First Day of School!

The First day of school for Emmersen has now come and gone, and we are almost completing the first month already! It is crazy how true the saying is that the days are long but the years are short! Sometimes it feels like days last forever and then we blink, and another year has passed. I entered this first day of school with far less apprehension then I did last years. I was actually excited for Emmersen to go to school, she was looking forward to it, and was just vibrating with enthusiasm. She wasn't nervous in anyway and she just seemed so ready. She was ready, and I was ready. I don't know why it seems so much easier this year, it's still another baby growing up (but it may have something to do with the fact that I am hoping to homeschool her in the future so it doesn't feel like she's gone forever, just the year, but that is for another blog). I know that part of it also has to do with the fact that Emmersen is in the hands of one of the most gifted teachers I have ever had the privilege of observing (and being a teacher, I have had the opportunity to observe many gifted teachers). This woman has the most beautiful spirit and the most gentle nature of any kindergarten veteran I have ever seen. In the past I would always worry a bit for Emme because she is such a different kid then Cheyanne, she just isn't the little girl who just sits still, listens to instructions, and then quietly goes about her work, instead, Emme is full of life, always moving, wears her emotions on her sleeve, and is often ruled by her impulses. For many teachers she could be frustrating, but I watch Mrs. Sigston and I can see how her eyes light up and her sense of humour shines through when kids like Emme enter her classroom. This year we have decided to put Emme on the bus. She goes with her little friend Ella and has made a new friend from her class. So far she loves it! The very first day she rode the bus I asked her how it went and she said "oh good good" and paused  then her eyebrows went up, and she got this little sideways grin and said, "weeeellll. the bus driver had to talk to us" I laughed, or tried not to laugh but couldn't help it as it wasn't shocking that she hadn't even made it one day, and said "oh" and she very quickly qualified it with, "but just from his seat" lol, not sure if she has seen him pull over and get off his seat to yell at kids or what, but somehow that seemed to make it ok, lol. Apparently the boys behind them were bonking the girls on the heads so the girls decided to sit on the floor of the bus instead of their seats, lol. Oh the stories we will hear, I am sure they will be quite different then last year, and I may just have to actually go to parent teacher interviews this year, hahaha.

I can't wait to watch Emmersen change this year and grow. I am looking forward to hearing the songs that she comes home singing and the interpretations she will give of the bible stories that she hears. It's gonna be a fun one for sure! Good Luck Emmersen, we love you so much and know you are going to love this year!

Mrs. Sigston sends the kids a letter asking them to bring a picture they have drawn and their favourite stuffed friend to their first class. Emme drew a picture of herself and Mrs. Sigston outside the school, and of course woof woof had to come with her!

her new Tinkerbell backpack complete with matching lunch kit!

This was a brand new off to school outfit! She rarely gets anything new so we decided to buy her something just for school!

she had no hesitation at all, she didn't check where I was or anything, she just went off to play

Emme and Mrs. Sigston, they will have a blast together this year!

It might have been just a tad too sunny for this shot, lol!

in front of her school

I forgot my camera on her first bus day so this is her second time riding the bus!

so far she loves the bus, even if she did get a talking to already, lol.

New Additions to our Family

I just had to include this photo cuz he's so cute!

 We have recently had quite a few new additions to our family. I have never really been a pet person, but for some reason this July I had decided that we should really get the kids a puppy. I really wanted a Maremma like our farm dog, this is not an easy breed to find! When I looked on Kijiji there just happened to be a Maremma Shepard cross posted that afternoon, we went the next day and picked out our adorable little pup that looked more like a bear cub then a puppy at that time. She was so sweet! Normally a Maremma is a pure white dog, but the Shepard cross in her made her a black puppy. The girls wanted to take here home that day but we had to wait a few weeks until she was ready to come with us. In the middle of August we brought our beautiful little girl home. We also added three new kittens to the place, I am definitely not a cat person, but, we have a mouse problem and so they have become a necessary evil around here. Hopefully these ones will last a little longer having the dog around and won't make any trips to school in the undercarriage of our van! Chickens have been our final addition and we have enjoyed having farm fresh eggs at our house on a regular basis, we go through a lot of eggs!

