretty excited. However it'll suck for the next three months without Tim's paycheques. The EI he gets while is school is pretty terrible, but at least it's something right?

Summer Update

Okay, so I think I've finally got this thing figured out -- maybe. Well I'll give you a quick update of our summer.

We'll start with June. June was a write off...completely. My sister Kimmy was married on June 17th to Brendan Yuill from Cardston. It went very well (even though it was super windy the day of). In addition to Kimmy's wedding, Tim and I found a house out in Stirling that we just loved. So of course, we had to put our house up for sale and pack and move (all in June). We listed our house and we sold it for $5500 more than our asking price in three days. Then we needed get banks and lawyer and all that fun moving stuff in order. We packed and moved and were living in Stirling by July 6th. Also Rachel and her family moved to Lethbridge. We love having them near by.

Now July...we got moved to Stirling, but we needed to unpack. We've got most of that done now (yes I know it's September). Our garage looks like a tornado passed through it still. But there was some outside stuff around the house that we needed to get done before it got cold. First we had to build a fence to keep our two dogs from running around Stirling. Tim also took our little balcony out back and made a huge deck for us. We had to (yes, had to) get our hot tub pad ready for our hot tub (I brought it with me from Lethbridge) and Tim hooked that up too. And that was our July. We got the house set up (and had my birthday).

Then onto August. We needed a break so we took a week off of work and headed to Las Vegas (it's a very long drive). We had a great time with family and then we spent two days on the Strip. It was soooo hot there though. When we got back to Canada I thought I was going to freeze to death and it was 27 degrees here. I guess I got used to the 45 degree in the shade in the desert. On our way home from Vegas we stopped in Salt Lake City for a day. We were able to go camping only once this summer. Shauna had a baby boy, Thomas. He's a cutie. However, Tim and I are now really falling behind on the baby count.

Now it's September and Fall is here. The summer seemed to fly by. I forgot to mention that Tim also switch jobs in August as well. He's still doing the same thing, electrical, but now he works for a company here in Lethbridge - Midland Electric. This winter he'll have his ticket and we'll be all done with the apprenticeship. Me...I'm still working for the Government. I really like my job (as far as jobs go anyways). The Mad Cow problem so far this year as well as the Anthrax outbreak in Manitoba this summer has kept us super busy. Keeps things interesting, right?