Phoenix

So, you may have noticed my absence last week? No? It's ok, my blogging hasn't been exactly regular these last few months (although I have been making an effort to blog more regularly, so you know, when you make the effort to click over here, there will actually be something new to check out).

Anyway.... last week Jamie, Donovan and I, took what would be his last free flight down to Phoenix (more specificlly Fountain Hills), Arizona to visit my parents at the vacation home they reciently purchased.

They bought this home last summer, and yes, it took them THIS long to convince us to go down there. You see, Phoenix was never on my "must go see list". For some reason I never really understood the big excitement about it. I thought it would be much better to go to Mexico for a week and relax at an all inclusive, or go to I don't know, there are a number of places Jamie and I have talked about, and Phoenix was never one of them.

That all changed when we got off the plane a couple Thursdays ago (my birthday actually) and felt that Hot Hot air on our skin (Jamie and I are both hot weather people), saw all the catus' and the rest of the beautiful environment, walked into my parents beautiful home, and then stumbled into the backyard to see this:

Of course, shortly after seeing that, we did this:

And we sat back, relaxed, enjoyed ourselves, and well, life was good.

And people, I am not lying when I tell you this, I am a Phoenix Convert. I LOVE Phoenix, and I can't wait until our next trip down there!

First a word or two about the weather. People, it was HOT, I'm talking +44'C (or 118'F) hot. And it was beautiful! The pool heater was turned off (obviously) and from just the heat of the sun, never dipped below 88' and most days stayed around 92' (one day it even got as hot as 97'). And it was WONDERFUL. We were in the pool, at least twice a day, and the first dip usually being somewhere between 6 and 8am, depending on what time Donovan got us up at, and how quickly we ate breakfast.

We spent most of our time around the house, which was perfect, as the intention of this trip was to relax and unwind. Jamie and I like to travel with no schedule, to get up in the morning and decide what to do that day. That by the way, drives my dad NUTS, and I think it almost killed him to not have a plan. So for his benift, we did make a tentive schedule, and would even go as far as to suggest what we might be doing the next day.

And on Sunday, that ment Jamie and I taking off in the morning on a little adventure.

(please note, these next few pictures are over exposed. Donovan dropped my camera onto the tile floor while we were down there. On inital inspection I thought just the UV lens had cracked, but after using the camera for about a day and a half, I realized there was some pretty serious damage done to the lens, which resulted in my loosing the last 35mm of the lens (it would no longer focus at that range) and also the sever over exposure of my pictures. I think a mechanisim jammed somewhere that caused the apature to be stuck at a wide open setting. Anyway, I really wanted to get this post up before things got too busy around here, so I haven't had a chance to photoshop these pictures into a better image. Also, after relaizing what had happened to my lens, I got a new one, so you won't have to put up with the crappy pictures for long).

Of course, we had to get a little shopping in, and I have been dying to get to a Carters Childerns outlet store for, well how old is Donovan? Two? Yes, well that's right, two years then! Being down in Phoenix, we finally had the oppertunity, and we made it to this one in Scottsdale. And people, it did NOT disapoint! Jamie and I had to practice some real restraint in this store, and even had to ban ourselves from the little girls section after getting our niece a couple shirts, had we kept looking, well she would have got an enitre new waredrobe.

That same day we decided to try to check out a boxing gym that was near by in Tempe. Unfortunatly the gym was closed, but since we had made the trip all the way over there, we thought we would drive around and check things out a bit. And we were THRILLED to find that ASU was mear blocks away from the gym!

We had a great time looking around the campus (or what we could see from it), only wish we weren't there on a Sunday, so a few of the buildings (read gift shop) would have been open!

Donovan took the liberty of learning how to swim while we were down there, which simply amazed us! I can't believe what a great water kid he is! I guess taking him to the pool when he was 9 weeks old started something! Becuase he absoultly LOVES the water. Every day he was larning something new, from just floating on his own, to doing the doggy paddle from one end of the pool to the other, to putting his head down and trying to swim (with eyes open under the water I might add) to LEAPING into the pool, he was absoultly GLOWING around the pool (and not just because we kept him covered in a layer of SPF70 sunscreen!)

Jamie and I also took another trip on our own to try to go to a boxing gym, that was, well you know, OPEN. And we were lucky enough to find the best gym in Phoenix, Central Boxing. It was a dream come true for Jamie to walk into the gym, and I almost had to drag him out by his ear to leave. It was the perfect boxing gym, both Professional and Amature boxers trained there, and Jamie was able to watch them train for a bit, to talk to the coach and Ms. Margret (who LOVED us) and to make some contacts. He is hoping to get down there to fight in the near future.

