Thanksgiving

This year we hosted Thanksgiving. It was awesome to have a house fit for hosting! I do not miss have a bunch of people into our tiny basement and main floor suite! Both my family and the Wright's were able to come. We also had a new family in our ward come. Tim actually new them from his mission! The church makes the world pretty little. 

It was nice to have Chrissy and David come over early to watch Jack so we could get everything ready. 

The only person we were missing from the Wilde side was Tannis! Even Danielle was able to make it. Living in Alaska is killing her because she hasn't been able to meet Lincoln!  

Scarlet kills me! She is a tiny little human with LOTS of personality! Here she is rummaging through the empty pop cans trying to see if she could find one with a little left in it! 

 She also loves Jack. I am so happy Jack has awesome cousins to play with. It makes every family gathering that much better!

 The best party of Thanksgiving is having all the leftovers! We seriously had so much food! I was stuffed at the end.

This year I am very thankful for my wonderful, happy and healthy family. It has been a hard and busy year. There is nothing that can truly prepare you for having a child and becoming a mother. I feel so lucky to have Tim who is so supportive of me even when I am a little crazy! On top of that Tim has also been blessed with an awesome job which allowed us to buy our house and means I won't have to go back to work full time! This isn't where we thought we would be 5 years ago when we started our journey but I am so happy to be here! I really do feel so lucky and blessed. Thanks to friends and family who have helped us with moving, Jack and every other hurtle in life! Here is to another wonderful year! 

Kitchen Table

I have been wanting a beautiful kitchen table for a long time. All the places we have lived are ghetto and small so I never bothered investing in one. Once we bought our house I was excited to upgrade a few things and a new kitchen table was at the top of my list. As we shopped for couches I was always on the prowl for a table. They were all very expensive and pretty ordinary. My lovely friend, Miko Collette, took me to the Inter-Faith furniture Store. It is super sketchy and straight up awesome! I was able to find a table and 4 chairs for $75! I feel like I got a pretty awesome deal.

Here is the table and chairs before starting. 

 I spent waaaaaaaay to many nap times out in the garage working on this! I love it but holy smokes that took a long time. The tedious part was sanding the legs of the table. Getting in all those crevices was painstaking work! Tim was kind enough to sand one leg and did keep me company while in the evening while I was out there.

 All finished staining the table and just had to varnish it!

 I really do love how my chairs turned out. I used plaster paint from Real Deals on Home Decor. Aunt Lisa owns the store so it was fun to go down and check things out. I do love the paint because I pretty much did zero prep work! The chairs were definitely the easiest part of this whole ordeal. Erin refers to them as bariatric chairs but I like to think that they are just spacious and comfortable.

Seriously though, I am pretty pumped with how this turned out. So much time spent I figured that my table deserved its own blog post. If you don't find it perfect just lie to me. And Jack, please just don't draw on it or gouge it! I might literally cry if it gets damaged! Good news is I still have stain left so I could just fix the top which wouldn't be the end of the world. I had fun but I definitely need a break before I do this again. 

Falling for Fall

This year Fall has actually been a season! The weather has been dreamy and I wish it would stay forever! We have been busy trying to squeeze in as much outdoor time as possible. Jack's happy place is in the stroller going for a walk. He is definitely a boy after my own heart.

I also got a Chariot stroller! It is the best ever. Airdrie is flat and everything is super close so biking is so easy. Jack was a little unsure at first but now he likes it just as much as our other stroller. It will also be nice in the winter as it has more protection than our other stroller. 

Fall also means college football! Thanks to the Millers we were able to watch a lot of the BYU games. It was super fun to have the kids play and eat wings. Please don't move! We will miss you too much.

The city wide food drive was also a success this year. It was fun delivering flyers with my "friends" aka Jack and Wrigley. It took a little longer than anticipated because I dropped my route and had to walk all the way back to find it. Picking up the food was super easy as someone had already picked up most of it for us!

 General conference was, as usual, super awesome. Three new apostles were called! Our internet cut out right as they announced the names so we had to find out online. Jack is turning into more and more of a terrorist so it was hard to pay super close attention. The Wright's did come to watch the Saturday afternoon session so it was nice to have extra hands watching Jack.

 For Sunday morning I made some cookies and Jack thought that was pretty spectacular. 

 I participated in a busy bag exchange. They are basically just activity bags but by doing it in a group you are able to make the same one over and over so it should be easier! There ended up being 21 participants which was waaaaaaaaaay more work than I anticipated. I made cards you trace with string so I had to hole punch these shapes. Anyways Jack just ate everything and messed up my piles! Hopefully in a years or so he can have fun playing with them!

