Gingerbread Goodness...

On Sunday (our last day together) we pulled out the gingerbread houses and had a little messy fun! When Miles came home later on & picked his fave, it was our families... he didn't know who's house was who's but he obviously has good taste :)

Mommy & Ethan

Workin' away...

Steve & the kids

Angus, Giuliana & Liam

All three houses

Me & my boys (Ethan & Jackson)

Sarah, Steve & kids

Hard at work...

Water logged...

It's always a treat to have 15 people in the house + no hot water + flood... that was our Christmas Day (late night) and Boxing Day morning! Our tankless hot water heater somehow got too cold and resulted in no hot water. My brother and I went down to 'trouble shoot' so looked at the manual and he unplugged it. It had gone down to 10 degrees and as soon as it was plugged in again, it reset itself back to normal and I had hot water almmost right away. However... the warm temperature also caused frozen pipes/valves to crack and around 2am when my bro went to bed, he found serious leakage!!! He turned it off and at 8am I had to call the plumbing & heating company to come doctor it up - just the call you want at 8am on Boxing Day eh? They were here by 9:30am with a brand new tank. This one has a sensor in it so if it ever gets too cold, it will sense it and kick in to heat it up again... that's what I understood it to be anyways! Thankfully we haven't been in the house for a year yet and are still covered under warranty!

My dad pulled back the carpet and underlay and wet-vac'd up as much water as he could... a heater is on 24/7 now as we dry everything up. Other than some hardwood that was being stored right below the tank, nothing was really damaged - just a bit water logged and providing it dries out properly, all should be well!

Explosion!

TAKE NOTE: when visiting cold prairie provinces, in winter, one cannot leave pop outside in -25C weather! This is the potential outcome:

But it made me think of a little rhyme that I've thought about sharing before now. Ethan and Jackson apparently learned this from Miles' high school reunion, back in June!

Coca Cola went to town

Diet Pepsi shot him down

Dr. Pepper fixed him up

Now we're drinking 7-UP

7-UP got the flu

Now we're drinking Mountain Dew

Mountain Dew fell off the mountain

Now we're drinking from the fountain

The fountain broke...

Now we're back to drinking Coke

I'm back....

We are back to the land of the cold... snow, snowsuits, mittens, hats, scarves and boots! We left behind sandy beaches, palm trees, snorkelling, turtles, swimming pools, sandals and shorts! Brrr! It's gonna take a little while to adjust! We are still settling in and my brain is a bit foggy from jet lag, long airport stays and lack of sleep - so much so that I just got a phone call saying that I missed Liam's dentist appointment just now! Ooops! (and Cole slept till 10:30am)

Our trip was great - we saw and did lots! I will get into more detail when I upload some pictures. It was a very technology challenging trip though... my Canon Rebel camera decided NOT to work from the get-go so thankfully I had my little point and shoot back-up camera. It was great to have a stand-by but saddening to know that I wasn't getting my best possible pictures in HAWAII! Argh! We also took our laptop along, so that we could download our pictures and have them on a back-up but it decided to stop working too... it wouldn't charge, wouldn't work plugged in - nothing. Both hotels/resorts had in-room internet so had planned on sending little updates too but was apparently not meant to be! Then... there's the GPS! We took it along to help us navigate our way around the Hawaiian Islands but it chose to be difficult too and ended up just going back into the suitcase! To get these from car rental places, it's about $10/day so that's why we brought our own but the trusty map ended up working just fine :) So we've decided to become Amish and boycott electronic gadgets!

We did have a great trip though, despite a few gong-show moments! We went to a couple luau's, snorkelling, road trips, spent hours and hours by the pool, played on the beach, a catamaran ride/tour, glass-bottom boat ride, the Dole Plantation, saw the North Shore, had lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp and the list goes on... stay tuned!

crazy hair day

Friday was CRAZY HAIR DAY at school... Ethan sported a colourful gel'd mowhawk and Jackson had some crazy pony tails! Thankfully there was coloured (Halloween) hairspray on clearance at Wal-Mart that I could get at the last minute because I forgot to pick up coloured gel from Chatters! I won't describe the colour of the bath water that night - no problems washing it out though :)

Ethan

Jackson

Off to school...

