Blair's Blog

The Christmas season is upon us once again! For the kids, the wait has been interminable, yet for us adults it seems that December has returned all too soon. The months roll by quickly and the final days of 2007 are at hand. We hope that the year past has been a good one for you and wish you all the best this Christmas and for the New Year ahead.

2007 was a busy year, as they all are with a growing family. The biggest event of our year was the basement development at the beginning of the year. We managed to go from ill-organized storage space into a place for the family to really enjoy. We’ve got lots of room for entertaining and playing games and have even joined the 90’s with a home theater! The major effort was from the start of January when the contractors showed up until the middle of April when the furniture and window blinds were in place. We did as much as we could ourselves, with the help of the extended family and spent many a night cleaning up or working on different tasks. I did all of the low voltage wiring, a bit of the electrical, installed a cork floor with Brenda and painted the walls with my brother Scott. The end result is everything that we had hoped for and we are happily making use of the basement every day now.

With all of our spare energy (and cash) focused on the basement development in the first part of the year we found ourselves taking a pretty relaxed, low key approach to the remainder of 2007. For summer holidays, I took the first week of July and then all of the Fridays for the rest of the summer so we had 6 long weekends! Since both of Brenda’s brothers and their families are now living in the Rocky Mountain House area, we were up that way several times during the year for family get-togethers, camping, swimming at Crimson Lake and helping out with a kid’s vacation Bible camp for a week in July. The cousins all had good times with each other exploring the woods, playing in the creek behind Uncle Barry’s house or blasting along trails in Uncle Ronny’s 8-wheeled Argo.

As summer turned to fall we celebrated my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary with an open house at our place. My brothers and I prepared a retrospective slide show and we had nearly 80 guests come by to help celebrate the occasion. Brenda did a great job organizing food and photographer and was a wonderful hostess. It was a very nice day and it was good to see so many of my Mom and Dad’s friends come out to wish them well.

The kids are all in the same school this year, Heritage Christian Academy in Calgary – the school is very good and reasonably close to my workplace, so I can often either drop off or pick up the kids so that Brenda doesn’t have to do the ‘double commute’ every day. Steven is now 10 years old and in Grade 5, he is our reader and thinker, who loves books and is also growing stronger and more athletic each year. Mark is 8 and in Grade 2, he is still the animal lover in the family and always has a quick smile and twinkling eyes. Alyssa is 5 and attending Kindergarten two full days a week, she loves to dress up for school (and everything else) and is very creative, constantly making crafts with paper, paints, scissors or yarn.

The kids are all growing and maturing so much, it’s hard to believe that the baby days are so far behind us. All three kids have been taking gymnastics classes throughout this year and have all been gaining strength and agility as they learn the various skills on the rings, bars or trampoline. Even so, I think that play time in the foam pit is their favourite activity! We’ve been fortunate to have them all in classes that run concurrently on Monday evenings so we only have one evening out each week.

My year has flown by; the highlight was seeing the basement floor plans that I’d worked on over the past few years coming to life. It was all very tiring, but a nice change from my day job. Speaking of which, I am still with General Dynamics working in our process improvement group and we managed to complete two significant projects this year that we’ve been working towards since 2004. The next year should be interesting as my team will begin to get more involved in the day-to-day work of some of our projects developing military communications systems.

Brenda’s interests and activities have evolved again this year as she has a bit more time of her own with Alyssa in Kindergarten. Brenda’s interest in education and learning has continued to be a strong theme for her – this year expressed by being the Director of Alyssa’s preschool until June and, more recently, through volunteering one day a week at the kid’s school in their classrooms. In addition to Brenda’s role as a “Fun Mom” she has added the title “Fun Aunt”. When her brothers are in Calgary working we’ve had them bring along one of the older nieces and nephews on each of the trips. It’s been a pleasure to get to know the kids as individuals and treat them to a few special outings.

As the year closes out, we have already had our pre-Christmas “Sinterklaas” celebration with Brenda’s side of the family. The 4 families rented chalets at a resort in the mountains on the 1st weekend of December and had a great time together as we took over the resort’s lodge. We played games, and spent time in the pool and ate way to much good food. To round out the Christmas holidays I’m taking vacation to match the time that the kids are off school. This year we are hosting Christmas dinner with my side of the family at our place and we’re looking forward to lots of family time and, who knows, maybe a bit of skating on the lake.

Have a very blessed Christmas and a happy New Year!

Tags: Christmas Update

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