Snugglicious

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

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!

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

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!

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

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.