Todays events... please excuse the run-on paragraphs, as blogger refuses to acknowledge "enter".

Well, today was a good day. Infact, it was a great long-weekend follow-up sort of day. Kev is now working 10-hr days, which means he gets every Friday off to make up for the extra hours worked. And since it was a holiday on Monday, it was super duper long!! Anyway I had my ultrasound today, in Golden, at 11:00am. Golden is about an hour and a quarter drive from Invermere, so you can imagine the pain of driving along a bumpy winding BC road (nothing like Alberta's perfectly paved, straight roads) with a litre of water in my bladder. Thankfully, the lady doing the ultrasound was very reasonable, and kind, and she let me empty it a little (nobody in Kelowna let me do that with my first pregnancy ultrasound!). I forgot how detailed the exam really is! They measure absolutely every tiny body part, count each & every finger & toe, take pictures of every organ and limb at least twice (from every angle possible), and then finally allow the family (kev & attie) to come in for a little baby tour. It was fun! Kev took some time off work to come with me, which I really appreciated - it would have been a little lonely without him, staring at our tiny innocent unborn little babs all by myself. Not something to experience without your spouse. Atalie was bored immediately following the first picture of the baby, but was intersted again when the lady gave her a cute little bracelet when we were about to leave. You can see it in the pictures below, it's one of those flourescent ones us girls used to collect in the 80's/90's and wear until they fell off. The trip to the hospital was followed with a trip to McDonalds (mmm!!!) for lunch, which is always exciting, as we don't have one in Invermere. Seriously, I know. But it was. I got home to discover a message from our mortgage lady at BMO. Yeaa!! Finally, the results... much awaited results. When I got in touch with her I learned that we had to do some more figuring, not b/c of numbers or budgets, but b/c of CMHC's regulations on builders mortgages. To make a long story short, it seems that this will still likely turn out to be okay, but she has to re-submit our application, appearing with two different loans. Odd, I know. But we think it may work. So that means another few days of waiting - hopefully Friday will be our day for good and possitive answers. And I must add that this experience has been rather interesting... a mix of emotions and QUITE the learning curve(!). Waiting on mortgage/realestate results has been extremely easy-going and completely stress-free for me, I'm guessing b/c those are things which are out of my control and I trust that God will grant us favour and give these people wisdom in dealing with our matters. However, learning the building process and doing the phonecalling for quotes has been all too frusterating as I often don't really know how to ask intelligent questions on topics I know sooooo little (or nothing) about. Learning is something which I have to take control over and force myself to do, otherwise none of this will happen. God was gracious in giving me a brain but seriously, I wonder if I even know how to use it sometimes. It can be frusterating to be the instructor of a course you know nothing about - ie. building a house from scratch. So that was my day. Good. Relaxing. And lately I've even been feeling excited about all the fun details of building a house. Carpet, paint, cupboards, layouts, etc etc etc. It's fun:)

Pics of Atalie

Here's a few pictures I took today. Atalie let me sleep in this morning, which means I had no time to make her bedhead less bedheady - you'll have to excuse her cute little morning doo:) The first two are of Atalie and her new carebear which she got for her birthday... she wasn't too sure about the talking bear but was interested nonetheless:) These next two are obviously her peaking through her Little Duckling book, which she loves! She has really taken to books (we only allow her free range with the cardboard-page books, as the rest would likely be destroyed) and loves when you read to her - although you don't really get much reading done, as she loves to turn the pages rather quickly:) Upside-down always makes for a good read;)

Easter Weekend

All in all we had a great weekend:) As I mentioned, my Mom & Dad & brother came to visit us this weekend. We watched movies Friday; Saturday we slept in (till 8:00), hiked the hoodoos, went for a drive, walked by the lake, ate lots of turkey and sat out on the deck enjoying the lake-view... aaah, exactly what a long weekend should be! Atalie has been somewhat of a bear with her awful teeth coming through. But she has her moments of delight - she's quite the giggler, looooves to babble, and really loves music(!!!!). Just tonight she had us doubling over laughing as she danced to music - okay, it wasn't really music at first. Kev and I were describing to the fam. how cute it was when she'd get going to a song that has a good beat - so I displayed by singing "Old McDonald" and clapping my hands, and to our surprise, it was enough to get her excited and start a jig. Once she got going we put some better music on (she seems to like Delirious, or anything quick with a solid beat) and she pulled out allll the moves!! She did the shoulder shrug, the hip wiggle, the elbow jiggle, the slow and steady sway, the bounce, the foot tap, the hand slap... she even did a little move which requires her to sit down, bend over and toss her elbows back and forth while kinda shaking her head and moving her shoulders around. Wow! I've never seen so many moves:) We got some of it on video but I'm gonna have to figure out how to upload it onto blogger - which I'm terrible at! In the meantime, here's some other pics of the weekend (and I'm not going to try and coordinate comments with the pictures, as blogger just messes it all up anyway). I'll mention that the first couple you see with a lake are taken just infront of our house on Windermere Lake. After that it's mostly at the Hoodoos National Park close to Fairmont.

question!

