A little bit of this and that...

Well, it looks like if I had a million dollars - Digger would win it. Guess what buddy?? You are my new best friend :)

As for pictures of the house. I can't take any today - it's very messy. Unfortunately, all there is to see is paint and walls. I'm still waiting for my kitchen cabinets, office, main bathroom, new furniture. I'm sure it's all coming - all good things take time right? Well Stanley is a good thing, so I guess he's gonna take some time.

Meanwhile, I thought I would post some random picture's of the goings on in our world....

First of all, Drew got her first bike. It's a "heartbreaker" bike. Seemed suitable for the little darling. Man, she is a go-getter! At first she could pedal, but not steer, or steer, but not pedal. She seems to have the hang of it now, but has figured out it is much more fun if someone is pushing her - we're trying desperately to break that habit, but so far, its not working. So we take turns catering to our princess!



Here are a few pics of us out on our golf course. It has provided us hours of entertainment, not only that, but really improved our short game (and the boys long game). Watch out Tiger, here comes the Tebb-tuplets!





This is a cute story.... The boys wanted pancakes one morning, so I told them sure....go ahead and make them yourselves. This is the recipe on the back of the box. It calls for a cup of milk, 1 egg, and 1 1/4 of the pancake mix (no we do not make them from scratch).



So Jake came up to me, and asked me if this cup was full enough to use or if he needed more milk for the "cup of milk". He can be a trickster, but he was dead serious - it was sooo cute! Guess we have some more work to do on our homeschool cooking classes :)


The kids sure love Meeka. She has turned into one very special dog. The kind you just don't come across everyday. This is Drew hugging her good morning. She goes everywhere with the kids all day long, and Jake spends a lot of time playing catch with her and scratching her.....


Here is a pic of the 3 of them....
Awww, we got the ponies home to our place finally. They are sooo cute! The one on the right is "Label", she is the mommy, and "Sable" is the one on the left. Sable is 3 now, but Label is her mom. The kids ride Label all of the time, but Sable is yet to be broke. Jake hopped on her on a whim once, and she bucked all the way across the pen until she launched him.

Jake has started mowing grass this year. He enjoys it and has been doing hours of it. He does a fantastic job.
Brian took the small overhead garage door out of the garage, and built a man door and window. He enclosed a little room that the doors leads to, so it looks great, and now he has a space to turn into the office, which means he moves out of the house soon - Hallelujah! We are both too messy to try and share an office - it's mass confusion when we do.
That's all for now. We went camping last week, I'll try to post some pics of that soon......hopefully construction on the kitchen will start soon, and I'll have some pics to post.

Love,
Jodi

If I had a million dollars.....

If I had a million dollars, I would pay people to be my friends and write little comments on my blog :)

Just kidding, but it is kinda disconcerting to think I come on here to blab away to myself all the time, never knowing if anyone else ever comes by?!?!?! Not that I'm unhappy to blab away to myself....

We are having a fantastic summer! We love, love, love living at the farm. All of us. The kids are in 7th heaven, and to be quite honest so are we. What we have noticed is that we are so tired all of the time right now. We sat down to figure out why, (well not really - but it sounds good, doesn't it?) and we realized that we just work away at the place from dusk till dawn. We were doing it without even realizing it. There is so much to do on the farm isn't there? We are going to have to start making a point of sitting down and taking a load off more often - this is crazy to be so tired.

We built a little golf course in the back around the bins and become even more golf -a- haulics. Admittedly, it has been fantastic for me. Brian has become a really good golfer since I've been at home having babies and looking after babies.... so it's given me a bit of a chance to get going too. I love it! My body is having a hard time keeping up, but that's ok - lot's of time to heal at the rink in the winter! The boys have been golfing lots too - I love how natural kids are. They can just walk up and whack the ball 150 yards without hardly any preparation at all. I'll be getting some pictures up soon.

Jake fractured his finger at Wayne & Sandy's last week. He was going on the slip and slide and somehow hurt it. They originally said it was just a sprain, but today the doctor phoned me back to say the radiologist found a fracture on his finger. It's been really swollen and bruised, so I'm not surprised. Unfortunately, it has been a little depressing for him. He's such a go-er, that it makes him sad to be on the sidelines :(

Well, that's all for now - time to go pick up those boys - they had a sleep over at the Morrison's last night.

Love,
Jodi

Beach Day!

I try to get the kids up to Sylvan at least once in the summer. We managed to get away this past Tuesday. It wasn't a real easy trip up - we were a part of an accident on the highway (long story), and my van's oil pressure went down and it stalled on hiway 11A. We did make it there in one piece (somehow - not entirely sure how, but I'm grateful that we did), and had a very enjoyable day in spite of the events leading up. Here's some pics........

