HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Not too much is new here, I mainly just wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas. Yes, I say Happy Christmas. I'm a Harry Potter geek, which should be explaination enough if you've read the books and/or seen the movies. My gift from John won't get here in time for Christmas, but I already know what it is. Here you go:

















Again, have a great Christmas and a wonderful new year.

PS
This new year's eve will be 4 years that John and I have been married for. I've been blessed with such a wonderful eternal companion. I just want to say how grateful I am for the temple and the strength it gives to my marriage that we chose to be sealed in the temple right from day 1.

It's Done. Whew!

Okay, so I didn't pass my test, I messed up parallel parking (for the first time of course), plus I missed a pedestrian. In all honesty though, I was just so happy that it was over. I'd been so nervous before, I ended up having a panic attack and a super sore stomach that lasted a couple of days. I will probably try to take the test again, but not until the snow is gone. Right now I just want to concentrate on being a good wife and mother and just trying to get/keep our house in order.

Our weekend in Magrath was fun, but there certainly wasn't even close to enough time for visiting. 2 of John's sisters we only got to see for a few hours. Now we're just waiting for Christmas holidays. I'm really looking forward to seeing Caleb's face on Christmas morning, should be lots of fun. We're having my dad over for Christmas steak dinner as well, so that should be good.

On a side note, here's a little lesson I learned this morning. Always check in your fridge for milk for the kids before you decide that you can wait until tomorrow to get groceries. Our kids have ZERO milk until groceries tonight, which means Ty is going to be a pill all day long.

The Cat is Out of the Bag

On Friday I'm going to take a test so I can drive one of these without a licensed driver in the passenger seat:

Computer, YAY!

So we got our old computer back, and I have a disk drive that actually works again, HORRAY! I am just so frustrated with computers in general right now. They usually don't work quite right, and I really don't like transferring data from one computer over to the other, even with an external hard drive. Oh well, I'm still happy that we were able to get the old one back and that it's working better than the DELL. John says that we're never buying a DELL ever again, and after all of the problems we've had I'm inclined to agree with him.

My mum was up over the weekend, and that was a lot of fun. We got to do a lot of shopping. I got John's Christmas presents for him, so that was good. Not too much else is new in our world right now, though, I just wanted to share that I finally got my computer back and have a working disk drive again.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Our tree is up!!! Caleb begged and begged yesterday, so I decided to beg a tiny bit too, and it worked. My reasoning was pretty good, too. I don't have a lot of Christmas decorations, so my house doesn't make me feel like it's Christmas season without the tree. I feels like it now, though:) No pics yet, we're kind of waiting on our old computer to come back this week so that pictures will work again. This computer has never worked right since Caleb busted out DVD drive out.

So my calling was clarified for me yesterday. I am the Activity Days Leader, and the other lady is the assistant leader. EEK! I have lots of plans though, which I'm hoping will turn out to be lots of fun. Some examples are preparing an FHE lesson and packet, a book club night, babysitting stations to learn skills, a talent night and about 10 months more worth of stuff (I just gave you January and February). I also don't think they've been working on an article of faith every week, but we'll be starting that this week. However, I don't plan on doing treats every week, and I was just wondering if anyone knows if that's the norm or not. I was told that it's run kind of like FHE, but FHE usually has a treat, so I just wanted to make sure. We don't exactly have a huge budget for Activity Days... So anyway, I'm really excited about my calling, in case you couldn't tell, but I'm also more nervous than I've ever been for any other calling. I'm hoping that means that this will turn out to be my favourite calling yet.

New Calling

So after over 2 months of waiting for one, I got a new calling this past Sunday. I am one of the Activity Days leaders for our ward. I'm really excited about it. We have 14 active girls, so I'm sure I'll get MORE than my share of estrogen, ha ha.

I also got my dishwasher, HORRAY! We got family photos done on Saturday by Brent. He was in YSA with us in Grande Prairie. The photos on here of me, the boys and the family were all done by him. He charged me a bag of Christmas baking, which I could totally afford.

Anyways, not too much else is new here, other than lots of Christmas music being played. Here are two of my three favourite Christmas albums.

The Boy Are Back

My boys are back home, HORRAY! I was so excited when John's dad rang the doorbell when they got her that I nearly fell down the stairs I was running so fast, ha ha. More good news, we ordered our dishwasher last Friday and we'll be picking it up this coming Saturday. I am SO excited about that. I think some of the people who follow my blog know the dishwasher story, but I'm sure some of you don't, so I thought I would post it here.

Back when we were still YSAs up in Grande Prairie, a bunch of us girls were talking about household chores before church one Sunday. John piped up and said that he would expect his wife to do all of the dishes. As all of us looked at him with nothing but shock and disgust, I'm sure, he quickly added "well, I'd buy her a dishwasher". Then on fast Sunday a month or so later, I was sitting on the Edmonton Alberta Temple steps with John, trying to figure out how to tell him that I'd gotten an answer to what I was fasting about, when he didn't even know what I was fasting about. So I looked at him and said "John, I think Heavenly Father wants me to get a dishwasher". So there you have it, the joke behind the dishwasher in our marriage, PLUS the story about how I told John that I knew I was supposed to marry him.

Hope you're all having a great Remembrance Day. Even if you don't support everything our military does, still support them for being willing to do their best to serve us.