Wednesday May 27, 2009

So I guess this has become my weekly journal rather than daily, haha! I guess my ambitions were running faster than reality for me. Life gets busy, but I think it's important for me to keep writing things down. Even the seemingly mundane things, I think I will appreciate them in years to come.
So lots has happened in a week. Maiya turned 4 officially on the 20th, and I turned 31 on the 21st. My friend Carrie took me out for lunch for my birthday and Rose also joined us. We went to Mr. Mikes. The food there was great and I got free dessert because it was my b-day. Grant took me out to dinner at my favourite restaurant in the evening (East Side Marios). I love it there. I never seem to get tired of it, and I usually order the exact same thing every time. Alex babysat for us while we went. On the Friday Grant and I went over to Carrie and Tyler Adams house for a couples games night with friends. It was fun, and the food was yummy as usual (gee, I seem to focus on food a lot). On the Saturday I went yard saling in the morning. There was a big community yard sale. So fun. I bought Damian a great bike (he was growing out of his other bike) and a pair of sandals and a magna doodle (love those). It was fun. Carrie and Sue came by on my b-day to give me a gift basket for my b-day. I got a new watch from them and a bunch of yummy treats. I have the best friends ever. Sunday was a nice day at church. It was also gorgeous outside, so we had a BBQ at Josh and Alex's house afterwards. Such a nice day for it. It was fun. We all sat outside in camp chairs and the kids played in the sandbox and stuff. Monday we had Grant around during the day, so we went for a walk to the park and then I went out for a photoshoot of the Kyle family in the afternoon.
Grant started training for his new job as the Store Manager of Town Shoes. He has 8 weeks of training ahead of him I went to Nose Creek Park and met up with Carrie to let the kids play for a while. When Grant got home at night I left to go grocery shopping. We watched "The Day the Earth Stood still" together. Today I went to the park in the morning with Sue, Carrie, Valene and all of our kids. We had a picnic there and let the kids play while we chatted. So fun, and what a great day for it. Afterwards we went home and my visiting teachers stopped by. It was too nice outside to be indoors, so we sat in the yard in the camp chairs and watched the kids play while we chatted. I always get such great visiting teachers. Well, the kids should be getting home soon, but I thought I should catch up on my blog a bit here.

Monday May 18, 2009

This was a very busy,but fun long weekend. On Saturday morning we got the kids all ready in their matching yellow shirts (this was so it would be easier to keep track of them, and it worked out well. You could see them from a mile away). It was funny how much outside attention the yellow shirts brought though. When we were at the gate showing our passes, the lady said "Aww, look at the adorable family in the yellow shirts. You guys look like sunshine" hahahaha!!! Also while we were walking around the park, people kept stopping me to ask me if "all of those kids in the yellow shirts were mine" lol. It was a gorgeous day outside for the grand opening. Bright, sunny and +26. I guess everyone else thought so too, because it was packed!! Grant played some of the games with the kids (they are only allowed to do this once or twice a season because it gets expensive and I hate having a million stuffies strewn throughout the house). They enjoyed them. It was a fun time, we look forward to going back many times this summer. When we got home Grant got McDonalds for dinner. It was nice to not have to cook. McKenna went to her friend, Isabella's house to play until bedtime. We also witnessed a fire. The kids called me from outside saying they saw a fire. I thought maybe it was a bonfire, but then I went out and the sky was filled with huge black clouds of smoke. Grant, Kaitlyn and Damian went to go check things out. They said that one house completely burned down, they saw the roof cave and the car that had been inside the garage melt, it went on to brn half of another house down as well as touching one house behind it. No one got hurt, but those poor people. What a horrible thing. I heard it started because of a BBQ and a propane tank that got knocked over. How horrible.
Sunday was another nice day. It was beautiful weather, nursery was smaller and therefore much less stressful, and we had Maiya's b-day party. She turns this week. We had a family party on Sunday at Nose Creek Park. It was beautiful out (though windy). We just let the kids play at the park, had some desserts, let her open her presents from everyone and just chatted. Caleb and Meg brought Sammie (their puppy) and the kids had a blast with him (except for Catcher who avoids dogs at all costs). Maiya had a very fun day. Damian ended up sleeping over at Draytons house and we took Reese to sleep over at our house. Caleb came back to play videogames and Meg and I went and attempted doing a quick shoot with Tyson and Sammie, but it turned horrible out. It was extremely strong winds and it dropped dramatically in temperature. I didn't end up getting much of a shot in. Oh well. That brings us to today!! I woke up to SNOW!!!! How dumb is that?? Yesterday like +22 and this morning 0 degrees! Sheesh! It was definitely not a day for playing outside. We had a slow start to our day. I ended up taking Reese home at noon and bringing Damian back home. We had a bit of a catch up day again for cleaning. They all helped out. McKenna went to Isabella's house again to play. We just had an in house day today. Well I am tired and am excited to just sit back and relax (that's what night times are for right?!)

