Thanks to everyone's help...

Thank you to all who were trying to help me on the area rug. I finally found one last night on ebay, new from a carpet store and is shipping from the states for only $10! It was about twice the price that I wanted, but is a really big size, so that will be super nice. The original one we had picked out that was going to be lots to ship had a lot of pink in it- because I was thinking of how Dominique's just LOVES all things pink and purple, but so far Emora hasn't shown a preference for a color. That is so weird to me, because both Ivan and Dominique had definite color loves from very early on and have not changed from their choices. But when I ask Emora, she usually says blue, but I think it's because that color is the easiest one for her to say. If I hold up a blue pants, she will not necessarily pick that one to wear. So the new rug has many colors and that way she won't be stuck with pink if she hates it- like I did!!!

Shock factor- this was my first time to be on or buy anything from ebay! I can see how it could become addictive, which they warned me when I set up my account. I knew I would get my bid since the seller had a dozen of the same rug up and there were no bids on them. I placed mine 5cents over the starting price and got it within 15min. But when they start sending e-mails saying I had the highest bid and that I won- it felt like I really had WON something instead of BOUGHT something. Tricky, tricky that site, I tell you.

Happy story- Ivan's school is so awesome! There is a peer support group that does a garage sale fundraiser so they can do Christmas for a family in need. The garage sale is donated items that they invite students to come shop at with prices from 25 cents to $5 and they gift wrap! I took Ivan and Dominique who once I explained to them that they could not shop for themselves and had to pick out something for their siblings, were very, very excited to purchase items. The volunteers were so sweet in wrapping and letting the kids decide which bow, and asking if they can write the names on the gifts. So now there is something under the tree ;) I haven't gotten anywhere close to wrapping yet- much to Ivan's shagrin.

Comedians a plenty

I call this picture- Princesses in their chariot hauled by gallant gents.


Ivan has been making up his own jokes and for a 6 year old, I think he's doing pretty good! So here for some giggles:

"Where is the best place to live?

and closely related,

"Where is the best place to lie?"

I'll post his punchlines in the comments and while you are there, you may as well say "hello!" haha I gotcha now too!

I tackled some Christmas shopping today. I started off on the net and was so loving shopping online, got so much accomplished and wondered why we even have stores! Then I went to 3 stores locally and found some stuff, so I was feeling quite accomplished. Then this afternoon, I tried to make one of my last big purchases online and rediscovered that online shopping can also be quite horrendous!

I'm trying to get an area rug for Emora's room and since there are none in town, someone suggested I go online to Sears. They are way expensive and didn't have much for kids, so I stupidly clicked on many of the links promising me free shipping to Canada and great 75%off regular price and other such wonderous dreams- none of which came true. I would spend an hour scoping out the perfect rug, at the right price, get to checkout and they say- oops only free shipping in the US, we will ship to Canada for another $100, or did we say starting price of $75, that was just a swatch sample, the rug you want is $500! It was nuts. So I'm on ebay right now, but if it does the same to me, I'm going to wait for after Christmas sales and make it a birthday gift, or maybe I'll take up weaving!

Hope you are having better luck finding all the items you want to get for those you love.

After my "I hate shopping" rant, I must leave you with some more giggles. Just look at this one! You should have seen her dance too. It was x-rated, so can not appear here!

See you in the comments ;) It may be fun too if you wrote "hello" AND the best joke you've heard.

Land of the living skies

They say Saskatchewan is the land of the living skies. I always loved seeing the sunrises on the way to school and the sunsets on the way home. The other morning this is what I saw out my kitchen window as I made Ivan's lunch. It didn't last very long, so you have to just pause and take it in while it shows off all it's resplendence. Unfortunately, we've had lots and lots of overcast days. These are the least fun days because it's so grey and gloomy, but at least it hasn't been bitterly cold and we've been able to go out on the hill or walk a bit, then treat ourselves to hot chocolate or vanilla milk ;) You can see our own neighborhood sledding hill in this picture. A city worker was out there for about an hour shaping it up. It's pretty awesome. There are stairs facing us, steep sides to the left and right and if you are on top, you would see a long, nice slope with some decent sized bumps going off toward the houses across the way. Another advantage of the hill is that I've gotten to meet some of the neighborhood kids out there. Ivan's discovered that some girls who seemed like bullies are really quite nice when mom is present. I also met a dad who was trying to get one son to the doctor and another one dressed to go with them. They were both on the hill. I had wondered why the toddler had come without his jacket zipped and after talking with dad, realized the kid had just let himself out the house and over to the hill. It kind of draws them that way!