They decided to bury Jake in the sand. Yes those are very carefully sculpted boobs on his chest.



Drew took the opportunity to dump some water on his head while he was buried....

Playing in the water...




Ooops, meant to put a better picture of Kolt up here - sorry hunny!

Love,
Jodi

We've FINALLY moved

We moved to the farm on June 24. What a busy week that was. 2 Days after we moved in, the hockey team (or part of it), moved their holiday trailers onto the farm for the final hockey tourney.

I haven't got any pictures yet, I'll try and get some up soon....

Love,
Jodi

Lacrosse

Lacrosse is long over, but I wanted to get some pics up for the season. Brian coached the tyke team this year, and both Kolt and Jake played on the team. It was pretty neat to have all 3 of them on the same team, and will probably never happen again. I didn't want to leave it out.

These are some pics I snapped while they were doing warm up drills before the game, first is Kolt, then Jake, the the coach.




Drew at Lacrosse - she got tired of watching and I spent most of the games watching her instead of the boys.




It was a stressful season, only because we were so busy. In the end, it was really good. Brian began to have some fun with the team, and in the final game Kolt got his first penalty. It wasn't just any old penalty either. It was a 4 minute penalty - and he couldn't have been more proud. The smile on his face going to the penalty box was from ear to ear. Now he wishes he could get penalties in hockey too :)

Hockey in Burnaby

Well, we are so busy with hockey and lacrosse. I look back now and wonder how I didn't have time to post before - we are busier than ever! Just when you think you can't take anymore.....

Now, we are busy and tired. I've been kinda cranky to be honest. A person can only take so much. In the month of May, we will have had 5 nights off from kids sports. Every other evening or day had either hockey or lacrosse something or other. Some of those days we had 2, or 3, or one 4 different combinations of games and practices between the 2.

Lately, I've been feeling bad for Drew. She's gonna have to get by on her good looks in life, cuz that poor kid isn't going to get any attention otherwise. She fights to get my attention during the days, when I am either working on the computer (which is usually), working with Jake, doing laundry, or trying to make an early meal. Then at nights she's drug off to the arena or rink - whichever it may be. She has made some friends at the rink, siblings off of the team, thank goodness. One little girl painted Drew's nails during one of the games -- that was fun!

May long weekend, we had a hockey tournament in Burnaby for Jake's team. The whole team and most of the parents took a bus out --- phew. Let's not do that again.

Here's some pics of Jake from the weekend. Don't forget who made that beautiful logo on the jersey's. Oh and the first picture, is one of the team with Joe Sakic! (he's in the black shirt on the very left - looks like he's trying to get away) His son was playing in the tournament there, on a team from Colorado, so we stole him and got a picture with him at the opening ceremonies. It was a huge hi lite for the kids! Joe grew up there, and they now call him "Mr. Burnaby".














At the end of the very, very long weekend. We ended up "A Division Champs". That means 5th place. We won 5:4 in double overtime. We were fairly pleased with that since there were 20 teams, and many of those kids play together year round. We saw some amazing hockey - especially considering all of the kids were only 8 years old. Quite an experience!




There is so much more to tell......but I'll try and come back to update soon.

Love,
Jodi

Are you collecting your Nickels?

Click here to return to the Nickels for Blake post

The time is here......Julie is collecting all of the Nickels on March 18 (Blake's birthday). Anybody who has money to donate to the children's hospital......let me know.

Love,
Jodi

Welcome to the world, Justice!

Justice Reanne Deere, 7lbs 4 oz born @ 2:30am on February 26, 2008.


I posted back in the summer that Digger and Denise were expecting. Well she's here..... Here are some pics..


The happy little family...



Sweet baby girl. 4 days old.



Don'tchya just love sleeping babies?

Mom and baby are doing very well. The start was a little rough, as Justice had fluid on her lungs, and doc's were afraid she may have pneumonia. They kept her NICU for the first couple of days, but everything cleared up and they are now home. Healthy and Happy! Congrats Guys! You have received quite a little gift!

Love,
Jodi

Hockey, Hockey, Hockey

Hi All!

Well, there has been lot's of hockey, some hockey is over, but never fear, I've learned there will always be more hockey.

Kolt finished up his season with a tournament in Calgary this past weekend. He had a fantastic year. He went from a kid who leaned on his stick to stay upright in the beginning, to one of the top kids on the team. He is very talented, and very skillful. Not that I'm surprised by that, the very first time he walked on his own, he walked clear across my house. That's just his personality; study it, study it, gather all of the details, then just go do it. He really made it look easy. My Jake crashed, banged, and fell all over the place trying to get the puck in the net the first year. He didn't ever care how it looked, or if it might hurt, he just went 100 miles an hour all the time. Not Kolt, he's very careful, and doesn't necessarily care how often he puts the puck in, but heaven forbid he should get hurt, or not do it correctly -- he can hardly get a hold of himself when that happens. He's very hard on himself -- but when things are going well for him, he is the happiest looking kid out there.

