This weeks update ...

Jade caught a cold this past week, actually since she started Kindergarten just about every week she comes home with some kind of sniffles, thank God she is such a healthy child and eats so well so everything she gets over fast and nothing hits her that hard but this past one ... well she is almost over but she is still coughing, poor thing. I guess the early cold mornings don't help either but on Friday morning when really I feel as a mom she should have stayed home although she thought she was ok, they had their mile run at school and Jade would rather have died than missed that, being Friday, I figured what the heck and sent her. It was freezing that morning so because I had to work later the morning and wasn't feeling too great myself after a bad night, I let Dave go stand in the cold to cheer her on :-) He said she did fine, I told her she could run on one condition that she didn't try to win, that she took it easy, you see there is another run at the end of the year where they are timed again so she thought she had to run her fastest ... I told her next time she can run as fast as she could but this time coz she was sick she needed to take it easy. Dave said she pretty much ran in the middle of the class so she still did well, as athletic as she is with her gymnastics, she really isn't a runner so I didn't expect her to win anyway :-) That being said, she tries so hard, I know she would have done a lot better had she felt more herself.

Anyway here is a picture of her class before the run, you can tell that most of them ran with jackets on it was so cold.



On Sunday we went out to the house to get an update, most of you probably are getting tired of these updates but we are trying to show our folks the stages of how a house gets built her so please just hang in there, it will eventually be built and you won't have to hear too much more about it :-)

Here you can see that they have started putting the siding on the front of the house but remember I mentioned before that the color you are seeing is not the color that you will see in the end, it still needs to be painted, that being said, I kinds like it this light but it's going darker ... they have also started putting the shutters on too, I think one more week and we will need a key to get in every week as the garage doors will be on which is our main entry right now into the house.



This is the back of the house, I am sure shortly they will start our deck, you can see that the one side of the house closest to the camera is all done being sided too but the other side hadn't been done yet.



These two are just of the inside, it's a lot cleaner looking than it was last week but here was so much dust going on because they were actually working on the house when we stopped by that I didn't even go in, Dave just took a quick pic or two. Yeah it was Sunday, can you tell they are eager to get it done. They say it will be done before Christmas but we have no intentions of starting to move in till mid January, so ... guys since we won't be making a trip out to SA anytime soon, we will have lots of space for you, so hint, hint, time for a trip across the ocean, come visit !!!





Last but not least, I want to tell you about a proud parent moment, on Sunday evening at church Jade was asked by the Monsignor to help take up a basket when they took up the offertory, you see during the mass she attends a kids class in one of the back classes and then when the Father is done with the Homily, they come in and those chosen walk down the center of the church with the rest of the group taking the offertory and rest of the goodies for communion, only Jade was right in the front and she did so well, she had to walk up on the 'stage' as she calls it, the alter to put the basket up there and then come down for a blessing. She was so cute and so proud, she ran back to us with a big smirk on her face and mom of course was almost in tears.

Oh oh ... I said last thing but I wanted to mention one more thing, today I took Jade to have her eyes tested, my gut feel was that there was nothing wrong with her, I mean she is my child that can find a needle in a haystack but her pediatrician suggested it so better safe than sorry. Well they did a bunch of tests before even seeing the doctor then they dilated her eyes for further testing, not ever having had that happen to me before, I had no idea what she was going to experience and from what I understand, it could be a totally scary experience and she was as usual such a trooper. She had to wait 30 mins before seeing the doctor, in that time her site got worse and worse and she kept on telling me how much less she could see, a scary experience for me actually but she was totally ok and handled everything so well. Bottom line is thank God all is well and she passed all the tests perfectly, hopefully she has my eyes and not her dads, the doctor says obviously it is no guarantee but it looks like she is going to be fine and won't have eye issues anytime in the near future ... Thank God !!!

Jade is such a brave child, as long as you tell her what she is going to go through, no matter how uncomfortable things are, she just deals with it, she is way braver than I am, that I know for sure, poor thing, I am so proud of her !!!

That's it for now, Halloween on Friday so I am sure there will be lots of pics then.

House Update

Well it's been a week or two since I updated last, since they were working inside there house doing all the electrical and water, you weren't seeing too much from the outside so I thought I would wait a bit for a bigger update !!!

Let me back track here a bit, two weekends ago Jade and I went to see Disney On Ice, every year I like to take her to some ice show but I was excited about this one since there were 4 stories, Cars, Lion Kind, Little Mermaid and TINKERBELL !!! Yeah not Peter Pan but Tinkerbell ... I had no idea what that story would be all about but I was exited for Jade since Tinkerbell has been the character for the past year or so :-)

The show was good, the Tinkerbell part was a little confusing but I think she got it, hopefully she got it. It was a great mom and daughter fun morning, of course dad has had his fill of ice skating over the years so didn't think twice about getting out of this one (hehehe) !!! I actually took lots of video if I get a chance I will load some.

After that Jades school had their Fall Festival which to me was a little disappointing but Jade had fun and that is all that matters right. Dave was out at the house laying surround sound cables etc. so he got out of that one too, lucky guy !!!

I am sure I have mentioned it before but Jade is really loving school, this weekend she said the best part of school is learning to write, I was sure it would be the playground, or gym class or the bus ride but was thrilled to hear just how excited she is about learning to write and well we all know she loves reading so that she is enjoying too :-) Now let's hope this excitement follows all the way up to graduation right.

