I'll take Potpourri for $600 Alex

Once again I have fallen behind on my posts. I'm going to put some links to Facebook albums to cut down on the amount of scrolling pictures so make sure to click forward.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We spent time with both our families.

Here's a LINK to pictures from Thanksgiving.

We started our Ballerina Dreams class. It's been very fun so far. I'm so glad that there are great programs like this for us to take advantage of.

Here's a LINK to some pictures.

We had an "Oilers week" this month. Claire got to meet Steve MacIntyre at Little Bits because he was donating some funds to the program. He was really kind to all the kids.












Then a couple days later, Ryan took Madeline to Gymboree class and Mike Comrie was there with his niece. Unfortunately we have no pictures to substantiate our claims, but Madeline kept knocking his block towers over. Awesome.

Claire's been busy with school and GRIT. Lisa is so awesome. She's extremely organized and enthusiastic. She's always got something new and exciting planned for Claire to work on. Claire had her vision assessment done by ERECS, took her "All About Me" bag to school filled with her favourite treasures and continues to enjoy her class and her friends there.

Lisa gathered some lovely fall leaves for Claire to touch.


Madeline keeps growing and learning everyday. We have some very meaningful conversations and I love to hear what she is thinking about. She keeps us all on our toes but keeps us upbeat and going at the same time. She's loving her ballet class, her library singing class and her Gymboree classes. We try hard to give her opportunities to do things just for herself because we always have so much going on for Claire. But she still always wants to include Claire. Every week she asks, "Does Claire want to come to Gymboree class with me today?" I think Claire will have a good friend and advocate in her sister.

Ryan got a new calling in our ward - 1st counselor in the Young Men's program. He was thrown right in the thick of it with a food bank drive and youth conference occurring the week he was called. It was a busy week. Since then he's done a mock-MTC night, pumpkin carving and is looking forward to many more fun activities (including a winter camp, which he is worried he will literally freeze to death at).

Here are some random pictures from the month:

Claire likes to tip.


My little Cinderella


Jason and one of his clones (Ben) practicing Rock band.


Maddie and Ben rockin' out


We went to a fun Halloween activity at the CNIB. Claire picked out some cool toys to borrow.


Madeline enjoyed exploring the pumpkins.


Luckily I had Shauna's help! Both the girls liked feeling the textures of the dry pumpkin seeds and the slimy pumpkin seeds.


Ryan and Rob took one last motorbike ride before the snow. It still looked pretty cold though.


Madeline's new favourite thing to do is turn somersaults. The problems is that she doesn't look before she leaps. Today she did one right off the couch. Here's an example of her craziness.



Grandpa's visits are always fun.


Previous to this, Claire hooked her arm in her backpack strap while rolling on the floor. This time she did it with a Rockband guitar. She's awesome!


We're so lucky to have a personal esthetician on call for emergencies such as non-painted toenails. Every time Natalie comes over now, Madeline asks to have her nails painted. It's kind of her to do it!



It was fun to have Kathy and Christopher over for a visit. They brought us some lovely flowers and fun Halloween balloons and the kids actually played pretty nicely with each other. The last time Maddie and Christopher played together, they spent the whole time trying to bite each other, so this was definitely a step forward!


Claire falls asleep in the most interesting positions. She's very flexible.




Claire's been doing a lot of walking practice with Lisa and is getting pretty good at it.


That first snow was magic for Maddie. She probably would have played outside until she keeled over from exhaustion, but I made her come in to eat.


Along with other day to day adventures I attended Claire's IPP meeting and set some great goals with her team for this year, I went to another Malmo Parents Association Meeting (it's great to be involved in something like that!), we got our teeth checked by Grandpa Patterson and both girls did well, we had Val take some family pictures of us out in the cold, we stood in line for 2.5 hours to get our H1N1 shots, decorated our house in spooky Halloween style and have generally had a great month.

