Update on our lives~
~ I’m still pregnant. Yup. Imagine that… 4ish more weeks to go, I like the sound of baby arriving Feb 20th
~ Had our furnace checked out today. We will probably be getting a new one in the next month or so, depending on the quote they give us.
~ I discovered how messy our house is. I’ve been doing lots of cleaning, so it’s mainly just toys and stuff we are still moving around. I probably wouldn’t have noticed except I needed to ‘clear a path’ for the furnace guy before he got here and realized just how much work there is left to get done.
~ My best friend’s mom lent me a book. It’s a cookbook. “The big cook”. I’m in LOVE. The recipes are made for you to get together with some girlfriends and make lots, you cut up the meat, make the sauce put it all into a ziplock bag and freeze it. So no cooking involved for now. The book also gives suggestions for side dishes (I always need help with those). You pull the food out to thaw overnight then cook it up the next day for dinner ~ many of the recipes are cookable in the oven, slow cooker or BBQ. I have made 8 meals so far, we ate one so I have 7 frozen meals. I also have all the ingredients and most of them prepared (cut up etc) for another 2 meals, however I miscalculated how much meat I’d need so need to buy a bit more. Darn Kg to Lbs! I know the math but apparently can’t do it!
~ Orlund and I have both been making many different meals from various cookbooks we’ve bought or were given. We are finding out what’s yummy and easy. I’ve got to start making a list of the recipes so we can remember later! LOL
~ We are FINALLY going to move the girls downstairs TONIGHT! *gasp* got lots still to do, but I’m going to work on it today after Olivia is down for her nap (well I have stuff to take out of their room first..). I’m excited it’s finally happening because that means I can start getting ready for our new addition.
~ Joy went to Sunday school last Sunday! This was a big step, she didn’t like to go as the kids were too loud and all over the place. however on Saturday we went to a birthday party with some of these kids and she decided since they were nice there she’d go to Sunday school with them again. She loved it! (now the rowdy kids I noticed weren’t there, and the new teacher is more strict ~ which is good for some kids like Joy, but not all kids). She say’s she’s going to go again this Sunday. Poor Olivia, she really wants to go! 1 more year
~ Olivia is completely a Daddy’s girl. If I discipline her she runs to daddy for hugs. If Orlund disciplines her she runs a full circle, towards me then back to him for hugs. During the day if she gets really frustrated and I don’t know why, she points out the front window and cry’s “Daaaaaaaaaaaaddddddddddddddddddddyyyyyyyyyyyyy”. I remind her Daddy is at work, but she just cry’s and cry’s for him. The only other thing that will sooth her is her Blankie.
~ Both the girls are so smart it blows us away sometimes the things they come up with! They sure are listening.
~ Joy loves to say something to you (not understandable) and then when you ask her what it is she said she replies “oh, never mind” while waving her hand. She is also using the word “pardon” now instead of always saying “what”. It makes her seem so much more grown up.
~ Joy is excited at the thought of having a baby brother to play with… I’m worried she’ll be upset when she realizes he wont be much of a ‘play’ buddy for a while. At least all the baby toys will keep them busy
~ Orlund is LOVING his new job. Much less stress and it’s doing stuff that he loves.
~ I accidentally killed Nemo (our Gold fish). Yup somehow the temperature in our fish tank got so high he died and our other ‘fish’ (more like a snake/eel) was jumping out of the water because it was too hot! We cleaned the tank and cooled it off for them (slowly as to not shock them). Joy and Daddy went on a special trip to buy more fish, they bought 2 Pleco’s (the fish that clean the algae) and 4 little neon tetra’s. We are hoping to get on track with cleaning on a regular basis (it doesn’t take long, but remembering is the issue), then we would like to get guppies again. I love guppies. Just before we’d moved into this house I’d gotten into the routine of cleaning the tank, and our guppies were having babies. Unfortunately guppies are very sensitive fish and didn’t survive the move.
~ My pregnancy is going good. I have very low blood pressure still, the Dr suggested I use pressure stockings to help, I just gotta go buy them! My back has been killing me the last few days, but I think I know why. I dusted all our ceilings and walls on Monday (or was it Tuesday? lol), I think I just over did it and must have strained something.
~ well it’s time to get lunch going and some stuff cleared out the girls current room before Olivia goes down..

