LIFE, KYLE STYLE

Ashe Road Trip 2011

2011-04-25T18:08:00.001-07:00

My sister and her family came to visit us spontaneously this month. Leigh had one month left of maternity leave and Kev didn't have any work in April since the election was called and he works on Parliament Hill, so they decided to hop in their car and drive out to Calgary - from Ottawa - with 2 kids under 3 - woohoo! We had the best time and made so many memories. It will forever be known as the Ashe Road Trip 2011. I will let the slew of pictures tell their own story! Grandma and Grandpa Chilvers outiftted all the kids for Easter!

Many of the pictures to follow were taken at the zoo, which we went to twice since it was so fun.

I absolutely loved hosting my whole family at my house - I've never had the chance to do that yet since we live so far away.

More pressies from Grandma and Grandpa

I love my sister!

McD's lunch!

Everyone together. xxoo

I have so many more things to post but I never seem to find the time to upload all the pictures I want to so I am trying to be better at updating. Much of my free time in the evenings this week is devoted to all the specials on the royals though - I am so excited for Friday's wedding!!!

Skirts!

2011-01-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth modeling her new skirt - made by Mom. The pictures are kind of terrible again, we need to stop taking every picture on Morgan's iphone.....

Last fall I decided to learn some sewing. I really wanted to make Elizabeth some original summer skirts and dresses. I bought a nice second hand sewing machine and decided to show up to sewing class that was offered at church. I unfortunately was only able to attend the fisrt two lessons since the rest of the fall Morgan always seemed to work on sewing night. I was still able to learn how to make a basic little girl's skirt and I've been having so much fun making them. I already have a couple of orders to make some for my friend's little girls!

As much as I don't really enjoy these post-Christmas winter months, it really does seem to consistantly be the time of year that I get the most done, creatively. So for that reason, I can appreciate this hybernation time!

Here is Elizabeth modeling her new skirts. The BEST part about sewing for a little girl is how excited she gets when you make her a new skirt.

A small sample of my work!:

This one makes me laugh - it was her idea to put on dress-up glasses and try to look serious.

Our Month of December

2011-01-08T15:59:00.000-08:00

Most families are usually pretty busy over the month of December, and ours was no exception. It is hands down my favorite time of year and we usually try to hit every traditional Christmas event. Warning: picture overload coming up. Here is a little of what the Kyle's have been up to: Elizabeth was a star in our church nativity play. She was pretty excited to hold that star up. She definately likes the stage already... First successful Santa visit. Elizabeth loved this and told him how she really wished for slippers for Christmas. I may have planted the idea that she wanted slippers in her head, since I had already bought them. I love how she still has no idea that she could have tried asking for something WAY cooler.

Some of these aren't in chronological order. Here the kids are showing off what they got from Great Grandma Chilvers. A new winter coat and boots for Elizabeth, and new big boy bed sheets and summer leather sandals for Mason.

This is also out of order, and also a terrible picture since we seem to take too many on Morg's phone. Morg came home on boxing day from work for a stop-in, so we had a small second Christmas morning where the kids openend gifts from Grandma and Grandpa Chilvers and Uncle Kev and Auntie Leigh.

This was on or around December 1st or so. We went with our neighbors to go see the festival of lights in our city. We thought it was a warm night to go but we all still froze. The best part was the warm shelter where the kids lined up a couple times to decorate cookies. Mason is going straight for the sugar.

We had a Christmas Party at our house on December 4th with some good friends to kick off the Christmas season. The food table was amazing - and our bellies hurt from too much eating and laughing.

Then it was time for Linda and Sam to get hitched. We spent a late night setting up the reception room. I remember feeling a little overtired though by the end of the night, and a few of us were finding everything a little too funny.

Here is the beautiful bride and handsom groom. Here they are posing with almost all of the nieces and nefews, minus little Harper. How does 11 kids feel you guys?

After Linda and Sam were secretly on their way to Hawaii, we decided to try our hand at curling.

The kids loved having turns launching the huge rock down the ice.

I think Mason took one step on the ice and wiped out so he really prefered to stay on the carpeted sidewalk and sweep there.

We spent an afternoon just playing in the church gym. The boys mostly played baksetball and the girls enjoyed performing made up skits on the stage.

On Chritmas Eve we went to the church to use one of the larger meeting rooms as the stage for our family nativity play. The kids love getting their roles and acting them out. Elizabeth was the star again so she knew what to do there, but she also got a second role as angel with Brooklyn, and was in her element. Later that evening we had traditional homemade pizza and celebrated Lorna's birthday as well.

Christmas morning came and went too quickly!

This is our second Christmas morning on boxing day when we returned to our house.

Here we are in Salt Lake City for the rest of our holidays, starting the 28th of December to the 4th of January. We spent the first two whole days shopping. Morgan snapped this picture and said this must be my biggest dream. I was surrounded by Christmas wreaths that were all on clearance.

This was our first experience at In-and-Out-Burger. It was delicious!

Then Linda's New Year's Eve Reception in Salt Lake City was another party. The kids busted their moves until the wee hours of the morning. We weren't sure how long we'de stay and just use the kids moods as our guide, but they danced all night long. It sure made some great memories for us.

This is us at midnight. There were sparklers and poppers everywhere.

The next day was a beautiful brunch and gift opening at the Yamamoto residence.

Second cate cutting.

Then we visited the Bee? Bean? Been? Bees? seriously I still don't know the real name of the Museum but it was full of stuffed animals and was really fun for the kids. This was one of the coolest navity scenes - baby Jesus surrounded by kangaroos, zebras and penguins etc.

Katie assumed her usual museum position.

I think this was December 27th, a Flames game. Shea and Carson drove up to our place to see a game and stay the night. They however didn't have tickets and after driving up here and an afternoon of no luck finding tickets anywhere online, they decided to go find some scalpers outside the arena. You can usually get nosebleed section tickets for really cheap, but instead they wound up paying over $102.00 each for their tickets. I was expecting him to pay $20 for a ticket. And the worst part was that WAS the nosebleed section. So it took me overnight to get over this when he came home and told me how much he had spent. Morgan assured me it was well worth it. Of course if anyone deserves to go to sporting event it's Morgan, and so in the end I'm glad they went and had a great time! Good thing he knew the police officer guarding the lowest level section and he let them slip by and find some empty seats right by the net.

Here we are back in Utah at a Jazz game. These seats were acutually IN the nosebleed section.

The game was really exciting and we knew the kids would love all the loud sounds and lights. Mason's favorite part of the night was clapping after each basket, no matter what team scored. There was much more to our trip, including a tour of the firehall, a strep throat outbreak among various family members (was better than the vomitting outbreak of Christmas 2009), and our frist experience at Chuckarama buffet. We truly had a BLAST partying our way of 2010.

Seasonal Celebrations, and Wreaths

2010-12-03T15:10:00.001-08:00

We started off the holiday season by decorating gingerbread cookies. I have to admit I didn't really bake these from scratch, I bought one of those "just add butter and water" PC packaged cookie mixes, since Elizabeth convinced me to, and I really didn't see myself baking much from scratch for the holidays. I love to cook. Baking....not so much. The thing about baking is that things always have to LOOK pretty, and I just don't have the patience for it. The other thing is I have no will power and I eat it all within two days, even if I put most away in the freezer. A frozen cookie tastes just as good as a cookie straight from the oven in my opinion. Therefore, I just don't bake. Mason. I think he looks a lot like my Mom here....

We had a little last minute birthday party for Elizabeth. At Morgan's request, we made Frootloop necklaces.

Here is me looking bossy and telling the kids what to do. We are playing the "pass the gift around and unwrap a layer game". And I'm a brunette now....

I found time to fit in a tiny project. I found two of these old wreaths last year at Homesense in the clearance bin.....

for 0.70 cents each! They were sprayed an interesting gold....

They were missing quite a few pine cones, though on a recent trip to Banff with one of my best friends Andrea and her bf, we went to the park with the kids and we collected some pine cones. Why didn't we just collect some in our backyard you may ask? Because there are no trees in Alberta....

This picture is terrible, but I sprayed them with a can of deep red (looks almost black here) I had in the basement. And this is the begining of the wreaths in our home.

Morg sat down one day and asked me "do you know we have 11 wreaths on our main floor alone? " Oops. I don't know what it is about a wreath, but I really just love them. The circular shape, the fact that each wreath has a theme, the fact that you can find one to fit ANY theme. They are my favorite (I guess besides the tree) way to decorate for the holidays.

And since we have no fireplace, the swags of fresh greenery found a place on our armoire.... These little sparkly wreaths are from the dollar store last year, and so is the ribbon.

Smallish/mediumish wreaths on our pantry door....

The front door wreath.

The end. Hope everyone is enjoying the seasonal festivities so far!

Anniversary Getaway

2010-10-26T18:13:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago we celebrated a late 6th wedding Anniversary, thanks to Morg's mom who kindly took care of our kids while we were away. We were married in July though we decided to wait until the fall to experience the Banff Springs Hotel. It was the perfect season to spend a romantic getaway. I only wish we had waited a couple more weeks though, since the Christmas decorations in the hotel were due to be set up in November, and that. would. have. been. DREAMY. We spent an entire day at the hotel Spa. It was bliss. There were mineral pools and outdoor hottubs in the Spa, to which we had access all day, as well as free snacks our whole visit. I pulles this picture from the internet since we weren't allowed any phones or cameras in the Spa, since it would "ruin the tranquility".....

In the elevator.

There were so many rooms to explore in this huge hotel. I thought it was very strange that most of them were not really being used, and felt kind of like a museum. We kept thinking, "our kids would LOVE to run around here and explore". Next time we'll bring them...maybe.

You could find old antique wood furniture ALL over the hotel, lining every wall.

I REALLY wanted to take something home. There is no way they needed all that furniture.

I want this one - and a can of white paint.

View from our room.

This is our spa-like bathroom.

We spent most of our time in pools - both indoor and outdoor. This was an amazingly warm pool outside. We had woken up to snow that morning and we down to the outdoor pool and were surrounded by snow covered mountains.

Self-portrait...

Someday we will definately go back.

A Day at the Farm

2010-10-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

This Thanksgiving was pretty special. We were lucky enough to spend it with friends and family the whole time. On Saturday, Morgan's Uncle Richard and Aunt Bev were kind enough to have us hang out at their farm almost all day. Morg's Mom and Dad were there, as well as Linda, and Christine and her family also. The kids had a ball and the day was definately a memorable one. Grandma Lorna picking wheat in the prairie fields to bring home for decoration.

"Oh Morgan, put that away!"

Hide and Go Seek games never get boring, especially on a farm.

After a long day in the sun, we found Elizabeth hiding/sleeping in the back of a tractor in the barn.

Who gets to ride horses all day? No one where we come from. It was dreamy to watch the kids get this opportunity.

Okay so not everyone enjoyed it. Mason needs to muster up the courage for next time.

We enjoyed a hot dog roast lunch, and anxiously discussing Linda's wedding plans.

The men enjoyed discussing other things.

Grandma Lorna showed us how it's done.

My first time on a real horse.

So proud of her! She climbed right on the huge animal without a second thought, and didn't look back. Go Elizabeth! I think for her, Heaven would be riding horses all day long.

Cousins playing in the treehouse. There is so much to do on a farm!!!

Checking out the stables. Morg's mom told us a really amazing story about how her Mom (this is the farm that Morgan's mom and siblings grew up on) woke up in the middle of the night and since she couldn't go back to sleep she felt prompted to take the pigs a bucket of water. When she got to the barn a small fire had started from a heat lamp keeping the pigs warm, and she was able to put the fire out with her bucket of water. If it had been minutes later the barn would have gone up in flames.

Farm bums.

On Sunday we enjoyed a feast in Lethbridge and on Monday we had Morg's police partner and her girlfriend over for another turkey dinner at our house. My spread never tastes as delicious as my mom's or my mother-in-law's, but I enjoyed preparing it and with a few more years practice maybe I'll get things just right.

