LOVE and LIFE

It was an eventful weekend to say the least. We had a great drive considering we had 3 kids stuck in a van for over 6 hours. We visited with friends, walked through our old neighborhood, did a bit of shopping and took turns having a girls/guys night out. It had been our first time back since we moved and was interesting to be a "visitor". The boys kept asking if we could go to our old house. We had some heart wrenching moments as we met up with our old neighbor whose wife has left and he is in shambles. I was crying with him last night and thinking how I barely recognized this man who had once been strong and head held high and now looked like a beat up child. SO SAD! I wondered God's timing in it all...why we were no longer there to help him out in this definite low of his life? We spent some time with his children and I just feel so burdened for them...so send out some prayers with me for that broken family. I was overcome with this feeling that life is just SO cruel and there are people all around us who are hurting and barely functioning.
While we were in Calgary, we heard news that G's grandpa in Salmon Arm had passed away. He died peacefully in his home at 87 years old. We are happy that he is with Jesus and yet of course will miss his presence with us here.


The boys have had many questions about "how we die?" and "why did his heart stop working?". Riley had a bit of trouble falling asleep tonight with all his brimming questions. We prayed that Jesus would give GG a great big hug from us.
Anyway, we had a great time in Calgary and had fun with all our friends. It is so cute to see our 3 boys with our friends 3 boys and they just played their hearts out. We hardly had any arguments because they all were having so much fun. So that was a nice break for all of us.
Back to the grind. School and swimming lessons start tomorrow. I'd better get his lunch packed...and before I go...HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM and DAD! 34 years ago today, they were here...

How cute is that?? They were but wee babes in that photo, ha ha.
Thanks for "holding on tight"...love can be tough, but it's so good to be loved!! I told our old neighbor that I would pray for him because I believe in marriage and family, and man I know how lucky I am to have parents that have stuck it out...TOGETHER.
HUGS.

Spring Fever

Hey y'all. I don't have any idea what kind of audience I get on my blog...I imagine that since my own life can bore me, that I'm sure it may become a rather boring read as well. Sorry about that. I'm feeling stuck in a rut at the moment. I can feel the excitement of Spring and Summer coming right around the corner...but for now it is just blah blah blah.

I've said it before, but I have a teething angry baby...

He doesn't like too much these days. He's also getting mischevious and hates to be removed from his new found treasures of cords, remotes, phones or the like. He's learned the "angry screech". It's beautiful.

Liam got a belated present from Uncle Glen and Auntie Bri today. He loved it...can't you tell?


What a nut!
He really did love the game, but after 10 minutes of them fighting non-stop about who's turn it was and who pushes what button and who is what color etc. etc. the game had to be put away til a later date.
BAH.
They would fight about who gets to eat dirt off their shoe first. They really would. It will never cease to amaze me how competitive the two of them can be.
Can't we just all get along???
BAH.
Greg is working like crazy for the past week, and it's a little straining on everybody. We miss him.
But hey, there are some bright moments...

And he sleeps ALL NIGHT now!



It's a roller coaster all day long of being stressed out, grouchy, upset, tired and cranky but also mixed with complete joy, fun, giggles, hugs and sunshine. I guess that's what can happen when you mix 4 personalities with their own needs and feelings together. It's kind of like dorm life all over again!

And while Shea slept today, the big boys and I took off to Jungle Mania for almost 2 hours where they played and played and played. I even got in there and did the big slides and climbed with them.
I took Riley to piano lessons today, and it does amaze me how well he is doing for only 2 months in. I'll have to make a video of him playing. Grade one is quite an amazing year. He has gone from only writing his name in September, to reading and writing full sentences now. Amazing.

We're leaving on a little trip here on Thursday. I'm looking forward to it as I haven't left town since November. I need to do some shopping. My favorite jeans have split at the knees. So hopefully I can do a little bit of clothes shopping in between visiting with some dear friends that we can't wait to see! Hopefully the time away will give us all a little cheer amid the BLAH.