Hope all is well with your family. God bless you.

Last night (while I forced Orlund to stay in the living room) I baked his Birthday cake… Yeah, didn’t get a chance during the day so I did it once the kids were in bed. For someone like me, it was a complicated process. I got the idea off another blog, kinda wish I’d looked at their pictures better as it would have helped me not make such a mess… But I got it done, put in the oven. Cooked. Cooled and now it’s sitting hidden in our fridge. I took pictures along the way..I can’t post them yet as Orlund’s birthday isn’t until Saturday.

Today I’m icing the cake. I was going to make the icing this morning as my girlfriend Leah coming to help me later and I wanted the icing ready to go ~ oops left the butter in the fridge so it’s now out ‘softening’. My plans on just exactly what I’m going to do keep changing. I’m hoping Leah has some ideas. My experiences with Icing cakes is not good. I’m not all that talented at it, but I’m going to give it a try again. I pray I can make the icing thin enough to do a ‘crumb’ layer (where you ice a thin layer on to keep the cake from crumbing into your decorating), I just heard about this crumb layer for the first time today… wish me luck. I usually give up on decorating when my cake starts crumbing, and Orlund finishes it off… NOT today. Today I’m going to do it..

Wish me luck! I’ll be sure to take pictures of it at all steps along the way and post, probably, on Sunday..

This past week has been….an interesting one…
Saturday night Olivia was up all night with a fever. Actually she was up then down then up, just all over. We spent most the night snuggling her and worried about another seizure.
Sunday morning she woke with a horrible cough and a lot of flem in her chest. But she seemed to do better through the day.
Monday Solomon got dropped off, he had the exact same cough as Olivia, he also napped almost the entire day. Olivia was more snuggly than usual and we went through a lot of Kleenex between the two of them. Monday night, I didn’t feel so great.
Tuesday Solomon got dropped off again. I also now had the same cough as the two little ones. Not fun, whenever you cough the pain spreads throughout your chest and back and, well, it’s painful! Tuesday night Olivia was doing a bit better, I was a bit sicker, and Orlund spent over an hour in the washroom.
Wednesday morning Orlund had another bout in the washroom just as we were getting up (he’d figured he’d stay home to recover as he wasn’t feeling well). This time however there was a lot of blood. So I got the girls dressed and we took him to emergency. After we dropped him off we went grocery shopping and then went to take him a few things before coming home. After 4hours of not hearing from him I was worried and tried to call him numerous times (he’d turned his phone off). Finally I couldn’t take it and wanted to know what was going on so called Leah over to watch the girls so I could zip over and find out for myself what was up (Thanks Leah!). I talked to a volunteer to see if I could get in to see him and she found out he was on his way down. Okay I’ll wait. Turns out his mom was with him all day (Thanks Hazel), although apparently because she was with him he just forgot to call and update me? dunno. Not important. So we came home to some girls that were happy Daddy was home. (he had to have a CT scan and they have more tests to run as they don’t know what it could be). Joy also seems to have picked up Olivia and my wonderful cough.
Thursday (Dec 1st), Today. Orlund stayed home as he’s still not well. He slept the entire morning. I of course had taken the other days as not cleaning days… well there is only so long you can go before you need to do some cleaning. So I picked my worn out, painful, exhausted self up and got a little cleaning done. *yeah me!*. Both the girls are exhausted and….well….sick. I took a nap when Olivia did, I don’t know if it helped or not. I feel even more ready for bed. Oh well, no rest for a mommy! Our little bean I’m cooking seems to be just fine, he’s rather set in his waking/sleeping routine and doesn’t much move off of it (unless I wake him with my excessive, painful coughing).

But you know what? we’ll make it through. I might have even more grey hair after, but we’ll make it! Well I’d better go get dinner cooking. Hope you and yours are feeling better than we are! God bless!

Our next stop was in Brandon.

