Our first night at the acreage

After Mark was done work on Saturday, we headed out to the acreage to spend our first night in our trailer. We got there around 4:00pm, set up our trailer and enjoyed a nice birthday dinner/cake with Grandpa & Grandma, Kaitlin, Kyle, Connor and Uncle Jerry. It was a really nice night so we sat around the fire and made smores until about 10:30. Our first night in the trailer wasn't picture perfect.. when I went to the washroom around 1:00am I was surprised to find about an inch of water covering the bathroom floor. Our toilet seems to have a leak in it!! Mark and Grandpa spent a couple hours on Sunday trying to get it fixed. (When we left the acreage yesterday afternoon it was still in pieces and Grandpa was going to see if he could figure it out.) Other than that small set back, the weekend was really good. Duke ran and swam all weekend long. He was like the energizer bunny... he kept going and going and going..... He got to chase a deer through the field, well, he attempted to chase the deer. He's quite slow. He had a great time as always, and if you saw him today you'd be shocked, he's like a completely different dog. He's so tired all he does is lay around sleeping. We're looking forward to going out there again - hopefully this coming weekend!!

The long awaited...

Here they are!! FINALLY!!

Mark quickly took these tonight after we got home from a delicious dinner with the whole family at Mom and Dad Wienses. When I look at these pictures I can't believe how massive my tummy is!! I'm about the size of a house!! I look HUGE!! But honestly, I don't feel that big!! Sometimes I worry that people just think I've packed on a few pounds and don't know I'm pregnant.... but after seeing these pictures, I'm pretty sure nobody's making that mistake!!! And I still have 6 weeks to go!! Ahhhhh!!!!!!

Our craaaazy dog!

Wow! It has been a while since I've last posted anything!! I guess we have just been too busy enjoying this BEAUTIFUL weather!!! Since I last posted we have spent quite a bit of our time outside; working on the lawn (which I swear is a lost cause!! The harder we try to get rid of our dandelions, the more appear!! It's quite frustrating!!) or walking the dog, or out at the acreage.

Speaking of the acreage, we haven't had the chance to spend the night out in our new trailer yet.. just day trips. Which is probably a good thing... we need to slowly ease Duke into the acreage life. Right now, I don't think he can handle more than one day at a time. He is absolutely NUTS there!! From the moment you first get there and let him out of the jeep, to the moment at the very end of the day where you have to tackle him and wrestle him back into the jeep, he just runs and runs and runs - non stop!! He thinks the acreage is just the greatest place out there... especially now that he's discovered he can swim in the pond. (He's created his own little game where he runs, dives into the pond, swims around a bit, jumps back out, runs full speed into the centre of a group of people, where he then proceeds to violently shake all the water/mud of, and then runs back to the pond to do it all over again. Fun for him, but not for the innocent bystander!) At the end of the day, we no longer have a golden retriever, but a mud hound - a very sore and tired mud hound who sleeps and sleeps for hours!

I think Brett said it best.... "Duke is a craaaaaazy dog!!"

We've also been pretty busy preparing for the baby to arrive. We've started our prenatal classes at the Foothills hospital (2 down, 4 more to go!) and have been slowly coming to an agreement on baby names. The bookshelf for the nursery still hasn't arrived, so we haven't done anything more in there yet. Luckily, we still have more than a month and a half to go!! Despite some annoying allergies that won't go away, I've been feeling pretty good - HOT, but pretty good. My ankles and fingers still swell occasionally, but I really don't mind having the exscuse to lay down and put my feet up for a while. This weekend I did manage to go and take an unexpected tour of Unit 51, Labor & Delivery at the Foothills. We weren't sure if my water broke, so we went down there just to double check. Obviously, it didn't break... but they think there may be a small tear - hence the leaking amniotic fluid. After a day and a half of laying down on my side, everything seems to be back to normal. A little disappointing after you get yourself all excited thinking that the baby is coming - but, in the end, it's good that the baby is waiting a little bit longer to make its appearance. I will try to take some photos of my growing belly sometime soon.. I keep meaning to!!

Duke and his baby

This week I borrowed one of Robyn's old dolls to help introduce Duke to the idea of us having a baby in our house. So far things are going pretty well. Duke is VERY fascinated by the doll. Whenever Mark and I are holding it he gets really excited and wants to sniff it. If we don't share the baby with him (let him see/sniff it) he starts to bark at us. We've tried several different scenerios, ie. placing the baby in the swing in the living room, laying it on a blanket on the floor, etc. and so far Duke hasn't attacked it! He has however given it a few face washes with his tongue.. but that's about it. Hopefully he's this well behaved with a real baby!!