 This was a few days after we got home from camping, hence the crazy Barbie and the rockers hair from the 80's. The girls had so much fun playing with the Munroe's dog as well as with some other campground dogs that we decided to start the puppy search as soon as we got home. We stumbled upon their puppies for sale post and we were sold!

 This is what she looked like when we first went to visit her, doesn't she look like a little bear cub! She was the second largest puppy of the bunch, only a little boy pup was slightly bigger.

This is her with her litter mates. They were sold so fast! The owners had people from Princeton and Vancouver coming up to get puppies as soon as they posted on Kijiji!

 Here she is the day we brought her home, isn't she adorable! Her name is Aurora. Emmersen wanted to name her Sleeping Beauty and Cheyanne said it would be better to call her by sleeping Beauty's actual name, and so she became Aurora.

 Mason and Bella are not really her biggest fan, she is a little to hyper for them and so she jumps all over them and it scares them. Cheyanne is doing wonderful with her though.

 We took her for a car ride to Salmon Arm and she did great, no puking, peeing or pooing in the car! We had intended to take the kids to Fletcher park and then realized that no dogs were allowed there so we took her and the kids for a walk around McGuire lake and then through the McDonald's drive through (Aurora didn't get anything though, just us and the kids,lol)

 These are the baby robins that lived in outside our back door this summer. Every year the robin comes and makes her nest in there and then has her babies, they are so cute! The swallows also had babies at our back yard door this year, they are far less welcome though, they make a huge mess all over everything! Next year the swallows will not be permitted to build, we're putting up a robins only sign, haha.

These are the kittens. They have the most wonderful names: Prince John, Shrek, and Spiderman. For outdoor barn cats they are doing exceptionally well with the kids. They get packed around and played with a lot, and so far only a few minor scratches have occurred.

 Emmersen seems to think of the kittens as real live Barbies or something. When she is in the little pen playing with them she is always acting out signs and moving them around like they are dolls. I am always having to remind her to be more careful or that they aren't dolls and that you can't flip them around and make them jump all over  the place. 

And the Chickens. This is my favourite photo of the bunch! I love how you can see everyone's expression when it comes to the broken egg. Can you guess who dropped it? LOL, it was Bella. 

 Cheyanne playing with the broken egg.

 Cheyanne and the chickens, she is the one somewhat responsible for collecting eggs and feeding the veggie scraps to the birds, although daddy seems to be doing it a lot instead. Her plan is to use the extra eggs to sell and buy Christmas gifts for kids in children's hospital. I don't think she is going to have very many to sell though because we go through so many eggs in a week. It takes at least a dozen eggs every time we have eggs for breakfast, which has become a more frequent occurrence now that Michael is working earlier in the mornings.

10 Sweet Years!

We celebrated our 10th anniversary last week, August 26th, together and still very much in love. God has blessed us with such a beautiful relationship. Our ten years have been sweet. They have been a very busy ten years, and I am pretty sure that we will never pack as much into another decade as we have the one we just passed. In the past ten years we have bought and sold our first house, had four children, completed a university degree, moved to the farm, grieved over the loss of a nephew, rejoiced with the birth of many nieces and nephews, and of course now grieve again with the loss of a parent. As we have walked through issues in our life, our family, and our marriage I know that God has been there, in every circumstance he has given us enough grace to make it through. Our marriage has been filled with joy, we truly are blessed, and I credit God's grace, and some AMAZING pre-marital counsellors for the fact that I can say marriage has been easy. I know everyone says marriage is hard, and I have seen that, but for us, even the moments that could have been incredibly difficult we have made it through with relative ease (again, full credit to some amazing pre-marital counselors). I am so thankful that our families supported us in getting married even though we were way too young, and many outsiders thought it was crazy. Although the older I get the more I realize just how hard it must have been to let your children get married as young as we were, haha, so I can't guarantee that I will jump up and down if Cheyanne comes to me at nineteen and says she wants to get married, but we will talk about it, lol.

