Three

I know another month has gone by, but finally I have a few minutes to sit down and write a post with some pictures!

Happy 3rd Birthday sweet boy!!

February has been a busy month already. We made and decorated some Valentine's cookies. The kids love helping in the kitchen and especially decorating with treats:)




Gabby trying on my new hat! I love it!!


Marty's trying on daddy's new helmut!!

Jeff has signed up to ride the Gran Fondo ride from Penticton to Osoyoos this summer. It is a 160km bike ride! He absolutely loves to bike, so he's pretty excited about doing it. He is also planning to run a half marathon for the first time this Spring. He has been running quite a bit through the winter. Last weekend he ran with his friend and they did 24km...that is the furthest he has ever run! I'm pretty proud of him:) I wish I had some of his motivation...

Then we were making lots of Valentine's cards and cupcakes for Megan's class. I saw this idea on pinterest to make mini cupcakes and put them in a cup. We made one for each of the kids in Megan's class. She wrote out all the Valentine's cards herself and she did a great job. She was so excited to give them to everyone!

Another pinterest idea...these are amazing!! So easy to make. Just square pretzels, a hershey hug and a smartie. It's the perfect mix of sweet and salty:)

And this past weekend we celebrated Marty's 3rd birthday!! I still can't believe my baby is 3!! It makes me a little sad to see how fast he is growing up.

Marty's birthday morning breakfast!! Megan had a pro-D day on his birthday, so it was great to have her home too. Teddy Bear pancakes and I let them decorate them with a few chocolate chips...they were in heaven:)




Marty's gift from us...a fireman uniform!



We had a Fire Truck Theme party. He loves fire trucks and gets so excited when we see one! Jeff painted a little brick wall for the background and I think it turned out pretty good.



We had homemade Mac N Cheese and Sausages(Marty's favorite meal)! And some appies and, of course, cupcakes for dessert.



We had 14 kids and 10 adults for the party! And that is with 3 families not able to make it. We had a full house, but it was so much fun!!

Shortly after the party, Jeff and I weren't feeling so great. Last weekend Megan had the flu and Gabby had it during the week...so I thought we were over it. Well, we weren't so lucky. We were up a lot during the night and felt awful and just hung around the house trying to recover yesterday. But, today we are both feeling pretty good!! Thankful for that:)

So that's an update for now! Hope there are still a few readers out there:)

Finally....

I don't even know where to begin!!! I know it's been forever since I've wrote anything. I just haven't really been interested in blogging. I love reading other people's blogs, but it's sometimes tough for me to get going and actually write something or post pictures. I hope there are still some of you readers left out there...

Gabs got a haircut...

Church Christmas concert...

Megan all ready for her school Christmas concert...

Megan has her school Christmas concert at the beginning of December. She wore her special "candy cane" dress from Grandma & Grandpa V. Her class sang a song and said a little poem. It was really cute! Because of the teachers strike, it was only during the day, so Jeff was unable to come because he was working. So I took lots of videos, so he could still watch her.

We had a wonderful Christmas with family!! Both of Jeff's brothers and their wives came out this year...and we had an extra special new addition to the family. Eric and Traci had a baby boy, Arthur James, just 10 days before Christmas. We were so grateful that they made the trip up here with a newborn. I LOVED snuggling that sweet little boy, he is such a blessing to our family.

Christmas Eve, we all went to the early service at church and then all of Jeff's family and my parents came over for dinner and the evening. It was so nice to all be together!

My "dog" wrapped Christmas gift from Jeff!


Holding cousin Arthur for the first time..




Christmas morning, we spent at home, just our little family. The kids loved opening their presents and just playing with them. I had made our breakfast the day before, so I just had to put the caramel French toast in the oven. In the late morning, we headed over to Jeff's parents place and opened more presents. We had lots of fun!! Then we had an amazing Turkey dinner and headed home for the kids bedtime.

Playing with his new car garage!

We celebrated Christmas with my parents on Boxing Day! Mom made a delicious brunch for us and then it was more present time. We just hung out and relaxed and enjoyed our time together.



Funny story! My mom opened her gift from my dad and she pulled these pants out of the box...

My mom very kindly said, "oh, what size are these?"...we burst out laughing, they were a size 18!! My dad said the sales lady was helping him and she had picked out the pants and they were supposed to be size 10.

**Eric took lots of pictures at Christmas and now I can't seem to get them onto my blog, I will try again another time.

Jeff was off work most of the week and it was SO nice to have him home! I was able to go out shopping one day with my sis-in-law and we had fun. I am so thankful for our families!!