On our 7hour trip there we stopped in Regina at a McDonald’s to let the girls play for around an hour. They loved it, and it was a nice break for us too.
In Brandon I have an Uncle Richard (whom we stayed with), Cousin Dan (wife Becky, and their two kids) and Orlund has his Baba, as well as an Uncle Nathaniel (wife Thaisa and cousin Danessa). So we had many family members to visit with. The day we arrived at Uncle Richard’s house we were introduced to his Girlfriend Nancy, she was very nice to meet. I haven’t seen my Uncle Richard since our last trip out that way (actually we haven’t seen anyone from Brandon since then) and it was nice to see him. He and my Dad were very close growing up and they look quite similar. We were off to bed at a ‘reasonable’ time that night.
The next day we spent the morning visiting with Richard (he was on holidays) and making plans with the rest of the families. Shortly after dinner we headed out to see Baba. She was over the moon with excitement in getting to meet our girls. They took to her as well. Lots of hugs and loves, and of course in tradition to her Ukrainian nationality she stuffed us with even more food! After our visit with her Joy had many heart felt (tired) tears and kept crying out for Baba. She fell asleep on our way to Orlund’s Aunt and Uncles house and continued with a little snooze while we were there. Olivia didn’t mind soaking up all the attention! It was a wonderful visit. Then after returning to Uncle Richards and getting the girls down we continued our tradition of staying up much to late. (of course really it may have been midnight there but that’s only 10pm our time! lol).
The second day there Orlund went to spend some time alone with his Baba while I stayed at Richards with the girls. Nancy and one of her daughter’s (Jenna) came for brunch. It was nice to visit with Nancy again and to meet her daughter. After brunch we just hung around (played in a playground) and then headed over to Orlund’s Aunt and Uncle’s house for visiting, dinner and well more visiting. We enjoyed a bit of a cooler day (finally) and in the evening even enjoyed a fire in their back yard (in a portable fire pit). It was wonderful and we didn’t want to head home but the girls needed to go to bed.

The next day we headed to Winnipeg. (but don’t worry Brandon isn’t done yet…we come back .)

(sorry I haven’t been blogging!) Back to our trip~

We drove to Saskatoon and the girls did fabulous again! This was only a 7hour trip and that seemed like just long/short enough that we didn’t kill one another Funny enough but I wrote out all the directions off Google. Orlund never looked at the map. To be completely honest the only time I felt stress on this wonderful trip was giving him the directions. If he sees a map at least once, he’s okay to boss around….if he doesn’t see that map, lets just say it makes it interesting. We arrived at my Auntie Pat and Uncle Rob’s house in time to enjoy a wonderful dinner, my cousin Stacey was there and cousin Chris, wife Ivy and baby girl Summer (11months) came over for a wonderful visit. It was my first time meeting both Ivy and Summer. Love them both. Auntie Pat is my mom’s little sister. Pat is very similar to both my mom and myself. I found myself watching her, enjoying her company and making me realize just how much she is like my mom. Made me miss mom even more, but at the same time made me feel like she was there with us too.
The next day we mostly hung around at the house, thought we’d go to the zoo. Unfortunately by the time we got there it would close in 2hours. We figured we would go in anyway as our Zoo passes should get us in there too. They said it didn’t. So instead we took the girls to a pet store (they had to see some animals). Did a little shopping and had ice cream. Headed back to the house to enjoy all the family for dinner again. Every night we stayed up much to late visiting with Pat and Rob. We get a long fabulously with them, and the girls went to bed easily.
The following day we decided to go to the zoo earlier in the day. First however we went out for lunch with Chris on his break. It was nice to get to visit with him (we had been close when he and I lived in Thailand). Then we headed over to the zoo. Again they said we had to pay, so we did. It was super hot, but a nice zoo none the less. We had a wonderful time, unfortunately the train wasn’t working (luckily it’s out of sight so Joy didn’t notice! phew!). After that we headed back to the house where I took a nap with Olivia. I had forgotten to take my night diclectin the night before so was feeling a bit queezy.  Again the whole family was there for another delicious dinner. We all just hung around visiting after and enjoyed watching the kids play. And of course once everyone had gone home and the girls were in bed we stayed up past all reasonable bedtimes visiting.
The next morning we loaded up and headed to Brandon.
Thank you Auntie Pat and Uncle Rob for letting us stay with you, we had a fabulous time

ps~ Joy’s eye slowly returned to normal during our Saskatoon visit.
pss~ Once we returned home I sent an email to our Zoo informing them that we were unable to get into the Saskatoon zoo. turns out we should have been able to and our Zoo is willing to reimburse us of the admission! And they are informing their staff at the Saskatoon Zoo to be better aware.

