4 and 5 months

Wow! Where does time get to? It seems everytime I sit down to try and blog, months have past and I am wayyyyy behind. Oh well. When you have this beckoning to you, how do you argue?

I was brave at the end of September and took our very first trip home to visit. Going home to family and friends was amazing and renewing, however the trip itself was kind of a gong show. Getting to Calgary took hours longer than it should have, Riley decided that sleep was for the weak, and Everett did nothing but fight with his cousin while we were in Lethbridge. At the same time, we were able to stay with Gamma and Big Papa in Calgary, visit the zoo, and visit all the Great's we don't often get to see.

Then we were off the Lethbridge to stay with Gramma Reggie and Papa John and hang out with Auntie Jessie and the kids. Everett was able to spend a tonne of time playing with his cousins while I went to lunch with the beautiful ladies at the court house, we had lunch with our favorite dinner date Jenny, and spent a lot of time with Auntie Adonus.
 Auntie Adonus, Joscy and Nic spoiled the kids rotten! We had such a wonderful time. Brock flew down to have Thanksgiving with his family and then we started the trek back home. Why do the kids travel well for him?!?

 

Riley is now 5 (almost 6!?!?!?) months old. She is sooo big! When Riley went for her 4 month immunizations, she was weighing in at 14 lbs, 6 oz, and 24.5 inches long. We haven't made it to get her weighed in a bit but I can tell you she has had at least one big growth spurt and is definitely due for another. Riley is working on getting teeth as well, which has caused some sleepless nights and cranky days, but all in all she is generally happy. We started trying cereal yesterday as well. WOW! That was really not her favorite thing so far!

Riley likes to spend time in her Excisaucer and playing on the floor, but her heart truly belongs to the Jolly Jumper. She is becoming quite the little mover and shaker often wiggling herself around the living room, sometimes even under the couch. Brock seems to think she is gonna crawl any day now, I hope he is wrong! Could you imagine these two being mobile together? My house may not survive!

We are currently in the deep freeze known as winter in Grande Prairie. Perhaps deep freeze is not the appropriate term, as the lowest temperature was only -15, but I have never seen snow like this! We already have a pile 3 feet deep in front of our house and it has only been snowing about a week. It is amazing and beautiful to watch it snow here. The flakes are big, fluffy, white and heavy! No blowing ice like southern AB (although I am sure we will get some of that too).

Apparently snow this heavy is unusual, so we had quite the task of finding Everett a snow suit and boots. The one we did find has a HUGE jacket, but the pants seem to fit alright. There were no pant/jacket seperates anywhere we looked.

Everett is still Everett, changing and growing in a less obvious but no less amazing way. He is becomeing a loving, kind and respectful, but quite willful, young man. He keeps my days sparkling, adventurous, hectic and sometimes deranged, but I would not trade him for anything.

      Welcome to our little life!

 

3 Months

Can you believe that our little girl is 3 months old already? She is pretty amazing and has adapted to life in our little family seamlessly. Riley is a strong, beautiful, funny and happy girl. She loves to play on her play mat and receive attention from her big brother. She is always smiling and laughing. Riley talks and coos up a storm. Sometimes I wonder how we have been so blessed with 2 very different but awesome children.

Riley is growing so much and changing all the time. She still has blue eyes (which surprises me as I thought they would go brown). She now weighs 12lbs 11oz and is 24 inches long. She is so strong, she already rolls to her side and has rolled to her tummy once. If she could have her way, she would never be laying down, she always wants to be sitting up and has the neck strength to do it.

We have been very busy around here the last few weeks. Brock has worked very hard getting our fence put up. It is taking longer than we thought, but slowly it is coming together. We also bought a new vehicle to replace the Envoy. We are the proud owners of a 2009 Ford Flex and we love it to bits! It drives like a dream and has enough room for all of our needs. It even has DVD players in the head rests, which unfortunately provides plenty of arguments when Everett thinks we should watch a movie just to go to the grocery store (read: a 5 minute drive).