The end of warmness

Luckily our new furnace is working well because we've begun to use it! Every year I'm faced with almost a feeling of dread about the upcoming winter. Snow and cold brings with it longer preparations to leave the house, a dirtier wheelchair to lug around, colds and flus, heat bills and often, cabin fever. On the other hand, we live across the street from a rink so we can go skating this year, we can play in our own snowy backyard, we have a garage to park in and we have a fireplace and hot chocolate and all those good things. It also means we're close to Thanksgiving, Halloween and Christmas, which are very fun holidays!

Ryan's been busy with work and field trips and swimming and basketball and helping his parents build a new deck at their house. His love of games continues and we've had lots of fun with our newest game (purchased lovingly and carefully with PC points) - Beatles Rock Band.

I've been busy with the day-to-day aspect of running our home and I've also done something for myself - joined Spa Lady. I'm not making any drastic promises to myself, because I never seem to keep them (a.k.a. losing tons of weight for Kathy's wedding last month, which never happened - sorry Kathy!), but this gives me an outlet and something that will help me feel better about myself. I've also become more adept at navigating the Edmonton Public Library system as I've had to get all the books that Claire is reading at school so that she can look at the pictures while Miss Steed reads. I'm beginning to love the library - before now I was almost exclusively a book buyer instead of a book borrower.

We said goodbye to cousin Carrie as she headed off to the Atlanta North mission. I know she'll be such a good missionary and look forward to getting to know her better through letters.

We had our first Stake Conference in our new Stake and enjoyed listening to dad speak, as well as the other church leaders.

Claire's been very busy. She continues to enjoy her horse back riding lessons (we finally found a helmet that fits her!) and her preschool class. It's a great class and the kids are getting to know her better. She had her special "Busy Bear" day and brought a photo album of pictures of her favourite things to share with the class. She also does art work everyday at school and we're running out of places to display it at home! She went to her friend Sadie's birthday party and it was a very fun tea party/princess party. Claire loves her helper Lisa and they seem to get along wonderfully!

Claire was rolling around on the mat and rolled onto her backpack and managed to put it on all by herself! It was so funny. She was so proud of herself. I guess she must really like school.


Claire has a great new friend named Sadie who lives a block away. We had her over to play and had lots of fun doing crafts and playdoh and playing outside.


Maddie always likes to sit on the stretching barrel at Little Bits. Hopefully I can get her into a riding class someday.


I finally caught a smile at horseback riding! Usually it's hard to catch it in time. Although her face looks a little squished her, you can tell she likes her class.


Claire gets the two male side-walkers because she's super strong, so they have to be strong too. They are so kind to her and she really likes to talk with them.


Madeline is such a smart cookie. Everyone is always surprised that she is only 2 because she speaks so well. I love having conversations with her and asking her about her thoughts and her feelings and finding out what is on her mind. She's really grown into her role as Claire's interpreter and helper. She loves playing outside and she can't wait to go to school like Claire. Until then, we'll have to content ourselves with our Gymboree and library singing classes. She loves writing "notes" and her favourite is making grocery lists. She'll ask me a hundred times a day, "What do we need at the store mommy?"

Again, we've had lots of fun activities these past few weeks. We had our good friends the Thompsons (Jason, Kate, Ben, Brigham) and the Jensens (Jeff, Eva, Beatrix, baby on the way) over for a picnic. It was just as the weather started to get colder so we almost froze outside but were determined to eat out there. The kids had lots of fun together and we had fun playing Rock Band too.

Ryan and his friend Beatrix rocking the beat.


Rockband! It never gets old.


We dragged a table outside and had lots of fun. I guess next year we should buy some patio furniture or something.


Brigham, Ben and Madeline enjoying their ice cream sandwiches.


The kids found it hard to sit and eat. They kept escaping to play on the swingset and trampoline.


Ben gave Claire and Madeline great pushes on the swings.


I got to attend the Relief Society broadcast with my mom and sisters. It is a yearly tradition that I look forward to, and this time I wasn't crashing the Millwoods dinner because I actually belong to the stake now!

