February 2009

Well, the month of January has been a very busy one. We started it off with a day ski trip with the girls. Emily had been out before but it was Jaelynn's first time (and Janelle's first time in over 13 years!) It was a great day and we left Evan behind with our nanny for the day. The next weekend Ehren took just Emily for a ski day as well. We're now looking forward to another day trip with the girls this weekend (Evan will stay behind with the Landrigans). The girls are loving it!

After we got back into the swing of things with school and extra-curricular schedules, we were set for a week and then we took off to Mexico. Janelle flew out with the kids for 10 days and Ehren joined about part way through. The kids always like getting to Nana and Papa's and they both remember being there last year. Evan's favorite thing was riding in Papa's Jeep! No car seat and all! We had a great time...took in Sea Life park, did some what watching, a couple beach days, several days at the pool, and Ehren & Janelle got in a round of golf with Blair! We returned to some colder than normal temps (of course it was in the 70's while we were gone!), but now are back to "normal".

Now that we're back Janelle has started swimming again. Ehren still continues with his three times a week swimming. Both playing hockey and biking and running. We've really enjoyed our home gym this winter as it's had a lot of use! We're currently both registered for one triathlon and will be doing a couple more yet...it's a matter of deciding what and when. We're still working on the Spanish although it's hard to fit it in to the evening with everything else going on.

Not much else is happening family wise. We're anticipating a long awaited visit from Gramma Elaine. She hasn't been here in almost a year so it'll be nice to have her visit again. She arrives early this month.

January 2009

Well, it's hard to believe that another year has gone by. Happy New Years! It feels like we just sent out our Christmas letter and now it has already been a month. We started the month off with Christmas excitement, concerts, wrapping up activities, etc. Once we got past the first couple of weeks it was quite a nice peaceful month. Janelle took on the task of painting Evan's room while Ehren kept the kids out of the paint. Once the painting started it didn't end. Janelle then took to painting the kids crawl/play space under the basement stairs. We call it "commotion in the ocean" after a book we have of sea life. We'll post pics once it's all done. We've done what we can but we're still waiting to swap out a couple lights on the ceiling. Once that's done we can paint clouds and it'll be finished. For now it looks good and the kids are excited. We learned not to cry over spilled milk, er, paint. The girls both got their shot at helping Mom paint. One managed to miss the plastic floor covering and slop green on the carpet...the other managed to string her wet brush across the wall...an easy fix at least. There were a couple glitches but it was something that we're really glad we let them participate in. The excitement in being part of the product!

We had a quiet Christmas here. It was so nice to be able to have a quiet one without the stress of traveling in the chaos. We attended Christmas Eve mass and then had dinner at the Landrigan's. We spent Christmas day here and Deana, Jay and Levi came over for a good chunk of the day. We hardly had any snow but that's ok...the little "skiff" we had was enough. It would've been weird to have had Christmas a week later as the weather has been quite mild. Temps have been in the 50's with some good Chinook winds at times.

We're now waiting for school to start next week. We made it through New Years (and had about 30 people over for a party) and then will be taking off to Puerto Vallarta in less than two weeks. Speaking of. We've been working hard at spanish. Good 'ol Rosetta Stone! We're both trying to learn spanish and have become addicted. Once we get back into our busy routine there won't be as much time but that's ok...we'll take what we can get! We'll update you after we get back and hope you all have a great New Year!