The Return of the Sun

December playing with Benji the dog and Felix the cat...she LOVES playing with cats, and Felix is very good around toddlers!

December playing the piano as Brad helps her, with Caden working on a speaker in the background

They both enjoy playing this piano, and they make lovely sounds come out of that instrument...

December playing with Felix again -- she throws him a rolled-up sock, and he chases it around the basement, which makes December giggle. I think the two of them could play this game for hours on end!

The sun has come back to Calgary again, and it's wonderful! We haven't seen substantial rain at all this week, and the babies love getting out and playing. As you can see, they've got LOTS of grass to run around on, which is great!

Brad's dad got this '91 Sunbird convertible in really nice condition, and he is graciously letting Brad take it to work and back to save on our van's horrible gas mileage. It's a nice little car!

Here's Brad fatefully opening up the car's hood. This simple action sure caused him alot of grief! It was a windy day, and after Brad set up the car's hood, the wind picked the hood up and threw it against the windshield. Thankfully, the windshield didn't break, but the long piece between the hood and the windshield (the part that the wipers rest on), got scratched and cracked! So Brad spent the rest of the night repairing the problem.

December pushing Caden around in the stroller

Can you see December's hair is a little bit curlier than normal? I had tried curling it with a curling iron, to practice for Matt (Brad's brother) & Tarena's wedding, where December will be the flower girl. Her hair did curl nicely, but I'm going to have to go about curling it a different way. It was neither easy nor safe to be chasing her head of hair around the bathroom with a hot curling iron in my hand!

Yesterday, Erin took me to the MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) group that she attends. They all went to the park, and we had a grand time! Here's December waiting for her turn on the beloved swings.

When she got in the swing, she was quite thrilled!

...and Caden really liked it, too.

Loving to Jump

December's favorite toy, by far, at Grandpa & Grammie's house is their trampoline! Both she and Caden just love jumping on it...



She has thankfully gotten better at actually staying on the trampoline, so we don't have to worry so much about her purposefully running off the edge of it like she used to.

Her favorite game to play on the tramp is Ring Around the Rosie, especially the "we all fall down!" part

Having fun with Daddy

This was December yesterday. She's wearing Brad's golf hat and holding the golf balls that Brad got from a golf tournament last Saturday. He went with his brother and dad, whose work sponsored the golf outing.

December singing "Baa Baa Black Sheep," which she just learned all of the words to.

Brad has begun his internship with the church! It looks like they're going to be keeping him pretty busy. He will be preaching all of July and August while the pastor is on vacation, and he'll be helping out with Vacation Bible School, doing visitations, leading a worship team, etc. This Sunday, both Brad and I will be playing for some of the songs in church. I'm also planning on helping out the 1st/2nd grade class for Vacation Bible School, which I'm looking forward to! December will be in the 2-4 year old class, and I'm sure she'll like that alot. I need to go and practice the piano again now, so hopefully it'll minimize the mistakes I'll make tomorrow! :o)

The Long Trip

Thank you for being so patient and waiting so long for this post!! It's been rather busy here, with moving and travelling and settling in here in Calgary. But here's some pictures of our trip!

This is the last picture taken of our "normal" apartment, when December's room was still put together. I really should have taken a picture of the gigantic stacks of boxes that we had before moving day. On moving day itself, we had eleven seminary guys come out and help us move all of our belongings from our apartment to the storage facility. They did it in record time! We were really blessed to have so many of our friends come and help us out. After Della helped me clean up the apartment, we packed up our van and left for Calgary around 6:00pm.


We stopped that night (Thursday) around 11:30pm, just after going through Las Vegas. We slept in our van, which actually worked out really well! I'll show you pictures of that below. The next morning we started out again around 7:30am. This picture was taken in Arizona.

Brad and I enjoyed seeing all of the different kinds of scenery pass by...God has truly made some fascinating landscapes, and each state that we passed through was so different and beautiful! This picture was also taken in Arizona.

December did well on the long trip. She's generally a good traveller, although we did manage our share of meltdowns and temper tantrums -- which is to be expected of a 2-year-old strapped in a car seat for hours on end! She played with her kitties and her bears (one of her favorite things -- it's what she and Brad are playing with in the very first picture), she watched movies, we sang songs together, etc.

Brad the tireless driver!

...and December passed the time by napping, too.

This picture was taken in Idaho. That was probably my favorite state to drive through, because it was stunningly beautiful!

We stopped at a rest area in Idaho and had dinner. After dinner, we wandered around on paths through lava formations. It was a fun break from all of the driving, and December thought it was great fun to run around in the grass and on the paths!

We let December drive part of the way, too. She really does quite well for a toddler! ...not really -- she's just pretending to be like Daddy.

Here was our bed for both of the nights! We folded down the back seats, flipped forward the middle seats, and laid down our foam mattress. I could sleep stretched flat out, but Brad was a bit too tall for that.

December LOVED sleeping with us! She slept great, which was nice. On the second night, we stopped at a rest area in Montana around 10:30pm and got back on the road again around 6:00am.

This is what we did with all of our suitcases while the back of the van was made into a bed -- stuffed them into the front seats.

This picture was taken in Montana, around 6:30am, right after we had gotten back on the road. We arrived in Calgary at 2:00pm that day, all safe and sound!

Here are December and her cousin Caden playing together. We are staying at Brad's parents' house, and so are Jeff, Erin, and Caden while they wait for their new place to finish being built. It's been fun! The kids love playing together.

Giving each other hugs. You can see how wet the bottom of their pants are -- it has rained nearly every day since we've arrived, and December & Caden love puddles!

Do you like December's pants?!? She fell down in one of the puddles and was thoroughly soaked.

One big change for December is that she is now sleeping in a big-girl bed! We tried putting her in a pack-and-play when we arrived, but she immediately climbed right out of it. So we put a mattress on the floor instead and made a BIG deal about what a big girl she was and what a nice bed it was. The transition went better than I ever expected, and she's sleeping in it like a champ! Well, most of the time anyway. At this nap time, she decided to sleep on the floor instead.