Friday May 15, 2009

Sheesh, I stink at doing this everyday. Oh well, I guess some is better than none. Soon Wednesday I went to the public library with the kids to finally get a library card. I have been living here for 3 years, and just decided to get one. I took Catcher, Maiya and Tyson with me. They enjoyed sitting in the kids section and looking through all sorts of books. I let them pick 2 of their own each to bring home to read. We picked up a bunch of fun books, including "Morris the Moose" books, which totally reminds me of my Dad. He always got a kick out of those books. Later on, Kaitlyn and McKenna went to activity days at the church. They were doing baby blankets as a service project. Charity called me up at the last second and invited me to go to the movies with her. We went to see "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past". So that was fun! I got a call while we were driving, from a guy who wants me to do promotional photos for his band. I still have to work out details. We seem to keep missing eachother. On Thursday Damian got to do In Line Skating at school which he was very excited about. I didn't realize Grant had the day off, and had planned a picnic with some friends. It ended up being a yucky day for it weather-wise. Grant went grocery shopping while I took the kids over to Sue's house. It was cold, and rainy so we just hung out along with Carrie. Carrie and I were so tired, but as usual I love hanging out with Sue and Carrie. They are a ton of fun, and great friends. The kids had a great time playing at Sues. They loved all of their toys. When we left, Catcher said "Can we go back one day?..they have awesome toys". Well, I am tired while I am writing this, so I will move on to today. It was gorgeous outside in the morning. I went outside with Maiya to take a few photos of her (here's one sample):

It was then that I realized how gorgeous it was outside, and decided to take the kids on a walk to Mac's (convenience store). Grant left for work, and we headed over to Alex's house. We picked up Ethan so he could walk with us. We got a bunch of frosters and went back to Alex's house and visited for a bit. They were in the process of getting ready to go down to visit Garth and Sarah. We left when we started feeling tiny raindrops. I really didn't want to get caught in the rain on the way home with the kids. After school, Charity came over. We visited for about an hour. The kids played outside for quite a while. I went out shopping for a few things for tomorrow when we go to Calaway Park. The kids are so excited. Hopefully the weather is nice!

Tuesday May 12, 2009

I was tired ALL day today. Just completely groggy. Kaitlyn got up early to go to floor hockey, which meant I was up earlier than usual as well. McKenna also needed to leave earlier to do some PAT test or something (forget what it's called, but all of the third graders in Alberta do it). McKenna also got to do inline skating at school today. So she was excited for that. Grant and I took the kids to wal mart today, just to get out of the house together. We bought a yellow shirt for each of our kids. We wanted to get them for when we go to Calaway Park this year. I prefer my kids to be easily identified in such a large setting. We are going to go this weekend if the weather is good. It is the Grand opening. The kids are very excited about that. Grant and Tyson napped when we got home. The grey weather totally killed me today. I am a person who does not take naps, but I was needing one today. Finally I decided to just let Catcher and Maiya play video games while I went down for a nap while Tyson was down....alas, the world seems to need me when I actually try to take one. I laid down and was instantly falling asleep when I hear Maiya calling from the livingroom "Mom, MOM...where are you???" then running down the hall saying it loudly. I was like "Sshh...Maiya, I am in here. I'm trying to take a short nap and Tyson is sleeping, so you need to be quiet". She left. I then proceeded to fall asleep...5 minutes later, Catcher comes running in..."Mom ,I need....". I can't even remember what he wanted, but I was like..."Just wait until I get a little nap". Fell asleep again....phone rings. Aaahh!!!! The phone proceeded to ring 2 more times apart from that.. and when that was done, Tyson woke up. Maybe this is why naps leave me more tired than I was before. Sheesh! Grant left for work and the kids came home after that. Kaitlyn came home asking if she was allowed to have a boyfriend. A boy in her class is interested in her, and was hoping to ask her out. Yikes! Am I ready for this? I said no, not until she is older. I did say that she was welcome to hang out with this boy with her friends and things though. She asked about "making out" with boys...Aaaahhhh!!! I said "No. This is not the right time for that. She needs to mature more. When did my baby grow to this point already?? It's like a blink of an eye! Before I know it, she will be off and married. Well, I am just going to put my feet up and relax. I'm going to watch the movie "Taken". Though it looks like an intense movie, so I don't know how relaxing that will be. It looks interesting though.

