September 19, 2009

Today was a good day. I slept in until almost 10 (and so did Eva :D). Then when Ken got home from his Men's morning thingy we chilled and chatted in bed for a while. Then he went and mowed the lawn and Eva and I got ready. Then we had lunch. Took Zoey swimming. I sat in the grass...it's been a long time since I sat in the grass, mainly because of the mosquitoes. Then I cleaned out my dresser and closet while Eva napped. Ken made yummy burgers for supper. I gave Eva a bath. Started some laundry. Now we're all just chillin' What a great day!

My mom left this week :(. It's always awesome to have her here, but it's nice to have your own space again. She's totally great...she watched Eva, did all the house chores, filled our fridge and our freezer, took me clothes shopping. Thanks mom! Now we're on our own....

The first two weeks back at school and work have been pretty good. School is pretty slack at the moment, but that will change once my internship starts. I'm feeling much more confident about that now. And I have some new professional type clothes so that makes me feel more confident too cause now I actually look the part :). I started work this week. Eva came with me for 5 hours on Friday and she did very well. So I think it should work for her to come with me...once she starts moving it might be a different story, but there's plenty of time until then.

This week feels like a normal week, just doin' the routine. I interviewed some babysitters and I really like some of them so I think we'll have people to watch Eva when we need them to which is great!

I feel like things in my life are organized now. Organized enough to the point that it doesn't feel chaotic but there's still room for fun and spontaneity. That's how I like it. A flexible routine.

Our cell group started this week. I'm really excited about it and think it will be good. We're going to read a book called "The Holy Spirit: who he is and what he does". I'm looking forward to that for a few reasons 1) I don't know tons about the Holy Spirit....he was always just kind of there, but definitely a neglected part of my faith. and 2)The book was written a long time ago so the writer will have an interesting perspective.

For my class I have to read a "spiritual development" book. I've chosen to read "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality" and I'm excited about it too. I've been wanting to read the book for about 3 years after Ken and I attended a conference where the author was the guest speaker. One phrase that caught my attention as I was reading the other day was "..My...present way of living the Christian life was not transforming the deep places in my life." It just got me thinking about my normal day and the things in it that have the potential to transform and the other things that don't have the potential to transform areas of my life. And it kind of fit with the bits and pieces of Pastor Andrew's sermon that I heard last week. You can listen to part 1 at www.thecalvarywebsite.com

Last night Ken and I rented some movies. We watched "New in Town" it was funny and for the most part clean...it's rated PG so it should be fairly clean. I would recommend it for people to watch. Even funnier then the movie was one of the commentary things on the DVD. The movie was filmed in Winnipeg in January and one of the commentaries is the cast and some of the crew talking about how cold it was and the different aspects of working in the cold...ha ha ha..quite funny to watch seeing as that's our reality every winter, not just for a few weeks :).

Well time to switch the laundry...that's all for now!

September 5, 2009

I can't believe that it's been a month since I've blogged! Time is just going so fast these days.

Eva is growing, I looked at her this morning and thought to myself "when did her hands get so big?". People said she'd grow fast, now I know what they mean... I took her to get weighed this week and she's 8lbs now, 2 weeks ago she was 7lbs 3 oz. We had a bit of a growth spurt this week :)

Tonight Ken and I went somewhere together without her. I had some mixed feelings, but it was ok. We had a good time. Ken married our chiropractor, we met some cool people, and got to eat some good food.

I do a lot of eating these days. I just can't seem to get enough food! I think I'm eating more now then when I was pregnant. Guess that's what happens when you have to produce milk to feed another human being. I'm very thankful that I'm able to nurse Eva and so far it's been going really well. And she takes a bottle when I pump so that gives me a lot of freedom when I need it.

School starts this week. I'm totally having mixed feelings about that. I'm excited for school to start and for my friends to be back and looking forward to routine. I'm sad that I feel like summer just went by WAY too fast.

I got an internship in the city for my last counselling practicum. I'm meeting with them on Wednesday to finalize all the details. I'm SUPER nervous about internship. I feel like I was a counsellor in another life a loooong time ago.....I haven't done anything, not even read a book in the last four months. Am I going to remember what to do? And people pay money to see me (read: the agency charges people to see me, but I don't get paid anything) now!...only $20, but still I want to make sure it's worth their $20. And then there's the matter of leaving Eva with a baby sitter ALL day (like 7 or 8 hours) one day a week.... I'm sure everything will be ok once it gets going, but it's still nerve wracking.

On a random note, I wish that everyone could customize the distances to certain places. For example: I would remove the province of Saskatchewan so then I'd only be a province away from my family. Or I would move Otterburne & St.Pierre so they were only 10 mins away from Steinbach. That would be good.

