sledding near the home

Ok, now that I know how to do this, I feel really sad I haven’t been doing this ALL this time. Go figure… we’re here for 6 months and 2 weeks before I come home, I realize I could be filming the kids. So stupid. Sorry mom.
All well. We had a lot of fun sledding down the little hill that’s right next to us. it's actually PERFECT for sledding, there are stairs right next to the hill - LVOE IT! so anywho, I thought you would love to see Amanda and Andrew playing in the snow again.
I hate my voice! Sometimes when I’m playing with the kids and trying to be fun my voice gets high-pitched and annoying… I hope I don’t sound like that all the time.
no matter thow. Love yall!

The snow is piling up

I have 7 inches of snow on my back porch! Just my back porch chair alone. who knows how deep it is in the open areas near by. 7 inches!... I think that’s the most I’ve even seen before. And it might get deeper. Eee… at least I’ve got good, a heater that works and TV… we’re good. Lol.

I just cry when I think of the poor people who are homeless in cold areas like this. I haven’t really seen homeless people around here. Only once really and that was by our old hotel. I luckily had some leftover lunch-bars so I gave that to him. But I’m SURE they’re must be more. It’s not like in Austin you’ll see them on every stop-light corner. I’ve decided that whenever I leave the house I need to have already warmed up some soup in container so I can hand it out if I saw someone homeless. I just have a really hard time thinking of coming across someone in the snow, and NOT offering to take them to my home to warm them up, feed them and offer it as a place for them to come back to to sleep. I know my mom just freaked out at her computer screen and is all in a panic by that. Derick wouldn’t want me to do it either. But really, could YOU turn your back on someone in the snow? I mean really? And yeah-yeah, they could be drug/alcoholics/sex offenders/murderers… and it’s for those very EXTREM reasons we don’t want anything to do with homeless people… we’re scared of them! We’re scared they would turn on us and kill us or our children if they were given the chance because being homeless is about survival. And the longer you’ve had to go about that on your own, the more you’re willing to push to get what you NEED, no matter who or what is in your way. But with all that said and done… I still don’t know what I would do if I were to find a homeless person in the snow. Snow KILLS! If you saw someone preparing to jump of a bridge, would you stop to help, slow down your car, or just say a pray as you gave a quick look in your rear view mirror “that you hope God will help them out”? It’s a perplexing dilemma, I think it just comes down to 1 question… do you let morals rule your action, or fear?

what a pain!

Oh my goodness the beds here suck! I woke up today with REALLY bad back pain! I’m STILL hurting! Uh! I hate the beds here! What’s sad is that my bed back home is even worse. I really want a new bed for Christmas! ... Care to send any donations?...

“Weather” you like it, or not.

If yall have been seeing any news about the crazy snow the Ontario area has been getting I just wanted to tell yall it’s mostly not happening in Waterloo/kitchener area. don’t get me wrong, we’re getting snow, it’s just not white-outs like what the rest of the nearby towns are getting. We have been getting a lot of snow and supposedly the worst part is over. But Derick and I are still trying to play it safe, stay at home a lot.
I did my grocery shopping and Christmas shopping last evening cause the sun had been out for most of the day, but when I was coming home, it was dark and it started to snow again so the streets were very scary. Everyone was driving 20-40 kil/hr (that’s like 10-20 miles an hr to you.) and people were spinning their wheels at intersections, skidding, sliding at turns, and finding stuck cars in the parking lot. I myself felt the car skidding a few times, but thank Goodness, we were safe and no one was hit or hurt. I will say this, who EVER thought “lets put a stop sign on the end of a bridge” is a MORON! I of course hit little patches of black ice and wasn’t stopping so great. Luckily no one was in the intersection. I’m just glad that I’ve done my food/Christmas shopping. And I’m probably not going to leave me house for a while.
I had to actually chisel one of the car doors open yesterday! Andrews sliding door was frozen stuck! I had to get him into his chair from the other side. Then I hacked at the ice around the top of the door with the scraper. Our sweet neighbors bought us a really nice one. Kind of like a “welcome to Canada, you really need this” kind of thing, and I’m so happy they did, we use it a few times every day!
The temp is really cold. Yesterday it was a -9 with the wind-chill feeling of a -20! And even though we stay inside a lot right now, this town house is just so dad-gum drafty! You can stand in front of the front or back door and you can FEEL cold wind just pumping thru the cracked rims of the door. We actually had ICE on the INSIDE door handle! Yeah! Like… ICE, accumulating inside me home JUST from cold air blowing thru the door. AND this townhouse has this whole, (it’s built to be this way, I just still don’t see why)… in the storage room under the stairs, there is a WHOLE (maybe 2inches in diameter) that goes OUTSIDE! Yeah! So when I come down my stairs and turn to go into the kitchen and pass the storage door under the stairs, my feet hit FREEZING floor! I told derick I wouldn’t be surprised if we get ice on our floor. I don’t care what’s that for, it’s a stupid design. Thank you mom and dad so much for my slippers, I’m LOVING them!
All I can say is thanks goodness we don’t have to pay for the heater bill, cause we crank up that bad boy and just open the windows if it gets too hot. I’m sure my dad just got hot behind the caller when I said that. Lol.