Everett is into full blown terrible twos. The day is not complete with out at least two meltdowns and a temper tantrum. Yesterday morning after being up with Riley all night, I stayed in bed while Brock hopped in the shower. That will teach me for trying to catch an extra 10 minutes of sleep. I come down stairs to get Riley who is crying and find Everett sucking on a permanent marker. Brock cleaned him up before I could get a photo but here is my wall. Several nights before this, we had put Everett to bed at about 9. When Brock and I went to bed at 11, we discovered Everett sitting in his bed with the light on playing with this trains and cars. That's what I get for putting toys in his room I guess!

 

 

Oh my Son!

So, some of you may have heard me refer to my Son as a bit OCD. He frequently repeats words and has a hard time moving from certain events or occurances. Last night I recieved what I feel was a bit of justification of my concerns. While reading a story with Daddy before bed, a page was ripped while being turned. After the story, Daddy put the book up and put Everett to bed. A few minutes later, Everett comes out of his room. This is typical, almost every night he comes out of bed and I go up, put him back in his bed and give him a new book to look at and leave (I think it's his little way of getting up both to tuck him in). Everett proceeds to ask me for the book he has just read with Daddy. I hand it to him and he tells me it is broken. I ask what happend, he shows me and Brock explaines that it was an accident. I tell him it is ok and that we will fix it in the morning. I tuck him in, give him a kiss and say good night, leaving said book in his careful hands (other than 1 eaten page when we first started giving him paper books, he is very gentle with the books). I come up on my way to bed to check on him to find this...

This is what the tear started with...

On another note, here is a picture of our beautiful 8 week old little girl. She is growing so fast and starting to look so much like her big brother. I wish she was a bit easier to make happy sometimes though...Oh well, she is pretty amazing!



Our First Post Ever!!!

So I came upon this draft of a post from when we first started the Blog. I am not sure where it has been hiding, but I thought it might be fun to post it so everyone can see where it all started. Enjoy!

Hi Everyone! Ok so probably like 4 people right now, but that's ok! This is our first ever post and it is going to be really short because, well it's 10mins after 12 and Brock has to work tomorrow. I however will try to come up with something better tomorrow during my unlimited time alone (at least until 5:30). Good night everyone and only 3 more days (wink, wink)!

Ch-ch-ch-Changes!

Well, when I looked at my blog to start this post I realized just how behind we were. Apparently I have been neglectful for well over a year! Well, as an attempt to rectify this, I will try to catch up. Forgive me if I miss anything...

I suppose I should start with the biggest changes of the year. In February we learned that Brock was the new Insurance Manager for the Grande Prairie AMA Center. The first weekend of March, he loaded as much as he could into the Saturn and left to start his new job. Over the next 3 months, Everett and I worked hard to pack up the house so that we could come join him.

This was especially difficult for us because we were expecting our 2nd child and I was still on contract with FJS. On May13 we welcomed a beautiful baby girl to our little family! Her name is Riley Louise Price and she was born at 8:24am on Mother's Day. She weighed in at 7 lbs 3 oz and was 21 inches. Her birth could not have been any more different from Everett's and she arrived naturally (no induction or medication) one week before her due date. Labour lasted a total of 9 hours start to finish! The unfortunate part of the smooth birth was that Brock missed it. He caught the first flight available, but he was still in Edmonton when Riley was born.


Our move up was difficult. We had to say goodbye for now to our wonderful families and great friends. Gramma Reggie and Papa John were so amazing, watching Everett for us when Riley was born and putting us up for 2 weeks before we moved on to Calgary on our move to Grande Prairie. Thank you both for all the help and love you shared with us! Gamma and Big Papa were a big help and wonderful to us during our stay in Calgary, we love you bunches!!

When we did finally arrive, we were essentially homeless for about a week. Let me clarify, we had a home, but nothing in it. Not even a chair. You cannot truly appreciate a chair until you have sat and slept on the floor for 4 days. Oh well, we are mostly settled in now. One day we will laugh about the whole thing...maybe...