Easter

We had a fun Easter...we made paper mache eggs (they looked like huge dino eggs!). We decorated cookies that "grandma" Motz had made, we decorated regular eggs, we had an Easter egg hunt at my parents place, we went to the Sunday morning church service, we had supper with Luke and his family and took funny pictures with bunny ears that Pam had made.

Easter
Originally uploaded by Sarah Dzines

The next phase

So I'm dreaming of paint colors, arborite, cabinets and tiles lately! So far the idea is to go with a slightly lighter shade of green in our kitchen than we last painted in our old living room. We had done Boston Fern there...and loved it. We are thinking of a Stem/Pear Green this time around. Then we are thinking of a slightly off-white color to paint the cabinets to contrast with the white trim. The knobs will be the oiled bronze.
We haven't decided on arborite or tile yet, but probably will tie in the taupe colors of the floor and other walls, and some black flecks to go with the black of the window and appliances.
We have a door. It is BEAUTIFUL. Pam found it for us at a store in Kamloops and it is fir with the largest pane of glass in it possible. She is in the process of staining it, and then it will be the first new thing put into this kitchen, so I'll post photos soon.
We had made plans to be in Calgary this weekend, but Shea was so miserable and sick that we didn't think it would be worth going. He was "off" for about 8 days straight with major snot, fever and grumpiness. It has been a really hard week for me as Riley is home off of school, so the boys have great needs to get out and about but it is pretty impossible with a grumpy baby. I was starting to go bonkers already on Monday afternoon, so I started making up a schedule by the hour of the activities that the boys and I would be doing. Lego, snacks, crafts, soccer, hockey, biking, cleaning our rooms, etc. It worked well and avoided some of the arguments that usually would take place every 5 minutes because someone was bored!!



We don't have big plans for a big Easter meal or anything, but will have a big Easter egg hunt outside tomorrow. For craft time this week we made paper mache huge eggs, macaroni crosses and painted eggs. I'll post pictures later. Happy Easter everyone!

We've only just begun...

We really need help from one of those makeover shows...they make it all look so easy, and have the money and people to rip everything apart and do it right.
We are starting kitchen renos. YIPEE! When we bought our house, I hated the kitchen. The pictures on the MLS site made me cringe a little. I couldn't picture myself in such a place. I knew we couldn't buy it unless I had the promise that we could fix it...not drastically, but at least a little. The main complaint is that it's dark and dingy. Those nice 80's oak cupboards with brass knobs, minty green countertops, unmatched appliances, shiny white bathroom tiles.
Let me show you...

It does have newly done tile flooring which isn't my favorite as it's hard and cold, but it looks nice and is a taupe marble look. It will stay.
We hope to take half a wall out to bring more light in from the next room (right side of the picture). In order to do that we are going to remove a sliding door and put in a single door to make room for the fridge that we will need to move there. Then we'll make it into a bar counter with stools (on the right side of the picture), and we want to paint the oak, change the hardware, take off the wall tile and either re-tile or paint, replace the trim, replace the counters, the sink, the stove, move up the microwave that is hanging low over the stove, and build a few additional pot drawers under the new bar counter.
Yikes. Lots to do. Since G and I don't have experience in this department, we're pulling in my dad and brother to take on this project (with our help of course). Might be a long long story. I will be sure to post pictures for those of you who like reno befores/afters as much as I do. I hope to learn lots on this project so I can tackle some more areas of our house.
Here's what I did today...I slowly and carefully (as not to cause too much dust and breaking tile) chipped off tiles in between separating fights of the boys and dealing with a super cranky teething baby with a head cold.

That's a start, hey?
So now I would love to hear all your advice and suggestions. I'm trying to decide on the wall color that will go in the kitchen. Right now it is taupe as is the WHOLE HOUSE. Although it is not a bad color, it is a tad blah. I don't want to paint the entire house, so I need to pick something that goes with it. Also I will need to pick out the exact color of white/cream we should make the cabinets...who knew there were so many shades. I know some of you may be cringing at the thought of painting wood, but I think painting them light will add so much more brightness to this dark side of the house.
I will be updating you as we go. Wish us luck!

