It's Hard Work Getting Us to Look Good!

Goodness, it is crazy how many photos one family has to take in order to get a decent family picture. These are only 12 of the "best". I can only imagine how much more complicated it's going to get with TWO kids. :)

Merry Christmas everyone!
Love Kirsten

Merry Christmas and Holiday Wishes

Dear friends and family,
Merry Christmas to all of you! I won't go into too many details because we plan to send out a holiday card/letter but in case my lack of motivation gets the better of me and I don't get them out in time I thought I'd post our card/photo. We are doing well. Our big exciting news is that we found out I am pregnant...whew! Crazy eh? Yup indeed, we think so too -but apparently it's meant to be despite the odds so we are quite happy with the prospect of Baby B. S/he will be 19 months younger than Jack so they will be best of friends I'm sure. Life will be crazy for a little bit but what's a little chaos. :)

For those of you readers out there, I just finished 'The Time Traveller's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger, oh my goodness, it was fabulous. The ending had me bawling hysterically, I loved these characters so much, they were so real to me it was heartbreaking when things turn out as they do. (I have not ruined the ending, it is quite clear through the entire read that this is not to be a Disney ending -and yet I loved it anyway.) Lily, you must get this book, you will love it.


Darrel is on an elimination diet right now -no dairy, wheat, eggs, gluten, sugar, corn, chocolate, coffee, tea, etc etc etc. Poor guy, he is normally the king of sauces, our fridge door is filled with condiments, but those are out the window too. The idea is that this will help him figure out what food allergies and sensitivities he has and then he can avoid them and feel better. Here's hoping! I on the other hand am STARVING all the time. I am still nursing Jack in the evenings and at night so between growing a baby, feeding Jack and fuelling my own body I feel like my tummy is always rumbly. Jack does not seem to be in any hurry to stop nursing, but he has become more interested in what we are eating at the table, so maybe I can wean him before I have this baby!! ;) I joked with my Mom the other night that I would be one of those poor women tandem nursing a toddler and a baby...and I was only half joking. I think his increased interest in nursing is partly due to me being gone at work all day. Poor little guy misses his Momma. It will be good come January when I drop down to Part time and am home more with him.

Well, hope you are all doing well. Build a fire, drink some hot chocolate and stay warm.
Love Kirsten Darrel and Jack

A Baby on the Move

In the past couple of weeks Jack has become much more mobile, he pulls himself up onto furniture, and likes to crawl through things. Today he mastered the art of climbing up onto the lower shelf of the coffee table, scooting through and coming out on the other side. Climbing through the chair braces is another favourite trick.

Yesterday at church we had to explain to quite a few people about the rash around his eyes...turns out Jack is allergic to the cloxacillian that I was taking for my case of mastitis. Poor little kid, he looks neglected!

Work is very busy for me right now, in fact I'm going to go do some work after I'm done this. I did some work on the weekend as well and I have to tell you, I don't know how people consistently put in 9/10 hour days. I just don't care about work that much, the only reason I'm doing this is to meet a tight deadline, and even then I am not overly motivated. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my job, but I like leaving and not bringing it home with me. I guess I'll never be senior management. Oh well...

I'm looking forward to going to SLC for Christmas...good food, family, and warmer weather. I've expanded my cooking repetoire this year while I was home (Lil and Marta you would be quite proud at some of my creations!) so I am eager to make a nice meal for the fam.

ok, off to do that work, sigh.

Big Boy Jammies

I can't resist sharing this photo, I love these pajamas! 

Learning New Things

I've been trying to learn new things in my digital scrapping. I want some of my pages to have a more artsy feel to them rather than just pictures on a background. So in this layout I have used different blending modes to make the red paper show through the photos, that is why they are all tinited and you can see some of the writing in the lighter photos. Something fun to try...I'm not always successful with these techniques, sometimes you win and sometimes you loose right.
I have a breast infection, ugh. It's not going away so I will have to go to the doctor tomorrow and get some antibiotics. I've been using a wheat bag to heat the area and try and unplug the milk duct and apparently the dust off of the wheat bag has done bad things to Darrel and Jack. Darrel is stuffed up and sneezing and Jack has a rash all around his eyes. poor guys! So out goes the wheat bag!
The weather has been great the past couple of days, +6C and +3C, after Tuesday's huge snowfall it is quite welcome! 

