The End of 2009

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!! I hope that you all had a great Christmas surrounded by friends and family. We celebrated Christmas at home in Fort Mac for the first time in five years with mum, dad, Ty and Stacey. It was a really great time of just maxing and relaxing. Lots of movie watching and naps. Sometimes you just have to have a holiday like that. It's nice to come home and not feel like you need a holiday after your holiday. Fingers crossed that we'll all be able to spend Christmas 2010 together as well. My wish is to have everyone at our place. Blow up mattresses and mismatched chairs. National Lampoons Christmas Vacation is Christien's favorite Christmas movie, so I think that having all our family together will make for our own funny stories. And having both sets of grandparents here for baby's first Christmas will be more then wonderful. Plus aunts and uncle Ty.

New Year's Eve is going to be a bit different this time around. We've got no plans and haven't really sought any out. I can barely stay up past midnight on a normal night, so I am just hoping that I can have a nap sometime today and stay up to ring in 2010. Would have been nice to have gone to the hockey game tonite but those tickets sell so quickly, I can't even imagine what people are asking for them on Kijiji. Either way, as long as Christien and I are together, then that's all that matters. From the looks of it, this is the last special occasion that Christien will be spending with me. His work schedule gave us Christmas and New Years together, but that's it. 2010 will be a year of celebrating with myself it looks like.

Be happy, be safe and cheers to 2009! Let's see what 2010 has in store!

Winter Driving

I read an interesting article in the paper the other day about winter drivers that I totally agreed with. Winter driving is not the same as summer driving when the roads are clear, clean and dry. People are either overly cautious, driving way too slow and causing accidents themselves, or overly careless, driving way too fast, and .. well, you know what happens.

"I'm guessing accidents would be cut in half if inexperienced and insecure winter drivers parked for the season. Alternately, these drivers could become roadworthy with a winter driving course. Winter driving requires extra skills - skid recovery, traction control and emergency manoeuvres. Not every driver is up to the task"
Adrienne Beattie, Metro News

I couldn't agree more. Why don't they make a winter driving course mandatory before you can get behind the wheel of a car in the snowy season? They have different classes on your drivers license, why not just add Winter Driver to that as well? Getting your learners and your license is much harder to do now-a-days then it was when I was at that stage. If we've identified that younger, or first time drivers need a bit more time when it comes to taking over the wheel, why don't we apply that to drivers in the winter time? I think that it would save a lot of frustration and accidents.

Think about it.

Single Digits

We are having a a baby in 9 weeks! That's crazy. That's also no time at all. Thank goodness we are so prepared, especially with the crazy cold that we've been having. I'd hate to be lugging dressers and cribs into the house in that weather, and in that snow. Besides, I can't be lugging anything anywhere now-a-days. I have a hard time getting up from the couch, I couldn't imagine trying to lug a box up the stairs.

Mum made the bedding and drapes for the nursery, so I'm so excited to get up there and see them. I picked out the material with her when she was up, but having that in the room is going to bring it one step closer to it being a nursery. I'll post some pictures after Christmas once we get home and get that all set up. Getting more and more excited to meet this little one. And to find out if it's a girl or a boy. Some people are SURE that it's a girl, while others SWEAR that it's a boy, so we're back to 50/50 now. All I know is that it's healthy (steady kicks and punches with a heartbeat of 168 on Tuesday).

Christien is coming home in four more sleeps! I've missed him. Talking to him for 5 minutes at 7am everyday just isn't really cutting it. It will be nicer when he has the laptop with him when he's back up there in January. He still works 12 hour days (or nights), so he pretty much just works, sleeps, eats and then back to work again. These fourteen off better make up for the fourteen that we're away from each other.

This weekend looks like it's going to be full of baking, wrapping presents, last minute shopping, and maybe some visits with friends. Christmas just snuck up on me this year. I blame it on the baby brain.

Christmas Reading

Another great book club last night. I'm so luck to be friends with these ladies. As different as we all are, we've always got so much to talk about. I guess we're actually really not all that different deep down when you think about it. We just all have such great stories and ideas to share that it's always a really good time when we get together. Missed Jasmine last night though!

Alana put on a superb veggie feast ~ with Kristin being a vegetarian, meals have been really interesting when she's able to attend book club. And interesting in a good way. Lots of new recipes coming out of the woodwork. Great Christmas and festive atmosphere at Alana's too. Definitely made me feel all warm inside, and for once it wasn't cause of the wine (that I wished I could have indulged in as well). Voting took place and our new book for December is:

The more that I hear about it, the more interesting it sounds. Especially as it takes place in Alberta in the early 1900's. I think that it's going to be a great Christmas read.

A big thank you to Alana for hosting book club, Mike for making cookies, and Candice and Amber for their very thoughtful Christmas gifts. To have friends like these means a lot.

I think that last night was the kick that I needed to get on this whole Christmas thing! I've got a list of shopping and baking that I'm getting started on this weekend. It all starts after work in fact. Although I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, I'm feeling good and refreshed today, so what better day to start it?? That's right.. Less then two weeks before Christmas and I'm "starting" it.