Nutrition From Our Kitchen

2010-09-30T17:12:00.000-07:00

My blog posts have not been too consistent these days, both in frequency and content. Today's is no different. Since the beginning of this year our family has been making bigger efforts to eat healthy, excercise more and to really learn about how different foods affect our bodies. Lately with the change of season, we've started new goals and tried new things in the kitchen, which have both been inspiring me lately, and I guess the result is this seemingly random post.

Every so often I enjoy blog cruising for helpful tips for moms and families. I really appreciate coming across a really great idea and I love that people take the time to share them. It seems that at this time of year, I am finding more and more ways to use those cans of cooked pumkin that have been in my pantry for a year. Yay!

I wanted to take the time to sit and write down a couple of our family's favorites, and possibly pay forward some of the helpful information that I've read. All of which, are our attempts at getting our family to eat healthy and properly as much as possible. None of these ideas are new, they just seem to work for us.

Healthy attempt #1: Sprinkles on yogurt.

My daughter has so many allergies (peanuts, milk, eggs, that we know of...) that cooking for her and finding nutritious alternatives has been a challenge for me since the she took her first bite of rice cereal and broke out in a rash. She has not minded soy yougurt as a dairy alternative, though she certainly doesn't love it, and pushes it away half the time. I can't take credit for the idea of adding sprinkles - I read it in Jerry Seinfield wife's cook book (Deceptively Delicious - I HIGHLY recommend) and Elizabeth took to it right away and was finishing her bowls of yogurt in record time.

Healthy attempt #2: Oatmeal Ice Cream Cones

I thought I was pretty clever for thinking of this, but later found out that my sister in-law does this as well, haha. For lunch, our kids love an ice cream cone filled with oatmeal (not the individual packs filled with sugar....) mixed with some honey and cinnamon. They also love a few added blueberries on top for decoration. Today at the grocery store I picked up pink kiddy cones and Elizabeth asked for seconds.

Healthy attempt #3: Healthier (and secretive) ways to add flavour, sweetness and nurtition.

Fresh Grated Ginger: adds a really nice flavour to lots of things for kids - cooked apples, steamed sweet potatoes, etc. We (and by we, I mean Mason and I) like adding fresh grated ginger to morning fruit smoothies. I used to never have ginger on hand and now I always have some in the fridge since there are so many things you can add it too. Bonus, ginger aids in digestion and is a natural metabolism booster for us adults. SWEET.

Cinnamon: YUM. One of my daughter's favorite supper side dishes is boiled sweet potatoes with spinkled cinnamon. Adding only half a teaspoon for flavour can help normalize blood sugar levels. Too much insulin encourages our bodies to store fat, so for any adult who is looking to lose a few extra pounds (aren't we all), cinnamon can help, haha!

Another great sweetning alternative to sugar is Honey (honey boots our immune system with bacteria fighting and anti-fungal compounds). Of course honey is beneficial in moderation, since it is still pretty high in calories per tablespoon...however Elizabeth has it everyday on peabutter and toast (yes, PEAbutter, not peanut butter...) for breakfast and on her oatmeal at lunch which is most days....oops I guess that's not moderation.

Cooked fruit: My parents were here not too long ago and my mom made a really great dessert. She sliced up a bunch of summer fruits (peaches, white nectarines and plums - with skins) and put them all in a frying pan. She covered them with a lid and simmered/lightly cooked them for about half an hour. The fruits produced a delicious natural juice, and LOTS of it, and together the cooked fruit and syropy thick juice made a really great summer dessert. You could eat it alone, or you could add a small scoop of vanilla ice cream, like we did :) oops.

Healthy attempt #4: Leaving fresh veggies around the house and NOT asking your kids to eat them.

I've read it before, it's nothing new, but I am discovering it actually works. I try not to feed the kids snacks after lunch, so they are purposely REALLY hungry for dinner. We leave out chopped celery and carrot sticks in a bowl sitting on the counter or table around 5pm and the kids start helping themselves. They can spoil their dinner all they want on vegetables. The key I've found is to get them really hungry though - otherwise they aren't tricked.

Healthy attempt #5: Soups.

Morg and I spent most of our summer eating variations of salads. It started getting boring when the weather started changing, so we turned to soups. I have hardly ever cooked soups before, though this year we are eating soups almost every second night. My favorite so far is a recipe I found in Oxygen's (I think it's a magazine only sold in Canada) Nutrition issue. I have made it probably 7 times already, and each time I tripple the recipe. I have tried a few different variations of vegetables but these are my favorite proportions:

2tsp trans-fat-free margarine

1 cup chopped leeks

2 stalks chopped celery

2 inches fresh gingerroot, grated

1 tsp ground black pepper

1/4 tsp salt

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1.5 pounds chopped carrots

1. on medium-high heat hear in a large non-stick skillet, add margarine, onion, celery, gingerroot and pepper and salt. Saute for 10 minutes Avoid browning.

2. While sauteing vegetables, in a large pot add broth, carrots, parsley. Cover and bring to boil. While boiling, add saute mixture and reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes, until carrots are soft.

3. I use my hand blender to puree the soup, though you could use a regular blender just as well. Blend until smooth and creamy.

I spent the first portion of Elizabeth's life just trying to get her to eat anything, and now that she is an active almost-4-year-old who is liking food a lot more, I am trying to focus on her getting the right foods. Mason is my meat and potatoes kid, and so if he will one day willingly pick up a piece of celery and eat the whole thing, I will have accomnplished my goal! So, at the risk of this being a totally boring post (I have a feeling I will probably wake up in the morning and say "why did I write all that?"), I guess I wanted to record some of the things that are inspiring us in our family, and to say I love reading the wealth of information available on all the blogs out there about tips for family nutrition.

Nighty Night!

Pink Side Table and Heritage Park

2010-09-08T09:29:00.000-07:00

I found this little girly side table at a garage sale a few weeks ago for $5.00. It was a soft yellow which I actually liked but I did not appreciate the gold accents on the leafy details. Even though Elizabeth's room is very lavender, she has bright punches of fusia in her mermaid quilt, so I was thinking soft pink. I knew that there was a shortage of softer spray paint colours in our local department stores, so I was prepared to maybe have to foam roller this one and buy a small can of paint if I wanted the right colour. When I found nothing on the shelves I asked the paint clerk if they would ever order in any nicer spray paint colours and he said "we have some pink behind the counter you can just have". So he gave me 2 cans of Rustoleum "candy pink" for free (which they no longer carry). Woohoo! The colour is still a bit more vibrant than I was imagining but since he handed me about $12 worth of free paint I figured it was now the perfect colour haha! A first coat of Rustoleum Plastic Spray Paint in white is what I always use as my primer. I will never use anything other than that to prime any piece of furniture. I've tried many primers on many different surfaces and no matter how much I sand and prep, it never sticks properly. With the plastic spray you don't have to do a thing, just maybe wipe the dust off of it.

No more gold leafies.

I thought it was sort of neat how it opened like an oven. Maybe someday this'll actually transform into a kids play oven haha.

My parents also came to visit for a week and this was taken right before my cousin's wedding.

Mom and Dad took the kids on a horse wagon ride at Heritage Park.

Outside a home that was built in the 1890ish ( I think she said...). The homes were so fun and interesting to look at, I could walk through them all day.

Just getting off a real early 1900's carousel.

Now fall is here in full swing and the kids are planning their halloween costumes already. I'm not sure how I'm going to survive the winter without bikes. Our kids live in bikes. Heaven help me!

Beautiful People

2010-08-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

I've been so lucky this summer to spend much of my time with these beautiful people....

This summer has been packed with family trips: visiting and hosting our favorite people all summer. The last month and a half was filled with countless memories and we will cherish them all. Things will start to quiet down now and August will no doubt quickly draw to a close. Summer is far from over, though this morning as the last of our company left, and as the weather has turned brisk, it sure feels like the leaves will soon be turning orange. Though, the start of a new season is always welcomed I think, as it brings new projects, goals and fun.

Thanks for the memories....

Update Squish

2010-06-07T11:03:00.001-07:00

I'm going to try and squish some of what we've been up to in one post. We've been so busy these days, I can't even remember half of what we've done. There has been no furniture painting of any kind lately - we've been too busy and having too much fun to devote any time to craftiness around here! Morgan hasn't complained about not seeing any paint brushes in his fridge lately.

The first most exciting piece of news is my sister gave birth to a perfect little baby boy named Benson a couple weeks ago. We all get to meet him in 2 weeks when we all head out to Victoria. I would include a picure of his perfection except that they are saved on Morg's phone. I am so excited to meet this chilled out little guy!

The second most exciting piece of news is that my 3.5 year old little girl is potty trained. After months of her refusing to go on the potty, she finally decided it was time. In spirit of celebration, we all put on our underwear and danced aroudn the house. Just kidding, only Mason did. For Easter (wow I haven't updated in a while) we got together with some good friends and their kids and did a pot luck/ easter egg hunt/ basketball game afternoon party at our church. Morgan would say it's never too early for our kids to start practicing ball.

Showing off our mad skills.

The kids after the egg hunt ( I guess these aren't in order)

Enjoying the delicious spread of food.

The kids waiting patiently to start the search.

Running like crazy trying to find treats.

My kids having a snuggle together. I'm not sure why this turned out sideways.

Morg pulled out all the stops for my birthday - we enjoyed dinner at the Keg. I hadn't been there since we lived in Ottawa. Mmmmm salmon.....

And dessert at the rotating Calgary tower restaurant.

The look out point. There were people around so we didn't get to make out. Just kidding.

This was much scarier than it looks!

The kids discovered a new fun way to eat lunch. Who needs chairs and a table?

What Mason looks like every morning after his favorite blueberry shake.

Elizabeth is old enough to ACTUALLY help out around the house now, instead of just pretending to, and therefore creating an even bigger mess for me to clean.

We went to the provincial park down the road for a little hike as a family one morning.

Hopefully next time we go the water will be warm enough to dip our feet in.

Morg and I have been looking for fun and different ways to work out. We went as a family to the Memorial Stairs and each took turns going up and down five times as the kids played in the grass at the bottom. We are pretty competitive with each other so it helps put a little extra jump in our step hahaha.

We've spent a lot of time at local parks. This night we met our friends Carrie and Tyler there and the girls tried to coordinate a dance number on the stage. It didn't last very long.

We still have a lot more to update but that'll be it for now. We just spent a wonderful couple of days in Lethbridge with the Kyle fam and I'll be waiting for Morg to download those pics off his camera for another future post. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer and get to spend a lot of time with family and/or friends!

Pottery Barn Inspiration

2010-04-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

Here is the beautiful Pottery Barn "Mia" wall sconce. They retail for about $69.00, EACH. I found these Shannon Crystals at Homesense for $3.00, on mega clearance - obviously no one wanted them because their purpose was very unclear - are they for decorating wine glasses? napkin rings? who knows.

These are yet again my $4.00 Thirft Store black wall candle sconces - painted white.

It took me a while....but I played around with the crystals and the clasps and was able to come up with a configuration that used all of the crystals equally between each sconce. A little sewing thread and a couple drops of hot glue helped out.

They will never actually hold taper candles, since one of them is a bit crooked - and because these are in my daughter's room....

The 3 vases were also a thrifty find at 0.99 cents each.

While my chandelier sconces don't even come close to the Pottery Barn "Mia's" , with break down of $3.50 each I don't mind having the homemade ones.

My Kids

2010-04-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

My friend Angela's photography business has taken off over the last couple years and she was looking to try something different than her usual request for family photos. We had a play date one morning and she decided to experiment on the kids for something different. I love the photos she took and here they are in the kids' rooms. Photos courtesy of Angela : Elizabeth adores horses.

Mason sitting with his car. His vintage cars were supposed to be decoration but they are too fun to let them sit on his shelf.

Antique Dresser

2010-03-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

My friend Laura asked me if I wanted an old dresser about a month ago. Laura's parents had just bought new bedroom furniture and were looking for a new home for their 50+ year old dresser. Laura didn't have room for it in her home and thought I might like to have a new project. When I saw it I fell in love! Morgan kindly went and picked it up for me again, and it sat on our back deck for a couple weeks until the weather cooperated with me finding time the time to get started.