Everett has grown into a fabulous 2 year old. He loves to play outside, color and do crafts and play with any toys that have wheels. He is working on learning to ride a trike, say the alphabet and count to 10. So far he can repeat the alphabet after you and counts "1, 2, 5, 9 and 10". Everett is fully entrenched in the world of make believe. He recently has fought a dragon at Kakwa Stone and believe it or not our house appears to be infested with wolves. He is a wonderful big brother and loves his little sister. He likes to play with her, talk to her and help me when I ask him to . I am somewhat surprised that he has not been more jealous. The worst thing he does is forget to be careful around her. He has accidentally kicked her in the head a few times and thrown toys at her, but he is almost as upset about it as I am, if not more!


Unfortunately, more often than not, we are dealing with the terrible twos. Everett's favorite words are "No" and "Mine". We are at a loss for how to discipline him. We have tried time outs, loss of toys and even spanking. Nothing seems to have any effect. In fact most of the time he just acts worse. Its heart breaking because he is such a sweet boy when we have the ablility to give him all our attention  but as soon as we try to do something else, he is rotten. Any ideas would be welcome.


Riley is a sweet girl. She has grown a huge amount in the her first 6 weeks. She is now 9 lbs 15 oz. I cannot believe how much she has changed. I am pretty sure that she will have blue eyes, although they are still very dark blue. She has very little hair and seems to loose more every day. Riley is a good night time sleeper, but sleeps only short amounts during the day (like Everett did). I think that she has a touch of colic because sometimes she just screams and screams for no reason, but it is not all the time and never for too long. She also is pretty pukey and I often wonder if she (or I) will ever be dry again. Riley LOVES to be held and HATES being in the car seat. This is a problem since the new stroller I bought requires her to be in the car seat for now. She is pretty wonderful! I will add a recent photo as soon as I figure out how to get it off of Brock's Iphone.

Well, I think that covers the important stuff. Sorry that I took so long to post this, our house is infested with borrowers and things keep vanishing. I only just found the plug-in for the laptop and still have not found the charger for the camera. Pictures will be few and far between unfortunately, but I will try my best.





Lots of love to all!

An Anniversary and a Birthday!

So the past month we celebrated not only our 2nd anniversary, but also Everett's 1st birthday. It all passed without much pomp and circumstance as we were pretty broke. I had managed to put away a little bit of money, so in a last minute decision we took off for Banff to celebrate. Unfortunately, our little man had other ideas about our celebration and spent the weekend throwing up. Thank goodness the wonderful manager at the Mount Royal Hotel was kind enough to re-emburse us the cost of our room. The next weekend, we celebrated Everett's birthday by having a family dinner at Grandma Reggie and Papa John's house. Everett had a blast playing with his cousins and opening some presants and then we took him swimming in the evening. I splurged by making him monster cupcakes. I think that they turned out pretty cute! Check 'em out:

Here are some of the things that Everett can do now that he is a big 1 year old:

~He can walk, although I would say that it wasn't until last week that he was doing it most of the time. So even though he took his first steps at 11 months, he wasn't "walking" until 13 months.

~He still loves swimming and now he splashes and laughes and tries to swim in the little pool.

~He weighs 26 lbs!!! He is one heavy dude, but he has stopped growing as fast and we might actually get to wear 12 month clothing for more than a month (or like 9 month clothes, miss them altogether).

~He can climb, and climb he does. His favorite place is the green chair in the front room.

~He LOVES the playground, but especially the slide. Unfortuantely, mommy has forgotten the camera everytime we have gone to the park, except the first time and it was too busy for the slide that day! ~He has the curliest hair now that it has grown a bit. I am sad to cut it, but I think it will grow better if we shave it off. We will see!

Well, I know it was a bit over due, but there you have it. Can you believe so much can happen in two years?

Oops!

So for anyone who actually checked out my blog before this posting, here is the video that was supposed to be first on the list. Sorry!