We had a ward carnival and silent auction for the youth to raise money for activities. Of course I forgot my camera, but they had lots of fun games for the kids and both Claire and Madeline enjoyed them. Claire spent most of the evening being escorted around the gym by the girls in her Primary class. It was fun to watch them.

I sometimes worry that friendships will be hard for Claire. I think, right now, the kids are intrigued by her and are treating her a bit like a baby to take care of or a novelty toy. I had to remind them to talk to Claire before just whizzing off with her wheelchair. I want them to connect with her as a person, not just a girl with a cool chair. I hope that the initial interest these kids have in her will develop into something more meaningful. I'm grateful that they do have an interest in her - maybe I'm just been to overprotective as usual.

We a fun Saturday October 3 - we missed out on Conference (That's why we have the internet and the Ensign, right???) but Ryan and I got to fulfill a life-long dream of seeing Fred Penner! We took the girls to his concert out in Spruce Grove and it was delightfully fun. He's 63 now, but doesn't look that different from when he was on TV - he certainly has lots of energy and we all enjoyed his songs.

Here we are at the Fred Penner concert! I love the Horizon Stage.


Fred himself. He was great! He really got the audience involved.


Then we rushed over to the Royal Alberta Museum to take in the annual CNIB Sensory Safari where kids with visual impairments are allowed to touch certain animal exhibits and meet some of the bugs they have upstairs. It's always a fun activity.

Maddie loved exploring and learning about the animals.


I told Maddie to make a walrus face.


Claire liked the feel of the "velcro" legs of the millipede.


Madeline was very interested in the leaf bug.


We had to take a "ride" on the escalator. This is my attempt to take a picture of us, but Madeline decided to sit down right as I took it.


We got another family picture taken this day at the museum in front of the bear.


Claire liked the feel of the different pelts and animal heads. It's not as gruesome as it may look.



We had a fun Conference Sunday with our traditional crepe breakfast. Ryan outdid himself this time with a great bunch of crepes. We had a lot more room for people to spread out in the house this time, so I think everyone had fun and we enjoyed visiting with our friends.

We've started the process of adapting our home for what Claire needs. We had someone come out from Shoppers Home Health and give us some estimates on an electric lift for the front door versus a ramp (a modular ramp is $10 000 and a mechanical lift is about $5500 - yikes!) and tracking lifts in her room and the bathroom for transferring when she gets bigger ($1200) and a lift down to the basement for her and her wheelchair ($12 000!!). I've started wading through the applications for all the various funding organizations, and while I'm so grateful that these places exist, they make you jump through a lot of hoops to get there! We'll also have to look into adapting our van in the future to accommodate her wheelchair, which can be up to $20 000!

Is it bad that I count down the days until Ryan has work off?

5 days of work until Thanksgiving weekend
24 days of work until Winter break
49 days of work until Christmas break

I can't wait!

Marathon Picture Post

I seem to always start out with an apology about how long it's been since I last posted and to ignore the overflow of pictures. But oh well, this post is the same. We've had a lot of fun and excitement with starting school and GRIT, etc. Here's what we've been up to.

Funny story: Madeline once heard me say that I had a frog in my throat. She replied by saying, "I have a bunny in my throat."

Ah the joys of owning a home. We had our dishwasher inspected because it's not draining properly but the appliance guy said it was a plumbing issue. So we had a plumber come and fix the drain pipe, but the dishwasher is still having the same problem. I called the appliance company to come look at it again (for FREE!) and they are closed for the entire month of September. Nice. Now we had our chimney cleaned and inspected and found out that the chimney needs to be extended almost 3 feet and the home inspector didn't tell us anything about that. So now we have another fight on our hands. I'm sure something else will go wrong soon.

We've had lots of meetings and appointments like the Malmo Annual General Meeting and eye check ups and Gymboree classes and meet the teacher nights, etc.

I might have mentioned this before, but if you are a stay at home parent, you can apply for a grant for approved childrens' programming. You can receive up to $100 per month per child so I use the money for Claire to go towards preschool and for Madeline, her Gymboree classes. Here's a link to the application online.