Here is the before. The dresser was in such great shape structurally and the hardware was perfect already, just missing one. The original castor legs are my favorite. My workshop - our backyard, when it's nice out. After. The colour I used was called "inspiration white", a little warmer than a bright white. The hardware got sprayed black and I bought 2 new black antique style knobs to make up for the missing piece.

I think this is my new favorite piece of furniture. Thanks Laura's Mom!

Kyle Family Update Via Photos

2010-03-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

Here are some things we've been up to this month.

Elizabeth colouring in her princess dress. Grandma Kyle sewed this dress her to wear at Kenny and Britany's wedding 2 years ago but lately it's been her pick for what to wear all day. Wearing my shoes. I don't think I know any little girls that don't like shoes.... Elizabeth had a slumber party (minus the slumber) with her friends Kendyl and Emerson. We had popcorn and watched the Princess and the Frog but that lasted all of 5 minutes and the girls just did summersaults and cartwheels all night.

Elizabeth and Morgan had a mini photosession together. Here, she is pensive....

Sleepy?

Finished?

Dad's turn.

And Mom's? Excuse the creepy face.

My cousin Steve came for a visit and we loved having him around for a couple days!

We went to the zoo to see our gorilla friends.

Steve taught Mason to step down a stair all by himself. His legs are still pretty short for this though so he usually wipes out but he still seems pretty proud about trying.

Awkward snake slide. Maybe not a good idea for 2 people?

How about three?

That's it for now. We are enjoying another 4 days off with Morgan again though most of our time will likely be spent inside....potty training. I swear I'll be able to post someday soon about the success of our almost 3 and a half year old peeing on the potty. Heaven help me.

Flower Urns

2010-03-19T16:21:00.001-07:00

Spring has been a real tease. Not because we've had little bits of sunshine, but because we've had lots of it - though just not quite enough to get summer flowers outside yet. For instance it's been warm all week and this morning we woke up to snow. That's Clagary for you.

I found these flower urns at the Thrift Store. They were nice and big, though plastic and stone coloured.

One can of black Plastic Spray Paint later, and the urns could almost pass for the expensive heavy clay ones that I keep eyeing inthe stores and then walking right past. I stuck my indoor flowers in the pots to dream about how they sort of might look with bright summery flowers in them. I spent half an hour at Home Depot today talking to a very kind elderly lady in the garden section who was also eager to get started. She had been all over the world (I think she mentioned countries in about 4 different continents) and had so much knowledge about plants and flowers and their seasons. I wished I hadn't felt so rushed - I would have loved to hear more of her stories!

For now I guess these will wait on my back deck until mid-April when the outdoor potted flowers hit the stores. Oh, and you can see a peek at my new (old) dresser that's been waiting for a paint job for about 2 weeks on our back deck.

M + D Chilvers

2010-03-17T16:13:00.001-07:00

My Mom and Dad drove from Vancouver Island to come visit us last month. We always have a fun time together and here are some pictures of their visit. Our kids love both their sets of grandparents and I hope one day they realize how lucky they are to have them. Here are my lovely parents with a little more than half of their total grandchildren on their laps, at the zoo. Hanging out in the basement watching Dad play on his phone.

This might be my favorite shot of the visit.

Giggle-fest.

Snuggle-fest.

Grandma and Grandpa bought this tent during a trip to IKEA. The cookie Elizabeth is about to swallow whole is also from IKEA.

Mason has developed a true "Mason family" characteristic - a love for trains.

Tea parties with G-pa.

Mom and Dad did a ton for us this visit, including showing me how to change a light fixture. Elizabeth still looks up at the light above her while eating dinner and says "hey that's Grandpa's light!". I'm so glad that my kids already have such fun memories with Grandma and Grandpa!

More White Paint

2010-03-13T08:26:00.000-08:00

This canister has appeared before in my pictures, though it wasn't always white. I bought this originally brown canister at Homesense, after about 4 mark downs, and gave it a quick spray in my backyard last summer. I then asked a very good vinyl-making friend of mine to spell out SNACKS for me and stuck it on. My favorite thing about the canister is the little pokey-top lid. Morgan's least favorite thing about this canister is that it never actually holds any snacks.

These oringinally cherry stained chunky frames were $5 dollars each at Homesense, more than half off, and were cracking a bit the seams. They also got a spray of white paint and a bit of distressing to match the cracks. I got the idea from my sister here, to add vintage pictures to the frames. She had found a website that you could print good quality vintage photos for free. These are found in our main floor powder room.

Books

2010-03-12T13:09:00.001-08:00

Books are one of the easiest ways to add colour, warmth, and charm to a room! While old furniture steals are usually few and far between, old books are a dime a dozen at thrift stores and garage sales. I bet most of us have some tucked away in our closets.

These books on Elizabeth's dresser are from my childhood - and probably exsisted before that. I remember playing library with my sister with the Alice and Wonderland and the Little Women book. Which book doesn't belong? The old Hardy Boys book can be Mason's later in life... Who doesn't remember Beatrix Potter books?

I found this Junior Classics series for free on a local website. There's supposed to be ten in the series, but two of them are missing.

We had a similar set as kids and always enjoyed playing "school" with them. There must be something about these old style books, because every other day I find Elizabeth reading these to Mason in a corner of his room.

Elizabeth's Eye View

2010-03-08T13:30:00.001-08:00

Every once in a while Morgan and I leave the camera in an "easy to reach" spot and it quickly gets snatched by Miss Elizabeth. Most of the time I don't notice until after she's taken a picture or two. As much as I don't appreciate her little fingerprints all over my camera lense, I do enjoy seeing what she captures from her level in life. Me getting a snack ready. I guess she can really see our worn-off counter edge stain from her height. I knew this photosession was happening at the time, but they were giggling and having so much fun I couldn't stop her.

I think she snapped about 30 photos of Mason lalygagging on her bed.

I think it was right about now I took the camera away.

She caught me (half dressed for the day) setting up some clothes I was then going to take pictures of to post on a local swap/buy website.

When Dad's home, and Mason gets boring, he is her favorite subject. Maybe because he poses for her.

I didn't know about this one either.

I think I'll continue to be a little relaxed about letting her experiement behind the lens - I love seeing a little part of her view of the world.

Mirror

2010-03-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

I saw this dusty mirror sitting in a pile of 75% off clearance/damaged items at Home Depot a few weeks ago. It had scratches all over the frame and was missing one of the two metal buttons that decorated the areas where the cut mirror points meet. I thought the cut glass pieces were interesting and different from a normal mirror and figured it wouldn't take much to fix it back up.

I sprayed a couple coats of "heirloom white".

I also realized it's very difficult to take a good picture of a mirror since there is always a bad reflection!

This is the only angle that didn't reflect the outdoors, or my kitchen, or me.

I learned that the "button" that was on the mirror was actually screwed on like a cabinet handle....so I just took the knobs off my bedside table (which I plan to replace with more feminine hardware to define our "his" and "hers" bedside tables) and sprayed them black and screwed them in place.

Here is our old kitchen nook. Not a great picture, but we don't seem to take many pictures of people eating...or an empty table....so this was Morg carving a pumkin last fall. We had a different oak table, chairs and light fixture. New kitchen nook, a little whiter and brighter.

Family Shots and Thrifting

2010-03-03T07:26:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago a friend of mine Laura took our pictures of our family as practice for her and her husband's new phtography business. It was so cold that day though and the kids were VERY difficult. Josh and Laura were so funny with the kids though that they managed to get them to look at the camera and even crack a small smile. It probably would have helped too if I had brought them hats and mittens to help brave the weather....

Thanks Laura and Josh! You guys are going places I know it.

And on to my Thrift Store finds....Our local Thrift Shop doesn't have too many things to be desired...but occasionally I find something worth picking up. Below is my new fruit bowl.

$3.oo! I love the shape and the beaded edge!

I bought these two wall candle sconces. They were black and I got both of them for $4.00. I gave them a quick spray of white so they would fit nicely in Elizabeth's room.

A cute little pencil holder. Just something a little different than a plastic cup I guess.

I also found a stack of large white Urban Barn letters. I bought the large black ones to hang in our main floor when we moved in, and they were $8.00 a letter I think....and I bought four to spell H-O-M-E. When I found the stack of 7 white ones in the Thrift store for $2.50 for the WHOLE stack I was frantically trying to figure out what the letters could spell.....and came up with OUR BABY.....and that was the only combination I could figure out, so I was wondering what the origianl owners had acutally spelt with them??? Anyways, I started thinking they could spell "RUBY", which I would love for a little girl's name...that is IF we have another baby and IF it's a girl....so since I couldn't come up with a concrete use for them I sadly put them back....better luck next time.

Spring Fever

2010-02-26T11:38:00.000-08:00

This week we've been enjoying the sights, sounds and scents of Spring. As I type this, my windows are open and I'm listening to a steady steam of water flowing down the drains outside. The snow is slowly disapearing and my backyard is looking more green (okay....brown.) than white. We are soaking it up as much as we can since this is likely only a tease until the real Spring arrives with more permanency. This week Spring has meant......

Mason splashing in puddles. He's wearing Elizbeth's rain boots from just last fall. His feet are catching up very quickly to hers...someone's headed towards size 15 feet like Daddy....

Going for walks. Elizabeth wearing her new rain boots. We opted to buy her the giraffe boots instead of the pink butterfly boots since Mason will be wearing them soon enough.

Tulips. I just can't resist Spring tulips.

All sorts of fresh cut flowers. I always stop by the "older" flower bucket at the Superstore, and get them for 50% off. You can get some really beautiful bunches of flowers for $5.00 and under, especially if you hit the store the day they mark them down! I've noticed our store does this on Thursdays. These are miniature carnations which I love since they are cheaper than most flowers, so you get a large bunch of fluffy white flowers for a reasonable price.

The kids get new bright Spring coloured church clothes. Elizabeth's dress and Mason's shirt and shoes were gifts from my mom - she has such great taste!

Spring sales! I had some groceries to do yesterday and Morgan said "take your time" ( I LOVE when he says that) and so I decided to make a stop at Homesense. I snagged this spring wreath for $2.00!

I'm sure we'll get hit with a blizzard next week but it sure is nice to be basking in sunshine and have a Spring break.

Ingolf Chairs

2010-02-23T12:41:00.000-08:00

Today I enjoyed eating breakfast on my new kitchen chairs. I have dreamed about these chairs since we first got married. At $89.99 a pop, I was never willing to spend $400+ dollars on chairs alone. When we moved to Calgary, Morg and I bought IKEA's second cheapest chairs available, which suited our family and our budget. At the time, I splurged on the Ingolf chair pads to spruce up the more plain chairs we had decided on. I guess I never really got over the Ingolf chairs I didn't walk away with because they've been in the back of my mind since as a "maybe one day..." purchase. They aren't paricularly original in any way, just EXACTLY everything I've always wanted in a kitchen chair. I started looking over a month ago for some interesting and reasonable priced kitchen chairs on my favorite kijiji site. I started off looking for some old farmhouse style chairs, or something antique looking that I could paint. About two weeks ago, someone posted 4 Ingolf chairs! I had plans to paint them white and was so excited. Much to my disapointment they were already sold. Two weeks later, another posting! This time they were in an antique white paint, with a bit of antique crackling - perfect for my already distressed black table. I had my doubts that they would only let me part with 4 of the 6, but when I called, she said 2 were already gone and she only had 4 left - PERFECT! You and me were meant to be, Ingolfs... When I picked them up, it was the woman selling them's husband who was home. It hit me suddenly that this was potentially a very dangerous situation, so I was quick to spit out something to the effect of "my husband is a cop and he knows where I am right now!". Although it did actually came out quite calmly and did actually flow with our small talk conversation..... My Ingolfs.....: These were our chairs before. I put them up on a local swap and buy site and they were gone in a few hours so that was nice. Here are my brighter, cheerier, sturdier, more handsome chairs (you can kind of see my new light fixture that my Dad kindly installed!):

Here they are with my 3 year old chair pads to match - I actually think i might prefer them without them...