Dominique found a looney up there the other day. Some kid has left a shovel there and there's a little play car out there too. There's another smaller hill that would be a great dug out. I wonder if the city worker left it for us to make an igloo. We may have to start that next!


This is one of my favorite pics of the kids. All the moisture and light and plants make it look tropical to me, but if you look closely, you can see snow on our pine tree behind them.


Hoping that Dec. is not getting too crazy for you. I think all the hoopla can kind of spoil the whole point of it all- you know peace on earth and goodwill to men. Some days we have to take a deep breathe and remember what is important.

Before the water froze

This picture was taken at the lamp post in Narnia. Just kidding. It's in my cousin's yard, but may have been Narnia if you compare it to Texas. We will definitely have a white Christmas. I remember my first winter in Texas. It didn't snow. One day there were the smallest hint of snow flutters that accumulated in a crack in the sidewalk and when I realized that was the extent of winter, I nearly cried. I just hadn't thought that there were places in North America where it didn't snow all winter long! Since then, I've had many non white Christmasses, and one white Christmas in Texas.

Here it's been snowing at least once a week, some weeks nearly every day! There is a lot of snow in the ground and a bunch mounded into a hill across from our house. So my new routine is to dress the girls up, go get Ivan from school (and 3 times a week Kellen also) and we sled for a while, if it's warm enough, which it has been.



Other winter joys have been weekly jaunts to the skating rink which I am still so amazed that it's FREE! They play music and barely anyone is there with their kids on the ice. You would think it would be a very popular activity, being free and all, but not many parents take advantage of it. Of course, I haven't taken the kids yet on the weekend when it's free for open skate times yet. One of Ivan's classmates invited us to skate on the lake at their house. We'll have to take them up on it, but I'm not sure the ice is thick enough yet. He said someone already has an ice fishing shack out there, but I also heard that some guys brand new truck sunk last year out there. I want a good 3 feet of thick ice between us, our skates and the liquid bottom- cause I sure don't want to go for a swim this time of the year!


The ski hill opened up here and I am anxious one day to get to go try it. I'm 98% sure it is not recommended with my knee as it is, so I will be a good girl and wait until they have my knee fixed, but some day that will be so totally awesome! The only thing I hate is that it will be expensive, but I'm thinking that will make nice momma gifts some day ;)

Speaking of my knee, I have a date with an MRI. We are finally going to find out why it's being a pain in the ...knee and hopefully can get to a solution soon. My MRI is scheduled for Dec. 23rd which is the day we want to go to Stoon, so we will pack that morning, drive to Regina, then on to my parents for Christmas. It will be so awesome!


These pictures were taken before the rivers and lake froze obviously. There are so many beautiful scenes if your eyes are open to see them.

in the Christmas zone

Here the kids are making recycled paper that we are using for "pass along" cards. Cards that you can use again by removing your note and putting a new one in for a friend!




We make quite a few of our gifts, so we are in the Christmas time gift making mode, which doesn't match too well with the renovating basement mode, but such is life. I am trying not to pile on too many projects so that we can manage. It is also an extra challenge to try to shop without much good shopping here in town. There's isn't much selection and what is here often costs a lot more than in the city, so I'm not sure when all I'll get the shopping done.

We did get ourselves an early family gift of a tree and lights. We hadn't brought our old one because we weren't sure what kind of room we'd have in the truck and I was worried when I bought this one since it came in such a little box, but it is taller and fuller, but skinnier than our old one and we like it. This one is only in three sections that fold out too instead of having to fit every branch into the core, so that was a nice surprise!

Some friends

Although Brian would love to be spending time with other people and making friends, most the time he is in our basement working away at the basement. We were so very excited that he got our air to air exchanger working, it is clearing up a lot of extra moisture that was running off our windows, freezing on the sills and pooling onto the floor. Now all there is left is building the rooms! Lots and lots of framing, since he is also making a sub floor, but it's coming along none the less.



I finally figured out the trick to getting Emora down to bed. She was constantly fighting me on it, but now I have her put all her dolls to bed and she takes it quite seriously. She no longer fights when I close the curtains. She tucks them all in, reads to them and of course dozes off. She is also in a better mood when she wakes up because her dolls give her lots of kisses and thank yous for helping them have such a good nap and for reading to them.




We are enjoying getting to know our neighbors some. They have 4 children: 2 teanagers, a daughter between Ivan and Dominique's age and a son Emora's age. Ivan and Dominique are often invited to play with Fiorella.



