Mother Daughter Weekend!!

We just had our Mother/Daughter weekend and it was wonderful!! Our speakers were wonderful and definately challenged me to be a little more Mary in my Martha world :) The women, young women, and girls that came were so great! My own girls always had someone to play with and my amazing husband took care of the house, the girls while I ran around with a couple of the camp ladies to keep things running on schedule!
Being as busy as we were I wasn't able to take as many pics as I wanted to but here's a few that I managed to fit in :)
Melissa and I worked on the final setup on friday and Shaya and Shiloh played so nicely together, while Goober and Chloe played Uno together! And Ben hung up all the lights around the dining hall, in between helping to get everthing else ready for the ladies arrival!




Just a few of the end result of our decorating efforts! Classy, elegant and a little bit glamorous!

In the past month. . . .

Here's just a few highlights from our past month. So first off. . . .we got a new washer/dryer set for our house at camp!! They are so great!! At first Trev was so pumped he went gung-ho doing all the laundry he could find! If we ever have our own house, I have a feeling that we will be buying a set just like this one! :)

We also celebrated Christmas with my family the 2nd weekend in January! It felt a little strange not having the gatherings at "Christmas time" in December. But it was a fun time making new traditions and putting all our focus on Christ. Then there was so much to look forwards to in January as well!! Spending time together, playing, talking and of course eating!


This is our girls with closed eyes waiting for the dollhouse that Papa made for them

I love spending time with my girls outside! Chloe could live outside all the time, if she could! And Goober needs a little bit of coaxing, but this year she's been asking to go outside alot and on the warmer days spends a good chunk of time out there! Shiloh just loves being outside, watching her big sisters or sliding with Chloe on the hill in our front yard. I love that my girls enjoy the great outdoors!!




We have spent some good times with friends lately too! Our friends from Altona brought a little Z120, and they let all the kids have a turn driving and hauling their friends around on gt's! That was great fun!



And this is Natasha with Shiloh all cuddled up!! :)

And also our good friends the Jensens :) All our kids are 5 months apart except for the babies, they are nine weeks apart!



We also went to Altona to visit the Enns'! That was so much fun! The kids all had a blast and it was just so nice to spend time with them!

Shiloh popped two front teeth in one weekend!! She is constantly gnawing on her fingers, so I wouldn't be surprised to see more new teeth in the near future! We had a very hard time getting a picture of her teeth because she kept sticking her tongue in the way, so Trev had to hold her tongue back and keep her mouth open. It looks a little mean, but there was no harm done :)

Speaking of teeth. . . Chloe lost another one! She has been wiggling and wiggling it for a while and at one point was going to let Daddy take it out, but then Trev figured it could use a couple more days or so. Chloe was nervous about that, but really brave too! Then one evening WAY after she should've been sleeping she came out of her room and said her tooth fell out! So there we have it, another baby tooth is gone, she looks so adorable with her gappy smile and my baby is growing up !

Weekend with the Wilsons

We spent this last weekend up at Pinewood Resort celebrating Christmas with the Wilson side of our family. And we got to just spend time together, talk and laugh with each other, playing games and taking care of kids in between times. Each of the kids has their own cousin, one close in age that they play really well with. Chloe (6) and Paxton (almost 9) lived in the pool together

and Natasha (4) and Alexah (almost 4) played together
and Jaxen and Preston kinda just did their own thing most of the time, but both being boys and only 7 months apart, they'll be great playmates in a year or two :) Shiloh is on her own, and next year there will be two new babies at Christmas as both my sister-in-laws are expecting for June and August!! We had a lot of good times, despite a little puking from one of the kids, Natasha's ear has been bothering her for a few days and the odd spat between kids (which happened once, maybe twice). Our last night there the kids watched a movie before bed and they all cuddled up in a king sized bed together to watch it.
I really enjoyed just spending time together and wish we could do that far more often. We also got a whole family picture in :)

Recent Events

The warm weather turned into snow so quickly (which is fantastic) and a whole new realm of fun was opened up to us! Trev clears snow at camp and builds a nice big sliding hill in our front yard and the kids LOVE sliding down it and I love it because they are right close where I can see them :)

We've done some serious gt-ing behind the snowmobile which is definately a family favorite, although Natasha does prefer being on the snowmobile over the gt, but she'll gt for a bit as well.


Big news is CHLOE LOST HER FIRST TOOTH!! It's been wiggly since august, and took till after her birthday to get to the 'ready to come out' stage :) It got so wiggly she could bend it 90 degrees! I have to admit this milestone was one that I was so nervous about, just wondering about the unknown, would I have to pull it? What if I hurt her? What if she swallows it?. . . .and on and on and on, but in the end Trev pulled it with a quick yank, Chloe said it barely hurt and that was that! We put it in her tooth tin and told her the tooth fairy would come. Her reply to that was "I know the tooth fairy isn't real, I know it's you". So we may have to work a little harder to keep fairyland alive for her. It's so fun to make-believe. Anyways, here she is with her missing tooth.