Hey here’s another thing I never knew, you know how when you’re driving down the streets in TX you’ll get a mirage effect on the road ahead of you, and it’s just water-heat going up into the air? The same thing happens here but different, if you open your door and it’s warm inside but cold outside, you see these clear ripples in the air, just like a mirage. Weird uh?

The best snow day ever

We’ve been getting lots of snow lately and it hasn’t been melting away much but at the same time, we just haven’t really had a packing-snow-day yet to make snow balls and snow men. Until TODAY! The sun was out the day before and made the top layer somewhat wet and it was just starting to snow again today. So we bought a cheap sled, and packed up everyone to play in the snow. There is a BIG sled hill nearby, but I didn’t want to take the kids to that for their first time. So we went to a school nearby that had a small hill instead. It was SO much fun!! The kids and us LOVED it! They (and I) got to go down our FIRST hills in a sled, and it was SOOO much fun! I hated walking back up the hill thow, mostly case I had to carry Andrew up and I was scared of falling on top of him, but it was fun Fun FUN! I’ve never gone down a snow hill on a sled before. Derick couldn’t believe it. He use to do this as a kid and he really loved reliving the fun of it all. Sadly I couldn’t get the BEST pictures, falling snow on my camera and all, but you can still enjoy the fun with us.

Amanda’s VERY FIRST sled ride!

Once I was able to finally get Andrew up the hill, and he had his first sled ride too, he was also hooked. What can I saw, it’s just good plain FUN!

Andrew really loved eating the snow. He liked rolling in it too. He for a while just wanted to roll, so he just rolled around in circles in the parking lot! Lol. It was SO funny to watch! What a weird kid.
And then daddy got the bright idea to start a SNOW BALL FIGHT… AT me while I still had my camera out! Don’t worry, my cameras ok, but I certainly have worked my camera hard on this trip in Canada.

Then I got to try out the sled. You can’t really tell, but there IS a sled under me. lol. Amanda came down the hill with me too she was standing on the back end.

We had so much sledding.

While we were there we also had a few more snow ball fights, and we made a BIG snowman! The biggest snowman I have ever made. I had just turning around to go find my camera to take a picture but when I turned around, Amanda knocked him over. All well. K-say-raw, say-raw. (I know I totally butchered how that must be spelled - sorry) so instead of getting a picture of the snow man we just smashed him to bits.

When we got back into the car, our coats were soaking wet. I felt like we just when swimming or something. But when we got home and pulled off boots and stuff I was so happy to see that the kids were completely dry and warm. So happy to see that their suit-coats are working out well for them.

this was by far the best snow day we've had since we've been here! it was a great day!

I did something different while we were there. b/c I was having a hard time taking pictures, I tried using my video camera option on my camera. I never do this much cause I never knew how to SHARE it with people before. This is my first time trying it with the blog. So this is new to me. but I’ve got 2 short clips of the kids on the snow sleds. If this works out well, I’ll have to try this a lot more.