I had looked forward to our tenth anniversary and was excited to share it with our families but somehow, with all that was going on, it just seemed sad and I almost wanted to skip over it. I felt like there couldn't be a celebration without Don there to celebrate with us. Michael and I talked about it and decided that our plans to head somewhere hot this winter in celebration were likely going to have to be put on hold this year and so he worked it out with our milker to take our anniversary weekend off, and we headed to Kelowna for a couple of nights away. It was good to get away, to have no kids to worry about, and to be off the farm where memories don't flood you quite so often. As we were starting out it was hard, we both felt the heaviness, and yet we were trying hard to focus on our joy, to not cause the other one to dwell on the emotions we were feeling. Throughout the weekend little things happened that made it so we couldn't help but tear up as we realized how Don would have laughed at this, or we could have told him about that. Grieving really is an overwhelming process that becomes a part of every aspect of your life, I am thankful we have a loving FATHER who walks us through it. Inspite of these moments it turned out to be a truly blessed weekend. We were able to enjoy our time, have a little fun, and cry together. Just being able to be together for a full 53 hours, with no kids, was such a blessing. On Friday we got Michael his new phone, which was a joking point of friction all weekend as we competed for whose turn it was to play with it. A lot of the pictures I am posting on this blog were actually taken with his phone!  We spent the evening cruising Okanagan lake at sunset, and ended the night with a huge Moo-Lics ice cream cone on the waterfront. Saturday we toured wineries and enjoyed not having any type of schedule, then we ate dinner downtown Kelowna, listened to live music in the park, had a cartoon made of ourselves, and walked along the lake enjoying the warm evening. Sunday we hit the mall, it was fun, and I am pretty sure Michael purchased more things than I did, haha. We came home somewhat refreshed, and enjoyed a family dinner at my parent's house.



 I decided that it would be fun to where white again in honour of our 10th anniversary, and of course it matched my favourite pair of heels!



we took a lot of pics of ourselves over the weekend!



Summer Hill Winery



These bottles have art work from Robert Bateman on them, we purchased the ones on the right. They were some of the first wines we tried, from Summer Hill winery. They were also one of the causes of  sadness for us as we both recognized right away that Don would really appreciate the labels being he was such a Bateman fan.

Cedar Creek Winery

This is Quail's Gate Winery

 

This is the package that the Duke and Duchess (Prince William and Kate) drank when they were in the NWT, we bought the Chardonnay as a thank you for my mom for watching the kids (she's a bit of a royal nut, lol)

Mission Hill, they had a great tour and we learned a lot!

Mission Hill uses the Pelican everywhere, this is their Vault

These were our winery purchases!

Getting ready to go out for dinner Saturday night

the heels Michael made me walk something like 10 blocks in,

I was not impressed, haha

getting a cartoon drawn of us :)

when Michael sat down, the artist chuckled and said

"this is going to be fun" hahaha!

Here we are, dancing on the board walk :)

thankfully for the walk home I pulled out the flats from my purse and

we strolled along the shoreline, a far more enjoyable walk then the way there!

While we were away the kids had lots of fun too and we often got pictures and texts telling us what they were up to. It was fun and definitely made it easier to be away from them. My favourite line while we were away happened when the girls were playing at Renee's house and Cheyanne yells out "run Judas is coming to take over the world" haha, I would love to know exactly what was going on in that imaginary game :)

while we were away Emme got a new hair-do, thanks Auntie Brit!

Bella enjoyed time by herself at Grandma O's while Mason was napping,

and the other girls stayed with Auntie Renee and Uncle Daniel.