Ernst also sporting a new 'do'

a nice surprise...

On Thursday afternoon, we were blessed with a great surprise visit from some Norweigan relatives (my mom's cousin and his wife). They were in Canada and went from family to family, visiting... we were the grand finale, so no more secrets - we can all post pictures etc!!! They have now ventured over the border, into the states and will spend some time touring and shopping there :) Here are a few photo highlights of what we packed in to less than 24 hours!

Ernst & Ellen Randi

Me with E&E - out for dinner at Chili's

Me & my hubby

Seeing the boys off to school...

Liam showing Ellen Randi our Florida scrapbook & telling about EVERY single picture :) We warned them that he would be 'chatty' the next morning...

A beautiful fall day...

Tourist :)

Feeding the ducks & geese

Cole - I'm sure the whole lake could hear him! "DUCKS!!!"

Strolling along...

Cole's version of 'strolling along'...

Buddies! Liam was so sad when they had to leave!

The guys

Hats!

Very distraught that mommy was sitting in the very back seat with him - "I want ERNST to sit with me!" I thought Ernst should get a turn in the front seat, so he could see the sights!

boys n' girls...

Here are some recent card creativity... as you can see both sets are based on the same stamp sets and colour combos but have their own 'tweek' to them. I made these baby girl cards awhile back but had to make sure they got to their blog reading recipients before posting :) The boys birthday cards were for my friends 4 yr old twins and Liam went to their party on Sunday, after church. My colour inspiration was the wrapping paper! Could you tell?!

'Welcome Baby' - for Emerald & Megan

Happy Birthday - Cale

Happy Birthday - Seth

Colour inspiration - I bought a couple rolls of this paper, the ribbon, gift bags and tissue paper at 'TARGET' in spring '08 when we were over the border

pumpkin participation...

Back on October 3rd, I think it was, we picked out our 30 pound pumpkin from the pumpkin patch! The poor thing didn't get carved until the last minute though and it was a group effort :) Miles took E&J with him to Jackson's hockey pratice, while Liam & I stayed home & gutted the pumpkin - well OK I gutted the pumpkin and Liam posed for some photos!!! I promised it wouldn't get a facelift until the rest were home. E&J each drew an eye, Liam drew the nose and mommy drew the mouth & ears, while daddy was the chosen carver... you can see our masterpiece in the next post...

Trick-or-Treat

I bundled the boys up on Saturday night and headed in to our former 'hood to go trick or treating! Before leaving, we did a few of the current neighbourhood kids (maybe 15) at our door. We left a pumpkin (with battery operated candles) and a bin of loot on the front porch but it didn't look like anyone else had been by after we had gone! The reason for going into our former neighbourhood were too much mud, too windy and sporatically occupied homes, out here :) It was good to see our 'neighbours' for a few minutes and get more treats in less time (not that we 'needed' it). Also went to the home of the labour/delivery nurse who delivered Jackson! I'm glad she said something because I didn't recognize her - I did know her name though, so that's gotta count for something! She apparently sees Miles at work once and awhile, so knew that we used to live around there, had four boys now and had moved... (Miles wasn't with me though, so I think she took a guess and then we got chatting) Anyways, one of the things she gave out was juice boxes and it was perfect timing, at about our half way mark! Might do that next year and then if we have leftovers - school lunches! We then stopped by to see Chrystal and Brent (same area) and then went by Cressman's for hot chocolate!

Arrr - Pirate Ethan

Mr. Bones - 'decor' outside of someones house! The boys loved it!

Ethan and Mr. B

Trick-or-Treat

Hot Chocolate @ the Cressman's

Rider Fan - Jackson

Jackson & buddy, Kaden

Pirate - Liam

Happy Lion - Cole

Our handsome pumpkin... Miles cut a little too far past the eye, so we had enough tattoos to 'share' :) Battery operated tealights work great and the wind doesn't blow them out!