It Is Snowing

It is snowing. It is April 28. There are tulips starting to poke up. The grass is starting to green. We got sunburns 5 days ago. It is snowing.... again.

Commercial Work

One of the things I love about photography is that I can combine it with my other passions.  I have had the privilege of doing some commercial work for friends over the past year.  Often we exchange services, I take some pictures for them, they give me a pedicure, as is the case in the first example picture. 

 My friend started her own business called Stay Home Gorgeous Esthetics.  She needed some pictures for her website so she asked me to help out.  We recruited our girls and a friend and this is some of the pictures that came out of that shoot.

As many of you know I am a florist.  This past year I have volunteered to take pictures of what we make for holidays for the website of the flower shop.

This Mother's Day I took a bunch of photos of what we are offering, I also thought it would be good to showcase some of the giftware that we have as well.

The owner of the flower shop does amazing wedding work and one of the weddings was needing to be photographed before it left the store!  Shortly after this, the city tore down the wooden bridge just behind our store.  It was the perfect place for the shoot and am glad I got to use the bridge before they put in the bright orange metal one!

Our Egg Hunt

On Sunday we had our second annual Stefanek/Truman Egg Hunt.  A huge egg hunt that spans over 2 properties.  The sun was out and it was so warm, perfect for being outside.  The kids had a great time. There were only a few times of spilled eggs, twice by our J Man, one of which was a face plant on the road where the eggs went spraying all over the road for meters!  The other kids were kind enough to help pick them all up.  No blood, no cracked eggs, all good.

The Train

Getting on the cell phone train has been a long time coming for us.  It arrived almost a month ago with our iphone 4 and the ride began.  People now call me thinking I am at home but I am in Cranbrook instead.  I have to know where my phone is all the time and the kids LOVE to play games on it.  I am hardly using 1/4 of what the phone can do.   Just now, Paul opened the ear phones that came with the phone because he was about to pack them.  He has been using the old ones from is ipod.  He then realized that there is a microphone on the earphones so you can talk on the phone just by having the earphones in your ears.  Very cool.  It is all voice activated too so you can just say who you want to call and it does it for you, totally hands free.  I know that this might not be news to many of you, but for us, it is a surprise!  I can now talk on the phone, listen to music, and get work done hands free!

108 Action

We had our yard sale today, it went pretty well. Our signs brought in lots of people (for Kimberley), some stopped to shop and others just drove by when they saw all the kid stuff! We were able to get rid of a bunch of stuff and we glad that our friends from across the street were yard sale partners with us. It was pretty chilly as we started but then warmed up to above freezing and even hit 12 degrees, the warmest we have seen since summer! Glad that it is over and our laundry room is completely cleared out, the moving process has begun!

Some Spring, Some Snow

This is how we feel about more snow. We are tired of seeing the white stuff fall from the sky. It is falling hard right now, probably will have another 5 or more cm today. This is also how I feel about deer poop. There is so much of it to rake up, it is so gross. I will not miss deer poop. You can't walk on our grass without stepping on it! Gross.

On Wed mornings J Man and I go into Cranbrook with Paul. While Paul has a meeting we go to Starbucks, then hit the pet store and then to the library for story time. Last time we were at the pet store he found this dog. He headed straight there again yesterday to find his friend.

It is spring in Cranbrook. This is the evidence.

This is the fountain that J Man can finally play in at the pet store... you know 'cause it is spring there.  Not here.

Yesterday was also Egg Drop day at the girl's school. They both had to make a contraption that would protect their raw egg which was dropped from scaffolding in the gym. J Man and I went to watch and he sat with Beaner and her friend. J Man loves this friend, he told me just now as he saw the picture that he loves her. The three of them together is fun to watch but they do get into some mischief. There was a hair cutting incident the other weekend as the three of them played. J Man was the customer. Need I say more? Well, one more thing actually, I found him giving his own hair a trim yesterday. We had another talk about scissors and hair.

We are thinking about doing our big garage sale on Sat, but it needs to stop snowing and be nice. It may not happen.

We are having our "Good Friday Service" tonight.  I really enjoy it. We start out in candle light and sing somber songs about that night when Christ was betrayed and killed. There will be readings and communion and by the end all the candles will be blown out and we leave in darkness and silence. I am also looking forward to our Sunday service and the celebration that it will be. We also are doing an egg hunt with our neighbours this weekend, perhaps on a day when there is no snow. Cici is also having her last art class on Fri and a sleepover on Sun night, I might take the girls to go see the movie Rio on sleepover night too. It is turning into a busy weekend!

So Proud

I am so proud of my kids, they amaze me everyday with what they do.

Today was a dentist revisit for J Man and Cici.  J Man has a fused tooth and needed to get it cleaned out and something applied to it so food wouldn't get stuck in it.  Cici needed to get one of her baby teeth shaved down so to let her adult tooth beside it come in more straight.  They both rocked it.