 Cabella's opened in Calgary and Tim was pretty excited about it so we went on an outing to check it out unfortunately Tim jumped the gun (no pun intended) and was a week early.

So he went back the next week on a man date with Jack. I seriously love these two so much! Tim is the best dad ever and has so much fun teaching Jack all about his hobbies. 

9 months

Jack is getting busier and busier! He is an efficient crawler and loves getting into everything.

As crazy as this little man drives me I sure do love that face!

 In addition to crawling Jack has learned how to pull up on things. He learned how to do this while in Edmonton. He always seems to figure something out while we are there! I am worried Tim won't let us go back! But seriously, how cute is that face? He is so proud of himself!

 Jack is a terrible sleeper! I seriously feel like I have tried everything. Crying, rocking, night lights, heat, humidity... I am at the end of my rope!! Tim is really good about watching him in the morning so I can sleep for an extra hour or two. With the lack of sleep I forget stuff everywhere! I have forgotten stuff right at the till that I had already paid for. Below I left an entire box of chicken on the hood of my car. It boggles Tim's mind as to how this is possible.

Jack is not a snuggly baby so even though he is a terrible sleeper I try to enjoy the moments that he is relaxed and settled. 

 But seriously! How can you not just love that smile and those squishy cheeks!

 Jack LOVES his daddy! He always goes directly to him when Tim gets home.

 We usually eat left over popcorn in the morning. Jack still loves salty foods so he is pretty excited when I share. Jack likes mini wheats and crispex cold cereal for breakfast. He continues to HATE all fruit but will eat vegetables if mixed in with a sauce at supper. He still loves meat and cheese.

 Jack also loves Wigley and Wrigley loves Jack! Jack belly laughs at Wrigley and crawls after him. Wrigley is so patient and doesn't freak out when he gets his fur pulled.

 We signed up for a library card and do singing classes on Tuesdays. I love getting out and meeting people. Jack is starting to enjoy books so it is a fun outing.

 Jack climbs the stairs like a boss! When he gets to the top he laughs and plays on the landing for quite a while. I am trying to teach him how to go down. I try to get him to just slide. I don't think he gets it but he thinks it is pretty funny. I think it is time to invest in a baby gate. Good thing is that he isn't stealth and I can hear him cross the linoleum so I have time to make it there.

 I seriously just love him and his squinty Asian eyes!

Artember with the Dudley's

Tyler had a denture conference in Banff so all the Dudley's came for a visit. I wasn't complaining because I was pretty excited to snuggle Lincoln again.

Tim meeting Lincoln for the first time. 

Tim is pretty much the best uncle/father. He always wakes up with Jack in the mornings. When the Dudley's were here he woke up with all the kids and managed to make french toast! Breakfast is one of his favourite meals. When he was younger his mother woke up every day before Tim left for school and made him a hot breakfast. Now this is one of the things Tim loves to do when we have people over here. 

On the first day Erin stayed to hang out and we went to the park and after naps hit up 7-11. It was pretty fun to have someone to hang out with all day. I am sad my maternity leave is coming to an end and this can't happen more often! 

By the end of the day Erin was pretty tired so her and Tyler decided to get a hotel in Banff so Erin could take it easy. 

Having an extra 2 kids didn't slow me down at all! We were able to go to the dog park and "kid park" as Quinn calls it. After naps we hit up the library, had supper and then walked to the slurpee store. I am pretty sure people thought I was crazy pushing two kids in a stroller and then had a baby strapped to me! 

 Cousins are seriously the best! I am glad Jack has the greatest cousins ever. They love him so much.

Watching the library movies with slurpees! 

Airdrie had a festival called Artember. It was awesome because it was at the park by my house so we were able to walk to it. Local artists had a bunch of stuff for sale but there was also a whole lot of kid activities for free! The best was the train ride! Quinn was in heaven and there wasn't a line up so we went twice! 

Kids got to colour this wall and they plan to put it somewhere in Airdrie. 

There was a big tent set up for kids to do there own art. Because it had rained earlier in the morning there wasn't a whole lot of people out so Quinn and Scar got to do a lot of crafts. All the volunteers were so helpful and nice! Oddly enough the crafting was my favourite part. 

 The day became too much for sweet little Jack!

I was tired after our weekend of fun but I had fun having bigger kids who could do all the activities at the festival. Quinn and Scar love Jack and play with him so nicely that in some ways it makes my job easier!