Spring is here!!!

It's been quite a long time since I last posted anything, and that's mainly due to the never ending sunscreen saga. Not only did the sunscreen ruin my WestJet ID, my cellphone and my purse, but the damage done to our camera was more than we thought... at first we thought it was just the display that was affected... unfortunately, that wasn't the case. When we went to pop out the memory card to develop our pictures, it crumbled to pieces! And now the whole camera is starting to crack and fall apart!! That will have to be replaced before Baby Wiens comes... but for now we will just have to use the camera function on our video camera. It takes decent pictures... but you have to be standing SO still, otherwise everything comes out blurry.

Anyways, to update you on our lives since the last post....

Our shower is pretty much done!! Thank you sooooooo much Grandpa!! I know it caused some MAJOR headaches, but all of your hard work is greatly appreciated!! Mark and I still need to do a bit more work before it is 100% complete.. we need to tile around the surround, replace the bathroom counter and the bathroom sink, but at least our bathroom is use able now and we don't have to worry about falling through the floor!! (I'll post some before and after pictures once the WHOLE project is done.)

It might take us a while to get to the rest of the project.. for now we're busy enjoying this spring weather!! It has been SO nice out lately! Duke and I have been going for long, leisurely walks daily, and spend a lot of time relaxing on the front step enjoying the sun. Softball has started already too. I'm sad I don't get to play this year, but still enjoy going and watching Mark and all our friends play. So far our team (Team Moses) has won both games and have two more to go in the "preliminary round". It looks like we will get seated in a decent division again this year.

Baby-wise, things are going well. I am now 30 weeks along.. only 10 more to go!! Besides a few aches and pains, and a cold that seems to never go away, I'm feeling really good. (I'll have to get Mark to take some prego pictures of me soon!! I feel like I'm growing bigger and BIGGER everyday!) Although all of the crib bedding has arrived, we haven't done any more work on the nursery at all. At first it was being used as a workshop during our bathroom project.. and now we're waiting the arrival of a bookshelf. (We ordered a bookshelf through a company my dad hauls for and it should be here sometime early June.) I don't really want to hang any pictures until the bookshelf is here and I know where all the furniture will go.. so the rest will just have to wait.

In other news... Mark and I are now proud owners of a trailer!! We bought a 1990, 22 foot, Westwind 5th wheel this week. Mark is so excited and proud of his new trailer!! I'm excited too, it will make camping at the acreage this summer MUCH easier!! We're going to keep the trailer parked infront of our house for this week and then bring it up to the acreage in time for the long weekend.

"That's it!! I'm going home!!"

I've been hearing a LOT of that lately... a lot of cursing and words of frustration coming from the bathroom. Mark and I returned home from Phoenix on Saturday to find our one and only bathroom looking like this:

Grandpa Vanderveen decided that while we were away would be a good time to start our bathroom remodel. (The pipes behind our shower were leaking really bad... so the only way to fix it was to tear out all the tile... while all the tile was being ripped out, we decided it would be smart to replace all the aqua board and tub at the same time.)

Anyways, it has been nothing but headaches for my poor grandpa. Nothing seems to be going right... first the drain wouldn't match up with the new tub... then the kitchen sink started leaking EVERYWHERE (grandpa also decided to tackle our dishwasher at the same time... I am so excited to FINALLY have it installed and running!!) Now the shower surround won't fit... so they pretty much have to rip out everything they've done today and start over from the studs.

Needless to say... Grandpa's not very happy right now. (I apologize to anyone who was hoping he'd help them with their renos next... I'm pretty sure after this doozie he will be hanging up his toolbelt for a while!) Every morning Mark and I cross our fingers that Grandpa will be coming back to work and that he's not going to leave us with no shower and only a huge hole in the wall.

Cross your fingers for us that from now on everything goes well and according to plan (and that grandpa doesn't abandon us!)

On a side note... I went to the Doctor today for a check up... everything is going well... I am now 28 weeks and in my 3rd trimester. The baby's heart rate wasn't 150 for once... its now at 140 bpm.

I miss the sun already!!