The birthday blues

The parties are still going on. After the 22 people for dinner on Wednesday, we had 14 for dinner on Friday and then 7 more joined us for dessert...then last night Luke and his family came over for movies and popcorn. It has been party central. Lots of fun.
Last night at midnight we wished Luke and Greg a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
I got Greg a banjo!! I think I totally surprised him.


He's playin' the blues now.
Happy Birthday Greg! You ROCK.

A rare visit

My mom's sister Nancy came to see us this week. She is from Ontario, and I haven't seen her since I was pregnant with Liam, almost 5 years ago. It was nice to have her come to our house for the first time ever, and to meet the kids.
Here she is with her two daughters (my cousins Alexandra and Gabrielle) and her hubby (uncle Marc) in the background. They loved Shea.

Sweet memories

Party details

We had a fun party day today. We celebrated Liam's 4th birthday! Obviously we had a Curious George theme. We played many games...pin the banana in George's mouth, pop the balloons tied to the other kids ankles, hide the monkey, musical pillows. We made monkey masks, did other color sheets, listened to the Curious George story on CD, ate cupcakes and monkey bananas...he opened gifts, we gave out goodie bags. Liam ran upstairs just before everyone left and yelled..."HEY GUYS! IS EVERYONE HAVING A GOOD TIME?"
Apparently, he was.
This was the first time we did a "kids party only", his last 3 parties we had lots of families and served dinner. Let's just say, it was "controlled chaos". No, really, it went great. It was fun to do a special time for him and he was thrilled.
I still can't believe he's four.
There are more photos on Facebook, to fill you in on the rest of the time.

The happy birthday effort.

I sure don't get a lot of computer time lately. Oh, did I not tell you, I have an official CRAWLER. Not just scooting, actually crawling now. And not just that. Within days of learning to get up on his knees, he has learned to climb stairs. He can tackle the 5 stairs from the family room up to the kitchen, so there is no longer a safe place to put him except in his exersaucer! I haven't put up gates yet, as well, where do you start when you have a split level home and there are stairs everywhere!! The hard part about this stage is that he doesn't know his limits. He will pull himself up to stand against something, and then he will completely forget that he has to hold on or he will flail backwards and bash his head. Or he'll lean on things that move out from under him. And of course he doesn't know how to back down the stairs at all. I do a lot of dashing. I'm a sprinter now.
Tonight we celebrated my father-in-laws birthday. I have a great father-in-law, by the way. You would know that if you knew him. He was downstairs playing hockey with Riley tonight and commentating in his booming voice as he does and it's always so fun to hear. Anyway...at his request, I made some apple fruit crisp rather than cake. I took it out of the oven so we could be funny and stick sparklers on it while we sang. Greg misunderstood and ran out with just the lit sparklers, singing. I was standing there with the hot apple crisp, waiting for the sparklers to go in it. Liam had just finished dropping his whole ice cream. So Greg and I are half-heartedly singing, Greg's mom is saying, "LIAM DROPPED HIS ICE CREAM!". I'm trying to get Greg to stick the sparklers in my crisp. Greg is bent over, picking up ice cream. Liam is whining about having dropped his icecream. And well...we barely finished the song. Mom ended with "and many moreeeee!" and we all laughed.
We tried.

And then Liam proceeded to tell Grandpa what was inside every present before he could even open it. Dad would joke and say, I think it might be a ... and Liam would laugh and go NOOO, it's a sweater. And then, SEEEEEE Grandpa! I told you!!
Too funny.


We even lost our marbles. Well sort of...I had made a centerpiece of balloons on sticks, held up in a glass of marbles, and it got dumped over (of course)...landing each marble down on the hardwood floor with a bang.
Ya, oh well we tried. (We did make him some sweet cards with finger paint...)


Though it was a bit of a gong show, we hope he has a Happy birthday anyway!!

Fuzzy and out-of-focus...but oh so cute!!

Fuzzy and out-of-focus...but oh so cute!!
Originally uploaded by Sarah Dzines

There are moments when I can't imagine one without the other.
Like PB and jelly.
:)