Sept 3rd we finally set off on our family trip. I’d been planning for most of the summer. I’d packed a week early and was happy to leave my house in good standing (clean!), and feel that we had everything we’d need. We sure did! Brought back at least 1/2 of the snacks we’d taken! lol.
It was nice to have all the room in the van. I was able to keep a large bag between Orlund and I which contained our directions, my camera, snacks, drinks, my neck pillow and a blanket for myself. Then just behind the bag was a bin containing the girls toys, a bag next to that contained their DVD player and movies. On the other side of the toy bin was Orlund’s camera. Everything nice and handy!
Just before we headed out on the highway we stopped to gas up. While Orlund ran inside to buy breakfast and coffee (A&W) a truck pulling a horse trailer pulled up. Joy pointed the horses out to me. The trailer pulled out before we did, and for the remainder of our trip, every 20minutes or so, Joy would ask “Daddy where horses? More horses?”. It was cute, and since they can see out the van windows we were able to point out the horses, cows and trains.
The girls did AMAZING traveling. Olivia slept on an off (more off than on), and whenever I could I’d take a nap as well. Whenever I’d finally get into a comfortable position (weird complaint but too much room in the van for easy napping), Joy would ask “mommy nap? Why mommy nap?”. lol. We stopped in Jasper for a quick lunch and stretch of the legs. The girls napped for the rest of Jasper and so did I. Well it’s a 10hour trip to Wetaskiwin, and the girls were getting tired! So we put a movie on for them, they watched it, however once it was over there was many fits had because they wanted to watch another! This was the only movie then ended up watching in the van the entire rest of the trip!

We arrived safe and sound and had a wonderful visit with Auntie Darla and Grandma Norstrom. Their house was as comforting and familiar as it was the last time, this time however with a pretty new floor We settled in quickly and got to visiting. One thing about Orlund’s Grandma that you’d realize after a short 15minute talk with her is she has a memory like I wish I had! She remembers everyone’s name, their spouse’s name, their kids names etc etc. I wish I could remember names like that!! We love listening to her tell us stories of her life, growing up, meeting/dating Grandpa (whom I never got the pleasure of meeting) and all the wonderful things she experienced. It was beautiful weather and we took advantage of it, playing outside in their gorgeous backyard, and going to the park by the lake. Auntie Darla helped show us around and was a great hostess. She also makes the most beautiful bead jewelry! She showed me some of the bare foot sandals she made and some anklets. She even let me choose an anklet to keep! I wore it every single day for our entire trip, and would still be wearing it unfortunately it broke the day we got home. (I told Orlund I guess I’ll have to get into beading now . lol). I have all the beads so it wont be too difficult to fix (I hope, or else Auntie Darla will be getting a special package in the mail…). The day we went to the park dusk set in and so did the mosquito’s. Olivia received about 3 bites on her face, they swelled a little but nothing major. Joy got a bite on her right eyebrow, the next morning it was swollen. We didn’t let her sore eye slow us as we went to the Reynold’s museum (old cars/airplanes). That evening Orlund’s Uncle Dallas and Auntie Fay came for dinner. Joy’s eye didn’t seem to be getting better and she was rubbing it (were giving her Benadryl). So Darla, myself and Joy loaded up to head to the hospital. We waiting 2 hours, Joy is such a good girl!! The doctor finally called our name and rushed us through a bunch of hallways, stopping at the end of one (it had a corner cubby with stock). “Sorry, but this is our privacy” he said as he picked Joy up and put her on a metal tray with wheels. He examined her eye told me to put eye drops in and keep giving the Benadryl, and sent us home.
After such a wonderful visit, and learning that our girls aren’t shy and like meeting new family members, it was time to go. Sept 6th time to head to Saskatoon! Joy’s eye was now swollen completely shut (poor girl). Thank you Auntie Darla and Grandma Norstrom for  your hospitality, and wonderful stories. God Bless you both! Hope we can come see you again sometime soon.