Oh! Ken and Zoey are going to be in their first herding trial next weekend. I'm excited for them! I'll be sure to take some pictures and video. They're going to enter the first Trial level instead of just the Junior Herding Dog level. They did a practice course this week and did really well. So we have two more herding nights before the trial so hopefully they do well!

Anyways, I think that's about all.

August 6, 2009

Well I figured I should sit down and write the story of Eva's birth, cause really I know that people want to know...and I want to know other people's so it's only right that I should share mine :)

My mom and my Aunt's said that the baby wouldn't come until I washed my kitchen floor. So I thought I would test their theory. So I washed the floor on Wednesday night. And nothing happened....until the next day.

I had some contractions on Thursday night, but nothing to write home about. It was kind of like..."Oh, I'm having contractions...ok"

Friday morning I woke up and the contractions were still irregular and not all that strong so I thought I would have lots of time to kill. We had ordered some meals from Supper Central and I was supposed to go into the city to pick them up. But by the time I was supposed to leave to get them I wasn't feeling that great and the contractions were more regular. So I sent Ken to the city to pick the meals up. Then he came home and went to work cause he was supposed to work all weekend.

My contractions were about 5 mins apart and getting stronger. After Ken was at work for 30 mins I called and asked him to come home...I just didn't want to be alone anymore. Then we hung out at home for about another hour and my contractions were 2-3 mins apart. At 5pm we left for the hospital. By the time we got to Winnipeg and to the hospital I was almost at the top of my pain tolerance. I'm kinda wussy when it comes to pain so I asked if I could order my epidural right away *lol*. From the time I went into the triage room till the time I got my epidural I don't really remember too much. Contractions were happening and I was not very comfortable at all...I didn't think I was going to make it :) After triage we got move to one of the really nice rooms where you labor, deliver, recover and stay for the whole time in the same place. It was an answer to prayer that we were able to get one of those rooms. I had some of the gas until the epidural came...it was kind of funny cause I could feel myself getting kind of high...limbs tingling, etc...

So I think I got the epidural around 8pm and that was so fantastic. It was like night and day. I was about 5 cm when I got the epidural. My contractions slowed a bit so they were a bit concerned about that and thought they might have to give me another drug to get them going. But when they checked me a few hours later I was pretty much fully dilated. By 11:30 I was fully dilated. The nurses asked if I wanted to start pushing or if I wanted to wait until the shift change in a few mins. So I waited for the new nurses to come in. When the new nurse asked me if I wanted to start pushing I was pretty hesitant because that meant that we would have a baby...and really, what do you do with a baby??

So I started pushing about midnight. My water still hadn't broken...or as they referred to it, my membranes were bulging (ha ha...bulging membranes...that just sounds funny). I think around 1am they broke my water which was kind of cool cause I saw it kind of spray things :). (Maybe I just have a weird sense of humor). Pushed for a bit more then they called the Dr. Who, as luck would have it was my OB! I was pretty excited. I really liked him, but he's on a rotation with like 5 other dr's...so he's only on like once a week so I didn't think he'd be the one delivering, but he was. So anyways, Dr. came...I was ready...Dr got called to another room for a few minutes. So the nurse actually kind of started to deliver the baby. Then the Dr. Came back just in time to deliver the head, and the rest of her too. So the official birth time was 1:58am on July 25....a few days early.

So she came out fine, perfectly formed and happy. I ended up with a few stiches. And Ken got to have bragging rights cause he said the whole time that it would be a girl. He got to cut the umbilical cord too. So baby laid on my chest for a while...we took a look at the placenta which was cool. Apparently you can keep it if you want to...we declined :) By 4 am everything was wrapped up and we were settling down to sleep for a while.

Monday evening we came home. I had my first major meltdown. We survived :) And now at day 12 it's still kind of surreal. I can't believe that we have a child...it's just strange. It doesn't seem like my pregnancy should have resulted with little Eva..but it did! We're looking forward to when she's a bit more interactive and we can see more of her personality.


I suppose I should say something about her name too while I"m at it. We had a hard time picking a girls name. One night I was doing dishes and we were talking about the movie Wall-E. The girl robot's name is EVE, but when Wall-E says it sometimes it sounds like EVA. We were like hey! that's a good name. So Eva it was. Ironically I was eating lunch the day after we got home and noticed that EVA are the letters on our license plate. Eva means giver of life...which I think is a pretty cool meaning. Her middle name, Ruth, is after my Grandma (mom's mom). Cause my grandma totally rocks..she deserves to have someone named after her.