One last shot. Look at those sexy curved legs.

There's my rant about my new chairs. Morg says he'll never understand how I can be so excited about chairs. He keeps catching me staring at them and sitting on them. All I can explain is that it's just like when I met him, I fell in love instantly and couldn't get him off my mind. Good thing I only had to wait 5 years instead of 10 to have the chairs!

Pedestal Table Revival

2010-02-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

I really have always loved a timeless round pedestal table. When we first moved to Calgary and had no kitchen table I searched kijiji to find a cheap one. I found a decent one for a $30 price tag so I was sold. Unfortunately on the way home we encountered a very unfriendly cop (whom later would become Morgan's co-worker...) and after a steep $130 dollar ticket, the table wound up costing us whopping $160 dollars. I worked out on our balcony for days to create my fantasy white pedestal table, although it was kind of a wimpy looking table to begin with and my high gloss paint and varnish job made everything stick to it. We weren't sad to see it go when we replaced it with a table my parents gave us when we moved into this house. Recently, however, a friend of mine was moving and gave me this pedestal table that her kids had used as a basement craft table. My brain starting formulating fantasy pedestal table ideas again, although this time not with white and not with sticky varnish. As a before, it's your generic oak pedestal table, just in a little rougher shape than normal, but MAN it's a solid piece of furniture and I love the chunky pedestal. Mason also makes an appreance below in his lounge wear. We appropriately call this his "Team Canada" outfit. It was decorated with alot of permanent marker. Here is the after. After some sanding (I hate sanding), primer, and more sanding for a "distressed" look, she's a whole new table.

I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted to go for a more elegant look and have it plain glossy black, or go for a more shabby look and distress it. After I painted it all black, I knew the "elegance" wouldn't last 5 minutes with my kids eating at this table so by giving it an already antiqued look I don't have to worry about additional bumps and scratches.

I have a feeling though that I will be changing it to white one day when I'm sick of black. Shhh don't tell Morgan.

The new table has given me a couple more ideas to help spruce up our eating nook. I bought a new light fixture on kijiji a couple weeks ago for $15 and I have a plan for the wall featured here...we'll see how it turns out....

Next piece of furniture is an old coffee table that I found at the thrift store for $6.49. Morgan rolled his eyes when I came home lugging it up our front steps and through the door but I think he is getting more and more patient and accepting of my new addiction. We're not quite at "encouraging" though......in time maybe.

Morgan's 28th on the 28th

2010-02-10T11:27:00.000-08:00

This is my husband Morgan (and daughter). He turned 28 on January 28th this year - I wonder what his golden year will bring?....

I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday and in tradtional Morgan fashion he replied "nothing, we don't need to do anything for my birthday". So I went behind his back and called some of our best friends to ask if they would like to join us for dinner to celebrate. It was such a great time. Our cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing the whole night.

We went to Joey Tomatoes because we've always wanted to sit at one of their huge round tables. The picture below was taken after a very long and plentiful dinner. Angela insisted on taking the picture and photoshopped herself in after. For someone who is a professional phtographer, I'd say that's a pretty slack job of photoshopping Angela!

Carrie and I.

If Morgan gets his hands on your camera, you'll likely come home with one of these:

All four couples. Adams', Kyle's, Sager's, Siakaluk's. Sorry Adams', for ruining your pic.

After moving from Ottawa to Calgary it was so hard to leave family. I can still cry at the drop of a hat thinking about how much I miss them and I would do anything to be in the same city again. Over the past couple years we've met so many wonderful people (many of whom are pictured above) and continue to meet so many great friends that I feel very blessed to call them our family away from family.

Day at the Pool

2010-02-09T18:34:00.001-08:00

This is a short post about our morning today enjoying a quiet swim at the pool. The "Mom and Tot" swim time (Morg prefers to call it "Parents and Tots", even if he's the only Dad in the pool) is only $3.75! We went first thing and enjoyed having the pool almost to ourselves. The kids and Morg hiding while I seeked.

We alternate between the big pool, the tot pool, the baby pool and the hot tub pretty frequently. Morg says Elizabeth has pool ADD - she can never focus on one pool for very long before she's up and running to another.

While we swam Elizabeth asked for french fries afterward. We usually hit the Wendy's across the street after a pool date to get the kids fries (and Morg a Frosty) but we hadn't been swimming since early last fall so I thought it was funny she remembered that we usually do that after swimming.

Also, here is the table I've been working on - this is the before. I'll have the after picture posted soon.

Good night!

Fall Family Photoshoot

2010-01-12T11:07:00.000-08:00

Our friend Angela (sagerstudios.com) took our family photos again this fall - it was so much fun! Here are some of my favorites, although I really love them all it was very hard to chose.

Elizabeth's Room

2010-01-08T08:04:00.001-08:00

Last month Elizabeth moved into her big girl bed. I was dreading the change. She is a very restless sleeper and I was imagining many nights spent picking her up off the floor. I was wrong - the transition was a dream. She loves her new bed and has never once fallen out.

The twin bed frame used to be my Grandpa Mason's bed. My Aunt Joanne held on to it for me after he passed away 3 years ago and my parents were able to get it to us this last fall. I don't have a before picture, but it was a medium wood and looked a bit masculine, so I just gave it a couple coats of white paint. I thought it still needed something more interesting so I distressed it a little. With a quilt as bedding, I thought the "chabby chicness" of it would work.

I need to give a huge shout out to my sister, who made this quilt. It is the most perfect little girl quilt I have ever seen - way nicer than anything I could have found in a store. Elizabeth's baby room was lots of soft lavendar and white, so the the new bedding colours give new life to her new big girl room. I love how the fusia, dark purple and mustard yellow colours are feminine but not too frilly, and have a sort of vintage feel! I know my sister spent many hours making this quilt - and it shows - because I truly have never seen a nicer quilt in my whole life.

This is her dresser area, nothing much changed here: Here are the shutters I found on mega clearance but weren't quite sure what to do with them. They used to be yellow and pink, so I painted out the yellow to white and distressed them too, to match the headboard. I really like the whimsical crown cut-outs: My attempt at distressing: The footboard. She needs this footstool to actually get into her bed because it's so high: A nice closer shot of my sister's work. The fabric has little mermaids on it if you can't really see. She also made the little flower pillow (who's fabric is also featured on the reverse side of the quilt) when she found this perfect matching material! That's all for now - I am now trying to decide on how to recreate an old kitchen table a friend gave me. Hmmm....

Master Bedroom Makeover

2010-01-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

Here is our bedroom before. When we moved in just over 2 years ago, we worked on decorating the main floor, bought new furniture, and immediately worked on doing the kids rooms also. Our bedroom was left untouched. It has been the same builder's beige colour (that we chose...) that was painted throughout our whole house when it was built. Even though it's a nice warm colour, I have gotten really sick of it, especially in our bedroom, since it seemed to make our bedroom boring and nothing like the relaxing master bedroom I pictured in my head. Our bedside tables were the same drawers that my sister and I had as kids, and opposite the bed we had a couple more that were a bit bigger, but were starting to fall apart and look yellow rather than white.

My Mom and Dad offered us these bedside tables after they moved out to Victoria - I thought they would be perfect - just perhaps in need of sprucing up. They were in perfect condition, a nice old solid Sears set - just slightly dated... Here is the before picture of our headboard I bought right before we moved in. I bought it second hand and was never happy with the knotty pine finish....but loved the style. Here is our bedroom after. Most things are the same - just lots of paint! I painted the walls a cool grey (I wanted something totally opposite than the very warm beige that stares at me from every other wall of the house) and added an accent wall in a darker grey for the white headboard to punch out from!

Ideally it would be nice to have dark wood floors...but since that will never happen I found the next best thing - a 5'-8' rug on clearance at Superstore for $25. The rug is a rich brown and it's design mimicks wood grain, voila!

This is the bed frame after a few fresh coats of white paint. The side tables from my parents got reinvented with some black paint, and I kept the hardware the same since it looked fine. I thought about doing them white as well, though I was trying to stay away from having everything too "mathcy matchy". I splurged on the side lamps...I the room needed some jelwery to add sparkle. I love Homesense.... This is the dresser I finished this summer - which now holds our new tv. Morgan isn't usually very "encouraging" of my painting projects, since I usually take over the basement during the process, though when our room was finished he had a big smile on his face and said he loved it. He said that it was only missing a new tv....He got up at 6am on boxing day, after he had been throwing up all night Christmas Eve, to get this tv. He managed to get the last one they had at the door crasher price. The things men will do for big tv's....

We also bought the small black/brown Ikea side table to house all of our computer gadgets (the modem, mulitple external hard drives etc...) which were previously sitting on our carpetted floor in the corner (our computer is in a little nook upstairs right outside our room and there was no room on the smal desk for all the other things so he drilled a hole in the bottom of the connecting wall into our room for all the electrical cords). I was hestiant to spent $100 on such a small cabinet that we could have definatley found cheaper somewhere else, or else use something we lready had, though I really loved it and knew it would be a perfect bedside table for Mason's big boy room perhaps in our next house so I was willing to pay a bit extra if it meant it could serve multiple functions.

This is a mirror that I bought at Homesense a couple years ago and the frame was a sort of washed on gold faux finish...which I thought I liked at the time....so I gave it a little face lift by spraying it with flat black paint. Without counting the tv....the room was madeover on a very moderate budget. Paint and supplies probably cost us about $60. All of our dressers/night stands were free (except the one that holds all the computer junk). My area rug was $25, my curtains are the same ones as before, I bought them 3 years ago at Bouclair's in Ottawa on super clearance for $15 and they seemed to work perfectly since they are a grey/blue colour. My lamps were a hefty $100 for both, but they might be my favorite thing in the whole room and much deserved (right?) after all my hard work painting and revamping old furniture instead of buying new.

Now for the next little while I am immersed in different project....potty training.

May Your Holidays be Happy!

2009-12-20T07:30:00.000-08:00

I am still experiencing technical difficulties with posting! I am testing this again. I also have quite a few finished projects and new furniture pieces I've painted and refinished so I'm trying to get this figured out so I can post them. We've just about finished our master bedroom makeover, we are just waiting on one piece if furniture ( or piece of electronics...) that was Morg's request as a the final touch.... We had to buy a new computer a coulpe weeks ago so the proper programs that normally enable us to upload pics need to be reinstalled so all of this might have to wait until after Christmas, but in the meantime, hope all of you are spending lots of time with family and friends and enjoying your holiday! Merry Christmas from the Kyles!

Testing....

2009-11-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

testing testing 123.... please disregard, I've been experiencing technical difficulties with my blog....

Wreath Fetish

2009-11-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas decorating - but I am particularily excited about Christmas wreaths this year! There are so many styles, shapes and colours and I love them all. My new project this year is to vamp up our front porch with Christmas warmth and what better way to start than with a big welcoming wreath on our front door. As I was looking online for inspiration, these were some of my favorites: This one would probably cover the whole front of our house, but it reminds me of the Ottawa Parliament buildings at Christmas time!: So white and fresh: I love that it just hangs in a window, though we have blinds everywhere so that may not work too well....

I love the square shape - a little of the unexpected!

Who says a wreath has to be big?

I like this black door as a backdrop:

As much as I like different looking wreaths, the traditional green wreath is still my favorite:

Don't you just want to go inside this house? It looks so warm an cozy.

I found a couple of things yesterday (including a new wreath!) for some great deals and am excited to put something together on our front porch asap. Of course I'll be able to start as soon as Morg helps me retrieve some of the old decorations packed away, which might take me a week or two to convince him to do.

My Biggest Seasonal Weakness

2009-10-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

I am having a hard time refraining from buying my children all of the holiday dress clothes out there! Well, some of it is not so hard to resist since it is way overpriced, but many things I am having to constantly remind myself that my children and one and three and don't need an extensive holiday wardrobe. Did you know you can buy a little girl's holiday dress at Gymboree for over $60-70 dollars? Wow.