Stay warm and have a wonderful weekend!!

Major Milestone

I am exactly 30 weeks pregnant today. Holy smokes. I can't really even believe it. Out of the 20's, only 10 weeks to go, well into my third trimester, home stretch... It's all craziness. It's not like I didn't think that we were having a baby before, I mean, we have a fully functional nursery right now, but this just makes it seem all that more real. With my first two pregnancies I would look into the future to see where I would be and what I would look like around certain occasions, and now I've made it till Christmas (almost). I actually need to get a note from my doctor in order to fly home for the holidays. That just makes me smile. I'm getting more and more excited. And getting bigger and bigger.

All day yesterday I was super uncomfortable and just felt a crazy weird "pain" or stretching in my stomach. It hurt to sit, it hurt to stand, it hurt to move around. Then looking in the mirror I burst out laughing cause I looked large. I have my days. My big days and my small days. I think that I'm relaxed back to a more normal size right now.

I'm going to a spa party at a friend's on Saturday (thank goodness for that pedicure, I cannot bend that far for that long anymore), and she's having her baby four days before me. From pictures she looks much larger then me. It'll be funny to compare bellies. Christine and I are carrying alot differently too. It's interesting to see, especially since we're only two weeks apart (only 12 weeks to go for her, yipee). Now.. does that mean anything? Whose got a girl in there? A boy?? Do we keep torturing ourselves with the back and forth of that? I laugh. It's all fun. I'm still so happy that we never found out. It's going to be the best surprise of the year.

Book club tonite. My favorite day of the month!! Can't wait to see what Alana's got picked out for us. Dying for a new book to read. And all our Epicure orders are in as well. Sorry, no Christmas gifts in there. All for me!!

Day 1

Well it's day one of Christien's new job. He flew out of Calgary around noon today. I got to drop him at the airstrip. Was harder then I thought it would be to see him go, but now that I'm home with Franklin, I've been making lists of what I need to get done before he's back for Christmas. It'll go by quick. I've already got plans every other day this week!

Christien said that camp is good so far. He's got his own room with his own TV/VCR combo. Yes, VCR. Good thing we kept all our old ones. He can load up when he's back here. He said that they had a great dinner and he's got a killer lunch packed for tomorrow. As of right now the weather is the same in Calgary as it is in Fort Mac (-31 with the windchill at 5 this afternoon). He's got the next two days of training and then he'll hit the field. He's hoping that his training will be on some of those mondo snow clearing machines. We'll see about that. The camp he's at has about 3000 people living out there. Much bigger then what I was thinking. There are lots of trades guys working and training with him, so he's thinking of eventually seeing where a potential apprenticeship could lead with one of them. That's my husband. Always looking ahead to what he can turn this job into. I'm grateful for that.

I'm getting ready to hit the queen size all by myself tonite. One thing that I can look forward to: no sharing blankets, no getting woken up in the middle of the night cause my snoring is too loud...

New Job

Well, Christien finally got too sick of his job to continue with that company anymore. He took some vacation time last week, and resigned on Monday. A bit of a scary time, but knowing that he's not a slacker and that he'd be on the hunt for a job quickly made me feel a bit more at ease. Turns out he did manage to land himself a job. Starts on Monday. In Fort McMurray. It's going to be quite the change for us. He's working fourteen on and fourteen off. The two weeks that he's off is going to be great. I still have mixed feelings about the fourteen on. I'll miss him. I think that it might get harder once the baby comes. Being by myself for two weeks is going to be hard, but at least I have the baby to keep me company. And my friends (so get me on speed dial ladies, I'm going to be hanging solo for half of every month). It's something new to try out and if we both really end up hating it, then he's not going to stay up there for long. I'm looking forward to the two weeks that we'll get to spend together once the baby is here though. We can do whatever we want cause I'll be off as well. We can take a quick vacation if we decide. Or just spend lazy mornings in bed, cuddling the baby. There are pros and cons to every decision, and I think that the pros outweigh the cons right now. If you don't believe in yourself, and don't believe that you can do it, then you will truly fail. I believe that we can make this work, and we can turn it into an experience. Who knows where this will eventually lead?? Happiness is the most important thing of all, and as long as we're both happy then that should be all that matters. When the happiness fades then it's time to move on to something else that will make us even happier.

Christmas is Coming....

We've got snow. It's December. The weather is more like what it's supposed to be this time of the year (this I'm not happy about), but at least it's starting to feel more like Christmas. We got the lights on the house a few weeks ago when the weather was nice, and I took out a few things from the basement last night. Christmas tree to be picked out this weekend, and then decorated. It'll start to feel a lot more like Christmas then. I'm thinking of hitting up Market Mall tonite, so I'm sure the crazy shoppers and the decorations and the music will get me into the swing of things. Last year everything came so quickly with our trip to Mexico shoved in the middle of December. Only have three more weeks of work before I'm off till the new year. Then the mat leave count down begins in earnest. Stay warm!