Thinking of you Tess!

Thinking of my wonderful, sweet friend Tess. I know tomorrow is going to be a difficult day for you, but please know you are in my thoughts and that if you need anything, all you have to do is call! I hope that you get all the answers you need and that very soon you are on the mend and back living the life you love so much :)


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Starting to feel a little more festive....

I'll add a few more pictures of things around here over the next few days...slowly I've been decorating the place, but I still don't have the main tree decorated or the house fully decorated....the children have decorated their tree but I haven't taken pictures yet. I am not as organized this year but I will do that this year....the renovations have me all out of sync this year and I feel self conscious taking pictures when I have a house full of men all day....this week there have been extra workmen around the place - Bell workmen wiring the place for PVR etc and next week we have the electrician here and also the plumber putting in the new furnace in the garage for my bees.....and that furnace will also heat the next addition and our master suite. But yes, I am slowly decorating the house and making it a little more festive. It is nice to sit with the fire on and the pretty fairy lights glowing and have the snow outside making it feel cosy outside. The workmen have put all the pot lights in the porch now and it looks soooooo nice and makes the house look really nice and even more cosy!!! The pot lights go all the way around the wrap around porch!!!

Indoor S'mores maker....

Tonight we finally got around to using the indoor s'mores maker that Lloyd gave me for Christmas about two years ago!!!! Turns out I had bought the wrong fuel for it though so we STILL ended up using candles in it (lol) but we had great fun roasting our marshmallows in it and making s'mores by the fire....we sat and watched 'Christmas with the Kranks' while we ate them....

Susannah has gone to the theatre in Edmonton with a friend and is sleeping over, and Chris wasn;t interested, but Laurence, Abigail and Sam all had fun tucking in!

Mini Marshmallow structures!!!!

Abigail and Sam had fun building with mini marshmallows and cocktail sticks! I built a pyramid and a spider too :) It's a yummy craft :)

Sew much fun...

Abigail had today off of school.....a trial run of homeschooling I guess you could say ;) We spent much of the day 'crafting'. Abigail did some cross-stitching and then used some felt and created a gingerbread house design. She has stitched the shape of a house and is stitching on buttons and other embellishments onto the house to decorate the gingerbread house. Here is the house with just the square of the house even before the roof shape has been stitched - I will take more pictures as it progresses. As I type though it has already progressed much further and I am really impressed because she has done it all by herself with no help except for the occasional help with threading her needle.

Keeping busy.....

My back is pretty sore today but I find it's worse if I sit still, so I am keeping busy and keeping on the move. I washed the floors this morning, cleared the ice from the front steps and outside by the mudroom door - it warmed up over night and a lot of snow melted and the turned to weird ice chips - really slushy and slippery. So i cleared all that away. I've checked on Charlie a couple of times and given her food and fresh water and some company. Taken coffee out for the workmen and chatted to them.

The Bell guy came out again today (satellite tv) He was here yesterday and again today - he has put new lines into several rooms and run new cables for PVR to several rooms and brought a new remote control for the box downstairs. We don't want PVR but we wanted the cable installed ready. He's prepping ready for addition too.....some of the lines were disconnected when the porch was dismantled so that had to be reconnected.

Ardalta came out this morning too to pump out the septic system so we are all set to go through the winter with a nice empty septic system - thats good!!!

Yesterday we had no hot water coming through the tap in the kitchen - turns out that where the wall had been opened up outside, there was not enough insulation at present for that pipe - because at the moment it's open to the elements! So I went and told them and within minutes they had sorted it out and we had hot water again - Susie had been happy not to be able to do dishes before school lol!

Abigail didn't go to school today - she asked to stay home again so I let her. She won't be going after Christmas anyway. So this morning she did some sewing - cross stitching and then she started stitching a gingerbread house on felt - I just gave her the thread and felt and left her to it with that one! After that we built towers and creatures with mini marshmallows and cocktail sticks! They have had time on the computer, watched a Christmas movie, chatted with the various workmen here, helped me with chores, decorated Christmas cards, and played together. I will add pictures of their crafts onto the homeschool blog.

If anyone would like access to the homeschool blog please leave a comment with your email address and I will send you an invite to that blog!

Tonight Lloyd is making butter chicken for dinner yum - I wish he knew how to make the Indian desserts too - we went to A Taste of India for dinner again last night!!! OMG it's so good there!!! I swear I only go for the dessert - I hope no one counts how many trips I make up to the buffet for dessert ;) one guy must have watched because he came up to me and asked what it was I was eating and and asked what they taste like - I described them and he tried them and then I saw him go back for more too so he must have loved them too! YUMMY!!!! That family had a little girl with them who sounded JUST like Vals youngest!!! :) I kept thinking it was him :)

Three days

Abigail only went to school three days this week. On Monday she didn't want to get out of bed and today she got out of bed, but at 7:30am she came in to my room still in her pj's and asked if she could stay home. She is just NOT happy at school.

Last week she went to school two days.

I have noticed a few things though - the less she goes to school, the MORE she loves to read and go back to her work books as 'fun'.......she sees them as quiz books - you know, the way we all see Sudoku and word search books as adults. When she started school she lost all interest in them and she stopped reading for fun - it was a chore and something she HAD to do as homework and for a set time - she had to get the clock and would time herself for the 15 minutes and then stop!!!!

But before school, she would just read and read!!! She loved to read! On library day we would get massive piles of books from the library and bring them home and sit and read all day - read them in the car on the way home....but once in school she would maybe choose one or two :(

It's nice to see her already becoming more like her old self.

We've signed Sam up for Pre-K again after Christmas, and on those afternoons, Abigail and I will go ice skating and swimming together and maybe walking/ running on the indoor track. Abby will have dance class still on Tuesday nights. She wants to go back to drama if we can get her in (maybe not until September) and we can start going to the homeschool group at the library on Fridays.

I'd like to do some voluntary work somewhere somehow.....I'm not sure how we can do that or where with Sam but hopefully we can....