This season, like always, ebay has been my most reliable friend in the money saving department for kid's clothes. I found a Gymboree black velvet dress for Elizabeth with tags still attached, brand new, for $7.00! The tags say $62.00 and that's Amercian prices. I also found a Children's Place black velvet, brand new with tags, blazer for Mason for $5.00, and I just saw them this week in stores for $44.00. I also found a brand new Children's Place holiday tie (from their line this year) at the consignment store, with original tags of $9.50 still attached, for $3.50. I've found a couple more scores on ebay - a couple other Gymboree holiday dresses for Elizabeth under $10 and a fall jacket as well. My biggest weakness seems to be black velvet though for some reason, I love little kids in black velvet!

Anyways, if anyone is looking for holiday wear for their kids, you can find some real gems on ebay and save at least 50% and most of the time more than that. Even with shipping included. The only down side is that it takes some patient searching (that is the fun part I think though!) and you usually have to wait about 3 weeks for the item to get to you, though that just means you have to start shopping early!

Princesses, Parties and Pink!

2009-10-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

Okay so the fundamental elements of being a big girl aren't exactly in place yet (big girl bed, potty trained etc) but Elizabeth is turning into a big little girl! She attended her very first big girl birthday party - meaning parents drop off their kids and take off! This whole idea was a bit foreign to me since we've only ever been to parented birthday parties, so when my friend Laura told me earlier that "you don't have to stay, non of the other moms are staying", I was kind of excited! Her daughter Jadyn was turning 4 and the other kids were at least that age, so Elizabeth being just shy of 3 was the youngest. It was a princess tea party theme so I was excited for Elizabeth to get to play princess games with a bunch of other older girls to whom I'm sure she looked up to, but I was also excited to have 2.5 hours to get some Calgary errands done with just Mason and I. Here is a picture of the birthday gang. Laura is due at the end of this month with her third girl - what the??? Where does she find the energy?! After I left Elizabeth in her princess glory, I went to my favorite children's consignment store in Calgary. I was able to find Mason a winter jacket for $12.00. I wasn't too picky, but I was hoping for a red one, and I found it! I also found Elizabeth a horse halloween costume which works well since she is obsessed with horses and since Mason can wear it down the line. Score! Morg gave me a call when he wasn't busy from his car while he was working and we were able to meet for a quick lunch. It's always fun following his police car on the road. Today I went through an "almost solid red" right behind him and I'm sure someone was thinking "is she stupid?". This is Morg eating lunch. While we ate together, a call came in about a husband who threw food on the floor during an argument with his wife. I had to laugh when the dispatcher said it was a last priority call. Obviously... Mason enjoying his bread.

When I picked Elizabeth up from the party she was in this state within 2 minutes. A sure sign of having had fun.

During my errand running in Calgary, I stopped by a woman's house who was selling all the Barbie furniture she had collected over the years that her daughter was no longer interested in (I saw the add on kijiji). She had 3 Rubbermaids to dig through, and I was able to narrow it down to this stuff (plus some not pictured) for $27.00! Not bad since I just saw a Barbie sold at walmart that came with one bathtub for $24.99. I was so excited since they don't really sell furniture like they used to, and the furniture they do sell is really expensive. I am planning to make Barbie house out of grocery store produce boxes and use carpet and lyno scraps for flooring and if I get really crafty I'll use some old wainscotting scraps for detailing and maybe make curtains and things. She seems so much more like a big girl to me as I watch her act out her imaginary Barbie scenes. It reminds me so much of my childhood!

My favorite are the bright pink lawn chairs. I think I used to have the same ones....?

I got this fold up Barbie house and the Barbie tour bus that plays Britany Spears also. All in cluded in the price! So fun!

This is Mason grinning in his high chair today. His plate is cleaned, no surprise.

The Final Phase of Summer

2009-10-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

August in September are over. One went by fast and one went by painfully slow. We spent the last days of summer trying to pack in fun for the kids, as well as us. We hit Calaway park (a smaller version of Wonderland), the Zoo, the parks, beaches, and just enjoying the weather. In late August Morg and I took off to Vegas for three nights where we enjoyed some alone time without kids for the first time in almost three years. Not that three years is terribly long, though it had felt like it had been a while since we were able to just be us two. We dropped our kids off Monday evening at Morg's parnets house in Lethbridge and drove back to Calgary where we'de be leaving with our flight early the next morning. That was the hardest part of the whole trip, coming home and having to sleep in a house with two emplty bedrooms, especially since no one else has ever put them to bed before and I was feeling so sad that they might be feeling like we abandonned them! I just kept telling myself what someone told me "when you get home the kids will never remember that you left, though your husband will never forget it." Great advice for a mom feeling very guilty about leaving her kids to go enjoy some time without them! The first day was a little overwhelming (Vegas in general just plain crazy, not sure how else to describe it) and we missed the kdis horribly. I was surprised at how i got over that quickly though once we were there, since there was nothing I could do about, so I decided to forget about them and enjoy it. We had the best time ever. We enjoyed a full day of jam packed shopping. We covered so much ground on our own running from store to store! Morg and I shop well together - we both know what we want and are pretty fast to find it if it exists. There were a couple stores where we both needed to take our time (Nike and Addidas Outlet for Morg, Ann Taylor and kids clothing stores for me) though we are mostly pretty efficient shoppers. We enjoyed shows almost every night. We enjoyed pool time (actually I didn't enjoy it very much since it was so crowded and the pools were really greasy with sunscreen and pieces of hair and bandaids floating around....). We enjoyed food! Morgan kept saying the whole trip though that I had to slow down, I think I am so used to rushing with kids that as soon as we were finished our last bite of a meal I wanted to be off to the next thing. Oh yeah, and we won $1000, but everyone already knows that. That was a pretty nice highlight for us, especially since we were using the 15$ free dollars of slot machine money that the MGM Grand gave us. Vegas was a blast for us and I think we'll never forget it. I already posted lots of pictures on facebook so I just picked my favorite. This is Morg outside of New York New York at some time in the early hours of the morning. It reminds me of the freedom we had! The rest of these pictures are pretty random. Here are the kids on our front porch. I hope our kids get straighter teeth the second time around....

This was at Calaway Park. I was so proud of my little girl and how she loved all the rides, except ths one. I just had to laugh the whoel time since there was nothing I could do. She screamed the whole time. A rollercoaster at 2 years old....too soon?

Morg and Elizabeth on the "horsies"

These are some decorative shutters I bought at Homesense for Elizabeth's room. i thought they would be something different to hang in her room. I plan to paint them white and distresss them since I'm not a huge fan of the squigglies.

This is Morgan's new toy. It's kind of a big deal in our house. Anyone who has talked to Morg recently will understand this.

This is my favorite way to start fall - with new scents throughout my house. my favorite this year is Leaves at Bath and Body Works. My second fave is sweet cinnamon pumkin. We just got a Bath and Body Works store this summer so I was so excited to be able to refill my plug in that my sister-in-law Micki gave me for Christmas! Now I have about 12 oils to go through...I couldn't not have them all.....

This sums up my life in September - one of the longest months of my life! While we all had the stomach flu (except Morg, thank goodness) at some point, Mason's lasted for a five weeks. He got getter for about 5 days somewhere within the five weeks but started back up again, so he was pretty much throwing up almost every day for a full 4 weeks. He lost 3.5 pounds and all of his good cheer. He was a lifeless, skinny, depressed lump. He was either doing this:

Or if I wasn't holding him he was doing this: (photography courtesy fo Elizabeth)

Now out houre has been healthy for over two weeks and life is good again. We are looking forward to the fall festivities - including heritage Park with the Kyles on Monday - stay tuned!

Dresser Makeover

2009-08-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

I tried my hand in refinishing furniture this week and now I'm hooked. I found this dresser below for FREE (I didn't think of taking a BEFORE picture until I'd already started priming it). It wasn't the nicest looking piece but I knew it had loads of potential. Here is the dresser as I finished it.

I have been feeling very inspired lately to refinish some furniture pieces. Our bedroom is the last room in our house that hasn't really been touched as far as decorating goes, so I decided it was time to turn our neglected bedroom into a peaceful retreat on a budget. I wanted to start by refinishing an old dresser and building the rest of the room around this.

I had been looking on Kijiji for a while for either a really cheap or free old dresser that could be transformed. I saw this one and had to have it! Although when I called I was so disapointed to find out it had already been claimed (the add had only been posted 5 hours earlier, you have to be fast when it's free!), so I eagerly left my name and number and asked them to please call me if the guy didn't show up. He said he would let me know after 7pm if it was never picked up. He never called that night. The next morning I couldn't stop thinking about the dresser so I put my dignitiy aside and called him again just to check if it had been picked up and to my surprise it hadn't!!! I asked him to hold it for me until we got there to pick it up and that we'de be right over (and by "we" I mean Morgan....). Morgan willingly (meaning I dind't have to beg too much) drove to the most Southern point in Calgary to pick it up for me. He had to drive 30 minutes home with his seat tilted forward so much that his chest was an inch away from the horn (of this he made certain that I know and understand and appreciate). He had a pretty sore back after the drive home athough it was worth it to him now that I was able to concentrate on my project instead of talking to him about my plans for it for another week.

The dresser is solid wood, a very nice size and the drawers are still functioning perfectly. I just sprayed two coats of primer and two coats of "blossom white" spray paint. I was debating whether or not to distress it and give it more of a cottagy feel, but decided to go with the advice of my sister and keep it the way it is - I can always do it later if I want to change it up a bit. I decided next time though I will rent a large paint sprayer (aparently they are really cheap for an afternoon) and get it done much faster and it would probaly do a better job. My spray paint job left some blotchy areas which bug me, but for now it'll do.

I replaced the harware which turned out to be a bit of a headache. I guess the dresser is so old that it doesn't match the standard hardware sizes anymore, so I had to fill the old holes and redrill new ones. The exciting thing about this though was that it left me the option of whatever handles I wanted!!! I had my heart set on the upside down cup shaped ones but found that they were so expensive (about $10 a handle) so I was almost ready to settle on a cheaper style when I found the ones on the dresser at a local hardware store for $3 each! Yay! With a savings of $7 for 6 drawers, that's a total savings of over $42! Though I did splurge on the crystal knobs, which were $8 each - but it was only for 3 drawers, I would never have spent that on all 9 drawers.

The before dresser also had a very interesing flower carving on the top three drawers. I originally was just going to leave it and paint it out white so it would be more subtle. I actually think it would still have been pretty, but I guess I didn't want our bedroom to start going in such a french country direction, so I bought a sheet of wainscoting at Home Depot and they cut it for free to the size of the drawer faces. I grabbed some "no nails" glue and slapped them on - pretty easy!

The dresser isn't perfect but i sure learned a lot along the way. I spent:

$30 on spray primer and paint (if I was using a real paint sprayer and bought a gallon of paint it would have been half the price)

$42 on hardware

$10 on the wainscoting detail

So my dresser in the end cost $82 dollars, not bad since the originaly dresser I wanted for our bedroom (Ikea Hemnes long dresser) was $400.

A Week and a Half of Pure Summer Fun

2009-08-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

We had a really great time visiting my parents in Victoria, BC. As I was going through the pictures, I wanted to pick the ones that evoked the best memories for me , or at least the most emotion. Here's Elizabeth jumping into the pool. She's such a dare-devil. I wonder who she gets it from.... This was a lunch with my parents at the White Spot. The kids were pretty good and Mason swalloed a 2 inch piece of bacon whole. Who has time for chewing?

I love this picture. We spent lots of time wading around in lakes/beachy areas. We got some waterguns from the dollar store and had a few duels.

We spent a gorgeous afternoon on the boat with the kids. I don't remember much of the scenery....since we were trying to keep our kids happy and safe, but I loved watching them get to experience a sail on the ocean. I think there will be so many more fun memoreis to come on this boat!

We spent a good portion of our time in my parents pool in their community. Our kids love the water. I think this is more of a Kyle trait.

This picture makes me think of how much my little girl is growing up!

This picture makes me think of how nice it was to have so many "hands free" moments while we visited my parents.

