Happy New Year!

Well 2009 has been quite the year for us.

We left our old church so Doug could pastor in our current church.

We sold our house.

We said goodbye to some very dear friends and moved 13 hours away.

We moved into our first rental house in town.

We made friends.


The boys changed schools and made new friends.

We moved into our second rental house in town.

Olivia turned from a toddler into a preschooler.

God provided for our needs in more ways than I can possibly mention... everything from complete strangers giving us money that we used to pay our bills to friends fixing our van for free.

We are blessed.

It has been a crazy year... I am kind of hoping for a slightly more boring 2010 :)

Happy New Year everyone!

hello?

Apparently my 3 year old daughter Olivia phoned my mother-in-law yesterday. Twice. Without any aid from the rest of us! We think she must have just hit redial a couple times :) Grandma told us about her phone calls from Miss.Olivia later that day.

Crazy kid! She got a pink princess phone for Christmas and has been calling Cinderella regularly for the past couple days but I had no idea she would attempt to use the real phone. Good thing she called Grandma and not some random person in China. :)



It's just a hunch but I'm thinking she is going to be on the phone a fair amount when she is a little older.

Wordless Wednesday- Airplane (snowsuit style)

SafetyTat

If you have ever worried about what would happen to your child if he or she got lost than I have the perfect product for you. SafetyTat- "The Tat That Brings Kids Back!".

As most of you know a couple weeks ago my 6 year old son Owen took off from his school in the middle of the day and got lost. Everything turned out ok but it sure gave us a huge scare. Many years ago my family took me to Disneyland ( I was 7) and I managed to get myself lost. I wasn't lost for very long but it was long enough to freak me out and terrify my family.

It can happen so fast- a child can wander off or get seperated so easily and end up in a very scary situation.

SafetyTat offers a way to help ensure our children's safety. I was sent a package of "Quick stick write-on! ultra-durable, waterless skin applique safety tattoos". You simply apply the tattoo to your child and then write your emergency data on the tattoo! The tattoos are waterproof and can last up to TWO weeks!!

You could apply one at the beginning of your family vacation, write your cell phone number on it, and then rest easy knowing that if your child got lost you could be easily contacted. Perfect for waterparks, theme parks, malls, the zoo,  sporting events, airports- the list is endless.

My son Owen was able to remember his phone number when he got lost and we were called right away. But my older son Aiden has had a significantly harder time remembering that sort of information. He has some special needs and the thought of him wandering off and getting lost absolutely terrifies me. And of course my 3 year old isn't even capable of passing on that vital information yet.

SafetyTats are a brilliant idea for ANY child but especially perfect for younger children and those  with special needs.

Be sure to check SafetyTat out!

Weekly Winners- Christmas vacation

I already posted my favourite pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day but here are a few of my other favs from this week.

You can find more Weekly Winners at SarcasticMom.com .

Boxing Day Bliss

Today has (mostly) been a lovely relaxing day. I love boxing day! None of the stores around here are open today so there is no pressure to go shopping for deals or anything. The 5 of us have just spent the day at home watching it snow and enjoying each others company... for the most part anyway ;)

My house is a complete disaster area because I refused to clean... time enough for that tomorrow.

I played the Harry Potter game on Aiden's DS and discovered I actually LIKED it! Go figure. I usually hate all video games. The internet was down at our house and since I am refusing to clean or do anything remotely productive I played DS.

If anyone feels like giving me one of their old used DS' I'd be happy to take it... then all would have to do is borrow Aiden's game now and then... and a pair of headphones... and a quiet room all to myself.

Never mind. If I had a quiet room all to myself and time to play video games I'd just fall asleep anyway :)

Olivia has been unbelievably good today. I mean really. She has just been exploring all her new things and playing with her brothers and watching Dora. The boys have been incredibly good today too. They have had the occasional scuffle but nothing compared to the last week!

Yesterday was filled to the brim with abundance and today we are just basking in it :)

Oh how I love mellow days like this!!!

How was your Christmas???

Christmas Day

Here are a few of my favourite pictures from Christmas Day and there is a link at the bottom to even more pictures if you are so inclined :)

Christmas 2009

Christmas Eve

Every year my mother-in-law makes all 5 of us new jammies and we open them on Christmas Eve. The tradition started when her kids were all small so everyone would look acceptable in Christmas morning pictures. Or so I'm told anyway :).

Olivia's jammies have adorable little ballerinas on them and she loves them! She looks so cute in them. Olivia and my mom had a little picnic on the floor when we got home from church on Christmas Eve.

Owen and Aiden are basically the same size right now so they are going to share lizard jammies and dinosaur jammies and my mother-in-law even made them cool matching lizard/dinosaur pillow cases.




































 Aiden had a bit of a rough night so he was a little sad... even with the cool jammies on.



































He did perk up some when it came to leaving the milk and cookies out for Santa. They wrote him a note and even left him a present of a snowman stuffed toy. And of course he had both white milk AND chocolate milk to drink.

I got to snuggle with my boys in my pretty new rose jammies too.  Aiden was especially cuddly.

 

My husband took most of the pictures since he is the resident photo-expert in our house so all of these pictures are his. The kids all stayed up waaayyy too late Christmas Eve and I stayed up even later to get the wrapping done. I foolishly sat on the floor wrapping for hours and now, two days later, my back is still just killing me! But it was worth it :)

Happy Birthday to ME!

I will post some more later but I just wanted to share one birthday gift that I got today that made me laugh...

This is from my dear friend Becky...

It's almost like she knows me or something!

Thanks Becky- I love you too :)

Xmas tree this way...

We have a fake fireplace in the basement... my sons wanted to make sure that Santa could find his way upstairs to the tree in our living room. So they made him some signs...

The signs are every few feet all the way from the basement, up the stairs, through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room.

I don't think Santa will get lost :)

Website issues

As most of you know my husband is a pastor. Our church is very small (but fabulous of course) right now and we meet in a local school building. Without our own building it can be tricky for people to find us and it can also be difficult to pass on information to our church members. When you don't have a bulletin board where do you tac up those posters for community events etc.?

All this led to our church starting its own website so we could be a little more visible in our community.

But of course the website it down now. That should make it very easy for folks to find out about our awesome Christmas Eve service tonight (feel the sarcasm).


We have looked at a whole bunch of hosting options... everything from blogger and wordpress to Squarespace and Hosted Zen.

The thing is if your website sucks than no one is going to want to look at it!! My husband and I are both blog writers but we certainly aren't professional writers. Have you ever tried to write great website content for a church?

I did a bit of research on what other churches that have great websites have done. I really like the websites for Unionville Alliance and North Shore Alliance. And the church my husband grew up in, Cedarview Alliance, has a cool site too.

I think the common thread is that they all  have really great content as well as a snazzy look. Those particular churches have like 20 times the amount of people we have so they likely have some expert writers in their congregations. Not so much us.

I have been looking into a few options for finding great content. We obviously need some help developing our church's website. I found a cool company called iWeb Content who specialize in great writing. They offer services like blog content writing and brochure content writing and of course website copywriting.

In my opinion if you are going to do a website for a church (or anything else really) it should be done well.

And all that thought just because I went looking for our church's Christmas Eve service announcement!!

Did you know CHRISTMAS IS TOMORROW!!! YAHOOO!!!!!

Merry Christmas Eve to you all :)

Wordless Wednesday- Owen + Snow = happy kid

Making Cookies with Olivia

This weekend I made cookies with Olivia and we had so much fun! Doug took a bunch of pictures for me...

ALL of these fabulous pictures were taken by my sweet husband!