871 Km to Wetaskiwin, 498 Km to Saskatoon, 626 Km to Brandon, 212 Km to Winnipeg, 212 Km back to Brandon, 1740 Km home, 16 days, 27 family members visited, 1 wonderful driver, 1 hormonal pregnant woman (me), 1 yr old going through a growth spurt (“I hungry”), 1 teething toddler, 7year anniversary (uncelebrated),  loads and loads of fun!! I’ll blog more on it later. I still haven’t finished unpacking ~ of course we did just get home today!

I’m so excited to sleep in my own bed again, I just hope the girls do good tonight!

(Oh and funny enough we missed 3 weeks of Church and people started to think we no longer attended our church! lol. guess we didn’t tell so many people we were going away!)

I have been (just slightly) stressing over our upcoming holiday. Trying to figure out what to pack, and trying to make it as light of a load as possible! I thought I would wait until Thursday to pack, however strongly feel I need to pack NOW. Don’t know if it’s the pregnancy, or God whispering, but I’m going to listen either way! So tomorrow, I’m going to pack most my clothes that I plan to take (other than the clothes I still need for this week), along with kids toys, movies and some of their clothes. I may have the boys for a few extra hours, or an entire extra day this week that is completely unexpected so perhaps I do need to pack now and stay on top of this just in case!
My belly is growing at a very quick rate! I can’t believe it!! Orlund took some pictures of me standing (ones that were later deleted, so I didn’t stand pretty) and WOW talk about looking pregnant already! I’m hoping Wednesday at my Doctors apt I’ll get to hear the little heart beat! (14weeks!).Well, during all this stressing, We did take some time out to have some fun! Check out Orlund’s latest blog entry for one picture. And here is another (not the best quality, but still fun to take!).

Hovering over Mommy! OH What fun!!

As you know we’ve been looking at vans as of late. With baby #3 arriving in February we needed to keep our eyes open for that perfect deal. We had looked at the Dodge Grand Caravan’s. Two different ones, Canada Value Package and the Stow-n-go. The only thing we didn’t like about the CVPackage was no rear air or tinted windows. The only thing about the SXT (stow-n-go) package was the price.
We met with our financial adviser and discovered we are doing better than we thought and could afford a bit better van (or bit more money). So we looked and discovered the two ‘best’ vans out there are the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. The Honda starts above our budget, so we thought we’d go look at the Toyota. Their websites suck! I like the Dodge one, it shows every van they have in stock, and in transit. And all the different prices, features etc for each van. You can basically shop online, the Toyota and Honda websites aren’t anything in comparison.
Come today… Saturday. We decided it would be a good day to test drive the Toyota (and go look at it for the first time). We dropped the girls off at Grandma and Grandpa’s house at 10:30am. Once at the Toyota dealership a sales lady came out and showed us the van ‘she would want’. uh huh… Rear video, power sliding doors, 8 passenger, you name it, it had it! Yeah, we didn’t even ask the price on that one and asked to see a ‘base’ model. She didn’t have one as low of price as it showed online, however had one similar. We took it for a test drive. Very nice. Very. But once back at the office, the price…..well…. Lets just so not so nice. Once everything was totaled it blew our budget out of the water!!
It was only 20minutes to 12. “Want to go test drive a Dodge again?” Orlund asked. I figured might as well while we have the Toyota fresh in our minds….
Arrive at the Dodge dealer. (opposite side of town so like a 20minute drive). A sales guy comes out and we ask for our sales guy (I’ll call him John for the purpose of it’s easier than calling him ‘the sales guy’ LOL). Orlund mentioned before the sales guy went to get John that we had looked at a Toyota. A few minutes later John came out. I have to say he didn’t look all too impressed. But he started to tell us about the different features, prices etc again, and said they’d just got some new ones in so we started to walk over to look at them. He then mentioned while motioning to a red minivan, that it had just been traded in as the owners were upgrading. it had 67000Km’s on it (the price was under $20,000). It still sounded like an okay deal but he kept telling us about it. I couldn’t figure out why he was so excited about this red van. He then re-told us the information… No it didn’t have 67000Km’s it had 6100Km’s!!!!! GAME CHANGER! It was a 2010 Canada Value Package however with rear tinted windows. The papers were still being signed to hand it over, so we couldn’t even unlock the doors to look. We asked him to check the price with his boss. It was an AMAZING price. We said YES!
We went for lunch (to give them time to transfer the van over to the dealer). Came back and signed the papers…. we might have been silly but we didn’t get to look inside it (unlocked as in) until we were waiting for the insurance guy to come!! Our first test drive was driving it off the lot!!! CRAZY! I know! But even including taxes it didn’t come to $20,000 !! How could we pass it up! I guess another sales guy was taking photo’s while we were away at lunch and sending them to one of his clients trying to get them to buy it before us!! But we got it!!! So now I have a beautiful Red minivan in my driveway I couldn’t be happier….Okay I could… read on to find out….