My mom took this shot. This was such a pretty place. The water level was so low we were basically sitting on a river floor. Behind Elizabeth somewhere is rope hanging from a tree to jump into the water with (when the water level is much higher!). It just seemed like the perfect little summer scene. This is my Dad with Mason and some extra clothes on his head.

He knew something was up there, but wasn't sure what. This is some more relaxing and wading around Shawnigan Lake. Mom told me that something like 5 generations have enjoyed this very spot.

We had a wonderful time and are already looking forward to next summer.

Summer Thus Far

2009-07-14T12:55:00.001-07:00

So summer has been pretty busy for us thus far! We've done a bunch of things I can't even remember anymore. Since our camera battery was dead for a while and the charger was in the car and so the problem didn't get fixed for a while since I kept forgetting...so we've only got a few pictures of the summer so far (Morgan usually takes care us such things....and he's been working around the clock for a couple weeks it seems!). Here are some of them so far: This was a Sunday afternoon at our friends' Carrie and Tyler's house down the street. Morgan is trying to crack all of the kids' eggs: The kids trying to crack Morgan's egg:

The men: Josh, Tyler, Derek, and Grant. Oh and little Emerson too:

Some of the ladies - Valene and Carrie:

Arm wrestling competitions. Angela has her game face on - I don't. Angela whooped me. No surprise though....I've never won an arm wrestle in my life...excpet for with my whimpy sister.

And this one!!! The first ever arm wrestle I've ever won (other than Leigh). Sorry Carrie, but that says A LOT about your strength....

This was at Morg's work Stampede Breakfast. This picture shows off Mason's dimple chin, which could have been inhereted from both sides of the family. I think Mason looks like an old man in this picture - he was born looking like an old man!

The fam at Morg's Stampede Breakfast. That big bouncey castle was the greatest thing ever. There is an obstacle course for two people to race through. Elizabeth and I raced probably 20 times - we felt like American Gladiators.

This is typical Elizabeth at dinner time. She talks and plays and does everything but eat. We have a big painting of a Tuscan house above our table and every night she points out the house to me as a way of distraction from eating. At some point every night you will usually hear me say "YES Elizabeth, I see the house, that's nice, now get over it and eat. "

Here is Mason pictured on the same night. By the time I scoop out his meal on his tray and turn around for 30 seconds, it's all gone. He is going to eat us out of house and home I swear.

I'm kind of sad that we missed so many summer memories so far due to my lack of charging the camera battery. That's it for now. More to come.

Snugglicious

2009-07-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

Today while Mason was napping and Morg was at work, Elizabeth and I snuggled for a moment on the couch. She started giggling and looked up at me and said "Momma, I'm so happy". It was a nice moment.... And even nicer that she isn't old enough to realize that it's at times like this where she would be able to get me to say yes to anything.

Father's Day Weekend

2009-06-25T16:03:00.001-07:00

Over this last Father's Day Weekend we visited our family in Lethbridge. It was such a good time! On Saturday we visited Katie at her job (which is a pretty sweet job). She works at the Japanese Gardens and "tours" people who visit, which basically means she tells people not to step on the grass or climb trees or throw rocks in the water etc. Apparently there are tons of wedding parties that come take pictures at the gardens as well as people who come to meditate there. It was very interesting, and since we paid 7$ each to enter the gardens, we wanted to get our money's worth so we hung out with Katie for like three hours. Saturday night we put the kids to bed and while Grandma babysat, we decided to go out on the town! Morg and I were feeling like being young reckless singles again, so we wanted to do a fun night out on the town with Linda, Gene and Katie. Morg put a lot of pressure on Linda to get a fun party going, though it seemed like everybody bailed so we ended up just chilling out at Linda's with her roomies - though Adam and Tyelr stopped by so that was fun too. It was just as well since we are usually tired by 11:00pm anyway... Sunday was a lovely day of church and a yummy big meal as usual. I love my mother-in-law's cooking - it reminds me of the early marriage days when I used to get home form work late and never felt like cooking and so when Sunday's rolled around, so were we by the end of the day. Venus also came by that afternoon with her new fiance and she got the Kyle drilling of questions all about the wedding - so fun! She is so excited and happy - I can't wait for the wedding! Our fun weekend ended with us making the 2 hour drive back home - which is always kind of peaceful (yes even with two kids!) through the prairie roads. I'm glad we had a chance to celebrate Father's Day with family and get a really great 3 generations picture with Morg and Ken and Mason. I'm so grateful for Morg and all he does for our family. He is my rock - he is so reliable and helpful. He is so involved and energetic and FUN. I knew when I married him that life would never be boring. His kids are so in love with him. And so is his wife. Not a day goes by where I don't feel appreciated by him. Thank you for taking such good care of us Morg. Kyle Fam on Father's Day 2009: 3 Generations of Kyle men (I got Morg and Mason matching ties for father's day):

Gene at the gardens:

Morg and Elizabeth making a Japenese kite:

Mason liked the gardens too:

Elizabeth, Gene, Grandma Lorna:

The fam minus Mason, he was in his stroller sleeping I think:

Katie geared up:

We tried to pick up Katie - somehow her size 2 frame is a lot heavier than it looks - it mustbe all that muscle:

Dad!

2009-06-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

Happy Father's Day Dad! Here is my cool Dad at the helm of his new sailboat: Due to distance yet again, I was not able to spend Father's Day with my Dad. As I thought about him and thought about some of my memories of him I wanted to write them down for safe keeping: -dancing to anything from his CD collection - Best of Cream, Simon and Garfunkle, Leonard Cohen ("Clooooosing Time") you name it. -playing ball - baseball, basketball, soccer. I always thought it was so cool that my Dad could always play sports with me and keep up:) -watching Home Improvement and Rosanne as a family. -He never let me dye my hair until I was 14. I asked every week from for two years prior I think. He didn't want me to look like a "tart". -Even though my Dad wore the pants in the family, he was somehow a bit more of a softy than my Mom for most (not all) things. Leigh and I always knew Dad might let us do something that Mom would immediately say no to. Except for hair dying. And going to movies with boys. -As a parent/grown up person now, I realize my Dad tought me the value of patience. He didn't usually let us have things right away. He would say "no" and then it would unsuspectingly show up as a birthday gift almost a year later. Like my basketball net, or my 12-speed bike. -working outside, working inside - Dad worked around our house a lot! -Dad working at Grandma's house! -Dad fixing anything and everything for anyone and everyone -Chocloate chip pankcakes -Burger King nights when Mom worked -Dad letting us order our own Burger King meal separately - and teaching us that by paying for them separately we would save a few cents on tax. -patience! Dad had lots of patience for things and rarely lost his temper. He was the parent we would learn to drive with, or help us with math homework. -Dad catching my barf in his hands -Dad brushing my hair in front of the tv Thanks for everything Dad. Happy Father's Day! xoxoxoxox This is a picture of a picture, hence the brutalness of quality:

Miscellaneous

2009-06-17T15:39:00.001-07:00

Below are some picture of the last month or so. Below them, I wrote a quick bit about some of the photos. Playing nicely together. Seriously though, check out Mason's thighs...: Elizabeth and her cousin Adele at the Dinosaur museum. Let's keep it G rated girls.

Possin and Kyle kids minus Matthew?

Arbour Lake in a peddle boat - Morg doing most of the peddling.

At Genesis Place - there is no one there on weekday mornings when we go!

They both can't get enough of this,

Eating at BP's at the West Edmonton Mall. She didn't touch her chili.

At the zoo. I guess this pic might have been more exciting if you could see the cool white furry mountain goat I'm pointing at.

We've been up to a lot it feels like lately, and so I thought it was time to record some of it. While I was trying to figure out what to make a post about I asked Morg what he thought I should write about. He thoughtfully replied "I'll let you be the blog creator." He's so supportive.

Since we've been up to a bunch of things the last month so here is disorganized Coles Notes summary.

Dinosaurs:

We finally went to Drumheller after tentaively planning this trip for a year and a half. We met Christine and the kids there (it's half way - sort of - between us and the Possins). It was pretty cool - though the museum was a bit dispointing. After getting our hopes up (for the kids mostly) to go see the "best dinosaur museum in the world", it was borderline lame. You can only see so many dinosaur bones before it gets to be a bit monotonous. It was a fun trip to make though, and it doesn't matter where you are, the kids just love running around anywhere. Also, it wasn't just the museum, the whole city is dinosaur themed - so wierd! Morgan got so sick of me pointing out all the dinosaurs around town. I couldn't get over it.

Edmonton:

We spontaneously decided to mke a trip to Edmonton a couple weeks ago. It was fun to be able to use the word spontaneous again. We used to use that word a lot before we had kids. So we decided the night before that we would head up to Edmonton for 2 days to have our try at staying in a hotel with 2 kids, cruising the West Edmonton mall and going to the water park there. The trip was great, though we both agreed it was just as much work as it was fun, so in that case, the fun/work kind of balanced each other out and we felt kind of "neutral" about the whole trip. Good times, good memories, though we aren't rushing back there next week. We realized perhaps a trip that was half centered around shopping might not be the most fun with 2 kids under 3. So....

Vegas Baby!:

Morg has been working on me for months about going somewhere. Just us. No kids. For the last few weeks he was pushing the idea of Vegas, for only 2 nights, as our 5 year anniversary trip. At first I said no since I'm such a chicken when it comes to leaving my kids behind overnight. Eventually I caved and then it turned into 3 nights (you can't go to vegas and only spend two nights....). We found a deal at the MGM Grand for 59$'s a night and we get to eat all day at their buffet for free - it costs more for us to live at home I think! So now we are so pumped to go and dreaming about our very short getaway without kids. The possibilities are endless! We were both marvelling the other night about how we could literally do whatever we want, whenever we want to. Though I think I will be crying myself to sleep by the third night because I'll be missing my little kidlets, but I think it's going to be such a great time. So, here it is Morg: "you were right". There.

Embarassing moment:

The other day while at the grocery store, Elizabeth grabbed another lady's bum. I don't know where this behaviour came from, I've never seen her do this ever. It was even more emarassing because this lady's bum was particularily....juicy. Thankfully the woman just looked back at Elizabeth, half smiled, and continued shopping/talking with her friend. I shamefully held back by about 10 feet and decided not to tell Elizabeth that what she had done was wrong - literally for a moment I was pretending she was not my kid. I'm such a loser Mom.

Dream Home:

So the odd time when Morg works nights and we are toally bored after dinner and it's raining, I take the kids to showhomes. Elizabeth LOVES showhomes - she knows the drill: take off your shoes and don't touch ANYTHING. We went two nights in a row earlier this week and the next night she asked to 'go see houses'. Anyways, I found my dream home floor plan. It has 4 bedrooms upstairs with a bonus room, and somehow none of the bedrooms share a wall. I could go on, but I won't. Floor plan enthusiasts will understand my excitement - usually there is something you can find about a home you'd want to change to make it just right - but this one had everything on my wish list. So exciting that my dream home exists!

Elizabeth discovered her brother:

Mason went from zero fun to tons of fun in a week. As soon as he mastered the crawl, Elizabeth found she had a whole new person in her life. They have been running/crawling around the house squealing together all week. I always wished my kids would get along famously. I hope they still like each other this much in a couple years. And forever.

Welcome to 2009:

Morg got a flat tire on the way to work last week. Since he was about half way between home and work, he had to walk 45 minutes through country roads at 5:30am to get there. He decided it was time for us to join the rest of globe and buy a cell phone.

Recipe Re-vamp:

I have started a new project. After some subtle hints from Morgan that I always cook the same things, I decided to put together a menu calendar. I have an 8 week rotation with each week's recipes typed out. Along with the weekly recipes I have a weekly grocery list - so no guessing what we are having for dinner and if I have the ingredients. I think it will save us some money in the end too since those "running out for white vinegar" trips always turn into 50$ trips somewhow. I went through all my cook books and picked out all the recipes I've always had intentions of trying but never have. I'm excited to be more organized and Morg is excited for a spiced up dinner menu.

