Happy Halloween!

Since I've been working all this week at the Elementary School, I got to be part of the Halloween parade/parties.  It was a bit crazy!  All the kids were super excited and the last thing they wanted to do was sit and work... so they didn't (at least not much).  There was a huge parade of all the 600+ students so I got to see Emma and Ben in the parade.

Ben - Storm Trooper

Emma - black cat

 The kids were so excited to go out trick-or-treating that they didn't eat much for dinner.  Thankfully there wasn't any snow on the ground, but they still had to bundle up!  Typical Canadian costumes... winter coats and mitts!

 Lennard took the kids out while I handed out candy at home.  They were gone for a long time!  They just kept going and going!  They brought home a crazy amount of candy!

Carving Jack-o-Lanterns

The kids decided that they wanted to do their own pumpkins this year... except for getting the 'guts' out.  Ben really didn't want to touch anything slimy! It was quite entertaining!  They finally got them somewhat cleaned out and designed what they wanted to cut out.  

 Ben was super proud of his design.

 Emma just kept cutting... she wanted it to look scary... I think she accomplished that!  lol

Crazy, Busy Week

It's been a busy week!  Lennard went to Calgary on Monday and his cast is gone!  Finally!  Things are looking good.  We worked on the siding again and got a huge load of garbage loaded into the truck to take to the dump tomorrow.

I went to the temple with my sister, Mindy, Tuesday morning and then went to DQ for lunch with her.

Our oven quit... so while I was in Lethbridge this morning I picked up a new element and Lennard was able to put it in tonight!  What a handy guy to have around!

Emma and Lennard got to go to a Daddy-Daughter activity (for Activity Days) this evening.  They had a spaghetti dinner and then played basketball together.  

We just got the oven fixed and our microwave just stopped working the next day... Thankfully it is on warranty, so we just had to pull it out and get it in to Lethbridge (I took it in on Friday).

The kids had Champs (basketball) Saturday morning and we worked on the shed the whole day.  I love it!  It looks so good and it will be SO nice to have a spot for everything!  The kids played at our neighbor's home (Judy) most of the afternoon, so we were able to get more done than we thought we would.

Expanding the Shed

For a few years now, we have looked out at our shed and thought about expanding it.  We'd originally built it so that we could park our tent trailer under half of it, but now that we've upgraded, it's been wasted space.  Wednesday night after Lennard got home from work, we were talking about getting the patio furniture put away before it snows again and I made the comment that we should just expand the shed while the weather was still good.  Well... that comment led to us running down to Home Hardware and buying the lumber we needed!  We knew that we could move the existing wall out to the outside wall, so we got that done Wednesday night! It took a bit of fiddling to make it fit, but it turned out great!

 Thursday, after work, we built the other two walls to close in the shed and got all the OSB put up!

Friday we went in to Lethbridge.  We'd planned to only get groceries and Halloween costumes, but then Lennard decided that we should just side the shed while we were working on it!  We've been planning on siding it ever since we built it!  We managed to get a couple boxes of siding onto the van's roof rack.

Saturday, while the kids were at Champs (basketball), we got the shed wrapped and then we started putting siding up!

It was a bit of messing around to get the j-channel figured out around the window and to get the starter strip as level as possible, but once that was done, we got into a groove and made some good progress! We were babysitting Rachel's kids too this morning, so I'm really happy with what we got done.

We had to quit here so that we could get showered and ready to go to Stake Conference.  We're hoping to get the rest of this side done to the door on Monday night after we get back from piano lessons.

It's going to be SO nice to get stuff out of the garage (ie tires, extra rock and shingles for the house, Tonka trucks, bikes, etc.

Tooth #3

Once again, Ben had a wiggly tooth that he wouldn't let us touch.  He kept complaining that it was hurting, but then he wouldn't let us do anything about it.  Finally, tonight, I asked to just touch it.  It was so loose that it almost just fell forward.  Then Ben started playing with it with his tongue and ended up pushing it out with his tongue!  ha! ha!  What a silly boy!

Relief Society Activity

We put on our big craft activity tonight. It's been a busy couple of days!  We set everything up last night and then I was at the church at 1:00 to finish up.  The activity started at 3:00, but not many people showed up until almost dinner time. We had four different kinds of soups that went over really well with everyone.  We did smaller bowls, so everyone could taste as many as they'd like.  

We had lots show up for the cookie decorating class, so that was good!  Breanne did a good job.  I'd hoped to sit in on the class, but I ended up being too busy.

We didn't have as many 'big' projects this year, so we didn't have as many sisters there for the entire time, but I think it went okay.  I'm glad that it's done now though!

General Conference Weekend and Thanksgiving!

Melissa surprised Mike with a family trip down to General Conference this weekend, so we got to watch Maren for the four days that they were gone.  Emma absolutely loved every single minute of having her here and wanted to do everything for her.  She would get quite upset when I did anything for Maren.  She even got pretty good at changing diapers!  Since it was General Conference, we spent lots of time together in the Family Room watching the broadcast.

 The kids had lots of wiggles... but they found ways to get them out!

 We had a big Thanksgiving feast on today (with lots of turkey for leftovers!)

No one left the table hungry!  It's been a fun weekend.  The kids are now asking when they can have a sibling... guess we'll be borrowing more cousins!  ha! ha!

Day Out

I had to attend another Speech-Language Assistant course this morning in Lethbridge.  I got done at noon and made a quick stop at Costco to get some groceries and then headed home.  I got home just in time to unload everything and turn around to head back in!

Emma had an appointment in Lethbridge this afternoon, so I got her out of school a half hour early.  After her appointment, we did a bunch of errands and got dinner out together at the food court.

 While we were in Lethbridge, Ben was at Cubs!  They made birdhouses and branded them. He was pretty proud of it!  They will be putting them up on Toone's land in a couple weeks.

Snow

We got a pile of snow! Ben was so excited to play in it that he didn't even come in to take his backpack off after school!  He made his own snowman!  I'm glad they enjoy the snow... I like a nice toasty fire with a good book! ha! ha!