Master Timothy Wright

I am so proud to introduce you to Master Timothy Wright:

For the past two years Tim has been studying at the University of Calgary in the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies. For the last year he has been writing a thesis titled: China's Race towards the Arctic: Interests, Legitimacy, and Canadian Security Implications. On September 12 he defended and passed his thesis. It has been a lot of hard work and many sleepless nights thinking and worrying about this piece of work. It is something he really wanted to achieve so I could not be more proud of him. He is a 3rd generation masters degree holder!! I think that is pretty cool. The Wright's are a very well educated family.  

Something you may not know about Tim is that he wasn't the most stellar student in high school. He never really planned on going to university. During his mission he learned how to really focus and study. After his mission he got into the U of C. Through lots of hard work he got amazing grades and was able to finish an undergrad with a double major and now a thesis. This hard work and dedication are reasons I love this boy! 

WAY TO GO TIMMY!!!! YOU ARE AMAZING!!! 

To celebrate we went out for lunch at our favourite place, The Asian Noodle Box! 

 And then did a serious amount of baby shopping. I am so excited because I bought a city select stroller!! I am so in love with it and can hardly wait to put our baby in it. I attempted to put our first baby (Wrigley) in but he would have none of it and jumped out so fast!

Later that night we went to the Keg to have a celebration dinner with the Wrights. 

 The next day Tim had a long nap on the couch. He was exhausted after defending his thesis. It felt so good to no longer have that stress.

Here are a couple links to the CMSS web page.

-This is an article congratulating Tim on finishing his thesis.

-This is a video of Tim being interviewed on why he wanted to go to CMSS.

Snowtember

On September 7th it was literally +30, no wind and absolutely beautiful! And then on September 8th I came home from work in this....

Lucky for me that we live close to work because ALL traffic lights were out. Traffic was basically a nightmare because every intersection became a 4-way stop. I was able to come home on side streets so it didn't take much extra time. The trees had not lost their leaves yet so with the weight of the snow  and leaves the trees were just snapping and taking out power lines. Unfortunately our house was out of power. I had to dig through the camping supplies to find a flashlight. I haven't used the flashlight for about two years so the batteries were dead. Lucky for me our Wii-motes had working batteries so I was able to do a switch and get light. 

The next day it warmed back up so we were able to go to the dog park. Compared to the rest of the city it wasn't that bad but it was still crazy!

It is back to being nice and I am just hoping that it stays that way for as long as possible! I am not looking forward to the cold! 

Other bits of Summer

I am lucky enough to be in the YW's presidency. I definitely enjoyed hanging out with these girls every week. They are full of spunk and light up every room!

Wrigley and I spent a lot of time walking and enjoying sunshine. 

 Nosehill Park was a new discovery. It is so beautiful with endless paths!

Even though I was super sick all summer I was still able to plant a garden. I am pretty proud of my produce and loved eating the endless supply of tomatoes in greek salad! It is something I have been kind of addicted to during this pregnancy.

The Chopped Leaf restaurant was also a new discovery. It has fresh salads and even a gluten free wrap! Soooo good. Vegetables are something that I have been able to eat so we have been really enjoying this place. 

I crocheted the edge of a fleece blanket! I am kind of proud of this. 

 My other favourite food during this pregnancy is potatoes. Mostly baked potatoes from Wendy's. After work one morning everyone talked me into going to Denny's. I had a breakfast of champions of 2 sides of hash browns and orange juice. Delicious and I didn't throw it up! Win!

Karmavore Ultimate Frisbee

This summer I played on an ultimate frisbee team with mostly nurses from work and teachers. I am so glad they asked me to play because I had so much fun. I was pretty awful but I filled their need of more girls on the team. Success! Once they told me they were sorry that they hadn't passed much to me. I said that it was ok because I am a terrible thrower and prefer to just catch in the end zone so I don't have to do anything more with the frisbee. We placed 3rd in our league!! Woohoo! 

