+25 Beach and BBQ weather. We bought a sprinkler for the lawn and Edzea got to play in it. Brought out her kiddie pool and enjoyed the summer weather sans bugs so far.

Here are some pics from last weekend at Paul and Amanda’s house of the younger ones. Rohan, Madyson and Owen. Madyson is Haydon’s little sister and Owen is Georgia’s little brother. Supposedly (I didn’t see it) but our little one was kicking and kicking and kicking and moving like crazy (surprise, surprise) when the babies were all lying there and the rest were pretty much stationary. He’s going to play soccer for sure!

Rohan is 3 months, Madyson 2 1/2 mos and Owen about a week 1/2 older than Rohan. Rohan is the longest. So maybe basketball too? or Pairs Ice Dance?

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Here are some pics from last weekend and from Tim’s paternity leave week. We had a busy long weekend. A birthday party at Haydon’s house for his Daddy Paul on Saturday night. See pics of Edzea pulling Georgia in the wagon and then Haydon pulling the girls. It was a beautiful day. The bugs are not out yet so we’ve spent plenty of time outdoors.

The next night I forgot my camera but Yose & Maria invited us to go for a bbq picnic at the Yellowknife River which was great again. Beautiful weather and they brought their canoe and Edzea got to go for a ride which she loved.

Emily’s 2nd birthday party was on Saturday and all Edzea cared about was the cake. She embarassingly kept yelling out “where’s the cake” during the very very sedate/quiet gift opening. You can see she enjoys her cake our girl.

We took her to Canadian Tire on Wednesday after her day at Nancy’s house to pick out a new tricycle which was a gift from Grandma & Grandpa. She is enjoying it and slowly learning to pedal. She’s still a little small for it but she likes to try!

For the first time in AGES, Edzea played by herself in her sandbox giving Mommy & Daddy a break for a change. We are LOVING our sandbox! She is starting to discover that not having Mommy & Daddy constantly hovering over you isn’t so bad. You can take off your socks & shoes in your sandbox and start covering your whole body with sand. She kept looking over her shoulder to see if we were looking while she did this. We pretended not to notice until later as we were happy she was occupying herself for a change! Here we come Mabel Lake beaches!

Oh, there’s also a pic of Daddy’s sandwich presentation for lunch one day. Daddy is experiencing all aspects of being a stay-at-home Dad…he’s decided that work is less stressful. At least people “pretend” to do what you say there. They don’t throw themselves on the ground in fits of defiance.

Ok, enjoy the pics.

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So we spent the day at home today as we were trying to have Edzèa get over her cold before her “way too big” birthday party on Saturday.

Key points from today. When Tim and I went into her room at 7am to sing “Happy Birthday” to her, she asked: where’s my cake? My Cake? See it. I want to see it.

She repeated this over and over again until she was distracted by her pile of presents on the dining room table and her anticipation of waffles for breakfast.

She received: a pair of Flower gumboots from Bumpa, she will be receiving a tricycle from Grandma & Grandpa (pending the re-opening of the channel on the Mackenzie River), lots of cute clothes from Bumpa & Nana as well as a pile of Dr.Seuss books and two great puzzles. Mom & Dad gave her an easel with a chalkboard on one side, a bubble machine, sunglasses and the big hit of the day: soft pom pom balls which she played with for the majority of the day.

Since she asked for a cake and I wasn’t planning on having one for her thinking she wouldn’t notice…(oops…I forget who my daughter is)-I ended up getting a cake and putting a #2 candle on it. We brought it in and she was happy but commented on two things afterwards…

“Where are my kids?” and looked around kind of forlornly. We tried to explain that all of her “kids” would be coming on Saturday. And then she commented “1 candle”. She knew she should have had two. Who knew????

Anyways, this is a quick and dirty post just to mark down the fun moments.

Oh, also, when she and Nana were playing for a while and Nana commented on her pretty new skirt. She replied” It’s from the Sally Ann.”

Which it wasn’t!!! I actually bought this outfit new for a change but we got a good laugh out of it.

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Here are some pics from Georgia’s 3rd Birthday party today. Princess theme. There is also a pic of Rohan happily having his bath last night.

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Well it’s been a busy month. Grandma Froehler just left today. Here are some pics from the past month. We are on our own with the two kids now. Luckily, Rohan continues to be an easy baby.