Well, we are back from our trip. For those of you out of the loop, Mark and I went to visit his family, the Olmsteads, who live in Arizona. We left on Saturday, the 14th of April and returned yesterday, the 21st. We were gone for a full week, but it seemed WAY shorter than that!! Here's a quick run down of how our week went:

Day 1: Saturday, April 14th, 2007
Our flight left this morning at 11:00am (but Mark and I were there at 7:30am so that when the check in counters opened at 8:00am we would be the first in line.) We made the flight no problem and arrived into the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix around 1:00pm. After waiting for eternity for Mark's golf clubs to arrive, we met Cheri (Mark's cousin, the oldest of the 3 Olmstead girls) outside the airport. From there we met up with Tracey (the 2nd Olmstead girl) for lunch at the Pita Jungle (or Jungle Pita... Mark and I can't remember what it was called). After lunch we went to the Olmstead's friend's house to celebrate Ted's graduation from Boot Camp. From there we went back to Cheri's house for dinner and hung out until it was time to go back to Uncle Bill and Auntie Irmie's for the night.

Day Two: Sunday, April 15th, 2007
Today we left Mesa at 8:30am to drive out to Tuscon with Cheri and her friend Lisa. There we met up with Amber (the last of the Olmstead girls) and spent the day there visiting her. We went to her church in the morning, where my sunscreen decided to explode all over my purse - ruining pretty much everything inside... including my WestJet Travel ID!! It also lead to the gradual death of my cellphone (we're still investigating what caused it to crack and split in half... we're thinking it may have been a combination of the sunscreen, dry atmosphere and the warm weather... because I sure DIDN'T drop it!! I swear!!) Luckily only the display screen on our camera was affected, so we could still take pictures using the view finder. After church we went for lunch to the Firebird, where Mark could have a "real lunch", meaning a hamburger. After lunch we had a tour of the University of Arizona (where Amber went) and headed back to Amber's apartment to play Trivial Pursuit pop culture. We left around 4:30pm-5:00pm to head back to Mesa so Mark could watch the Flames game he made Cheri tape that morning.

Day Three: Monday, April 16, 2007
Mark and I slept in this morning and the headed off to the mall to do some shopping. First we hit up a Ross, where Mark bought new golf shorts and a new pair of dress pants. Then we walked around and went into store like Abecrombie, Hollister, Aeropostale, Gymboree, A Children's Place, etc etc. At the end of the day we ended up with only Mark's Ross bag. For lunch Mark and I went to PF Changs (my dad's favorite restaurant) and had some delicious Chinese food. After lunch we headed back to the Olmstead's where we spent the afternoon reading around their pool and enjoying some warm weather. That evening Tracey, Uncle Bill, Auntie Irmie and Mark & I went to a baseball game. The Diamondbacks were playing the LA Dodgers... and unfortunately the Dbacks lost... but we still had a good time.

Day Four: Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
Today Auntie Irmie played tour guide and showed us around. We headed over to Apache Junction where we visited an old ghost town, a local lake and Tortilla Flats. We have LOTS of good pictures from this day... including some good shots of some cactus (yes, I wanted my picture taken with some cactus!!!) We got back to their house around 5ish. Cheri and I then met Lisa for a pedicure (my first!!! But definitely NOT my last!! I loved it!!!) while Mark went to Cheri's and watched the Flames game. (She kindly switched her movie package over to a sports package so Mark could keep up with all the playoff action, thanks Cheri!!!!)

Day Five: Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Today Mark and I left the house at 6:00am to head up to the Grand Canyon. We spent the better half of the afternoon there admiring the fantastic views and doing a small portion of the Bright Angel Trail. (I'm not in the best shape right now to do a major hike seeing as how today I was officially 6 months pregnant!! WooHoo!! Only 3 more to go!!)

We then headed down through Flagstaff to Sedona, where again we were taken away by all the beautiful scenery!! Mark and I both decided if we were to move to Arizona, Sedona is where we would live! The red rock there is AMAZING!! The pictures really don't do it justice!! Then, on our way back into Phoenix Mark and I stopped at a GIANT outlet mall in Anthem and did a little bargain shopping. Mark found a great deal on a Quicksilver jacket ($15.00!) and I managed to find a cute little baby sleeper. We then hit up an IHOP (weird, we know) for dinner and headed home to bed.

Day Six: Thursday, April 19, 2007
Mark woke up really early again this morning to go golfing with Uncle Bill (their tee time was at 6:45am!!) By the time I was up, showered and ready to start the day, they were home already!! Mark had a great time golfing... even though he didn't play his best round. After Mark golfed we sat around the pool again, finished our books and had a relaxing afternoon. We had tacos that evening for dinner at the Olmstead's and then headed over to Cheri's, yet again, to watch the Flames game. After the game we played some more Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture until about 11:30pm.