Heather, Me, Pauline, Kerry, Cassandra

Thank you for asking me join Kerry! Hopefully I can play again next year because it was super fun. 

Babysitting the Dudley's

The weekend after the garage sale I met back up with the Dudley's. I watched there kids for about 24 hours so they could run the tough mudder. We met in Airdrie at Costa Vida and got super lucky because the tills went down. They gave us our food for free!

On our way home from Airdrie we went to the dog park. Me with two dogs and two kids was fairly sketchy but everyone lived and had fun.

The next morning I was woken up at 6 AM. Normally I don't even recognize that time of day exists. Having a baby is going to be a harsh change to my pleasant life style. After eating breakfast, watching cartoons and getting dressed, we went to the park. Thank goodness for beautiful weather because there isn't much to do in my basement so it was nice to spend so much time outside.
After the park we hit up the ward family fun run. I did the 1 km race with the kids and Timmy placed third in the 5km! It was hard work keeping track of Q-tip because she was so fast on her bike. She might have ran over another kid. Oops! I am a newbie to parenting. As she was riding away she passed Tim but he was too into his warm up run so he ran right by. Good thing our baby won't be mobile for the first few months. Parenting is really going to test us! haha!

It was fun and we made some nice friends. Quinny is so friendly. 

After the fun run we went home for naps. Everyone participated in this hour. It was truly lovely. Quinny is hilarious and has a lot of spunk. She carries a lot of gear with her in a Dora backpack and has to sleep with all everything.

After we all woke up we went back to the dog park. Tim came with us so it was a much safer experience this time.

We all had fun and made it end to the end! 

Garage Sale

Growing up in Welling, there was never really an opportunity to have a garage sale. I have always loved finding treasures at garage sales so at some point having my own garage sale made it on my bucket list. On the Saturday over Labour Day weekend I had a garage sale! I was pretty excited about it!

 Wrigley didn't share quite as much enthusiasm as I did!

It felt so good to purge all of this junk. I was surprised by how much stuff I had just been holding onto.

My mom, Tannis and Erin came down and added to the pile. 

We started the morning off right with dollar drinks!

A few of the awesome things I sold:

-3 Cameras

- 3 phones

- Air purifier

- Desk 

-Oodles and oodles of clothes

Overall I was really surprised by what sold. Stuff that I would have been interested in, such as kitchen stuff, was barely even looked at. One mans trash is truly another mans treasure. 

Overall we had lots of fun making some serious dollar dollar bills!

Meet my neighbour Glenys. If you look super close she has lipstick smeared all around her mouth. 

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a picture of her husband/boyfriend/common-law. They are really special people. She is pretty much always wearing this outfit and after living here for nearly two years still doesn't know who I am after meeting them multiple times. They are always outside and just loud. It doesn't matter if it is +30 or -30, they are always outside yelling at each other. We are hoping to move upstairs so hopefully they keep it down and don't wake up our baby! She bought bobble head Peja Stojakovic for $5!! I feel as though I robbed her but she said her grandson would really love it. 

We were too tired to clean up after the garage sale so we just made a big free pile. Four days later this was all that was left. 

It was hard work being trapped in my basement with two little kids. Good news was that they got creative and played with all kinds of things... like the neti pot! 

Good thing the ginger bread house didn't sell.

 Q-tip ate more candy than she put on. She even ate a year-ish old ginger bread man!

We hit up the dog park and somehow rocks from the playground made it onto the cheese grater. 

I don't know if I am really ready for kids!

Tim left me during our fantasy draft. It was really stressful to draft all by myself. I really hope to win it all this year. 

The morning the Dudley's left we hit up the zoo. The penguins were a highlight as per usual. 

 Scarlett is walking and was crazy at the playground! I had to crawl through a tunnel and pull her out.

After conquering the zoo I went home and took a nap because I had to work that night. The next morning I came home to a clean house. I truly have the most amazing husband. It was a disaster after the garage sale! Thanks so much Timmy!