Morg at work:

Morg's had quite the stories from work and he's never really written any down. I"ll leave that up to him one day - plus I'm pretty sure that's some kind of breach of trust for him to write about on the internet. Some of his stories are halarious, but most are pretty sad. I will brag though that he was recently honored as ranking within the top 25 shooters for the Calgary Police this year. Okay so he came in at number 25, but that is dang good. It was measured by speed and accuracy combined. He atttended a lunch with the Chief who presented him with prestigious pins that he gets to wear on his collar to show off for the next year. I'm pretty impressed with my husband. How can you be good at every sport? Even shooting?

Family Recreation:

We go swimming a lot. The kids love it. That's about all I have to say about that.

We've been to Arbour Lake a couple times this year and love it! Our friend's Laura and Josh live in Arbour Lake so we get to go with them. It's the greatest set-up - tons of sand and grass and water, it's gated so no runaway children, so us parents get to sit bakc and realx and chat while we watch out kids tire themselves out without our help. Ahhh.....

We've been to the zoo a couple mornings. Elizabeth loves the animals and I dont think it will ever get old for her. It's kind of fun this summer because she can actually tell us what she wants to do - She either says "animals", "swimming", "zoo", "Adele" (her cousin), etc. Unfortunately one of her favorite things to do is "shopping"....Momma's girl......

And that's pretty much our lives these days.

Photoshoot!

2009-05-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

We had a family photoshoot this week! It was so much fun. We used Sager Studios (sagerstudios.com) and were so impressed! Angela (the photographer) has found this awesome location, and apparently most of her fmaily shots are done here because that's where everyone wants their pictures taken. She said she is ready to try something new hahahah! Though it is such a cool place to take pictures, so I doubt she'll be finished with this spot anytime soon.

The kids were pretty good, although there was a herd of cows right off the road so that was a pretty huge distraction for Elizabeth. We were so desperate to get good pictures out of her, that we fake bribed her by telling her that if she smiled, she could go see the cows.....I am normally totally against fake bribes just to make things easier....but we wanted cute pictures! As you can see, she is in her own world in a lot of them, but this is real life so I really love those ones. She forgot about the cows after we were done, luckily because they seemed to somehow ALL (maybe 100 cows??) move behind a hill and so they disapeared, very conveniently.

Here are some of the shots that we had done:

Family:

Strangle hold?:

How does she get the sky so blue??: Natural Fam Pic:

Mason!

Minding his business:

So, Morgan can't stand looking at this one. It's a great picture, it's jsut that it's US kissing, and he thinks it looks like we've been holding that pose for a long time. I guess we're not pretty kissers?:

Had to have one of these....:

I love this one:

Snap Shots in Time

2009-05-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

After an afternoon of trying to convince my sister to start her own family blog (and succeeding!), I felt the urge to post some recent snap shots of the kids. I remember for the first year and a half of Elizabeth's life I was anxious for her to grow up and learn to do new things, like walk and talk (we're still working on the talking part...), but lately I've been looking at my kids and thinking that I want them to stay just how they are, forever! Here is an assortment of what we've been up to lately!

Mushy Mom Post

2009-05-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day Mom! I love you! I wasn't able to see my mom on Mother's Day which was sad for me, but we did get to talk on the phone for a nice long hour or so after kids were in bed. I love talking to my mom! We talked about the boat progress, and also we got to talking about my Mom's mom for a while, who passed away when my big sister was 2 months old. It's always so interesting to me to find out more about her! We did however have a wonderful day with my other Mom, and Morgan's family, on Sunday afternoon. She is the best mother-in law you could ever dream up. Anyone who knows me knows that I think this. I love her! It was so nice to chill out with family and eat lots of food. We went to church, got dinner ready pretty quickly after, vegged for a bit and some napped (it was inevitable!! hahaha) while kids played. Then we went to the park, got the kids tuckered out, and came home to some of Josh's leftover delicious birthday cake!! I love cake and icing. That's one thing Morg and I will never have in common - a love for cake. oh well. The Possin's and Grandma left to head back to Red Deer with kids in jammies, while the rest of the Kyle girls and Grandpa had a fun chance talk. I wish we had more time to catch up with everyone! We had a wonderful day and really appreciated everyone making the trek out here! So even though I didn't get to see my Mom on Mother's Day, I was thinking of her lots and wishing we lived closer together (well, I tend to think this every day but on Mother's Day especially I guess). BUT she spent the day on her new boat with Dad and I'm sure there is no happier place for her to be right now! Sometimes I think the only thing that must be harder than watching your kids grow up and not need you as much anymore, is seeing your Mom retire and not need her kids anymore! Leigh and I often joke about how busy Mom and Dad have become and that we don't seem to hear from them as much as when they lived on Hauteview though it's really nice to see them enjoying life so much. I heard someone say on tv the other day that "you will never feel so alone as when your mother passes away". I know, it sounds a bit morbid for a mother's day post....but I got to thinking about it and it's so true! I don't know what I would do without her. So Mom, since I wasn't able to spend time with you on Mother's Day, I love and miss you! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo My lovely mother: Mason and Elizabeth wishing both their Grandma's a happy mother's day:

Again:

The Kyle pile-on, featuring Grandma Kyle on the right:

Walking to the park - Sue, Adele, Christine, Grandma Lorna and Christian:

They were so excited to get there! Seconds later, Adele wiped out...:

Gene being the wonderfully enthusiastic Aunt she always is:

Linda and Elizabeth strike a pose. Elizabeth loves Linda:

Cheese!:

Katie and mason make a great pair, they are both good snugglers:

Morg and Elizabeth. They are crazy. Enough said.

Dance lessons!

2009-05-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth had her first ever dance class this morning. Her first ever dance class was supposed to be last week but her loser mom forgot about it. oops. The class went really well and Elizabeth reacted to it just as I expected her to. It took her a little while to warm up to what was going on. She mainly spent the first ten mintues playing with the shoe rack outside. I didn't try to push her too hard to join us because I knew that that could go ALL wrong, so I just waited for her to join us on her own. She had nothing to do with the warm ups (I am quickly learning that Elizabeth doesn't have much patience for slow, careful, methodical things...) though jumped right in when things got more lively. The intsy wintsy (spelling?) spider song was her icebreaker, since she already knew all the actions from nursery. She ran right beside the teacher and enthusiastically followed her moves, letting out huge bursts of belly laughter (that can sometimes be kind of embarassing to hear in public - you'd have to hear her to understand....). Oh dear. I was really happy to watch how much fun she has with the other kids and how she is really great at encouraging the shy or sad kids to participate. She says "come on! come on!" and coaxes them over with a little hand signal. On the other hand, it scares me a bit to see that she is usually the first one to cause mischief. Why don't the other kids notice all the fancy sparkly dance equipment in the corner? oh boy. Here are a few pictures of Elizabeth's first dance class experience, in chornological order: Hanging out with the shoes.... She is a bit weary, but trying....

wooooooo! purple scarves to whip around!

Twirling with scarves - notice Mason hanging out by in the back corner. He's so cool all the time!!!!

For the Love of Vinyl!

2009-04-25T11:16:00.000-07:00

I love vinyl lettering! I think I still do anyway. The bug started when I got this made for our kitchen (pictured below). Maybe it's confusing since many people have said upon reading it "You guys didn't move here in 2004?". Oh well. Then I got a couple things for the kids rooms. A couple of girls from church have a business and were having a sale one morning so I came home with a couple things. I talked to my sister on the phone when I got home and told her I found such a cute little saying to put up in Mason's room and read it to her over the phone. Leigh said "How did they spell 'no buddy'?" and so I said "n-o space b-u-d-d-y......why?......OH!!!!!" the play-on-words had JUST occured to me.

Then I got a quote for Elizabeth's room. Let me tell you, applying this quote was the single most frustrating experience of my life.

Firstly, vinyl can be kind of tricky to apply, especially if it comes in as long of a strip as this one did. When I started to remove the paper side (I guess people who've done this before will know what I'm talking about) the word strip got all magled up like a piece of scotch tape does if you aren't careful while tearing off a long piece from the roll. I'm not sure how long I spent trying to fix my mistake - I just know that it took about as long as it did for Mason to finally cry himself to sleep in the next room for his nap. The more I worked, the more it seemed to tangle and stick. I was reaching the point of furious and was completely frustrated that my good money might just as well have been thrown down the drain. As I worked and grew more frustrated, Elizabeth was keeping herself amused behind me by dismantling and reassembling her humidifier, over and over. With the impossible sticky vinyl mess, combined with the clunck clunck clunck of humidifier parts crashing together, I felt a scream about to launch out of my throat. So even though Mason had JUST cried himself into deep sleep and Morgan was also napping in our room down the hall, I let out a huge shriek. Consequently, Mason woke up briefly though Morgan didn't stir....not surprising I guess.

Secondly, after I finally had the thing untangled, I put it on the wrong wall. How could I make such a huge mistake you might ask? Elizabeth has two walls in a light lilac and two walls in a medium lilac. I asked for the word strip in white, thinking it would go well on the darker lilac - though in my slightly-not-thinking-straight head I was also imagining it would go well above her window (which is NOT on the darker lilac), like in Mason's room. When all was said and done and I had applied it above her window and peeled the baking away to look at my finsihed product - I could barely see it on the wall. In my fury to detangle I hadn't thought it through. White vinyl letters on a nearly-white/lilac wall doesn't work! So - I had to get up on a chair, take off each letter individuall and apply it the darker wall. My neck was aching from looking up while I peeled off each letter from above the window and I was starting to sweat and get really hot. Once I had all the letters peeled and applied by hand I stood back to look at my work.

Thirdly, since I am obviously too stuborn and frustrated at this point to go all the way to the basement to get a ruler or a level, the words weren't centered or leveled properly which at this point you'd think wouldn't be a big deal, as long is it was DONE, though I knew if I left it like it was it would annoy me forever. So, I put another half an hour of my time into straightening out the words until they were just right. In the end I ended up making the quote into two lines - and even now it's not quite centered beneath the pictures, but I figure it would easier to move the pictures than to try again.......

So in the end, I am thankful for a little girl who has so much enthusiasm. Even though she watched me work on these letters all afternoon yesterday, when I went in her room this morning to say good morning she was pointing at the letters and saying " OOOOOOHHHHH WOOOOOOOOOOW!".

SO worth it.

Yay for Visitors!

2009-04-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

We've had the pleasure of much company in the last month of so! Some of our family and friends have stopped in for a welcomed visit! My cousin Steve spent a couple days with us while he worked at the Calgary Auto Show this spring. He graciously gave us free tickets to the show which we enjoyed! At the show, Elizabeth and Morg enjoyed cruising in the flashy cars while Mason and I enjoyed cruising all the contest entry booths. We didn't win anything....yet. Morgan's cousin Darren stopped in for a night on his way to a committment in Calgary early the next morning. Pictured below is Darren and Elizabeth shopping on their knees together. It's WAY more fun that way!

Darren and Elizabeth having dessert.

Okay so Venus wasn't visiting Calgary since she lives here...but she was visiting us in Airdrie!

Our high school friend Ben and his girlfriend Lyndsay were visiting from Ottawa this week. They are so fun, I wish we still lived in the same city. We had a great time talking about Morg's police stories, Ben's teaching stories, and Lyndsay's nursing stories from the labour and delivery unit, over bbq-ed steak from our sweet new grill. This is us being normal.

This is us being silly! Elizabeth is doing the Austin Power's "mwuhaha" with her pinky finger. Mason is wondering what kind of strange family he was born into.

It's always a blast having friends and family visit from out of town. I think after Ben and Lyndsay left last night we both had a moment of home sickness! I guess it's always nice to have such familiar faces visit us!

This One's For You Edward

2009-04-05T17:20:00.001-07:00

So. I've confessed to my husband. I have feelings for another man. His name is Edward. He is perfect. I love him. Is this wrong???? Probably. I'm not sure how she did it, but Stephenie Meyers created the most perfect love story of all time! Okay, okay, so it's kind of lame to think a vampire love story is epic - don't judge me. Unless you've read the books, you wouldn't understand. The movie was truly satisfying. Despite the overload of white make up, the terrible acting and embarassing special effects, it completely delivered (again, you'd have to read the books to understand...). I don't remember feeling this obssessed since the Backstreet Boys. It's kind of pathetic. Oh well it's fun and for some reason my husband supports my continuing to read these books. Maybe he likes the romantic mood they put me in.