Why buy toys when you can make your own?

Honestly, Jack loves playing with things from around the house. He's most happy banging an empty gatorade bottle on his high chair tray. This was the first time out for the pot lids, fun was had by all, and Mommy was able to finish making dinner. 

Manitoba Sunrise

I had the opportunity of being up at 6am with Jack one day last weekend. By the time we ate breakfast and did some playing the sun was coming up and it was sooo beautiful. This is the view from our deck in the back yard across to the neighbours yard. It felt like one of those moments that was perfect, like time is standing still. I ran and got my camera and tripod... grabbed a pair of Darrel's shoes from the back door and went outside. Jack was playing in the living room, (tearing books apart I found out later) so I took off a few shots really quick, I'm pretty pleased with the results. 

All Hallows Eve

You know as a child I didn't really like Halloween, it stressed me out, the pressure of finding the right costume. But as an adult I love Halloween! It was really fun seeing all of the kids come to the door with their bright eyes and excitement. I had a couple of funny ones. One little guy about three or four was wearing a red coat with shiny buttons, I couldn't figure out what he was, so I asked him and in a shy little voice he said "I'm a crocodile". His Mom laughed, and said actually he's an RCMP officer, who wishes he was a crocodile. Isn't that they way life is, you always want to be what you are not!

The other funny costume was an older boy in prison clothes and a sign on his chest that said "Former Enron CEO". A sad statment of the times but pretty darn funny.

Jack was very concerned about all of the strangers coming to the door, and when a boy in a werewolf costume appeared his bottom lip started quivering and he was pretty scared. Poor little munchkin. As you can see, we didn't dress him up, with no family here to show him off to we thought it would seem a little goofy to take our nine month old around for candy. Ahhh, but next year it will be different, no lazy Halloweens for the next decade!

Technical Incompetence

OOOps, didn't mean to invite people as contributors, I only wanted to invite people to come see my blog. I guess that's not "team member". So for any of you that received the invitation to 'contribute' to my blog rest assured that you are not required to do anything here, just stop by once in a while and check it out. I guess I'll just have to send out an email invite with the url.

My latest layouts

I am way too addicted to digital scrapping but since I started work my output has slowed down.

One Week Down

Well, the Andersons have officially survived the first week of my return to work. We are happy to say that Jack is still alive and Darrel did not go crazy switching to being a stay at home Dad. It was a trial by fire though...Darrel got a nasty bout of the flu on Tuesday and by Friday Jack had it. We spent the weekend catching up on much needed sleep. I miss being at home with Jack but it is also nice in some ways to have the structure and accomplishments that come with work outside the home. This transition has been made much easier with Darrel being home with Jack. They are both happy when I leave and come home from work, no tearful goodbyes.

It was a nice fall day today, 10 degrees, but the wind was chilly, I can feel winter nipping on our heels. I read in the paper today about some crazy BC guy who wants to come to Winnipeg for a winter vacation, and he was asking what there was to do in Winnipeg over the Christmas week. Basically the columnist said nothing...he did a HORRIBLE job of promoting Winnipeg. I expect such a response from someone like me but not from a newspaper columnist. :) Yup, we're really looking forward to winter in our house.

After I got home from work we went for a walk in the forest near our house and we saw something that made us wish we had brought the camera. You know how you sometimes get those emails with pictures of pets that look like their owners, this was a woman and her dog that could have fit in quite nicely. The dog was big, the size of a lab but with a big wooly curly coat that covered its eyes and the woman had hair the same colour and it was big and wooly and curly and covered HER eyes. Darrel and I had a good laugh about it once we got far enough away.

We are planning on going to Salt Lake for Christmas, my Mom keeps calling with news that she's found another toy for Jack at the second hand store (her favorite place to shop). Last week she found him a musical pony, it sings a song about cowboys going for a ride if you pull one ear and says "Let's go for a ride" if you pull the other. I keep thinking it to myself and snickering, it's pretty cute. What a good Grammie she is.

Up and Running

This is my first post...more to come!