Actually I was blown away.  J Man just sat there with his mouth open even when the dentist wasn't in the room.  He was a statue, he didn't budge.  I couldn't believe that he did so well and they were impressed too!  Cici was scared, she knew what was coming but still she managed to be brave and get the freezing put in and get her tooth shaved down.  She was proud of herself too.  She has been asking to get her ears pierced and always wants to know how much it will hurt, well, know she knows!  She said, "Now I can get my ears pierced", and, "I bet no one in my class has ever got this done before, I want to tell everyone about it tomorrow for sharing!".

I am a proud mama, again.

How they have changed....

So, often when you move, in the midst of all the craziness you often take time to think over the years.  Well, at least I am.  We have been talking about all the winters here and how this one is the longest by far... it still is snowing everyday here!  We look at the house and marvel how much it has changed, but nothing can show the time pass more like our kids.

This is our oldest, she was turned 4 just as we moved here.

And this is our almost 9 yr old today.

Our second daughter was just turning 2 when we moved to Kimberley....

and now she is 6 and a half.

Of course we have another child, our Jude Dude, but he wasn't with us when we moved.  He came 2 yrs after we moved here and is now almost 3!  I thought of adding a picture of him as a baby and now... hey, why not!

Funny, I don't think I have changed much physically, 5 years older, perhaps a few more lines on my face, still no grey.  But what isn't visible right away is how I have been changed by the people God has brought into my life here.  How my values have changed, what I hold as important, how I parent, how I treat my marriage, who I believe God to be and who I believe myself to be.  I am thankful for the journey that has been Kimberley, I will miss it tremendously.

The Sun Came Out

The sun came out today and even though the air temp was only just above freezing, the sun made if feel like spring. So, how do you enjoy a sunny day in the Kootenay's, you go to Fort Steele!

Spring has sprung at Fort Steele, in fact, Kimberley is the only place with snow.  One important sign of spring is baby animals and one of the cutest we saw today was this little lamb. 

Ok, you may want to turn your head for this next picture...  The kids were all freaking out and calling me over to take a picture of this.

Yup, the cat had a mouse.  More so, he didn't care that we were watching him.  We tried to get the kids away before the inevitable happened.  However, the cat loosened it's grip instead and the mouse went running!  It freaked us all out!!  The cat then continued to chase, catch and release the poor thing.  The game went on for 5 minutes, I even got a video of it.  The weird thing was that the mouse would sit real still in front of the cat and then walk real slow toward the cat and even crawl under the cat's chest.  The cat would pick it up and then drop it again.  Why didn't the mouse just take off?  Why would it crawl TOWARD the cat??  Don't know.  We left before we go the answer.

We went with our friends and their littlest fit perfectly in this doorway, too cute to pass up.

Now here are some people you may recognize.

And yes, if you have forgotten what I look like, here I am.  

We joked that going to Fort Steele was more like going into the future than the past.  It is what we will have in a few more weeks... no snow and even some green grass spouting.  It felt like a mini vacation.  Just what we needed!

What makes you feel better when you are sad?

A big cuddly bear named Qualicum.

On to what is consuming me right now.

I am feeling the crunch, time is ticking by so fast.  

This is the beginning of what is going to be weeks of packing.

This is the pile of stuff that we will garage sale when the snow leaves.

We have already done so much work to get ready but so much more is to come!

This is my life

This is my life.



Usually I don't find these type of things funny, but I even laughed out loud when I saw the backgammon part as Paul and I had just finished playing our daily game!

AHHHHHHH!

So, did you know that every picture I have ever uploaded to my blog these past few years automatically went to a Picasa web album??  I didn't.  So, yesterday when the only choice I had to change my username and password for this blog was to create a NEW blog and delete the old one meant that ALL the pictures on the Picasa web album were deleted too???  Well, that is what happened.   So, that will totally change the way I upload pictures.  Right now I sometimes use Flickr for my pictures that I want to protect.  It seems that those pictures put on my blog from flickr don't show up in the Picasa album.  I will have to try to straighten all this out but for now I apologize that you will not see previous pictures on the blog, they are all gone.  Gone.

Winter

It is winter again, nearly a foot of  fresh snow on the ground. New snow covering the feet of old snow that still hasn't been able to melt. Snowblowers out, trees hanging low with heavy snow, car in the garage, winter again.

The Fish

I took the kids to the Trout Hatchery yesterday.  It was great to get out of town, go someplace where there is no snow and enjoy some time outside with the Big Horned Sheep and the fish.

This is the little kids fishing pond where it is catch and release, Cici thought that she saw a fish but I don't know if they have stocked it yet.

So, beside the pond, there is the main building where you can see the baby fish they are raising and see the other exhibits of the hatchery.  Around the outside of the building there is a moat with large trout that have been raised there.  The kids loved feeding them and even Cici was brave enough to pet them.  Maybe she was too brave because at the end of the video you will see that one thought her finger was food!

She is ok, but it bled pretty good, I cleaned it real well and she hasn't started breathing under water or growing gills yet so I suppose she is fine!  She is proud of it though and has been telling everyone that she got bit by a fish!

Paul and I were able to to to the Old Bauernhaus last night for dinner, oh man it was so good!  We wanted to get The Feast one last time before we moved, it was well worth it.  As we left it started to snow... it hasn't stopped since.  There are inches of snow on the ground.  When will it stop???