Happy New Year One and All !

I hope you all had a wondrous Christmas and a great 2007 year to come.

Update - baby Jack is adorable and for my birthday (Dec. 27th - Christmas birthdays.....don't get me started.....) Darrell is flying me to Calgary for a visit ! YAHOOOOOOOO...... I leave on the 4th until the Sunday.

House - we have really been ploughing through the jobs at the new house. I just yesterday finished the faux finish on the living room/dining room. Big job out of the way. We have also removed a sliding glass door (2 on the same wall???) and replaced it with a picture window as well as moved a wall downstairs and re-drywalled it. Lots more to do but it's coming.

So, as promised here are some before pictures of the new place. After pics will be a few days perhaps but you will get the idea of what we started with. The top pic is part of the family room - carpets ripped up, will be painted this week and the sliding glass door that is now a window.

The kitchen shows the half wall that has now been torn down and the whole kitchen has been gutted to the walls (cabinets arrive Jan. 24th) and Darrell tiled the floor in a gorgeous 18 inch tile I chose. The room that looks like a workshop is going to be the one-bedroom suite and work has already started down there. The picture of the living room/dining room is before being painted and I didn't like the bannister so we ripped that down to make a more open room. Great stone fireplace in this room.

Baby Jack - one day old

All is well and I think Anna & Mike will be taking my beautiful nephew home today. How cute is he??????? SOOOOO CUTE !

Baby Has Arrived !

Praise the Lord ! Little baby Jack Mason came into the world in the last hour and Mum and babe are both healthy. 8 lb, 2 oz and 21 inches long. Well done Anna - I'm very proud of you.

Sleep well little prince.
Love your Auntie Rachel

2nd Baby Update ......

Well, because I'm such an impatient sister and because it's 11:30am I phoned the Labour & Delivery ward of Foothills Hospital to see if my sister had a room lined up yet. The very kind receptionist told me no, because she was still in the delivery room but assured me that the baby was going to be born in the next half hour. YIPPEEEEEEE.........can't wait...........stay tuned..........

Anna......and Baby Update!

Well, the baby is on the way. My sister started labouring at 3am yesterday (Monday) and was inconsistent until later in the afternoon. She stayed home as long as possible (way to go!) and went into the hospital at 10:30pm last night when they were 3 or 4 minutes apart. I hoped to wake up to a new nephew (it's a boy!) but instead woke to a phone call to say she's 9cm. Poor thing - still, any moment now. I'll keep you updated.

Is the crash and burn-out coming soon?

Ok - I think I'm done. OH! Christmas shopping you're all thinking aren't you? Negative. Done with cleaning, scrubbing and tidying. I've been doing it at the new house and I've been doing it daily at the old house as Darrell put us on the "You can call us with very little notice to show our house to your clients" list.

So last night I hit the hay at 2:30am and woke at 7:30am. Got to work 40 minutes late. YES - 40 !!! Every morning there is the burden of cleaning your house well enough that if a realtor phoned and said someone is coming through, you would feel it was clean enough to present. Well everyone knows that 'realtor clean' is not the same as 'family clean'. So I scurry around after Darrell & the kids leave for school and clean up after all of us. And quite frankly, I'm knackered.

So as a result I am way behind on Christmas shopping, baking, cooking etc. But we did get our tree last Saturday. This year's theme is silver and gold. You can blame my Mum for my insane need to decorate in different colour schemes each year. She always did it and now I too continue the tradition.

Sorry - this is a weak post but I'm tired.... (see above). OH - but we did have a great evening Tuesday at the Tom Jackson benefit held at our church. The band was great and though I do say so myself I think our choir sounded pretty darn good too.

I'm out.............hope you're all finding real PEACE somewhere amidst the whackiness......

Live from Victoria....it's Saturday Night !

My good friend Rayael had a vision for a young adults (18-35ish) semi-formal banquet with a SNL theme. Well, due to her brilliant planning and expertise at bash-throwing, there were 135 of us enjoying SNL skits and great food. Well done my friend! You outdid yourself.

Jake and Katie did a brilliant rendition of the Spartans, Rayael and Elise were outstanding as the Sweeney Sisters and Aaron....well let's just say Elvis' gyrations had nothing on him.

Here's a few pics from the grand event, including one of the centrepieces.