Windermere sites:)

I think I'll miss this place more than I realize, as we have to move out next month. I must have seen at least 10 eagles fly by our house, over the lake today - whether or not they were all the same eagle I can't really tell;) There are so many around here, it's unreal!! They're busy catching fish and pulling up seaweed for their nests. I got a picture of one eating a fish up ontop of a telephone pole this evening and thought I'd post it. It's with our little point-and-shoot digital of course, so it's certainly not the best quality (!) ... aw well.

Another visit to the doctor

I went to see Dr. Dibb today. She's my new doc here in Invermere - she's extremely laid back, has a friendly small town attitude about her and kinda dresses like she's going out for a walk or grocery shopping or something:) Gotta love the Kootenays. Anyway, she's fantastic. I had a regular prenatal checkup this morning, as I am now officially 20wks. She reviewed my ultrasound results and mentioned that the radiology clinic happened to reveal the sex of the baby on the form(!)... which apparently, they have NEVER done. So she said anytime I want to know I can. Eegad, why the temptation????? Kev and I decided that this one would be a surprise b/c we chose to find out Atalie's gender before she was born (mostly my doing as I wanted to prepare with some girlie clothes and girlie decorating in her room). So I stuck to my guns and said, "no. we'll wait." Shucks. Curiosity is killing me! Anyway, she also mentioned that the plecenta is slightly lower than it ought to be... which isn't the norm. It is supposed to move upward as the baby grows but can occassionally move downward towards the cervix, which, in worst case scenarios, would block the "exit" on delivery day. However, the radiologist didn't request a second ultrasound (only 1 is necessary in most pregancies) so she said it's nothing to be too concerned over. But just to be on the cautious side she's sending me back for a 2nd ultrasound at 30wks. I don't mind though, it's fun seeing the little babs grow and flale around, even inspite of the hour drive with a full bladder. Other than that, everything looks great and the baby weighs 10oz, exactly average. So as far as predictions, I'm going to be brave and say that I think this one is a boy; Kev isn't making any predictions, which may be smart really. And honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it were a girl... who knows???

Blessings

So I know that I've had a farely light-hearted blog site. That is until now. I feel like posting something a little more serious today. It is long, beware. A friend and myself were sitting out on the front deck this afternoon, basking, uninterupted, in the sun, as our lil' children slept. We've been having a series of conversations about words. Here's what we've been thinking: There are 32 references in the back of my bible which relate to the word, "Word(s)". There is one verse which speaks about "words speaking life and death", however, I can't seem to find this verse in any of those 32 references (does anybody know where that verse is??). Anyway, to jump ahead a little I'll begin with an example: Kev and I have experienced extreme difficulty financially - both before and during our 4 years of marriage. So many things have gone wrong at the exact wrong times. I remember often saying things (in frusteration, or just jokingly) like, "Just our luck" or "of course" or "should have seen it coming" or "why me?" or "we can never get ahead"... sometimes we'd find ourselves saying things previous to having experienced those unfortunate incidences such as, "with our luck" or "just wait, this will happen just as we're getting ahead"... sometimes we'd even bring God into the situation by saying things like, "why doesn't God provide?" and "it's just not mean to be"... the list goes on and I'm sure some of those are familiar to some/all of you. So we began to take our situation very seriously, as we had had enough(!). Financial burdens were taking over our lives and making us miserable. We began to pray daily about this, infact it was more like 10-50 times a day - whenever it popped into my mind anyway. We declared victory, blessing and favour over our lives and renounced the devils plans otherwise; we asked God to protect us and deliver us from this debt we unknowingly got into; we asked for wisdom to know how to handle our finances and speak to us in every area which needed addressing. Soon we were given opportunities to speak with people who were knowledgeable in the area of $$. We also decided to tithe, regardless of our situation (which i MUST add, did not seem to make a difference at first or even soon thereafter, and we were very tempted to screw the whole idea as we continued to go into further debt and became more stressed, regardless of where our money did or didn't go). It was an all out war! But there was one aspect which was quite exciting about being at war. It was knowing that God had already won victory and even though we were feeling the utmost frusterated at this point, the air would clear and we would come out ontop. It seems that God gave me a burst of hope knowing that He was there inspite of what we felt and saw. What fun:) In the "end" God gave Kevin favour at work with a raise or two (not huge or anything); he kept us healthy and able to work; he brought us an opportunity (and very large leap of faith!) to invest in a condo, which we sold 6 months later and cleared our debt completely; he gave us wisdom in purchasing a reliable vehicle; he showed us how to invest our money for Atalie's future as well as our own; and now he's given us the opportunity (and once again, VERY large leap of faith) to build a home in which we will continue to invest both our finances and lives in. Now, after that length story I'll get to my point: Words do speak life and death. I once belived that prayer should solve everything (it was a very long time ago I admit, but it's always a long developing process out of those ways of thinking). However, prayer is and isn't enough. It is a necessary part of our relationship with God, thus our lives on earth - but unless we act on God's voice in that conversation, it simply isn't enough. So when it comes to us listening to & obeying him, why do we choose to compromise his abilities by saying things which bring upon disaster in our lives? I considered today what kind of things I say in the span of a single day, and I was shocked! I have spoken about colds and flus as though they are simply a part of life which are to be delt with as we get them. Now realistically, we all know that viruses are carried physically, thus everyone is suseptible. But why would I invite that into my life by making verbal assumptions? And what about vehicles breaking down? Sure accidents happen which aren't always our fault, but why send out an invitation for the devil to tinker with my vehicle so that it breaks down the next week, or to bring along someone in my path who happens to be talking on a cellphone instead of watching where they're going? Then there's disease. They are not understood and have brought so much death and suffering that this topic seems unbearable to even bring to the surface - however I can't help but think of the fact that my Grandma died of cancer, and that i once heard cancer skips a generation... where does that leave me? Well, if I have a choice in the matter I'm going to do everything I can not to get it. That means speaking life and health over my life and renouncing any ties to disease which the devil may have tried to bring down the line of genetics; it also means living a healthy lifestyle and not expecting God to work miracles while we work so hard against them. Here's another example, a sort of silly example, but a good one:) I had alot of dental work done when I was younger, and I know full well the misery of sitting in that chair for hours, listening to the drill buzz in you ear (uuughck, makes me shutter!). So when the dentist told me, as a teenager, that I would probably need to have my wisdom teeth removed in a few years, I panicked. My panick lead me to pray harder than ever, praying for those stinkin teeth to grow in straight and for God to make plenty of room for them, with no hastles in the future whatsoever!! Currently, they've all come in and I've had no problems. Many have advised that I should still get them removed b/c of horror stories they've heard of the teeth growing into sinus cavities, etc etc... but I'm sticking to my choice of victory. And that silly story brings together my thoughts: Why do we settle for average, or less, when we can take a risk of speaking blessing into our lives and have so much more?! Okay well that's all. That's my sermon for the day:) or perhaps the year:) .. we'll see.

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.