It was a wonderful week over all, and we can't wait to get down there again. Although somewhere along the line our baby turned into a little boy...

and I couldn't be more proud!

(also, I got to look at this all week, which wasn't so bad either....) ;)

(sorry, I just HAD to share that, lol)

Two Years

Two years ago today we became a family when Donovan was born.

Two years ago I learned that my heart could hold more love then I ever thought possible.

In two short years, he is growing up to be such a big boy. Swimming on his own.

Jumping into the water (sorry about the over exposed picture, my camera was dropped and the lens got jammed, and I haven't had a chance to photoshop yet).

And making our lives happier then we ever thought possible.

Happy Birthday Donovan! Love you and am SO proud of you!!!

Happy Anniversary!

I meant to post this earlier, but we just got home from Phoenix last night, and today, well today was CRAZY busy with getting everything organized again. But today is Jamie and my 5 year Wedding Anniversary. Which if you do the math correctly, and take into account that we were together for 5 years before we got married, that makes for 10 years of togetherness!

Crazy, I can't believe it's been this long already, sometimes it seems like yesterday, and sometimes it seems like a 100 years ago.

Although when I think back to that sunny/rainy (we had both sun and rain on the wedding day) 5 years ago, in that beautiful church in PEI surrounded by all of our friends and family, and I think about what our lives have been these last 5 years, it was nothing like I pictured! But right now, right this second, it's BETTER then what I pictured. If I could say anything that Jackie that Saturday morning, July 24, 2004, I would say this, "hold on tight, it will be one crazy ride, but man is it worth it!"

Alberta Sky

Like Father Like Son

This picture was taken shortly after Jamie got back from England. Can you tell Donovan missed his Daddy?

If you look closely, you will notice that Donovan is imitating Jamie EXACTLY. Same hand in the air, same foot position.

It's so cute to watch Donovan look up to his Daddy and try to be like him. He even tries to "make" coffee just like Daddy.

Can't keep quiet any longer

The very first thing that went through my mind when I heard that Micheal Jackson had died, was "I thought he died when his skin started changing colour". I honestly meant this in a serious way, the Micheal Jackson the artist, the icon, died in the late 80's when he started to drastically alter his appearance. After that, he turned into a different person.

The news coverage got more and more frequent, and the praise got bigger and bigger. He went from the "King of Pop" to the "King of Kings" (which in and of itself is so blasphemous I can't even stand it) in less then a week. Throughout it all, I kept thinking, "but what about the molestation charges? Surely they can't ignore that part of his life?" but they did. Then I thought, "but what about the drug addiction, someones got to mention that???" and no one did. To top it off, I heard Lisa Marie's statement about how Micheal always thought, "he would die the same way Elvis died" and I waited, and I waited, and not ONE PERSON stopped to say, "well if you knew you were going to die that way, why not STOP TAKING THE DRUGS???" but the only person I heard saying that was me.

On Tuesday was the memorial service, and I hoped so badly that it would be a memorial to his MUSIC, a memorial to his talent and how he changed the way we listened to, and watched our music. I was so saddened to be wrong, as I watched the service (ok, not so much watch, but it was on in the background as I was doing other work) when I heard not only the much deserved praise about his music, but person after person talk about HIM, how amazing he was, how he exuded light, how he would "never hurt a soul", and my stomach turned.

Never hurt a soul??? Really? What about his admission to inviting young boys into his bed? The fact that HE didn't think anything was wrong with it, is irrelevant. As any pedophile in prison right now, and they too probably don't see anything wrong with their actions. Since when is "but I thought it was ok?" as a legitimate legal defence?

Never hurt a soul??? Really? Why then pay a family $20million dollars for the trail to go away? In my experience (granted I've never been on trial before) but innocent people don't pay for charges to go away.

Every time I heard someone talk about what an amazing person he was, my heart broke for all those boys that were wronged (again, I'd like to clarify, I don't know the extension of the wrong, I simply know, that locking yourself in your bedroom with a young boy for an entire day, and not allowing anyone else in with you, is wrong). Every time someone praised HIM outside of his music, I felt like those boys were being wronged all over again. Whatever indignity they suffered (whether they knew that's what was happening at the time or not) was being committed again and again with every word of praise for Micheal the man.

What must they be thinking? The emotions they have been experiencing up until his death would have been confusing enough, but then to see someone who wronged them in such a deep and personal level to be held up as a hero???

I'm sure there are people out there who disagree with me, in fact I've talked to some of those people. There are many people out there who choose to only look at his music and turn a blind eye to the rest of his actions. There are people out there who feel that the word "acquitted" or "not-guilty" are the same as innocent, and that is fine, they are entitled to their opinion as I am to mine. And I only ask that if you are out there and you disagree with me, please do so respectfully.