Jake had an absolutely outstanding year! He overcame many obstacles, worked hard, practiced hard, and played hard. His last few games have been incredible. Their team won all their games this season (with the exception of one tied game) heading into playoffs. They won the first round of playoffs, but lost the final game today. It was a great game, they had it tied at 3:3, and the other team scored on a break-a-way with 30 seconds left in the 3rd period. It's really surprising how intense a game of 7 & 8 year olds can be! We have 2 tournaments to play in March, and then that's it for this team.

I briefly mentioned in my last post that Jake got picked to play Spring hockey this year. Spring hockey runs from April to the end of June. It costs $1000 to put him in it. Clearly, its a pretty big commitment. We actually hummed and hawed as to whether we would do it in the beginning. It's an honor to play, as they scout the kids from Southern Alberta to try to get the best team possible. They play with kids that are all the same age, so each birth year has it's own team. My biggest concern, was that I didn't want to burn him out. He loves hockey sooo much, I'd hate for him to lose his passion. When the coach approached us, I asked him what the advantage to playing would be, he told me what they will learn, will be amazing - so we decided to do it.

Soon after we registered and payed our fees, the coach emailed me asking if I wanted to be the team manager. So I accepted, and it looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me. When I browsed the league's website, I noticed that they had a new logo contest running. Whoever won the logo contest, got their registration fees waived for this year. So I thought, hmmmmm, $1000 to design a logo eh? Not too shabby. Jake and I got busy looking at different logos on the internet to find some ideas. We decided that we liked the circle logos, and that it needed some stars on it. I spent some time designing it and came up with this:

We just got the call this week that we won the contest! That's kinda fun! There are around 20 different teams, and they will do quite a bit of traveling. They will all be wearing jersey's with that logo on them. A pretty proud moment for me!

Well, I think that catches us up on most of the hockey news for now. Lot's of success's, improvements and learning this season. We have become good friends with many of the families off of our teams. It's sad to move on, as we will inevitably be going in different directions. One thing for sure; I'll always remember this year with a smile. I guess that's what it's all about...

Love,
Jodi

Kolt turns 6.....

I'm really late posting this, I'm sorry. I just haven't taken the time to sit down and do it. Better late than never though right?

We had a skating party for Kolt out at the farm. It was really cold that day. We actually had to postpone it for 2 days trying to get a day that was at least decent - which we didn't. The day turned out nicer than our originally planned day, weather wise, but it was still really, really cold. Nonetheless, the kids had a great time. There were 20 kids, so it was really busy. I didn't get very many pictures....here are just a few.

His cake was really cool. The little zamboni on top of it wound up, and drove around the ice.



He was sooo spoiled with gifts. Lucky guy got so many things, it took him a week to get through them all. He likes to open one and play with it for a while. Then he'll go and choose another and play with it for a while until they are all gone. Have I mentioned he is the perfect child before :)

As many of you know, I planned a surprise trip to Vegas for Brian's 30th birthday. He knew that we were going on a trip, cuz he walked in the house when I was booking it. He didn't know where, when or with whom we were going. We had to get up at 4:00 a.m. to catch our flight. When I woke him up, I said, "kay, it's time to go". He looked at me with sleepy eyes and said, "Now? Seriously?" I nodded, and he got up. About 15 minutes later, we were in the cab on our way to the airport with Jason and Sabrina.

We had sooo much fun! We played about as hard as I've ever played before in my life. We hardly gambled because we couldn't seem to stay in one spot long enough. We barely slept, yet I'm sure I wasn't any more tired when we got home than I was before we left. It was an excellent mental break! We laughed long and hard all the time. My stomach muscles were sore for days after we got home from all the laughing. Jason and Sabrina were perfect to travel with. Very easy going, and agreeable. Jason and Brian golfed in the days while Sabrina and I shopped in the outlet malls. It was beautiful t-shirt and shorts weather. It was a great time for sure. I never hardly took a picture, it was too fun to worry about carrying my camera. Jason carried his for the first few days, so there are a few pics for memories.


The first one, is one of the 4 of us (Brian and I on the left, Sabrina and Jason on the right). I believe this was at the Shadow Dancers Bar. The one below is at the airport on the way home, Brian "needing" a wheelchair now that he was over 30 ;)


All in all, I'd say we did Vegas the way Vegas is supposed to be done. We didn't hardly miss a thing, and yet all the memories are pretty fuzzy :)

Somewhere in this month was my birthday, and our 9th wedding anniversary. 9 years already. How did that go so fast? What amazes me is that the longer you are married, the better it gets. I love being married to Brian. Every year is better than the last. I know it's not that way for everyone. I'm so grateful I am one of the lucky ones.