Monday May 11, 2009

Today I had the pleasure of having my sister, Chelsea, and her kids as well as my cousin Jennie, come down for a bit today. Jennie has come down from Ontario for the summer. We took the kids to the park for a couple of hours. It was such a gorgeous day outside. Lots of swinging, throwing rocks in the pond, walking around and just overall enjoying what the day had to offer. We got to see quite a few ducks as well. I love how beautiful the Mallards are, but they are definitely camera shy. Everytime I got my camera out to take a quick shot they would immediately swim away so quickly, that it wasn't much of a shot. Teagan (Chelsea's little girl of about 10 months) is growing so fast. Everytime I see her, she's changed. Parker (her son, nearly 3) is quite a little man. Everything he said just seemed to make me laugh. It's not so much that what he was saying was funny...it just sounded funny coming out of such a little kid. He also likes to talk with a deep voice, which I think is hilarious. Grant went to work in the afternoon. He will begin training for his new job on the 26th of this month. I hope it all works out for the best. The kids came home from school and played outside for a bit. We headed over to the church at 6pm to play basketball with the Adams' family and the Kyle family. It was a blast. Although I really stink at basketball, it is my all time favourite sport to play. The older kids had fun playing bump with us and then a half court game. The younger kids played on the other side of the gym with some of the cars from the nursery, and the small basketball net etc. So fun! I went home after that and got the kids ready for bed, then worked on building a facebook fan page for my photography. Just working on getting my name out there and starting the business up again for the spring.

A special mothers day post

A small tribute to my Mom. 10 things that remind me of my mom while growing up at home (in no particular order):

~ ABBA (She would always have ABBA records playing when I was younger, and the coolest dance moves. So fun!!!)














Hugga Bunch (This was one of my most memorable b-day parties with a Hugga Bunch theme. My Mom has always been awesome with themed b-day parties. I remember thinking the Hugga Bunch place cards were the best thing ever)








Crayons. I still to this day think that my Mom is the best at colouring with crayons. She would always colour with us when we were little. Outlining the picture in dark lines of whatever colour she was using and then lightly and neatly colouring in the inside. Loved her colouring.










Those wedding pom poms. I remember my Mom opening up a ton of these wedding pom poms back in the day, and we would sometimes help her. My Mom decorated for a lot of weddings and events. I always thought it was fun helping her set things up.










Harmonicas. My Mom always loved to play her harmonica. She enjoys music and also tried learning the piano. She would often try to play the songs we would sing together for family home evening. While we would laugh sometimes at her attempts to play when she didn't know the song very well (which made us all go off key, or she would say "wait, let me try again.." leaving us singing the same song forever) but I found it very comforting and a fond memory.






Richard Simmons - Sweatin' to the Oldies!!! This totally brings me back to the days where my Mom would be doing her exercises in the livingroom. We would all enjoy joining in on some exercise sessions with Richard Simmons. We all thought he was hilarious, and the songs were fun. Hahaha!! Gotta love his stripey speedos!!

Granola! This was my all time favourite breakfast food growing up. I always loved when my Mom made it for us. It smelled so good in the house and was WAYYY better than porridge (which was the breakfast we mainly grew up on). My Mom made the best granola ever!
















Anne of Green Gables. This was one of my Mom's favourite movies and books I think. I remember watching this movie often when I was younger. I think I was in love with Gilbert Blythe back then. It's been a long time since I've seen Anne of Green Gables. Maybe I should watch it again!










Country Items. Especially country animals like cows, chickens, pigs. Tons of antique things like old fashioned irons, sewing machine, barrels etc. adorned our house.
















St. Patricks Day, and any holiday really. My Mom liked to make sure that every holiday was decorated nice and fun for us. Lots of fun cut outs. The style of cut outs in this photo are exactly what I remember. My Mom always made sure there was lots of green including green food on this holiday. Every holiday was a fun, well decorated party :)














These are pretty random thoughts, but definitely things that I like to remember about my Mom from when I was growing up, and I thought she might be interested to read some of the small (yet big) memories I have of her. There are many more that I could list, like special notes under my pillow, notes in my lunches sometimes, making barbie houses out of cardboard boxes and fabric etc., yard sales, flea market trips..and I could go on and on. I have an awesome Mom and I hope she knows how much I love her and appreciate all of the things she did for me and my brothers and sisters growing up.