Finally, there are two lovely ladies out there who wrote about this same topic, and did so MUCH better then I did, so do me a favor, hope over to these ladies sites, and read what they wrote, then come back here and pretend that it was actually me who wrote that! ;)

One Crafty Mother wrote about his addiction and how the rest of us enabled it in her post "Just Calling it Like I See it"

And DaMomma wrote about separating his talent from his behavior in her post "Speaking Out".

Re-Design

It's not a drastic change, but I did mix it up a bit around here. Hope you like the "new" digs. Let me know if there are any suggestions you have for the blog design.

It's been a long day, and after a few nights of staying up too late, and getting up too early (I'm looking at you Donovan!) I'm tired. However, it was also an exciting day!

Jamie and I moved to Medicine Hat 4 years ago this week. Three years ago we bought a piece of land about 10mins out of the city. It's not a lot, about 5 acres, but it's ours, and we love it. The plan was always to build our dream house out there. About two years ago we started searching for house plans and designing our house. One year ago the final plans were drawn up, but we decided to put the project on hold while we got everything in place. This year, it looks like everything is in place and we are ready to move forward! (almost).

A realestate agent came over this morning to look at our house, and we will be meeting with him again on Friday to decide on a listing price and a sales plan.

We've met with the contractor, gone over all the little bits and pieces and finalized the price and plan.

It looks like this is going to happen! And going to happen soon! There is still the pesky problem of the bank, and it's not really a problem, just need them to say yes. In all honesty we haven't even approached them about a new mortgage yet, as we were waiting to get a final price on what the new house will cost and what we can sell this house for. So that's the next step. Once we get the "yes" from the bank (keeping fingers crossed, although it looks like it shouldn't be too much of a problem, as Canadian Banks are wanting to lend right now, we have steady income, lots of equity but little debt, and a good down payment) we will list the house and start this crazy process once again!

I keep thinking that this isn't really happening. We've been planning for the "future" for so long, it doesn't seem real that the future is here.

Of course, I'm trying not to get my hopes up, as we do still need to get the final ok from the bank, and then there is the whole, selling this house thing, and there are no guarantees as how long that will take, but tonight, tonight I'm hopeful, and tonight, I'm a wee bit excited.

Thunder Rolls

As I sit here typing this, Ruby the Brave is laying next to me, since the storm started about an hour and a half ago, she hasn't left my side.

Ok, that's not completely true. When the storm was rolling in (literally, you could see the front of the clouds rolling through) ((pic taken by a friend of mine of the storm tonight)

anyway, when the storm started to roll in, and I first heard the thunder, I left Donovan to splash in the bath, and walked over to the window (relax, he was in the bathroom that is attached to the bedroom, and the window was in the bedroom, so I could still see and hear him the whole time, it's not like I left him to bath alone and wondered away for hours) Ruby, walked in the opposite direction and curled up next to Donovan in the bathtub.

As I watched the first of the lightening strikes, the really scary kind, where there is sheet lightening mixed in with fork lightening (is it called fork lightening when it doesn't actually fork, but just goes STRAIGHT DOWN! ?) I realized the bath tub was probably not the best place for Donovan to be.

Much to Donovan's dismay, I scooped him out of the tub, (he tried to protest, that he wasn't done playing yet, of course he didn't actually SAY that, as you know, he still doesn't have many words) and I wrapped him in a towel. As I was wrapping him, a loud clap of thunder was heard over head and he perked up, "waszzz thaaa???" he asked as he looked around.

So sans diaper, I took my still somewhat damp boy over to the window so we could watch the storm unfold in front of us.

Donovan looked at the lightening and "ooooed" and then jumped to attention every time the thunder clapped with a big "wazzz thaaaa?" and we watched the storm together. He then looked at me like, "why have I never seen this before?" and I smiled.

Today wasn't exactly event filled, we didn't work on any crafts (other then his colouring book) and we never made it to the park, but today was a success, because today, today I got to experience a Thunder Storm with Donovan for the first time. And let me tell you, when you watch a thunder storm with an almost two year old, well you can't help but stop and realize how neat they really are.

"wazzz thaaaa????"

He's Home!

Thursday afternoon/evening Donovan and I drove up to Calgary, checked into our hotel room, and went to sleep. Around 4am I heard someone at the door, and at 4:01am, I jumped out of bed, and ran to give Jamie a big hug! He was home!

Yesterday we drove back to Medicine Hat and had a nice relaxing day together as a family, and today, we are doing much the same. The weather has been beautiful, so I was out in the garden getting my weeds out of the way so you can actually SEE the flowers.

Thought I would update with a few pictures I took on Canada Day.

Happy Canada Day!