Edzèa has a terrible cold right now so she isn’t quite so easy to deal with when she is sick but we managed ok today without Grandparents. I’m going to use up everything in the freezer over the next month I’m sure.

We’ve had lots of lovely gifts and visits from friends which are much appreciated. Edzèa loves her little brother and it’s hard to keep her away from him while she is coughing away. I am hoping that he doesn’t catch her cold but we’ll wait and see. I’m on antibiotics at the moment so maybe that is saving the two of us!

The Easter bunny comes this weekend and Edzèa is excited about this. We have a group Easter Egg Hunt/Party planned for Saturday at Tim’s work. Our weather is improving again. We are actually forecasted to have positive temperatures this week! Yay!

Enjoy the pics and I’ll write when I get a chance.

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Well, our handsome son arrived on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 5:03 am. Labor was unexpectedly quick and went very smoothly pain & all. We left for the hospital at about 8pm on Tuesday night after having contractions during dinner. At 11pm the nurses told me it was up to me whether we stayed or not as they felt I was not in active labor although I was 5 cm dilated. I opted to stay and within the hour was having hard and fast contractions which continued to pick up until he came out after pushing for 20 minutes-DRUG FREE!!! Not by choice….

I asked for an epidural an hour before he was born and they told me I was too late. UGH!!! But I made it! and he was delivered well and was alert and easy from the beginning.

He’s been a doll so far. Very even-tempered, likes to sleep, good feeder. We are just extending our stay in the hospital for another day so they can monitor his jaundice. It seems that I’m not supposed to let him sleep for 4/5 hour stretches without feeding him. Darn it!!! So, I have to wake him up every 2 hours now to feed but he casually goes right back to sleep in his bassinette again. So far, so good.

We all think he looks like Tim.  He seems to have more hair than Edzea did at this stage and he seems a little swarthier skinned and skinnier.

He was 7 lbs 12 oz at birth and 19. 75 inches long. He has long fingers/toes/feet and he is really sweet.

That’s all for now. Edzea isn’t quite sure what to think of him yet but we’ll see how she does when we get home.

Here are some of the first pics taken by the nurses.

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Here’s our girl after she got into her dress-up box last night. We weren’t sure where she was as we were sitting in the living room. She ran in yelling “Hi!!!” and we couldn’t stop laughing. Enjoy.

Happy New Year to all! We had a great celebration at our house this year. From 4pm onwards, young families arrived until we totalled: 8 toddlers (Edzèa, Dylan, Mackenzie, Haydon, Connor, Georgia, Mo Mo, Henry and baby Desiree) and 16 adults (Gillian & Pierre, Amanda, Paul & Amanda’s mom Judy, Gina & Stuart, Xiao Yi and John, Ivy, Tracey & Markham, Carolyn & Glen, Myself & Tim). This is a reminder for me for years to come!

We had appetizers from 4-6pm and then had lasagne, shepard’s pie, ratatouille, spinach salad and garlic bread for the main course. Everyone brought a little something to help out. I made homemade coffee/chocolate mousse for dessert.

All of the kids were great all night with no meltdowns although I’ve since heard from parents that their kids were so wound up that they didn’t sleep well that evening. We certainly didn’t. We had Mackenzie overnight who woke up at 3am and started Edzèa on an all night/morning fuss. Unfortunately, when Edzèa gets jolted out of her deep sleep in the night, she doesn’t go back to sleep very deeply afterwards.

We had the kids decorate party hats right before we celebrated the New Year at 7:45pm. I thought that most people would head home afterwards but the kids were having so much fun that we went straight up to the bath afterwards and we had two baths going with the kids. Needless to say, it was the only area I hadn’t cleaned and wasn’t expecting the party to move upstairs! I’ll know better for next time!

Everyone loves our house for parties like this. It has a very good design for parties with kids/people so everyone would like to do this again next year. I’ve had a few people ask us to host again because of our house. We agreed but only if it’s potluck. Tracey and Markham offered their house after their extension is finished so we’ll just play it by ear.

We had a pancake breakfast at Tracey & Markham’s house on New Year’s Day and we are now slowly winding down and looking forward to going back to our routine next week. Next Saturday, Daddy is taking Edzèa to gymnastics as a Daddy/Daughter bonding time…plus, I can’t carry her and do a lot of the things she needs help with there anymore…as you can see from my BULK in the New Year’s Pictures.

Hope you all had a great New Year’s and we look forward to February now!

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