9 Years!

Yesterday, Doug and I celebrated our 9Th anniversary. It was a busy, but wonderful day.

The nine years have gone by quickly and I can honestly say that I love Doug more today than I did on our wedding day.

Two Weddings and a Funeral

June is wedding month for our family. Doug and I each have the last of our single siblings, getting married this month. Janelle's wedding will be pretty relaxing for us for the most part. Doug is an usher and I have to look after the punch table for in between ceremony and reception. Oh ya and we have to try to keep an eye on Brandon during the out door ceremony. Did I mention that it was going to be relaxing? Well let me change that to busy but still enjoyable. As for my sister's wedding, things will be great for me since I am flying out by myself. No boys to keep track of. My dress for the wedding is at the seamstress right now. I chose to do the dress with the v-neck, but I'm getting sleeves put on, since that is a requirement at the church she is getting married in. Now I just need to get some sandals for the weddings and decide whether or not to get a pedicure done. $40, is it worth it???



Don't worry, we don't have a funeral to go to in June, but I do feel that I death has occurred in my life. A death of a dream that is. I have had a certain dream/desire ever since I was a little girl and just recently I have come to realize that it wasn't in God's plan for my life. I did pray for God's will to be done in my life regarding that dream and that I would be OK with whatever the outcome was. Turns out that the outcome was different than I had hoped and of course that makes me sad, but I have to trust that God knows best. He can see the big picture, and besides sometimes life is not all about me.



Brandon has really been testing our patience lately. Ever since his ear infection he wants to sleep in bed with us and he can't seem to fall asleep without me laying beside him. Although he seems to go to sleep OK when I'm not around, so maybe he'll break that habit when I'm in Ontario. Brandon also is very ready to be potty trained. Anytime he has a wet diaper he takes it off. Hopefully we'll have our new toilet in soon so I can begin the task of potty training.



The other two boys only have a month of school left. Which includes activity day, swimming, and children's festival field trip for Cameron. Overall I think that the school year went quite well. Anytime I would ask Cameron how school was he would tell me that it was the best like always.
They both never complained about having to go to school and would always seem to look forward to it.



The bathroom renovations are slowly getting done. It turned out to be quite a big job. But the end is in sight. All we have left to do is plumbing for the sink and toilet and finishing up the vanity and linen closet. Hopefully I'll get to post pictures of the new bathroom soon.



I also starting work at the restaurant/boat rental store again. So far things are going pretty good. I don't mind the work. Last year I really didn't like the waitressing part, but this year I'm more comfortable doing it and actual enjoy it. I only work on evenings and weekends so Doug watches the boys when I'm gone. Which is a great bonding time for them all. I also see my job as a great ministry opportunity. I have already been able to share about my faith with one of the high school girls that I work with.

It it also anniversary month for Doug and I. On the 10Th we celebrate 9 years of marriage. The 9 years have gone by quickly and pretty much uneventful. We have moved once (from a two bedroom apartment to the house we now own), Doug has gone from working part time at the family business to full time, and I have worked on and off at the DQ and now this restaurant. Oh ya, the biggest change for us has been that we are now parents of three boys. When we were first married I read a stat about how much time the average married couple spent together talking and it was only a few minutes a day. Back then I just couldn't believe that would ever happen to us because we were spending two or more hours a day together. Well 9 years later I believed that it has happened. In between our jobs, rushing the boys off to soccer and meetings we only get a few precious minutes a day together to talk. Especially since Brandon joins us in our bed every night. I really think that we need to start a regular date night once a month.

Coloring Pages

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A month from today I fly out to my sister's wedding. I'm very excited, yet I know that it is going to come quickly. Especially since Janelle's wedding is a week before I leave and we have family coming out for that. I also started work again for the summer. I'm working at the same place as last summer.

Anyway back to my sister's wedding. At the reception table they are going to have colouring pages for the kids (and adults) to coloring while you wait to eat. They wanted a picture of a boy and girl sitting on a park bench with a rainbow behind them. I volunteered to look for a picture since she is busy wrapping up teaching another school year, planning a wedding and hanging out with her fiance. And besides she doesn't have the Internet at home.

I had a picture in my mind of what I thought she wanted and figured that it wouldn't be too hard to find. Well it turns out that it was harder than I expected. But I did find some cute pictures. Which one do you like best? (You can vote on the side bar).

Decorating Advice From Christine!

As most of you already know, we have been busy doing renovations to our house. Before we got started I had asked for advice from a professional decorator-who has a blog answering questions related to decorating. When she didn't answer my questions we just went ahead and did what we thought was best. Anyway about a month ago she emailed me wanting to know if I still had questions. I was surprised that she even remembered that I wrote in. I didn't reply to the email because we had already gone ahead and did the renovations. Anyway I was shocked this morning when I noticed that she answered my questions on her blog. She gave a lot of great advice that I wish we would have gotten before we started. But there was also some advice she gave that we can still do and that had to do with our dining set.

Also this morning I read a great post about how many children a person should have. In the Christian world you get so many different opinions on that topic. I thought that the article addressed the subject wonderfully.

Student Of The Month

Cameron received the student of the month in his class for the month of April.

His teacher commented on the certificate that Cameron tries his best, is ready to participate and always follows directions.

I would also like to add that Cameron has a great imagination, is very clever, he loves to teach others things he knows about or things he knows how to do and he is a joy to be around.

Our Bathroom

Doug and I (OK, I'll admit that Doug did most of the work) worked really hard on Friday evening and Saturday morning to get our bathroom looking like this:

AFTER
BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

I realize that the before pictures look better that the after....at least I hope they do. But we did work really hard gutting the bathroom. It was a big job to tear everything out and patch some holes. Doug also had to remove the drywall around the tub because of some mold issues. Ah yes, the joy of owning an older home.

The rest of this week we'll spend doing some drywall mudding, painting, and plumbing. Then will come the fun part of putting in the new vanity, linen closet, toilet, tub and flooring.

I'm so thankful that we have a second bathroom in the basement and I am also very thankful that I have a handy husband who can do most of the work himself.

Hoppy Birthday Brandon!!

Brandon turned 2 on Saturday. We had fun celebrating with family and friends. He enjoyed opening his gifts and was pretty good at it too.

Brandon ate his cupcake carefully. He hates getting his hands dirty. He takes after his Grandpa Kroeker.

There were many bunnies who came to the party. Anson being one of them.