Shiloh is rolling over from her back to her tummy all the time, then gets ticked off that she's on her tummy!
She doesn't like missing out on anything and loves to stand, so when April offered her excersaucer to us for the time being we jumped on that bandwagon, and despite having very little room in our house, it's been wonderful to have so Shiloh can stand and spin and play and see everything that's going on around her!
She also met her Great-Great-Grandma for the first time! It was very special there's 99 years difference between the two and for 99 my Oma is doing well. She remembers everything and loves her family and her Lord. We are so blessed to have her with us still!
We did have a bit of a rough time with Shiloh recently and anyone on facebook will remember my posts about it. But she developed an eye infection, her eye started getting really crusty, then swollen and red all around. The eyeball itself seemed fine, but all around and how goopy it was was brutal and we decided to take her in to Childrens to get it checked out (it was a sunday and the Dr's office was closed) We were unhurried, and figured it wasn't that big of a deal. The waiting room was just packed with coughing kids, kids with crazy fevers and quite a few kids with buckets puking their guts out! So I did NOT want to hang out around there for long. We had to wait to be registered and Trev and I contemplated leaving, but then they called our name and we went to be registered. The lady at the triage desk told us we'd be on the minor injuries side and that the wait would be a long while, then she looked at Shiloh again and told us that actually she'd put us on the main side. . .then after another moment of pause she told us she was going to put us in a room right away. That made me nervous because the sooner we go in, the bigger of a deal it is. The Dr took one look at her eyes and said he wanted to start IV antibiotics and I was shocked, but he said that with eye infections and fever, they need to counter it heavily with antibiotics so that it doesn't spread around to the back of her eye and cause permanent damage. So they put the iv in her arm and gave her her first dose and told us to come back the next day for another dose. They left the IV in her arm and wrapped it up good! That night her other eye got infected but overnight they improved significantly! We came back for two more days and on the second day of coming back (so her third day all together) they couldn't find her file for returning patients and put us on the minor injury side. When the Dr looked at her he said "I don't know why you are here, if she came to me today I wouldn't prescribe anything for you". I was a little annoyed but realised he hadn't met Shiloh on her worst day and didn't know what she looked like. But her eyes improved and she was fine!

Natasha is such a sweetheart, playing with Chloe and Shiloh all the time and the rest of the time, it seems, she loves to color and color and color some more!

We did some crafting for Christmas, Chloe made some felt cookies for Natasha for Christmas and I made a quiet book for Shiloh. It was time consuming but a lot of love went into the making of them!!

SNOW!!!

On sunday Oct 24th we had a dedication for Shiloh. We dedicated her along with our friends Greg and Vanessa's 3 kids, Connor, Winter and Mia. It was a great day and so much fun too! A little story that I find funny about the whole thing. Goober and Chloe didn't come up with us for the dedication part, but a little ways in, Natasha comes up and says "I'm tired Mommy" So I picked her up and within 5 minutes she was asleep! That girl can sleep anywhere!!


We got some great snow the day before halloween and it was perfect for building snowmen and so that's what I did with Chloe, Natasha and Anika. It was so fun! Our snowman toppled, he didn't even make it to supper because it was so warm, but we had such great time!!


Halloween was great too! I made(-ish) costumes for the girls. Chloe and Natasha helped make the masks that they wore. Chloe was a Ballerina Snow Princess, Natasha was a Butterfly Fairy and Shiloh was a sweet little pumpkin!! I took a bunch of pics on halloween but didn't realise I had no card in the camera to save the pics to. So we got all dressed up again later that week to take pictures!



We were able to ride bikes into November and I appreciated that so much! Our girls liked going for walks to the road and back, it was all the more fun when we'd cross the highway to get to the Red Rock sign! Notice Goobers tongue hanging out as she's riding, lol! We also scope out the road for deer tracks and the excitement is huge when someone finds some! These ones are really big.






Shiloh also had her first taste of cereal and she does super well with it! It just seems wrong to me that our baby is old enough for cereal!!!


One thing we've discovered about Shiloh is her very long tongue. We get so much amusement out of trying to get her to stick it out! We'll let her lick the condensation off our cups at supper and with water in the cup it magnifies it also. It always gets us laughing. Chloe and Natasha will ask us to do that at meals so they can see it too! :)

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The other day it was snowing and Natasha would randomly stop what she was doing and stick out her tongue to catch snowflakes! Of course I didn't have the camera with, so after I went and got it, I asked her to do it over and over. Since she liked catching them it wasn't a big deal for her. I just think it's super cute watching her sticking out her tongue to catch snowflakes!! Shiloh also looks adorable in a little touque!!



Chloe is an awesome big sister! She loves holding Shiloh and playing with her. And with Goober too! Goober will try to dictate the way the playing goes and will tell Chloe what to say and what to do and for the most part, Chloe lets Natasha have her way. It's really a beautiful thing to watch because Chloe has just as much fun as Goober! They share ideas and the playing goes on and on and on. Here's Chloe and Shiloh together.


Wednesday nights are Awana nights. We take our girls to Seven Sisters and while the girls are at Awana Trev and I and Shiloh head off to our friends, Drew and Kristal's house. Their kids are also in Awana. Shiloh can be pretty cranky sometimes because she's tired or whatever, but Drew will come and and take her and can almost always get her asleep or at least calm. :) It's so nice! (and is it just me or does he look like the lead singer of Rascal Flatts?)

Natasha turned 4 on November 16th!!! So crazy!! It was a good day right from the start. We let her choose the menu for the day and her choice for breaky was waffles (I was positive it would be pancakes!) and for lunch I asked her what she wanted and her response was "Macaroni!! But with no peas, and no beans and no meat in it, okay mommy?" I laughed out loud, I'm always trying to make it a little healthier, ha ha!! Another wonderful thing that happened on her birthday was my brother Mike and his wife Katrina had their baby at 3 in the morning, her name is Amiya (Ah-my-ah) Maliyah (Mah-lee-uh) Caydence Koop!! So we went into the city to see them and then had supper and trifle cake for Goobers birthday! It was a really great day!! I didn't get any pics of it since I left my camera at home (grrr) but this is our little sweetheart!!

My dad is blessed with 6 Granddaughters and two Grandsons. This is my dad with Shiloh and our latest niece Amiya! :)