Well that's the story! Time to go eat some pomegranate glazed salmon...yummy

July 20, 2009

So this will probably be a pretty random blog, but that's ok. No pictures cause our computer is broken :(

On Wednesday or Thursday our computer decided that it didn't want to turn on anymore. So now it's in Steinbach waiting to be looked at, which won't happen until at least Tuesday. Thankfully we have computer access at the school

Today is the first day of Sports camps at Prov. It's volleyball camp this week. I came over to the student center and thought I might register for it. I could be beneficial in some ways I'm sure...strengthening leg muscels by squating, physical activity, etc. But then I decided just to use the computers in the student center instead. :) I like sports camp weeks, it seems like the campus comes alive again for a little bit. And one night of each sports camp they make the teens do this crazy obstacle course thing late at night and it's fun to sit and watch them and think to yourself "Wow! I'm so happy that, that's not me!"

Yesterday I baked...a lot. Probably more then I have in the last year. I'm not sure what it was but on our way home from church I just had this feeling that I really wanted to bake. And Ken was going to be at work all afternoon so I really didn't have anything else to do. So for the 5 hours that he was at work, I baked. So now our freezer is full of cookies. I make oatmeal raisin, oatmeal chocolate chip, regular chocolate chip, peanut butter, peanut butter chocolate chip, and a batch of cupcakes. AND after all of that I made us nectarine apple crumble for dessert! Strange things pregnancy does to you....Although my cleaning urges that I had back in April have not returned, so at this point in time the house isn't getting a super thorough cleaning.

So it's 10 days until my due date. The baby has definitely dropped. I'm sure it dropped a lot time ago, but I didn't really notice much. Yesterday I wore a shirt that used to bother me because of the way my stomach was, but now that the baby dropped it fits completely different. And when I look down now the buldge doesn't seem so big. I'm kind of done with pregnancy now, not for any reason really cause my pregnancy has been awesome, but I'm just really curious to know who's in there.

According to my mom and my Aunt the baby won't come until I wash my kitchen floor. I always leave that for when my mom visits :)... but according to them you're not ready to bring home a baby until the kitchen floor is clean. You wash the floor and then the next day the baby is born. So I've picked a day that I will wash the floor to test their theory.

I think today I'm going to finish my sewing project. It seems like a good thing to do on a bit of a hot day. Then that's another thing off of the "want-to-do-" list.

Think that's all for now. Time to go eat some food!

July 13, 2009

So Ken's dad bought Ken a rotisserie for our BBQ and Ken tried it out last night for supper....




Very yummy... that's marinade not blood on the plate in case you're wondering :) I very much appreciate my husband's cooking skills.

We had an uneventful weekend. Ken worked Friday and Saturday evenings and then last night we went and played games with people. So a good weekend.

Tonight will be fun cause Ken won tickets to see an advanced screening of Harry Potter. Fun times!

July 10, 2009

I was going to go to the post office, but I just realized that Ken has the mailbox key with him in the van....so I decided that this would be a good time to blog!

(www.davisonorchards.ca)

I've been thinking a lot about peaches lately. Mainly because I would love to be eating some peaches, but I just can't bring myself to buy any. The peaches of my youth overshadow any peaches that I can find here. I look at the peaches in Superstore and think..."they're the same size as nectarines...peaches should not be the same size as nectarines.." It was the same thing in Alberta too. But at least in Alberta my mom would bring us some good Okanagan peaches cause it was only a days drive. But a box of peaches wouldn't fair so well over a three day drive to Manitoba....well they might make it but then you'd have to eat them all right away and that's no fun. As a side note, I'm not really a candy person, but fuzzy peaches are definitely the one candy that I love....




In other news, we had a great trip to Calgary. Super fun to see family and friends. Some friends that we hadn't seen in a long time! Hung out with the niece and nephew which is always entertaining. We camped in the back of the van in Moose Jaw one night. That was so much fun! It was super nice and cozy. We took some video so maybe I'll see if Ken can post those... You can check out some more pictures on my facebook page.

I'm officially full term now according to the doctor. It's kind of strange actually. I was thinking about my pregnancy which has been great and decided that it was really a lot of waiting. Waiting to see if you are pregnant, waiting until you're 12 weeks, waiting to have an ultrasound, waiting for the third trimester, waiting to be full term, now it's waiting for labour & delivery. Maybe it's not waiting, maybe more anticipating. SO yeah I just feel like I'm waiting. I'm the most nervous about after the baby comes, the labour & delivery part isn't really making me nervous at all. The one thing I find myself worrying about the most is what if someone who is having a kid around the same time we are (and there are several people *lol*) choose the same name for their baby as we have? ha ha ha... kind of silly but that's what crosses my mind every now and then... I guess then our kids would just have the same name and really that's not a huge deal.

