Snap Shots in Time

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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

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.