Our Funny Boy

Catch up!

I feel as though I am always playing catch up on this thing, so I have decided I am not going to try to catch up anymore. If something fun, interesting or special happens, I am going to write about it, but I am not going to keep a comprehensive developmental blog about Everett. It is just to hard and I always feel like I am falling behind and it is a chore. Bleh!

With that in mind, the first thing I want to write about is nothing related to us. A wonderful, beautiful, amazing and creative friend of mine, Shannon, has created a blog for her Daughter. Everyone who checks out my blog needs to click here and check hers out! It is inspiring and heart warming and she has given me permission to link it to mine, so please take a look. I wish I would have thought of it! Congrats Shannon on the beautiful work (both Mac and the Blog lol)!

Now onto our life. As everyone knows, Christmas has recently passed. This was Everett's first Christmas and as much as I would like to say it is one he will never forget, he probably already has! Either way, it was a special Christmas for us as we travelled for 12 days (for the twelve days of Christmas, my true love gave to me...) and were blessed to spend time with family we rarely get to see. We started off to Vegas and spent 5 days with Brock's sister Renee and her husband Matt. They were so kind to accommodate us and even gave us their vehicle to tour around Vegas, treated us to fantastic home cooked meals and an AMAZING dinner out, got us a babysitter to watch all of the kids so we could have an adults night out (thanks to the Brandley's for letting us all go see Harry Potter) and were just wonderful to spend time with! We miss you guys!!
Then, it was off to Phoenix for another 5 days of fun! We spent these with Mark, Cheryl, Sierra, Chase and My Mom and Dad. Yup, that's right, My mom and Dad flew to Phoenix for Christmas! It was a blast, we took in great shopping, were treated to fantastic meals and beautiful scenery, and relaxed in style on a handsome GREEN golf course. We enjoyed a pool that was as warm as most hot tubs in Canada and had no snow. That made it better I think. We cannot thank Mark and Cheryl enough for opening their home to us and spoiling us rotten!
Thank you to our wonderful families for having us for the holidays. We love you very much! Forgive me, however, for a screaming sick boy is beckoning me!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in our home took a drastic change for us this year. We were planning one last trip out to Gamma and Grampa Barrett's cabin when we recieved news that Great Granny was seriously ill. So, we headed to Calgary to visit and make sure that everything was going to be ok. We packed a wonderful chicken dinner up to the hospital with Auntie Cheryl, Uncle Mark and the kids to celebrate with Granny. We would like to report that things are getting better for Granny and she is moving in to a new place that will be healthier for her. She's a strong lady with lots of great family that love her! Here are a few pictures from our party:

Kids, Kids and more Kids!

October has been a fun time for us. We went out camping with Gamma and Grampa Barrett and Everett managed to find a baby snake.


We had fun walking in the cooler weather and getting Everett ready for the fall.


We watched my SIL Jessie's kids for 4 days while she and Pat took a well deserved holiday to Vegas with friends. While we had the kids we went to the Petting Zoo at the Corn Maze, watched movies and had a blast with everyone! It was a little crazy but we loved it.

6 Months!!!

Can you even believe it? I sure can't, but whether you believe it or not, our little man is 6 months old today! In just a short time he has gone from this
to this
Here are some of the wonderful things he does:
~Sit all by himself
~Jump in the Jolly Jumper
~Shower with Mommy or Daddy
~Eat cereal and fruit~Pick up his sucky and put it in his mouth
~Talks and hollers up a storm
~Roll over~Play with his feet
~Hold his own bottle~Giggle
~Swim and splash
He has had his first cold for about 2 weeks now. This has not been the best 2 weeks for me ever. Not only is Everett sick, but so am I and there has been very little sleep occurring in our home. Oh well, I guess this comes with being a mommy. It's not all smiles and laughs.

We entered Everett into the Zellers baby face contest. This means that if he wins, he will be featured in the January baby days flyer. We think he will win, what do you think?