I love mud!

NOT!!! It's been raining every day for the last week which has made the back roads 'very muddy'** and slippy and filled with little potholes. Hence the current state of our van. (The picture really doesn't do it justice, it is FILTHY!)


Fortunately the sun is out today, and hopefully we'll get a little bit of sun now before the rain comes back. I'm stressing about my newly-planted flowers who now have more-than-sufficient moisture but are seriously lacking in sunshine!

** Has anyone ever heard 'Truck Got Stuck' by the Corb Lund Band??? It's got one line in it that goes 'for the first time in the collective memory that old brown prairie that had been so dry for so long was very muddy,' and there's just something about the way they say 'very muddy' that cracks me up every time. You can see the video here (scroll down a bit to click on the video) - I know I'm almost the only one in my entire sphere of friends and family who (gasp) likes country music, but check it out, I love this song!

A true Canadian

Greg really is a true Canadian - when he's out in the evenings at youth group or meetings, he gets me to text message him updates on the Oilers' playoff games every time someone scores! Tonight he's going to a dry grad meeting and I've got my orders to keep him updated!! :)

GO OILERS GO!!

P.S. Yes, it makes me feel extremely old that fully half of our youth group wasn't BORN the last time the Oilers won the Cup!!!

Bad hair day!

Every day is a bad hair day for our Abby girl! :) We're thinking it maybe needs a trim to try and get it to grow into some sort of actual hairstyle...any suggestions?

Pictures of Greg's citizenship ceremony

See the post below as well for the details of the day!

Welcome to Canada! Bienvenue au Canada!

Well, it's official! Greg is now a Canadian citizen (and American too). His ceremony was at Grande Prairie Regional College at 8:00 this morning , which meant getting everyone up and out of the house much earlier than usual. First we waited about 15 minutes for the doors to the theatre to be opened, and then we had to wait in a line along with all the other new citizens and their families to have Greg's paperwork checked. There were 113 new citizens (from 37 different countries!) being sworn in this morning, so it took more than an hour to get everyone's paper worked checked by the two clerks at the door (note to Canadian government: would it hurt to hire a couple more clerks for two hours?). The kids were so patient waiting in line for so long!

The ceremony itself was also pretty lengthy, including a speech by the presiding judge, greetings and remarks from the representatives of our MP and both MLAs, and short remarks by the President of Grande Prairie Regional College and the Mayor of Grande Prairie (anyone know why mayors get to be 'Your Worship'?). There were a couple of musical numbers, as well as singing of 'O Canada,' and of course the new citizens had to swear the citizenship oath in both French and English. (Ask Greg how he did with the French!) Greg had to sit in an assigned seat, so the kids were both with me, but they did amazingly well for such a long (and I'm sure boring to them) ceremony, especially considering Abby was due for a nap by the time we got into the theatre and the ceremony hadn't even started yet. The ceremony finally ended at about 10:25.

Here's the announcement of our newest Canadian citizen:


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He passed!

Greg had his citizenship test today and he passed - hooray! Apparently is was much easier than expected and took him all of about eight minutes to complete...and he wasn't the first one finished! We are now finished jumping through hoops for the Canadian government - we've done student visas, landed immigration application, citizenship application and now the citizenship test. His official citizenship ceremony is at 8:00 am (who in the world picked that time?!?) on Wednesday. We are all planning on going with Greg, cranky as we may be having to be out of the house before the kids are even up most days. I think I'm allowed to take pictures, so if my arms aren't full of kids, I will take and post some pictures on Wednesday!

Deck progress

Well, we are making progress on the deck! The main part was completed last Monday, and over the next couple of days we got the rest of the 350 screws into the decking boards. Then Thursday night and this afternoon we worked on the railing, and we've got two sides completed! We're not sure of the placement/width of the stairs yet, so we haven't done anything on the third side yet. We're seriously considering not putting stairs on the deck at all - I had a friend visiting this week and we sat in the sun on the deck while the kids all played in the back yard five feet below us, and they couldn't get up to us to bug us! (Okay, no, we're not really going to leave it without stairs...but it was a pleasant afternoon!)