Ever heard this quote?

Don't go for looks; they can deceive.

Don't go for wealth; even that fades away.

Go for someone who makes you smile

Because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.

Find the one that makes your heart smile.

I did.


Love,
Jodi

Greetings from the non-poster

Hello!

I feel like I have abandoned my blog - as many of you must feel the same. I just looked and my last post was January 9th. Shocking that the time goes so fast!
I have lot's to post about, Kolt turned 6, Brian turned 30, I turned 31, and we celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. Brian and I went to Vegas with Jason & Sabrina, Drew started peeing and occasionally "poot"ing in the toilet. Hockey season is coming to a close (or at least the regular season), and lacrosse will be starting in April. Jake was asked to join Spring hockey, which is pretty exciting, as it is the elite AAA league.
But I'm going to leave you hanging yet again - we have 5 games this weekend, and we need to be at the rink in about 1/2 an hour.
Keep your fingers crossed that I will get my act together soon, and get back in the groove of bragging about our spectacular life!

Until then, lots of love to you all!

Love,
Jodi

Wasn't that a Party???

Drew turned 2 on January 7th. I threw a party together for her at the last minute. Poor little thing, she spends so much time at the rink that we haven't been able to go out and make her very many friends of her own. So I shoplifted a couple of little girls so that she could have a party :)

I made Deb bring her neice Cadi, and Trish bring her neice Luka, they are both Drew's age. I also had Jen bring Emma and Mason, that way we had a big girl here too! The picture directly below is partygirl Luka. Isn't that hair the cutest ever?

This picture is partygirl Cadi. Let me tell you, Cadi has the most beautiful big blue eyes ever. The horse in the picture isn't meant to be ridden. As soon as Cadi saw it, she hopped on for a ride anyway, it was really cute!

CAKE TIME!!!





Cadi won the most cake on your face contest. Wasn't much of a contest really, none of the other girls made a mess at all. It was pretty boring cake eating to say the least.

PRESENT TIME!!




PLAY TIME!!

Party Girls all playing together!

What's a party without sitting on a few balloons?

Or playing hockey?
This was really cute too. Drew and Cadi were both happily sharing the princess chair and eating strawberries. So I told them to smile so I could snap a picture, and these were the looks they gave me. Little turkies made it look so painful to be sharing....

All in all, it was actually pretty fun. We had 3 pretty tired little girls on our hands by the end of it. 3 tired 2 year olds don't really get along that well. So we bid them farewell, and had a nice long afternoon nap - Drew and me both :)

EXCITING NEWS!!

We have finally started working on the farmhouse again. Here are some intermediate pictures. The top left is the new door going into my pantry, the top right is my kitchen. The pictures on the bottom are my dining/living room. These pictures are after the first coat of paint, so obviously it's hard to tell that it's been painted. But it's beautiful - and I am soooo excited!!

And in case any of you are wondering what's been taking so long to get the house done, take a look at the next picture. Poor Matt....... he has to do everything all by himself because Brian just won't stop drinking beer! (That's not a very flattering picture........sorry hunny)

Hahaha, just kidding. I actually snapped this picture to show the paint difference on the wall. And surprisingly, Brian was standing there drinking a beer! I do have to give him credit though, so far he has done all of the demolition. When the house is actually done, he'll get even more credit because he is building all of the kitchen cabinets himself.

That's all for now.

Love,
Jodi

How are Babies Made?

Since Drew was born, we have had many different discussions about how babies are made. Never yet, have we told the whole truth. When Brian told the boys we were going to have a baby he told them that he had "snuck" a baby in Mommy's tummy last night. Ever since the boys have wondered how exactly Daddy did that. Once, Jake asked me if I felt Daddy sneak the baby in my tummy, I told him yes (cuz what do you say??) And he asked me what I felt? Brian rubbed his chest and said in his biggest, big tough guy deep voice, "pure pleasure son!"


Well just the other day, Kolt said he thinks he knows how Daddy made Drew. He said he thinks that daddy made a baby out of wood, and put it in my tummy and it grew into a person, just like Pinocchio. And Brian said to him, (again is his biggest, big tough guy deep voice) "well, I definitely put a big piece of wood in her!" He's awful......is this a family blog? Can I tell these stories?

Love,
Jodi

P.S. We have some exciting hockey news to share, but I need to prepare the post, so don't forget to check back! I've given up on any time frame promises :)

P.P.S. How about the creepy wooden baby picture? He'd give anyone nightmares.......