SLACKER ALERT!

Well this is one of the longest stretches I've gone without updating our blog. Hopefully I have some readers left. Bravo to those of you who have not given up on me!

Here's a quick list of some highlights over the past....month and a half. Yikes

In point form...

Anniversary - We have now been married for 7 years! I feel like a schmuck for not doing one of those lovely, timely posts on the nature of our love. But we did have a wonderful time away at an undisclosed location where we had a lovely dinner at The Creperie, walked around downtown, browsed bookshops, jimmy-rigged a flat screen in our hotel so that we could watch a funny movie while swimming, slept in and had lots of fun.

Olympics - We watched them, we loved them, we bought the gloves. It was fun to be so patriotic. :)

Swimming - We love swimming at Millenium Place.

Big Al's shark feeding - that pretty much says it all.

Ryan spent a few days winter camping up near Hinton with the YM. He made it one night in the tent and spent the other in the cook house. Luckily they had good weather, ate well and had fun playing hockey and hiking. He had an educationally fun time at Teacher's Convention. He's been helping with the track team at school and attending track meets. He was also officially invested at Baden Powell night with the YM.

Claire had an opthamology appointment with Dr Lewis, I enjoyed my duty days at her school, she had a penguin visit her class, she had a vision assessment, we're figuring out kindergarten for next year, we had a fun music therapy class at the CNIB, she went to the GRIT Winter Festival with Lisa, and did her first scripture and prayer in our ward in primary.

I've lost 15 pounds in the past two months. Yay! I'm really enjoying going to Spa Lady. The group fitness classes are awesome. I've had a few meetings with the Preschool association and an open house for the school. I've joined a women's choir, Bella Voce, and have been working a lot doing transcriptions and annotations at home. It's been a great job, but it's taking over my life a little bit.

Our family has had the missionaries over for dinner a couple of times, had a delicious, candlelit Valentine's Day dinner, celebrated our Family day in Wetaskiwin, had a good time at Broc's baptism and had Rob sleepover while my parents were in DC.

Madeline is busy as a bee. She's getting really good at going to the bathroom in the right place, but for some reason is deathly afraid of going "number 2" on the toilet. Any tips? Sheesh. She loves her Gymboree classes, still gets dressed up fancy everyday and loves to wear my high heels around the house. She's getting very excited to start preschool next year and has been loving the gorgeous weather.

Alright - to go along with my disjointed lists are some random pictures!

Madeline got this new dress from our friends as a hand-me-down treasure. She loves it. Can you tell?


Claire can fall asleep anytime, anywhere.


Madeline has picked up my penchant for perusing the flyers on the weekend.


A beautiful sunset over our garage.


Claire and her new walker. Note that she is standing and walking without sitting on the sling. Yay for Claire!


Candlelit Valentine's Family dinner - before


Candlelit Valentine's Family dinner - after
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Madeline picking up some good life "skillz" from Dad.


I think we need a bigger tub. But there's always room for more bubbles, right?


Tandem head massages.


Claire sporting her Olympic shirt and long bangs whilst playing a tune on her pian-yo (as Maddie says it).


A typical dinner moment captured in time.

Voila!

Voila: "Lo! There it is", ta-da, presto

That title really has nothing to do with my post. I just like that word.

It's taken us a while to get back into the swing of things after the holidays. It was too easy to slip into the sleeping in and lounging around schedule of the Christmas break.

Ryan's back at school, having a great time with the kids. He's been out with the missionaries a few times and got to help baptize a new family in our ward. They are great! He's had some fun activities with his young men, going to basketball games and skating.

Ryan, the missionaries and the Germann's


We had two fun "firsts" when we went tobogganing at Millwoods Hill and went swimming at Millennium Place. I recommend both places for great family fun.

Ryan and the girls before descending the hill. It was a beautiful day!


We met some friends on the hill who took our family picture. Yes Rob, that is your toque I'm wearing. You left it at our house.


We had a family get-together to celebrate Greg's birthday. It was fun to see everyone again. We certainly have a lot of family conclaves over the holidays.

Greg getting a lot of help blowing out his candles.


We saw Rob play basketball at a school around the corner from our house and he did great!

I am now teaching the CTR 7A class in Primary and the kids are great. The lessons are well planned but there is often a lot of preparation work for activities and projects. I've been to a couple of Relief Society activities which have helped me to feel more a part of our ward, but also made me realize that there are a lot of food storage gurus in my new circle! I DEFINITELY pale in comparison. I've also been more diligent in my workouts with Jillian and the Wii and occasionally, Spa Lady. :)

We had a fun date night (courtesy of Natalie!) to the Keg and to see Sherlock Holmes, which was fun.

I started a new job to go along with the interview transcription I've been doing. I'm now managing the literature database for the research project and searching for and annotating journal articles. It's a perfect match for me because I like the work and can do it from home in my "spare" time.

We had the Jensens over for lunch this weekend. We'll have to say goodbye to them soon as they move down to Medicine Hat in a couple of months. :( Good thing we all like Skype! That's become Madeline's new favourite thing. "Daddy, can we call Beatrix? Daddy can we call Ben and Brigham?"

Ryan's friend at school who teaches the other grade 5 class has been giving us a bunch of "new" toys lately. Here's Maddie modeling with her new car!


Ryan says this is his new favourite picture of Claire.


The vice principal at Ryan's school got a bunch of new electronics for Christmas and so she gave us her old DS. It's Madeline's new favourite game.


Other than these highlights, we've just been plugging along.

For fun, here are some of the songs I've been listening to a lot lately:

Fools Like Me - Lisa Loeb
Fireflies - Owl City
I Want You To - Weezer
Lisztomania, 1901 - Phoenix
Second Best - Barenaked Ladies


If anyone wants to share, I love to get song recommendations!

Belated as usual

So Christmas and New Year's have passed us by. I see other bloggers keeping up faithfully, chronicling everything in a timely fashion. But not me. I try to spice it up by always being...belated. Well that's my excuse anyway.

Since I have too many pictures to put on a post (and that's saying a lot, considering the size of some of my previous posts) I will simply put a link to a Facebook album that you can peruse at your leisure...for the 3 people that read our blog. :)

In other news, not attached to pictures:

I was lucky enough to be asked by my friend Lyndsey to accompany her cute Junior Kindergarten class's Christmas concert and play for some of her vocal students. I'm not sure if she regretted the choice afterward, but it was lots of fun and I wish I could do things like that more often.

Christmas was a whirlwind as usual. December starts out slow and then speeds by and you're back at school and work wondering what happened. This year proved true to form.

We had the traditional gingerbread houses, advent calendars, goodie making and delivering, shopping for presents and decorations. We also had the traditional Christmas Eve bowling match, Chinese food dinner, AMAZING scavenger hunt activity for our PJ presents and fun movies. We got totally spoiled, as usual, and had lots of fun with our families.

Ryan's class got to go to an Oiler's hockey game and be right down by the ice when the team came in. He's been very busy with school, Young Men's activities and helping the missionaries.

We had some fun activities with friends this month including having the Chutes over and Claire attending Dallin's birthday party at the bowling alley.

We attended Grandpa and Janet's wedding and it was very fun to see all our family and celebrate the day.

I can't believe it's already 2010. Guess who has her 10 year high school reunion this year. YIKES. (It's me, by the way)

I hope everyone had wonderful, safe and memorable holidays with their friends and family this year.