Jeff was so thoughtful and bought us tennis rackets for my Christmas present. We had talked about starting to play tennis last summer and so this was great. Although, we can't use them just yet! There is a great park up by our house that also has a tennis court, so we thought in the summer we can play some tennis while the kids play at the park!! I find it so much easier to exercise in the summer, I'm just not a big fan of the winter:(

I'm trying to think back to before Christmas and remember things that happened. We had some family photos taken in the fall that we used for our Christmas cards this year. Our good friend is a photographer and she took these for us. We are really happy with them. The kids were really good for most of the shots, but Marty doesn't like to sit still and pose of photos!



Just before Christmas, my friend lost her husband to a heart attack. Megan and her daughter are really good friends at school. I have gotten to know her over the last year or so. We get together for playdate's and just to chat. I got the phone call early one Monday morning from a mutual friend of ours. I was completely shocked! My friend had just lost her dad three weeks earlier and she was really close to him, and then to loose her husband. My heart just aches for her. I was able to go over to her house and be with her that first day and I actually managed to see her every day for the week, just to be with her. And some amazing ladies from our church provided meals for her family everyday. I know this was a huge blessing to her. I've never been through this with a friend before, so sometimes I'm not sure what to say or do, but I'm just trying to be there for her right now. She has two daughters, ages 6 and 9. So, if you think of them please pray that God would give them comfort and strength as they go through this journey. And that maybe through all of this that they would find Him!

On a different note, my parents leave for 2 weeks in Mexico soon and then Jeff's parents are going to Hawaii for a month!! I'm starting to get a little bit jealous of all these people that get to go somewhere warm during the winter. I would love to go on a vacation, but a vacation with the kids is just not quite a vacation...maybe when they are a bit older! I'm thinking our next vacation will be to Disneyland in about 3 years.

Thanksgiving, Halloween and more...

Once again, I'm so far behind and can't remember all that's been going on around here!


Megan has been loosing teeth like crazy this month. In 3 weeks, she lost 3 teeth!! She is now missing her two top front teeth and I think she looks so cute!!

Lots of fun things going on around here...



She had a Halloween Party at school last week and I was able to help out for it. I love helping out in her class and just being around all the kids. The kids played a bunch of games at the party and they all dressed up in their costumes. Then they got to have a yummy feast of snacks!! The kids were all so well behaved and had so much fun



I even got dressed up and went as Minnie Mouse...

The evening of Halloween, we had some friends come over for pizza and then we headed out down our cul-de-sac to do some trick or treating. We only have about 10 houses on our street and it's the perfect amount! After that we went to one of the churches in town to see a concert by Dougy Dug Dug!! The kids sing worship songs of his in Kids church, so they were super excited to see him in real life!





It's been so nice outside lately and the leaves changing color are so beautiful. I took some pictures of the kids in the backyard the other day before it got too cold out...
Taking pictures of 3 little kids is no easy task....





Gabby starts her speech classes this week. I went to a parent info meeting last week and I think it will be a great program for her. She goes once a week for an hour for six weeks. There will be 2 speech pathologists for every 5 kids. They go to stations like crafts, games, etc. and the kids interact with their parent and speech helpers to determine what sounds they need to work on.

I've been doing some home decor projects around here. I love going to thrift stores and finding things I can redo or paint. I painted a little sofa table I bought a few weeks ago and last week I bought a little round side table that I'm going to paint and distress. I will take some pictures when it's done.

I think I forgot to blog about our Thanksgiving weekend! My brother came up for the weekend and it was SO nice to see him and we got to hang out a lot. We did Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year and it was really fun. My brother did the Turkey and our mom's both brought things, so it was pretty easy for us!

On the Saturday morning, my family headed out to Davison Orchards for the morning. They had all their pumpkins on display!! We went on the tractor ride to the pumpkin patch and the kids loved the petting zoo.










We also went to a pumpkin patch in town a few days later with some friends! It was in the afternoon one day, so it was pretty quiet and the kids had a blast. We went on another tractor ride at this farm too...









I can't believe we are into November already!! I've started Christmas shopping and I'm almost finished getting everything for the kids. They are so easy to buy for. This year, we are just buying them each one bigger gift and then stocking stuffers. I really want them to remember the real reason we celebrate Christmas!!

Whew...ok, that was a blog post with tons of pictures!! Hope you enjoyed them!!