Ok now for the big news!!! So the last time I blogged was the morning that we were leaving for Calgary and I couldn't sleep. The night before we had found out that the roof in the trailer leaked during the big rain storm and we were freaking out that we'd never be able to sell it. Well, like two hours after I posted that blog I get this phone call and the guy on the phone is like "Good morning, you've just sold your trailer!"...excuse me???..but it was true! So that morning before we left I wrote up a bill of sale, dropped it off, and upon our return from Calgary we had a cheque in our mailbox! GOOD BYE LITTLE TRAILER!!! YAY!!!!!!



So here's the long story. We've been praying for a long time (like 1.5 years) that God would bring someone to buy the trailer who needed it...just like we needed it 2 years ago. We had some people come and go but no one really seemed that interested. We had one person last summer make us an offer, but at that time we chose not to accept it. Last summer things were getting kind of stressful because we owed my mom some money and she needed it to be paid back before her books had to go in to be approved by the trustee people...as it turns out the trustee's decided that they didn't need to see my mom's books until Next summer...so we ended up with an extra year to pay my mom back! (but that's another story)

Anyways, a few weeks ago I had gotten a call from one of the staff people at the school and he told me about this family from Costa Rica who was moving here and they had nothing and no money, but needed a place to live. And he asked me if we'd be willing to rent to own to them. So we thought about it ...our main concern was if they'd all be able to fit in there...it's a family of 6..the guy from the school assured me that the trailer would be fine because in Costa Rica in their home they all have to sleep in the same room. So Ken and I agreed that if we could work out financing with them that we would rent to own to them...but before I had a chance to tell the guy this he said he had made a mistake and asked if we would simply just rent to them...and we really didn't want to still own it so I said no that we weren't willing just to rent. So I thought that this whole situation was over.

Until the morning that we left for Calgary...the guy from the school calls back. Apparently he had found someone who was willing to purchase the trailer and rent it to the family from Costa Rica. I told the guy about the leak in the roof and his response was.."oh that's no big deal, we'll just get it fixed"...and then I asked how much they wanted to pay and he said "the asking price that's listed on the internet"...Ken and I took a bit of money off for the repair of the roof, but we were both happy with the price we sold it for which in itself is pretty cool because the price was something that we were not seeing eye to eye on. So now we can pay my mom back and the family from Costa Rica has a place to live (their story is pretty amazing...they arrive tomorrow) and we now only own and are responsible for one property which is fantastic. God is so cool!

I think that's pretty much all that's happend lately. No sheep herding lately because it's been so hot and the sheep haven't been sheered yet. Sad times for Zoey.

I'm going to be starting a new project soon that involves sewing. I haven't sewed since grade 8...should be interesting. Hopefully it turns out....I'll keep it a secret for now :)

June 29, 2009

Ever since we moved into this house I've always wondered what time the garbage truck came. Well today I shall find out! But only because I've been awake since 5:30 and can't seem to go back to sleep at all...

So I figured I'd do a quick blog

We're leaving today for Calgary. I'm excited to go, it should be fun. I'm especially excited to see Ken. Seems like he's been gone from 7am till 10pm every night for like 3 weeks. He hasn't but that's just what it feels like.

I'm a bit stressed...A) cause we're going on vacation so I always feel a bit stressed the day we leave B) cause I have to leave the dog...strange I know but it just feels weird to leave a family member behind and add to that hormones...I hope she behaves at the farm! c) Our trailer is a piece of poo and decided to have a leaky roof during the massive downpours on Friday and Saturday...totally retarded...I hope someone buys it really soon D) I have a strange lump on my shoulder, it's probably nothing, I just don't like having random sore spots on me

I had a good uneventful week. The only thing I did all week was go to the city on Thursday..oh and I subbed on Tuesday afternoon. The rest of the week I just conserved my energy for this coming week of traveling and visiting. My trip to the city was good. I got stuck in Walmart for like an hour. Their entire computer system crashed so they really couldn't do anything.

I tried to buy new underwear this week. I didn't do too badly, but I think I should've bought one size bigger. So maybe I'll do that the next time I'm in Walmart. They were cheap enough that I can afford to buy them twice :) Have I mention how I really dislike shopping for under garments? The best part was the signs that said "please don't open packages"... but the packages have the nice button things on them so you can open and close them. And how are you supposed to tell how big they are? Sure the hip measurement is listed on the package, but really who knows how many inches their hips are? ...maybe people do, but not me :)

Anyways... maybe I'll try heading back to bed for a bit and see if I can get a few more minutes. Then it will be up to get ready to go. Making egg salad sandwiches for lunch on the road and I want to see if the chiropractor can squeeze me in before we leave...not sure if I'll have any luck with that or not...

C-ya in a week! Happy Canada Day!

Oh the garbage was picked up at 6:32AM :P