Anyway, this past week was even more fun for her, they had a mock farm day where the kids had to either come to school dressed as a farm animal or a farmer, well mom being so uncreative dressed her like a farmer and she looked too cute, I totally didn't have time to take pictures at 6h30 in the morning so you will have to take my word on that one. She had dark green overalls on with a cute checked shirt under it, and pony tails, she loved it :-) Today they are going to a real farm, it will be the first field trip Jade has taken without me so I am a little nervous of that.

Actually that's not true, last week they took a short field trip to the fire station but that being just across the road that wasn't too big a deal for me not to attend, but this one is a good way away, they get on the bus at 8h30 this morning and wont be back till just before school comes out. She is so exited, hopefully I get lots of details as to how it went. It's cold today so hopefully she is warm enough, no rain hopefully but it's 2 degrees here this morning, later should be a lot warmer but Winter is on it's way that is for sure.

What also was fun for her this past week is the school had a Donuts for Dads morning, so instead of her catching the school bus, Dave took her to school and he and all the other dads had some coffee and donuts with their kids before school and going off to work, too cute.

Friday this week the kids are all doing a mile run at the school, I am going to pop down before going to work early Friday to support Jade, that's going to be a long run for the little Kindergartners, I am not even sure they have to run the entire distance but it is definitely advertised that way so we will see :-) hold thumbs, thank God she is very athletic so she should be ok.

Now onto the house, as you can see they have started with the brick work, I was a little disappointed how similar the bricks were to the house next door to use but I think the more I look at it, the more I can see the difference and once the siding is up and our colors are different, things will be better. We have two totally different shape houses so there is no chance they will look that similar.



This one is from the back, you can see they have started the siding, it's hardy plank so it gets painted the color we chose so what you see there is not the finished product.



Here you can see they have started the drywall inside, what a mess and oh how dusty but it's starting to take shape, it looks so very different with the drywall, amazing actually :-)





We actually got to meet our neighbors yesterday too, they moved into their house about two weeks ago, Jeff and Wendy, they have 3 kids, lets see if I can get this right, Hope is 8, Holly is 10 and David is 13. Jade got to play outside with them while the adults talked, they seemed nice so that's good to know :-)

So yeah, that's the update for this week, I am sure I will have more pictures next weekend. Have a good week.

Renaissance Festival 08

As usual this year we went to the Renaissance Festival ... oh gosh my moms going to hate me for all these pics again, she went with us years back and loved this festival !!!





We always make a day out of it and really enjoy it !!! The only thing we did differently this year is we didn't watch the jousting which we always do but we were busy enough that we didn't miss it ... also this year we passed on the traditional turkey leg and tried the bread bowls for lunch ... bad decision :-(

I somehow think this tree guy looked different last year, I need to go back and look. I tried to persuade Jade to go and stand between his legs like others were, for a photo but she didn't want to hear of it (hehehe).



Jade was mesmerised by all the wings, obviously with Renaissance being all about Fairies too, there are many fairies to see and lots of wings and outfits for sale.



Here is one of those fairies, she was beautiful, she played a flute and I too was mesmerised by her :-) She called the kids over and out of her pocket she would pull out a flattened clear marble but it was full of fairy dust so when she placed it in your hands you were covered in fairy dust, Jade loved this and went back twice for more :-)



Here are some knights, probably ones that partook in the jousting, I am not sure, I am always amazed at how many people dress the part for the festival, it's pretty neat actually, I could just sit and people watch all day, I love this festival :-)



I actually bought Jade a very regal dress for the festival but it was too long and it just would have gotten buggered up so I let her wear this one, the boots were not ideal but still she kinda looked the part and as she walked by, people working at the festival would refer to her as being a princess and she was just tickled pink by all that !!! Next year she can wear the other one !!!



Last year if you can remember Jade rode the elephant, well this year the elephant was on break when we went by him so she decided she would ride the camel instead this year :-)





This year since Jade was just a little bit older we decided to let her go on this trampoline thingi ... I knew with her gymnastics background she would be fine on it and since she is so close to doing a back handspring on her own, I knew she would enjoy this, see for yourself, do you think she did :-)

Here she filled a bottle with color sand ... we were all upset that before we even left the sand had gotten all messed up, we don't think it was compressed tight enough but oh well ... we live and learn right !!!



I don't think I have seen these mushrooms there before, very cute.



Here Jade is doing a small ride, thought it would make a funny picture since as you can see all the rides are manually driven by people ... obviously :-)



Last but not least here are two character pics ...





See you next year Renaissance Festival !!!

House Update

Well this week you won't see much of a difference from last weeks pics because this week they concentrated on the electrical inside, as far as we know that should all be done by the end of this week where we will go do an inspection pre drywall ... wow !!!

Since it was raining last week when we went out, I decided to go and take the pics from the back of the house so you could see that in progress too :-) As you can see all our windows and doors are in.



Most of you won't have seen this before, this is what the framework looks like inside as they are building.



This is a view looking up ...



This is the view from my kitchen / breakfast nook and too the left my lounge. The woods are pretty close to our house as we don't have a big back yard which Dave loves ... little yard work to do.



Anyway, I am not sure we will see anything different next week but we will wait and see, only time will tell.