The Cheap Toy Doll

2009-04-05T06:53:00.000-07:00

So, this week has been a bit of a whirlwind. Morg and I were totally mentally exhausted by the end of it! We almost bought another house - though in the end we knew it wasn't the right decision. Our friends were selling their 4 bedroom home that backs onto a canal, just a few blocks from us. It was beautiful, with hardwood and dark stained cabinets, stainless steel appliances, a mudroom, a deck, fenced, partially finished basement. It was perfect. We thought we could keep our townhome and rent it out as an investment. It all sounded ideal - we were financially approved for this plan with our mortgage broker, and in the end we would sell the townhome and cash in on our equity! Perfect. But all week something just didn't feel right. We knew we'de have to live REALLY tightly in the new house - as in hardly ANY money for anything other than food, mortgage and bills! We thought and thought and thought ALL week about it, but something just didn't feel right about it. We went through every possible scenario, including selling our townhome (which involved me acting on a whim, running over to my renting neighbours' house who are currently looking to buy something and offering them our home for a"good deal" - in hindsight that might have seemed SLIGHTLY desperate and strange....) or renting it out until we would try to sell it next spring, or renting it out indefinately. We thought about me taking on a couple kids part time doing day care to make things a bit more comfortable. We thought about me looking for a different part time job that would only take a few hours a week just to bring in a bit extra cash. Every morning for over a week, Morg and I woke up feeling like we needed to buy the house and that it was such a great investment - though by the end of the day we weren't comfortable with the idea anymore. If we could just live really tightly for a couple years, if we could always count on having renters in the townhome, and if we could guarantee that the Calgary housing market wasn't going to take any further hits, it would be the perfect plan - but we couldn't trust that any or all of these conditions were possible, so in the end I had to make the dreaded phone call to our friends and tell them that we couldn't buy their house. A day or two later the house ended up selling and Morgan said it was a relief almost since we didn't have to think about it anymore. The thought of buying this house had consumed our lives for a week. Morgan said at one point: "This is the hardest decision we've ever had to make. Getting married? Not hard. Having kids? Not hard. Picking up and moving to Calgary? Not hard. But buying this house - I have no idea." So since our decision, we've been thinking a lot about how much we appreciate our humble 1100 square foot home. It is our HOME. We already have so many memories in it. Morgan works four days on, four days off, so we get to spend loads of time together and so having a small day care, even if only one of two days a week, would take away from our family time together. So, in the end, we realized we will move when we feel comfortable and excited (not worried) to do so! Where does the cheap toy doll come in, you might ask? During this whole thought process - I often looked at our kids and felt a bit sad. I felt like I was being ungrateful for the things we have. I would watch Elizabeth play and talk to herself and her toys and I would think about how little it takes to make her happy. I would get really annoyed at myself for letting this whole "bigger house" idea consume my life, when I had two beautiful kids who were ready to play and have fun right NOW. One day Elizabeth was playing with a really cheap, tiny doll that came from a little princess set from the dollar store. She played with it ALL day. She washed her in the sink, she bathed her in a bowl of water, she brought her to bed with her. It was probably the smallest, most boring and ugly little doll that she owns, but she was thrilled with it!!! I just reminded me that we don't necessarily need a whole lot in our lives, as long as we appreicate what we do have. So this is my corny blog post to look back on and remember how much we've been blessed with! This is a picture of Elizabeth's doll. I took it next to her lamp to give a perspective of how teeny it is. A close up - the paint is chipping off her face.

Doll getting a shower.

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures!

2009-03-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

We got hit with more snow this week - ugh! Naturally, we've been feeling a bit desperate for warm weather. So, with snow mountains still lurking in our backyard, I may have jumped the gun a little the other day by buying a bubble gun! When I brought it home, Elizabeth had no idea what it was, just that it looked TOTALLY fun, and she wanted to rip it open right away. Since the weather didn't permit us to actually enjoy it outside, we decided to bust it out in our kitchen. Morg is really good at cleaning floors....so the soapy residue mess was just a minor, temporary annoyance - and well worth the fun! So yeah, the bubble gun turned out to be REALLY budget, and more effort and mess than it would be to just blow bubbles the old fashioned way with a wand, so instead Elizabeth uses the gun as a pretend hair dryer. That works too.... Here are some photos of us pretending we are in our backyard blowing bubbles - sun on our faces, grass between our toes, dogs barking (yeah we'll take anything at this point).....

BASEMENT RE-VAMP!

2009-03-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Morg and I decided it was time to really make the best of our uninished basement! I always think it's fun to rearange and change things up a bit, so we added some curtains to act as walls, added some family photos, and added a nice old 36 inch tube tv that we got for 25$. We brought our surround sound down there as well so now it's our very own "theatre space on a budget". It's been a really nice to feel like we have an extension of living space for the kids as well. Morgan is a great mover of big objects and I am good at letting him know where I'd like things to go, so we make a great team! That good old brown couch from Brookridge is still the most comfortable seat in the house! Long view of our basement

If you ever stay with us, this is your your bed! (notice the nice new big screen to the right - yeah baby!)

The living area - curtains hide our freezer and food/kitchen gadget storage.

Zoo Trip!

2009-03-22T07:15:00.001-07:00

My friend Laura had a great idea to go to the zoo Saturday morning! We packed the kids up as fast as we could to get the best of the sunshine and it was a gorgeous morning (despite what it may look like with some snow on the ground...)! We both got annual passes so hopefully Elizabeth will be great friends with the animals by the end of the summer. The zoo is SO fun for the kids (and adults - Morg and I love it too!). Elizabeth's favorite animal was the giraffe. I'm not sure if it's becuase it's actually her favorite, or because she saw it first...probably the latter. My favorite were the hippos - they are so creepy and ugly looking, but they are so intriguing! I could watch them all day. After seeing lots of animals we had a nice healthy picnic lunch, though Elizabeth crashed it with her french fries (oops, my fault), though she happily shared with her friends. Afterwards the girls had a great time heckling some neerby geese, climbing the stadium stairs over and over, and checked out the huge tiger. By that time my kids were officially tuckered out. They had had such a good dose of fresh air and sunshine - always does it! I soon realized it was time to go though when the meltdowns started (my kids anyways!). It was such a great trip and made me so excited for more summer fun to come! Laura, her two girls Jadyn and Heidi, and Elizabeth.

They were almost dressed the same!

giraffes!

Heidi and Mason. Heidi has a year on Mason, yet, hmmm, not much difference in size.

Creepy hippo pic.

Who needs carrots? oops.

Mason showing off his snack.

Mason was so cool the whole trip (until the last few minutes). He is so chilled out and this picture depicts this perfectly!

Winter of our Discontent

2009-03-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

So this has been a bit of a doozey of a winter for us with all the sicknesses that our kids have had! Between half a dozen colds, (Mason is 6 months old and has had five colds - the kid needs a break!) all-nighter throw-ups, week long cases of diarrhea, we've been slogged with home-boundness for a LONG time! I think I make it worse too since I try not to take my kids to any play dates or anything when they are sick so they don't get the neighborhood sick too. There have been healthy breaks and we've been able to fit in some fun here and there, but this sure feels like it's been the winter of taking care of sick kids. I am just venting I suppse and am so excited for summer to get here so we can play outside all the time! I love summer! In the meantime, this is a little bit of what we've been up to this winter.... Elizabeth with a snotty nose watching Enchanted on Dad's Christmas present. She thought it was so great.

Leave it up to Morg to find something fun out of nothing! All you need is a bit of tape.

Coolest look ever!

The kids really like playing together in their cribs. Elizabeth is reading "Here Comes Santa Clause" to Mason who was actually interested.

Haning out

Mason learned to eat solids. Kind of boring I know....but always an event in a house with a baby.

We went to the rec center pool whenever we could. This is Mason in his swim trunks, and a shirt we may have waited a bit too long to try on him....

I put Elizabeth to work whenever there is nothing to do. She loves windexing. I remember windexing as a kid and it was my favorite job to do around the house. Remember windexing the fireplace doors Leigh? So much satisfaction! hahaha.

working on the kitchen window. She's actually not bad at it - but is sometimes a little too spray-happy.

BRING ON SUMMER! WE'RE READY!

Going Coastal

2009-03-08T16:20:00.001-07:00

We visited my parents new place near Victoria BC and had such a fun time. This is the view from the watch tower by their house. We had timed races up to the top and I won! What can I say, I'm fast. We went for lots of walks around the community my parents live in because it's just so darn pretty and right on the ocean. I think it will make for many fun vacations, and the company isn't bad too! :)

This is right after we made the trek down to the water through the forest in a NON rough terrain stroller. (I love my stroller but let's face it, it's meant for smooth turfs). It wasn't bad going down the path, but coming back up was a struggle. Especially since I didn't realize until half way up that I had the breaks on - smart girl. Once we realized we'de taken a slightly different path back up, we decided to make an adventure out of it and see if we could re-route home. Two hours later, it was starting to get dark and we were lost (my parents community is surrounded by huge BC trees and trails and forest) and we started to get worried since we had two cold and hungry kids, but then they fell asleep so we were able to huff it. Finally we found a lady jogging who directed us back home, thankfully. We slept well that night.

Morg enjoyed tee-ing off into the mountains.

We had fun taking an updated family picture.

Morg and Elizabeth in Victoria Harbour

We enjoyed a second Christmas at my parents. Mom left the tree up everything!

This is my nephew Miles! He is such a monkey! I love him!

Diggin for crabs on the beach, still a bit cold though!

I think Mason was sleeping in the car at this point. I am so excited to go back in tshirts this summer!!!

Along the Way

2009-02-27T15:06:00.000-08:00

We started off life as "the Kyles" in a very comfortable basement appartment on good old Brookridge Crescent. Morg's parents owned this house for many years and it's in the neighborhood (Fallingbrook....tear...) where Morgan and I grew up and met.

We enjoyed moving in, painting, and making our first home together. We have such fun memories in our first place I almost cry just thinking about it. It was one of the best times of my life!

We celebrated our first year anniversary and were eager to document the occation....

Morg's flowers he gave me: July 23rd 2005

Almost another year later, we decided we were ready to start a family and got pregnant right away. We were so excited and I was terrified at the same time. The phrase "no turning back now!" all of a sudden had a much heaftier meaning. This photo was taken at Pitrie Island in Ottawa, and I was about a month away from delivery and the only thing that fit me (comfortably) was overalls.

On November 17th, we gave my Dad a pretty cool birthday present - a baby girl named Elizabeth who was perfect.

Shortly after we moved to Calgary and bought a house.

And a car.

Celebrated our first Christmas in our first ever owned-home. We decided it was time to have another one, and got pregnant again.

This time around I felt much huger, and puffier, fatter, you name it. little did I know I was carrying a baby almost 2 pounds heavier this time.

Mason Smith Kyle was born August 23rd, 2008. He is such a cool addition to our family - a very easy going dude that gets along with everyone :)

Mason is 6 months now, Elizabeth 2 years and a bit, so this is where our blog begins.

A Quick Re-Cap:

2009-02-27T11:28:00.000-08:00

Maybe it all began here (the romance blooms during High School (Grad) )....

Or maybe it was here....(who knew that grade 7 crushes would evolve into anything??)

And then we ended up here, married on July 23rd 2004.

Almost 5 years and two kids later, life only gets better.

2009-02-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

We've decided to join the masses and create a family blog. We don't necessarily expect anyone to be particularily interested in our everyday lives and so the main purpse of our blog is to create some kind of family history for ourselves to look back on (since, let's face it, I will never be a good old fashioned journal writer). I've really enjoyed reading some friend's blogs and sometimes (even though new pictures on Facebook is a really nice way to get people's updates) reading the 1000 words is worth more than just the picture! We'll see how this goes!