Sunday May 10, 2009

Wow, I am sooo bad at doing this everyday. I get too busy, but hey...at least it's something. Lots of things going on this week. I can't even remember everything that went on this week. Some of the things that this week included was me going to a bookclub. My sister has a book club. We just read "The Hiding Place". It was a woman's account of life in concentration camps. It was a very good read. Next on the list is "Persuasion" by Jane Austen. Kaitlyn has joined floor hockey and has been going every Tuesday and Thursday. I had a photoshoot on Wednesday. It was fun. I got to do it during a sunset. So nice. I have been working on my new website this week. It is still not finished, but it is close. I love it so much more than my other one. It is sagerstudios.com.
The kids had Friday off of school this week. Poor kids, I made them clean the house with me for the whole morning. It needed to be done though. They played outside for most of the afternoon. Grant and I went to the Adams house on Friday night for a games night. It was fun. Kaitlyn got to co-babysit again with Leah Moore (a 12 year old from our ward). Saturday morning I went out garage saling. I got a kids basketball net, a little doll table and chairs set, some books. McKenna and Damian had friends over in the morning. Grant took Damian and McKenna to gymnastics in the afternoon. They are really improving. After gymnastics, we went to Alex and Josh's house for a barbecue. Yummy!! I watched her kids while they went out on a date after that. That brings us to today. Mothers Day! The kids already gave me my mothers day gift last week (typical of Grant. He just can't wait, haha). Grant had gone through all of my makeup and wrote everything down and then went to get backups of all of my makeup. He also got me salon grade shampoo and conditioner, a series of books and some chocolates. I am spoiled :)
Nursery went really well at church today with the split classes again. The kids all made me cute cards with handprints on them. Grant made me some homemade pizza and breadsticks for dinner. So yummy!! What an awesome family I have :)

Monday May 4, 2009

So I missed a few days again, oops. Where's my comittment here?? It was a gorgeous weekend. Saturday I woke up and went yard saling. How awesome! Spring is for sure here when there are a bunch of yard sales. I went to quite a few too. I got some comics for Grant, and a couple of games for his PSP handheld game system. I got Maiya a bunch of clothes for a decent price, and I got a fun looking toolkit full of tons of play doh accessories for $1.00 that I got for the nursery. Kaitlyn, McKenna and Maiya all wanted to go with me. So they came along. Loved it! Like mother like daughters, haha! Grant went to the movies at night with Caleb, Shawna and Tyler. They went to go see the "Wolverine" movie. Meg came and hung out with me, and brought Sammie (her puppy) along with her. He is just the cutest thing. We were going to go take some photos that I had in mind, but Grant had accidentally taken my keys with him to the movies in his pocket, so we just walked in the dog walk area and took a few shots. On Sunday we got ready for church. I changed the way that the nursery was going. This week I split it back into the 2 sides. It was soooo much easier and way less stress. After church we went to Nose Creek Park to have a picnic with the Sherlocks. We had bought some KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) the night before and brought that, potato salad, macaroni salad, and juice. Alex made some cupcakes for dessert. It was such a nice day for a picnic. The kids especially enjoyed themselves. They love hanging out with their cousins. We stayed there for quite a while and then came home and had family home evening. We just sang a few songs, and Kaitlyn read us a story from "The Friend".

Now onto today. This morning after we got up and sent the older kids off to school, we decided to go to Costco to go pick up some things in bulk. I was so excited, but let me tell you...I did not see much of a price difference. Everything seemed to be on par with Superstore (which is our grocery store of choice). We didn't end up getting anything. I got a few groceries that we were needing when we got home, but I am going to do the actual grocery shopping tomorrow. Grant went off to the gym again. He is enjoying it. I spent the afternoon outside with the kids. It was so nice out. I just sat there and read my book while Catcher, Maiya and Tyson rode their bikes and played on the slide etc. Damian brought home a small evergreen tree today that he is supposed to plant and take care of. He was so happy about it. Our neighbour, Mrs. Goody (an elderly english woman) gave Damian a big pot to put it in and some soil. I am so happy that we have such a good neighbour. She is always so helpful and nice to my kids. At about 6:30pm the kids all came inside for baths and dinner. I pretty much left the house to itself this weekend, so there was (and still is) a lot of cleaning ahead of me. I did a bunch tonight, but I think I will go read a bit and then head off to bed.

Friday May 1, 2009

Yesterday I forgot to write in my blog. I will give a little recap of yesterday. I went into slight phanic mode in the morning because I was still in my housecoat, just showered, house messy when I get a call from my visiting teachers reminding me that they are coming. Aaahh!! Needless to say I rushed around trying to get myself decent and the house in less chaos, haha! I have 2 new visiting teachers. Vanessa Olsen and Charissa Sabey. It was nice to meet them. I don't know them that well, other than their children from the nursery. After they left, I got Catcher, Maiya and Tyson ready to go to Chuck E Cheeses. We went with Carrie and Sue and the kids. The kids had fun as usual. We are becoming regulars at that place. We went out for lunch together afterwards and to check out Old Navy. It was fun :) we got home just in time for the kids to be coming home. Kaitlyns final school concert was cancelled because of a pipe needing to be fixed. The schoolyard was flooding. They rescheduled for Tuesday. When Grant got home, I went out and got us some subs and we just chatted and watched Dr. Who for the night. It was nice and relaxing.
Now on to today. Today was a pretty laid back day. It was really nice outside (well, nicer than it has been lately). The kids played outside a lot today, and rode bikes and stuff. Tyson is loving being outside so much. Not much happened today that was significant enough to really note. I will add a quick snapshot from today when we were outside.