Ryan's been getting into golf a little bit more this summer. He's been a couple of times with my family and is enjoying it. Ryan's also been going swimming more often with Greg and Steph(s) and Natalie who have started their own lane swimming program.

Ryan's had a strange start to the year with the introduction of a teacher to the school (who had been on stress leave) who is supposed to "help" him in his French classes. It's really extra work for him because now he has to collaborate with her and implement some of her ideas and separate work out for her to do, etc. Hopefully she'll move over to another school soon so he can have his classroom back.

We had our first ward activity this weekend. A corn bust! The bishopric in our old ward hated corn busts for some reason, so this was our first one ever. It was fun. We all were to bring an international dish for the potluck and there were some very interesting and tasty things there.

On to the pictures!!!


Madeline loves Great Grandma's picture on the piano. She's always taking it down and putting it on the piano like a music book and playing "Great Grandma's song." She also likes to twirl around and dance with the picture. It makes me happy because we miss Grandma.


Here we are relaxing at Uncle Dan's annual golf tournament.


Madeline really got into the spray gun war and it was hilarious to watch.


Claire was smart to stay in the shade with Dad.


Val brought the girls back beautiful dresses from Tibet and here they are modeling them.


One night at Mom and Dad's we broke out the old records that we used to dance to as kids. Has anyone hear of Mousercise? It's a Mickey Mouse record with exercises for kids to do. So we turned our old school music and brought a new generation into the club by dancing with Maddie and Claire. It was so much fun!








Rob and Kyle slept over at our place before Sonic Boom. Here is Rob trying to add extra filling to his Twinkie. It didn't quite work out the way he had planned.


Here's Madeline and her new best friend, Kyle. He was sitting on the couch and she snuggled right up to him and put her arm around him. He said, "She's putting the moves on me!" Oh man, we're in trouble.


Here's the boys at Sonic Boom. Despite a crowd surfing fall and a sprained neck and damaged ear drums, they had a great day! I think it might become a yearly tradition.


Here's Madeline at Grandma and Grandpa Layton's house riding around on a trike. She loved it.


We tried out cousin Broc's quad (since he was in Calgary). Both the girls loved it!





Auntie Natalie (or Belinda) and Claire having fun in the sandbox.


We popped over to my parents house after being at Ryan's parents' house (it's nice to have them in the same city) and hung out with the fam. Included in this photo is Brandon, Steph's boyfriend.


We spent part of the long weekend Monday out at Payne's cabin. The weather became very lovely in the evening. I like this picture of us with Claire.


Madeline only had eyes for the bouncy castle/slide. She probably went down this literally a hundred times.


We hung out on the dock, enjoying the lake. Auntie Mel helped Madeline dip her toes in the water.


Ryan and I on the dock. It was a beautiful night.


Madeline and her new friend Nixon (from Nursery) learned how to share as they both tried to drive the boat. It was cute to watch them interact with each other!


These next few pictures are my attempt to get a good photo of the girls together. I gave up after awhile.








Claire started preschool! Here are some picture from her first day.

This is all the equipment that we had to take to Claire's school for her first day!!! This is definitely the story of our lives. Everytime we go anywhere, we have to anticipate every possibility and what she might need to help her do things.



Grandma did Claire's hair very fancy for her first day of school.


Here's myself, Madeline, Claire and Lisa - all ready for school!


Lisa and Claire, just before going in the classroom on the first day!


Claire loved the stations - especially playdough and the sand table. She's got these new Gator braces that Lisa straps on her legs and then helps her balance at the table, just like the other kids.


They have a fun park in the school yard with a teeter totter that Claire can sit on. It's a nice way to end the school day.


I was trying to take a nice picture of Madeline and I and she snuck in a funny face.


Grandma has come over lots to play with the girls. Here they are enjoying the lovely weather.



Claire started Little Bits again. Here she is in all her gear. The neck brace is a new one and seems to work a lot better than the soft foam one. She has a pillow in front of her, a gardening board for back support and two people to help her balance. It's quite a production but I think she really loves it. It's a great program!