Live it!

What a weekend

We had a whirlwind weekend, full of celebrations. I forgot my camera for EVERY event (can you say "Absentminded"?) so all the photos I'm posting are from my cousin :)

On Saturday Chloe and I went to Nana Lightfoot's, who was hosting a beautiful baby shower for the newest member of the Kellar clan :)  Another beautiful girl in the family, we showered with gifts of pink and pretty stuff. It was lovely and Chloe enjoyed spending time with her cousin Cole. Welcome to the world Josephine Carol. What a precious little girl she is.

After the shower we rushed home and went to the next party... my Gram's 95th birthday celebration. I don't know if there is a woman any more loved and appreciated than my Gram. All her children (including Uncle Paul, her 4th child...who flew across the country from Alberta) and  many of her Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren gathered at Aunt Carolyn and Uncle John's for a party filled with laughter and love. I am so fortunate to have such a great family and being with so many of them last night was just a happy time. K & C were happy because they had some of their 2nd cousins to play with. Grandma said a beautiful speech and thank you to end the evening and I think everyone in the room was just so thankful that we have had such a wonderful role model and woman in our lives for so long. She is 95... she is such a wise and wonderful woman. She lives such a great life and I thank God that she is so well. Technically she is not 95 until Tuesday, and she would want me to point that out. Happy birthday Gram Emerson.... and many more! (Photos from my cousin Lori):

Gram with Cousin Lori

Keaton with Harrison and Curtis

The great-grandkids that were in attendance, with Aunt Verna & Gram E.

Chloe, Erin and Gram.

Today my cousin Mary brought her son Joel down from the Toronto area for a play day with Keaton and Chloe. That was nice to have the kids playing and laughing while we caught up with Mary. Joel and Keaton are very alike and the house was loud and full of giggles. It was a great way to end the weekend.

Tonight is Oscar night, but considering I have not seen ANY of the movies being recognized... I think I'm just going to watch the Barbara Walters Special and the red-carpet fashion extravaganza.  I've got too many "Without a Trace" reruns recorded that I need to get caught up on :)

A "Family Day" for us

We celebrated Ontario's new holiday - "Family Day" with a nice lunch out and then we met John with his girls for skating at the ice rink. Chloe is anxious to learn how to skate and I will say she gives it her all. She is much different than Keaton and didn't get frustrated when she fell over and over again. With the assistance of this little chair apparatus, she was able to wizz around the ice fairly well, with Madelyn and Macey helping and encouraging her along.

Keaton was having a blast skating without all his hockey equipment and all my photos of him are completely blurry... he is a speedy boy. Oh well, it was a bad camera day. I forgot to change my white balance from sunny and so all my photos are wonky in colour. Still, a day worth remembering.

Chloe ended up with one massive blister on her heel. The poor girl cried and cried and I can see why, it tore a huge piece of skin off her heel. I had to take her to school this morning in slippers because her winterboots and all her shoes rub it and she couldn't get them on. She will have to stay in at recess and just take it easy with the teacher.

Home from CHA Anaheim

It was a whirlwind trip. This year I just flew in the day before the show started. It allowed me to be home longer and away for 1-2 less days, and I loved it. The booth was huge this year and all the new product was fun to show to the store owners and media, etc. A new Autumn Leaves collection, designed by Heather Bailey, a popular textile designer was pretty with a lot of fun sunny colours. The Cute World Boy and Girl collections were popular with the stores and our clear stamps pretty much sell themselves, they are wonderful. We also brought out new inks, 1/2 sheet stamps and a larger variety of embellishments to accompany each collection. Can't wait to play with all those!

Spending time with friends that I wouldn't get to see otherwise, is always the highlight of my trip. Flying to the west coast is always hard since basically on the way home I lose the whole day in airports, in the air (only a 5 hr flight) and with the time change. I was in the lobby of my hotel at 520am, catching a shuttle to start my day of travel home. I got home at 930pm... so that was a day that disappeared fast. I can't imagine the long flights to Vietnam, as well as a 12 hour time difference and what that is going to be like :)

No rest for the wicked... I woke up to Valentine's Day celebrations for the kids. Keaton had ice skating with the Primary grades at his school, so I met him at the ice rink and we skated for an hour. He is a speedy skater and he'd skate around, hold my hand for a millisecond and then be off again. Luckily I had other parents to chat with as I skated along leasurely. Chloe had a Valentine's Day party in her classroom later in the day so I went directly to that after skating, where the kids all shared their little Vday cards & ate a lot of sugar.

To celebrate Valentine's Day, I made Shaune a steak supper. But... he is the BBQ dude so I guess he made the main component of supper himself. There was so much snow around our BBQ on our back deck that he had to spend 1/2 hr shoveling snow before we could get to the BBQ. I got him some delicious candy on my California Travels, he got me a beautiful Gerber Daisy plant for the kitchen. I picked the kids up Lego (Keaton) and Disney stuffed animals (Chloe loves Lilo and Stitch) at Downtown Disney while in California... so we all got something on LOVE DAY :)

I only took about 3 photos on my point and shoot camera while away. I'm hoping Becky will have gotten some good ones of us as a group. She is an amazing photographer.

Not much else to report. We continue to wait for word on our adoption. Vietnam shuts down for TET (their New Years celebrations) in February so there was not much happening the past few weeks. Hopefully now that TET is over, referrals will continue and eventually it will be our turn to get the happy news we've been waiting for. We are almost 11 months into this process and our paper work has been in Vietnam for 7 months. Sooner or later, our daughter will be home with us. I'd prefer the sooner but have come to learn a lot of patience and faith during this process.