Snowshoeing in The Geat White North... (Actually it was just the backyard)

2008 Update- Month by Month- January and February

Since I've been so lax about updating the blog, I thought I would do a month by month update with photos. Here we go...

JANUARY

We had a great New Years Eve at home with the girls. We celebrated"early" as neither were going to make it to midnight. They were quite excited when we popped open the "sparkling Apple Cider" for them. Have a look!!!

Pop! They were so excited...

Bubbles, bubbles and more...

...BUBBLES!

"CHEERS!"

Delicious...

Yummy!

More Please!

Having some fun in the snow (we had plenty of it!)...

Kyra gets and extra push from Nina

Nina doing some fancy maneuver

Lily... our little dare-devil!

Brad...not to be out-done by a toddler (especially a girl!!)

FEBRUARY

Chinese New Year!

The 5 year olds were adorable!

Erin and Lily posing for a photo opp...

Our sweet girl

Lily is in awe of the "Dancing Lion"

Lily's 3rd Birthday...

Lily was so excited... Nana made her chocolate cupcakes with pink icing. She loves the book "Dora's Picnic" and Dora has chocolate cupcakes with pink icing on her picnic. Everytime we read the book, Lily says she will have that for her birthday cake.

Yum-yum!

February ends with a bang!

We're off to Punta Cana and we had a blast...

That will be in my next post!

I'm back.... Sort of

OK, I'm sure by now most of you have "tuned out" of our blog because I have been so utterly pathetic in updating it. But in my defense... there are only so many hours in a day. Since Feb 1, this is what our life has looked like.
We are preparing to sell our duplex, so I have been working there any chance I get painting it throughout- ceilings, walls, trim, doors, kitchen cabinets- EVERYTHING! We ripped out every stitch of flooring and will have all new flooring laid throughout. Changed all the lighting throughout, electrical upgrades, hauled 4 truck loads of JUNK that the last tenants left behind. And amongst all this, Daron's been 1 week in Nfld, 1 week in Florida (for work- poor Daron!), and his usual trekking around the Atlantic provinces for work (including weekend home shows!- Oh how I love the spring!!) The kids have had a record number of snow days this year, just to complicate scheduling! So I basically spent the whole month of Feb working at the duplex until about midnight or 1 am every night that Daron has been in town. AND, just to add to the mayhem, we have also sold our cottage to a couple from Ottawa that "fell in love " with our cottage from my website. They flew in one Friday to look at it, and put and offer in and accepted our counter offer on the day we were leaving for vacation. Oh yeah, amongst all the frenzy of the month, we did go away for 8 days to Punta Cana while Mom stayed at our place with the girls. So, don't feel too sorry for me... I had a week of sunbathing in 30 degrees on a white sand beach drinking Tiki Tiki's. Other than a few excursions we did, we were pretty much only upright for 3 meals a day!! It was sinfully relaxing. But we missed the girls like crazy. But, did I mention how relaxing it was? We definitely needed the break. And although I planned on coming back rejuvenated, I came back with "walking pneumonia" instead. Oh well, life goes on.
This week I will post all the pictures that I have been neglectful of getting on here. Promise!

A Blanket Party in Ethiopia

When we first started down this leg of our family journey to adopting our two children from Ethiopia, I was desperately on the hunt to find blogs of other families who had adopted from Ethiopia. I stumbled across this amazing blog, (and really amazing mother of 10!) that I was quite simply infatuated with! Her online name is Mary O. and her blog is called Owlhaven. She had endless information about Ethiopia and adoption in general as well as their own experience of adoption (2 boys from Korea, and 4 girls from Ethiopia in addition to their 4 bio children- OK, she's SUPERWOMAN).

Anyways, I used to follow her blogs (she had 2) daily. I would stay up into the night just reading the wealth of info she had on Ethiopia. After awhile, life got too busy around here and I slowly started "tuning in" less and less. Nowadays I'm up until the wee hours of the night trying to catch up on posting to my own blog! I'm still very far behind...but I digress.

I just revisited Owlhaven blog and see that Mary is doing an online fundraiser called a "Blanket Party" that I think is amazing. I wanted to post the link here so if anyone else was interested they could link to the Owlhaven blog on Feb 1 to partake in the event. (Just click on my post title and you will link to the Blanket Party info post) In short the idea of the fundraiser is to provide some much needed blankets to women delivering babies in Ethiopia. The women at the hospital said that most women arrive at the hospital with absolutely nothing for their babies, not even a blanket to wrap them in. The money donated on line on Feb 1 will all go to the purchasing of blankets for the new moms. It's amazing to think of all the "things" we had for our babies... I can not begin to imagine to be so poor that you wouldn't even have a blanket to wrap your newborn in!

I'll be on the link on Friday!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

The girls opening up their new Santa plate on Christmas Eve. The plate came with a dry-erase marker so they could write a note to santa on the plate. Very Cute!

Kyra busy writing the note to Santa

Lily, as usual, with SO much to say. It's quite astonshing to see how many photos we have of Lily with her lips in high gear! =-)

See!

See! I'm not exagerating...

Nana with her girls

The girls were quite excited about the lollypops in their stockings

Lily is a major Doodlebop Fan!

Quite thrilled with her "Dee Dee Key-tar"...

Kyra thrilled with her Webkinz kitty- she named it Snowball...

Parlee was thrilled with her bone...

Nana thrilled with her new Gucci shades! Ever the Fashionista...

You can take the woman out of Montreal, but you can NEVER take Montreal out of the woman!

Kyra "givin' some lovin'" to Gran-Nana

Then once all the presents were opened and the bird was in the oven...we spent the whole afternoon playing Wii!!. Very addicting...

Look at that Papa. He's out for blood...

Not so fast ol'man... I'm up for the challenge!!

We even had my grandmother in on it. (She'll be 90 in April)

!!YOU GO GIRL!!

... but none of us were any match for "Alley-Cat Kyra"! This girl is a natural!!

We played so much that first day that I actually woke up the next day and my arms and upper back were killing me!!

Then after all the exercise we were ready for some refueling...

Turkey Dinner!!! YUMMMMM

Christmas Party Season

Kyra's Special Olympics Christmas party

Kyra having fun dancing with her basketball friend, Heather.

Lily joins in on the fun!

A Christmas party with friends. The kids had a super time sliding while the moms and dads celebrated with some "Christmas Cheer" inside!

How many of you have ever used a picnic table as a "sledding launch"? It worked great!

Christmas Concerts Continue....

New Maryland Elementary Christmas Concert

Our "Celine" greeting fans on her way up to the stage! Can you tell she LOVES the attention??!!

Kyra singing her heart out

Christmas Concert at Church

Lily's first show!

Oh- those fingers!! Can I get dowm now Mom?

Our "Wiseman" getting some last minute pointers from her Sunday School teacher.

She had a little "stage fright" and froze- but was so excited and proud of herself afterwards. That's our girl- if only all of us could live in such a blissful world...how wonderful life would be!