Rot. Is not. Good.

In a classic case of Murphy's Law of home renovation (any project will take three times as long and cost five times as much as originally planned), we started off this weekend thinking we were going to replace a couple of boards on our deck, and by Monday night were the proud owners of an entirely (except for the concrete pilings) new deck. It turned out that the supports under the deck were rotting pretty badly, so we thought it would be prudent to replace everything before someone we really liked fell through. :) Greg had a friend from church come over to help him with it, and they did an awesome job!! It was kind of an unexpected expense, but fortunately we didn't have any other major expenses planned for this summer, so it will work out okay.

<-- 'Before' picture - and the one rotten board that started this whole procedure!






<-- The rot! The middle board was pretty much soil it was so wet, and the two outer boards weren't too much better in places.








<-- Hooray! A new solid foundation!








<-- Farrell putting in screws late into the night. :)








<-- The (sort of) finished product! Railings and stairs coming soon!

Oh, dear. ;)

It seems that our dear Abby is not far off from upright locomotion - see the video below! Gavin couldn't walk behind this toy until he was actually able to walk on his own, because it would start rolling since he was leaning so heavily on it for balance, and his little feet couldn't catch up...and he'd land smack on his face. But Abby's been walking all over the house with it the last couple of days. I'm pretty sure she'll be walking sooner rather than later!


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Gavin riding his big boy bike!

I was saying the other day how Gavin's having some trouble riding his new bike because the pedals were just too far away. Greg lowered the seat another inch or so today and it made all the difference - Gavin was off and riding!


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I. Am. (Almost). Canadian.

Greg got his 'Notice to Appear' in the mail yesterday for his Canadian citizenship test and ceremony! The test is on Monday, May 15, and the citizenship ceremony (assuming he passes the test, I guess!) will be on Wednesday, May 17! He's started studying all the information he needs to know for the test (which, by the way, most Canadian grade twelve students can't pass!) and we're looking forward to having our last contact with the immigration department!

Greg will then have both American and Canadian citizenship - the only difference with having Canadian citizenship as well is that he will be able to vote here.

We will let you know how things go that week!

First day of soccer!

We registered Gavin for soccer again this year - and Greg's helping out by assistant coaching Gavin's team on Mondays (neither of us can go on Wednesdays because of youth Bible study). He's in Soccer Tots again this year - ages three and four, and this year his little friend Devin is playing on his team as well. We'll see if they do more playing soccer or more visiting!

Gavin's birthday party (the longer version)

We had Gavin's birthday party yesterday after church. We invited a few of his little friends as well as a couple families for Greg and I to visit with! Greg barbequed and we had hamburgers, chips, and salad. For desert I made a tractor cake (although I forgot to take a picture before it was half-eaten - oops).

It wasn't summer-like warm, but it was sunny and when the wind died down for a moment, you could close your eyes and almost imagine that it was warm out. :) The kids played outside for most of the afternoon, and the adults spent some time visiting out on the deck.

Gavin of course got some great presents - cars, a toy fishing rod set, a little kite, a slip and slide for when it finally gets really warm, and a big boy bike from Mommy and Daddy. He's ridden it to church and back yesterday and then to soccer tonight - he gets pretty freaked out when he feels it wobble from side to side (it has training wheels but it still wobbles a bit before the training wheels kick in), so Greg has been walking beside him holding his shirt. His legs are not quite long enough for the pedals (we bought him the one that he's just on the bottom end of being tall enough for rather than the one he'd grow out of in a year) so it's kind of funny to watch him shift from side to reach the pedals. I think he'll get the hang of it quickly though.

We had a fun day with our almost four year-old! We're going to have another little party with just us and some family presents tomorrow night for his 'real' birthday.