Brian and Juliano have also been getting together about once a week, so that has been really great and this weekend, gasp, we all got to go out without kids! Sheena volunteered her teens to babysit our kids so that we could all go out. We went to a French restaurant in town that was so fun! The owner is from Quebec and we got to chat some. I'll have to take Dominique for sure. Out of all my kids, she is the most interested in French so far.

at the beach in winter

So what do you do at the beach in winter? Play of course! We walked out to see the lake and when the kids jumped off the wall into the snow, they discovered that it was even deeper than the foot and a half of covering we had already trudged through to get that far. It was now a cushiony bed up against the wall. So that was good for several leaps and lots of laughter.





Next they tried out the slide. It is very fast with snowpants on and dumped them into another huge pile of snow. Good for more gut wrenching laughter.


They also loved leaping off the swings into the slides or falling off backwards into the drifts.

However it didn't take very long before the cold had taken it's toll and we were hurrying as much as you can through thick snow, back to the van, which I luckily had not gotten stuck in the parking lot (I very nearly did get stuck and ended up opting to park right on the road, facing homeward!)



Warmth, home and some hot chocolate or vanilla milk are always a welcome treat to fun outside in the cold winter.

Same place, different season

Before in the summer






After- in the winter


Winter here has it's own charm. It's actually been a pretty good winter so far. There is plenty of snow, but hasn't been super cold for very long and we've had warmer days, like just under freezing. (That's mild, here). It was about -1C the day I took this picture at the beach, but I have now realized that just because it is minus 1 at the house, doesn't mean it will be that nice at the beach. It's always cold there with the wind whipping off the now partially frozen lake. It's pretty dangerous too. I was thinking the water was way out there and walked toward it when I heard a crunch, only a few feet in. I dug down in the snow a bit and sure enough, there was the shore, totally hidden in a wide expanse of snow covering.

This weekend we went to my cousin's in the city to watch the Saskatchewan roughrider's play for the Grey cup.

They brainwash their kids early here. Through school no less!


Ivan enjoyed watching football for the first time, even though the preferred team lost! It was so fun to be all together.

Happy American Thanksgiving!

Although it was pretty cold out today (-20C or so), the sun was shining, so the girls and I ventured outside. My workout today was this: warm up- get girls dressed, aerobic- shovel the walk, circuit training- lift child over snow, then through snow and snap pictures, return to shoveling, then pull children in sled down freshly shoveled driveway, cool down- undress children.

It was so gorgeous with the blue sky and snow all sparkling.

If you are dressed well, the cold is pretty manageable. Our cousins had just brought over a huge bag of scarves and tuques (in Texas, they call them toboggans- which here is what we go sledding on!) The kids all found hats and scarves they like. Emora liked every hat and modeling them for us.

I thought Arwen looked so cute today in the tree, I just had to get her picture!






The girls giggled and giggled as they threw snow at me. After school, Ivan and Dominique took to the pile of snow across the street, along with half a dozen other kids from the neighborhood, then they played some more in our backyard, sledding down the pile of snow from our shoveling.

We had spagetti for thanksgiving tonight. Not very festive, especially since this is one of our family favorites and we eat it about once a week! But I did manage to put some of the pureed pumpkin to use and we at least had pumpkin pie!

I am in full Christmas gift creation time and it is going well, so that is exciting. Some years I take on way too much and it's overwhelming, but I think this year I have a more reasonable list of things to make or maybe I'm getting faster.

the new ride

Brian found himself a replacement truck in Moose Jaw on the weekend. This was the first view we had of it. Ivan had made him a card and drew him, dad and a truck. He waited until Brian drove up to see the color of the truck, then ran off to finish coloring it and give it to Brian when he walked in. It was super cute. Now he can get back to the monster basement job.


We haven't ridden in it yet, but it's exactly like his old truck, except with an extended bed and automatic instead of standard and less miles, different color and most importantly PLATED for SASKATCHEWAN!! That was such a stupid ordeal, but it gave Brian a reason to go back to Texas and that was exactly what he needed to see friends and draw encouragement and love from them again and come back envigored for our life here.



Life here is filled with snow right now. Brian's not all sure of what to do with it all, but I assured him a little snow won't wreck the driveway. However, he seems to be enjoying keeping the cold stuff up and out of the way.


Here is a pic of our first snowman here, which is a giant compared to our Abilene snowmen- AND there was still plenty of snow in the yard, he wasn't half grass and half snow and we didn't even have to harvest snow from other neighbor's yards, like we did in Abilene. But, just like the ones in Abilene, this one didn't stand a chance at remaining intact much longer than a couple of days. However his threat of extinction was not from the sun and heat, but from the aggressive little people who brought him to life! Yep, he was felled by his own creators who were so excited to beat him up and topple him over. He is now two giant balls beside each other in the yard which I'm thinking look like the start of one awesome snow fort!