Okay, so I guess things are working now. Great!! You'll notice I've played around with some colour;) However, I'm wondering why all my posts are running into each other. For example, you'll see below that the comments above the first 3 pictures have to do with atalie's birthday, then immediately following the last sentence there's a new sentence which belongs above the next set of pictures for kevins birthday... and so on and so on. then there's paragraph structure, which is absolutely everywhere. anytime i hit enter for a new paragraph it still shows up immediately following the previous sentence in the previous paragraph. ?? it's all shmushed together. this is very annoying. solutions?

pictures too?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!! wowwee!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have a few pics of attie's birthday weekend, but unfortunately forgot to snap a few more with the digital... most were taken with my film camera so you'll miss out on some good cake pics. shucks. that's okay, here's some cuties of the big birthday girl!! The theme of Kev's party was wigs. Some forgot their weigs but the ones who brought them looked hilariously wicked:) Good times. -oops about the sideways picture of kev and his cake - too difficult to change it after uploading all the other pics around it. oh well. I have a before and after shot of the weekend. Cute little attie in her cargo capris on the deck, enjoying the warm spring sunshine; and Monday morning with a foot of fresh snow... uck! Here we have little pumpkin, lounging around with a bit of a fever and feeling crumby. She sits in this chair for hours at a time these last few days. Doesn't seem to mind either.

trying again

... - shocking - ... ! can you believe it???? i'm seeing what i've written on the screen! wow. so much to say! can i say it all before blogger disapoints me again? Better begin! Okay, well... two weeks ago was Atalie's very first birthday - my only regret is that I didn't initiate a round of "Happy Birthday" before she attempted to "blow" (touch) out her candle. Otherwise, it was a great day spent with friends and family. She was overwhelmed with gifts and has been exploring her new toys ever since:) Our trip to Lethbridge was all too short - and too quick! I was driving to and from town all weekend long, running errands, grocery shopping, getting a haircut/colour (which i discovered my stylist cancelled and didn't bother to inform me. ugh. thankfully a kind girl happened to have a moment and fit me into her bookings... the short story)... then there's always visiting to be done, which is the highlight of course, but seeing so many people makes for less quality visits unfortunately. The next weekend (last) was Kev's big 30th party, which was kept a surprise for a whopping 3 months, all the way up to the moment everyone yelled, "SURPRISE!!!". Can you believe it?!?!? These people are awesome! Best kept secret yet:) We had a bbq, a fire, lots of birthday cake, a million pots of coffee, and lots of good friends/family to share it with:) :) All in all, a great day! This coming weekend my family is coming to visit us for Easter... yea!!! We're doin the whole turkey dinner thing, lots of lounging, some games or movies perhaps, and likely a visit to the hotsprings:) Always promising. Atalie however.... has been one miserable little one year old this week. She's been teething like crazy - I think there must be more than one coming in. Plus she had a fever on and off for a couple days, even today a bit. Tylenol has been her best friend, although I try to only give it when she seems unable to bear the discomfort. She's mostly just lethargic and needs lots of attention, hugs, cuddles, story books, other means of distraction, and much much more... she doesn't eat much either and milk is her 2nd best friend. I've spent the last few days sitting and holding her while she sleeps b/c otherwise she doesn't sleep well, has too short of naps, thus is very very very cranky and I can't get anything done anyways... so I enjoy the moment of cuddling and usually nod off with her:) To top it all off she had four needles (4 big pokes in the legs!) on Wednesday. Her sweet chubby little innocent legs! She screamed like never before and was probably wondering why I just sat there, holding her down and letting it all happen... poor little pook. What a mean mommy! Anyway, life goes on (thank goodness!) and soon she was thrilled to shake the little "distraction" bell sitting conveniently nearby for all the poor little babies who cry during these episodes. In other news, we are moving ahead with preliminary plans to build a house. (how was that for a newspaper headline aye? ehh??) I've been working my butt off the last few weeks to come up with numbers and figures for estimates, running to and from the bank, the realtors, kev's work (which is a 1/2hr away on a nasty backroad, just so he can sign papers), the floor store, the hardware store, checking emails, sending faxes (at 1.50 per sheet!!!!!), photocopying plans, drawing plans (apparently I, along with my Father and husband, are now architects), picking siding, shingles, da di da di da... the list goes on. Busy! Much stress at times. We currently sit patiently waiting (really, actually, patiently) to hear back from our mortgage lady at the bank. We're waiting to hear if CMHC (the bank has to go through their insurance company before approving you when you put less than 25% down on any mortgage) will approve our budgeted amount, compared to our financial means. The numbers we've come up with were WAY higher than expected, but we think we can afford the payments if approved. Besides, the bank makes you give estimates of every last material and labour cost, even if you're planning to do it yourself. Thus, you end up with a much larger mortgage than necessary - which is okay, b/c this means there's room for error or changes along the way, as we'll be saving money in the labour area. When all is said and done, we can even put what we don't use back into the mortgage to shrink it down a bit... but when you think of all the possibilities: a deck, a finished basement for guests to sleep and kids to play in, a garage, a garden shed, a fence (whoda thunk a fence would ever take priority?!), a little sod, a nice sectional to watch movies on (we have one couch right now), etc etc etc... it becomes very unrealistic that any of it will be put back. So that's that. We should hear back by Tuesday or Wednesday. Pray please:) Thanks. Well, I'm off to bed as my daughter wakes daily at 7:30am -which isn't bad if you go to bed when she does, but it's a little late at the moment. Good night!