Andrews 2nd b-day

My little baby boy is 2! There’s a part of me that thinks “is that ALL? I thought he’s been around longer than that.” And then there’s a side of me that gets all sentimental and thinks “aw… my little baby boy!”

2 years ago, he was born and I was holding him for the first time. And I remember there was a situation when his daddy had to go back to the house to get something, and it was just him and me for a few hrs. I was holding his tiny soft body next to mine and I was whispering to him how this was such a special moment in time. It was just him and me, and we were the other thing that mattered to each other. That as soon as we got home. We would have to share each other’s attention and time, but for just right now. It was just us and only US. That was such a special hr or so. I hope I always remember that.


And here he is on his 1st birthday…

And he’s 2 today! Man time flies! I’m so grateful for pictures so I can hold onto these memories!
Here’s the birthday boys cake! We always like to try to find a fun Christmas themed cake for him. We’ve had a real hard time trying to find fun cakes here in Canada, they’re all kind of simple. Just not as cool as I remember the cakes being at HEB back home ya know.

We thought we had left-over candles from my birthday here, but I just don’t know what happened to them. No biggy thow. We just used matches instead.

“Happy Birthday to YOU!” (by the way, thanks to all you who called, Andrew loved hearing yall sing to him on the phone)

Birthdays are the one day of the year where I’ll strip my kids down and just let them make a mess with their birthday cake. I just sit back and watch them and enjoy it while it lasts.

Just look at that belly pushed out! So funny


“Present time, present time, open a present and see what’s inside!” We actually opened presents before cake. Just in case you’re wondering how he magically got clean again. I think its SO much more fun buying gifts for girls. It seems like there’s just not enough different type of toys out there for boys. Amanda got him a hot-wheel collections set of small cars. And Derick and I got him this yellow car from the Pixar movie “Cars”. He talks and movies forward a little. He says things like “hey! show some respect homes!” lol. Oh what am I teaching my kids.

St. Josephs Scavenger Hunt

For Andrews birthday we have a day of fun planed at the St. Joseph’s area. for yall non-locals, this is like a free market meets antique stores area. It’s the #1 tourist trap for very pricy souvenirs, but it’s also where the local Maninite community can come and sell their handmade blankets, rocking chairs, crops and such. We had planned to come here on Andrews birthday because they had a few kid focused things for us to do for FREE! Perfect fun for Andrews birthday.

They had a “Santa’s stockings scavenger hunt” going on where you went to certain stores and show them your scavenger hunt card, they would stamp it and give you a prize. It was a lot of fun. Some of the prizes were kind of lame but at the lego place we got mini basket balls! The kids (and I) loved that the most.

We got to meet Santa! While you waited to meet him you got your face painted. Amanda wanted a candy cane. I thought it was cute that little 10 year olds girls were doing this. They did a pretty good job I think.

Santa was a sweet man, and had a basket of candy canes for the kids. Amanda told him she wanted a mermaid doll and a cat.


The next stop was to get our first stamp and that was at the Lego place, this place was AWESOME!! They had all these things there that were made completely out of legos! Lego ART! So cool!! Just looks at these pictures! Oh I just know my nephews would have loved this place, I wish yall were here.

This was a dinosaur that Andrew just loved

They also provided little tables where the kids could build racing cars out of legos and then RACE THEM on the ramp they had there, such a great idea, and it was SO much fun!! If I had known this was here, we would have come here when we were still living in the hotel nearby.

For the next stop on the scavenger hunt, we were led to a log cabin that was right next to a “NON-petting zoo”? I thought it was a petting zoo, but all the signs said, “don’t feed or TOUCH the animals”… so… we just looked. Made me think of the ranch though. We miss you guys.

This was the only one we weren’t able to get a stamp for cause it was just too hard to catch them at the end out their tours. This is the horse drawn trolley. Kind of cool eh?

At the end of the day, these were all the little goodies we got during the day. We got mini basket balls, some baggies with the candy cane reindeer craft items inside, pencils, erasers, gingerbread men, candy canes, stickers, and we had some gum drops but the kids ate that all ready. And that’s our stamped cards are on the right there.