After our purchase, which got us picking up our kids at 3pm. I was ill, I hadn’t planned to be out so long so hadn’t taken my Diclectin (anti-morning sickness pill). So when we got home I laid on the couch while the girls played around me. I awoke to find Joy sitting on the potty yelling she was done, no Orlund to be seen and an Olivia poking at me… Guess I was worn out! So after helping Joy I peaked out the window as Orlund was supposed to show his Civic to a guy at 5pm. I saw him out there showing the guy (I looked out our bathroom window). Then I came back to the living room and in a few minutes watched through the front window and Orlund and this guy took the car for a test drive…… But the guy stopped before even fully backing out. I was wondering why when I noticed that he’d backed into his own car!!! Yup broke our tail light and dented our bumper, he broke his side mirror (driver) and dented the middle of the drivers door!! He’s paying for repairs but not buying the car….him buying would have made me happy… THEN…..
(and John said we were so lucky we should have got a lottery ticket) ~ Orlund was cooking Chicken on the BBQ. I noticed a funny smell. So Orlund took a look outside… sure enough the BBQ was on fire again! He had to push the flaming BBQ away from the house as much as possible (its on our small upstairs deck), there is smoke damage to the side, which with any luck we will be able to scrub off. Orlund turned the propane off and I think just let it die out itself. So I called a Pizza place and got to drive my new fancy van to go pick up a pizza for dinner.
Well Orlund just informed me he IS ushering tomorrow and I need a shower so I’ll have to get up REALLY early. Good night all!

Well it’s 10:32pm… I usually feel so sick at 10:30pm that I crawl gagging into bed and lay there feeling ill until I finally drift into a deep sleep. But I just ate a big bowl of itchy ban noodles so I’m feeling okay (for the moment). The rest of today was wonderful. After I finished blogging Orlund and I visited while the girls played about. Then we went for a walk over to Mac Park to the BG Urban Grill to try their smoothies ~ got a 2 for 1 coupon in the newspaper. YUMMY! And I checked out the rest of the menu as well, very reasonable prices.
After our smoothies and walk we had a quick lunch and then it was nap time. After naps we jumped in the car and headed to the fabric store. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me return some things I’d purchased, however I got the threads I needed. Olivia stayed with me. Joy went with her Daddy to Princess Auto. Orlund was shocked when Olivia and I came to find him, he thought we’d be in the fabric store all day… nope I just put my head down, ignored the adorable materials screaming my name, and got just what I needed. *Yay Me*. We then decided since we were already in that part of town to go check out the Dodge Grand Caravan’s again. We had gone once before, but the sales guy seemed a bit ‘slimy’. I know, I know, a lot of them are, but this guy we didn’t care for. Luckily when we pulled up another guy came out. We liked him. He gave us some more options and pricing, the other guy we saw as we entered the new guys office. Gave a little smile and pretended we didn’t recognize him. We know who we will be dealing with now at least….now just to meet with our financial adviser. Then we will start the actual wheeling and dealing.. LOL.
Well Orlund is shutting down and it’s now 10:41pm, I’d better hit the sack before I hit the ill…..
Good night all

Oh and I also learned today (the hard way) that just because your first child never took their diaper off during nap time, doesn’t mean your second child wont….yuck!