Day Seven: Friday, April 20, 2007
Today we pretty much took it easy all morning. Mark and I slept in, went and did some last minute shopping at Walmart, Old Navy and Target. We went for Lunch with Cheri, Lisa and their friend Laurel to Cheri's friend Drew's restaurant. (I can't remember the name!! EEKS!) After lunch Tracey came "goofy golfing" with Mark and I. Even though I was the only one who had TWO hole-in-ones (legitimate too yet!!) I lost!! Mark won, Cheri was a close second, and me... well, I took up the rear. After mini golfing we went out for dinner with everyone to the Cheesecake Cafe (yum yum!) did a little bit MORE shopping (where I made Mark buy the bestest shirt ever!!). After that we called it a night and rested up for the long day we had ahead of us.

Day Eight: Saturday, April 21, 2007

This morning we packed up, had breakfast and then headed off to the airport. Again, we had no problem making the flight (even with an unrecognizable WestJet Travel ID card!!) Our flight left at 1:40pm and we arrived home back in Calgary around 6pm. Mark went to came his golf bags, and while he was gone all three of our bags were the first down off the belt. Talk about luck!! My grandpa and grandma picked us up and we headed home. Duke was ecstatic to see us!! He kept running back and forth between the two of us, not knowing what to do! We returned home to a VERY pleasant surprise!! While we were gone my grandpa started working on our bathroom remodel! Even though that means we are without a shower for the next week, it is nice to get the project started!!

Overall we had a fantastic time!! I am already missing the sunshine and 20 degree weather!!

BINGO! Right in the blowhole!!

I've been at home sick with the flu for the past couple of days so I don't have a whole lot to update on... I thought I would just post some pictures of our Easter Celebration with Mark's side. Friday we went over to Mom and Dad Wienses and enjoyed an evening of games and sloppy joes with the whole clan.

That night we also went and saw Norbit at the cheap theatres. An interesting movie to say the least... I probably wouldn't suggest any of you go and see it.. unless you enjoy stupid movies like my family does. lol. Saturday, Mark went golfing in Radium with my dad, Uncle Bill and Brian (Robyn's boyfriend). They enjoyed some nice, SUNNY weather while we were stuck here in the cold. Brian actually came back with a sunburn, that's how nice it was!! Sunday we then had Easter dinner with my side at Mom and Dad Wagenaar's with Robyn, Brian and the Mols.

I also thought I would post some pictures of our newest pal, Cameron James. Cam was born over two weeks ago already on Saturday, March 24th. He is such a little cutie and I can not wait until our baby is born so they can be best buds!! I really hope our baby is a boy!! (Although I am 95% sure it is a girl.) Mark and I have a boy name picked out... but are still really arguing over girls names. Any suggestions?? The baby has been kicking up a storm the last couple of days, which is really exciting. I went out this weekend and bought some maternity shorts for our trip to Phoenix.. I can't wait!! Only like 4 more days until we leave!!

Hockey Week

Well, this week is certainly turning out to be quite the "hockey week"!

On Monday Justin, Jessiya, Mark and I went to game 6 of the Hitmen-Kootenay series (KOOTENAY SUCKS!!) courtesy of Uncle Bill and Auntie Wilma. Again we had an excellent time!! We sat by some interesting characters as usual (they seem to thrive at hitmen games) but this time their major chant was "____, You're a BUM!!!". Oh, and you can't forget the most memorable line, (said while holding up a cellphone) "Hey Ref!! You've got a couple of missed calls!!" The reffing was pretty bad (says Mark) and was one of the major factors in the score of the game. The Hitmen ended up losing 4-3 and now the series is tied 3-3. Game 7 is tonight in Kootenay.

Then last night the four of us also went to the Flames game! I was able to purchase 4 seats (in the sport check zone) from WestJet. Because the sport check zone is rush seating, we ended up heading to the Saddledome at 5pm already (the game started at 7.) When the doors opened at 5:30 we were one of the first people in. Mark and Justin then bolted, and I mean BOLTED, up to the sport check zone to claim "good seats". I wasn't about to sprint up who knows how many flights of stairs, so I took my sweet ol' time and met them up there (Jessiya met us a few minutes later when she got off of work.) As far as Sport check seats go, we had a pretty good view. We were in the second row from the rail, right on center ice.

Before the game started (since we had a LOT of time to kill) Mark ran down and grabbed us each a malt. YAY!!! (You can see how happy I am in one of the pictures below!!) Yum, Yum!! Best part about going to the hockey game vs watching it at home!! Sitting in the sport check zone is a lot of fun - everyone is so rowdy!! Including the little boys behind me, who, every time the flames would score, would take off their shirts and wave them around (hitting me in the head every time.) And it's only fitting that we saw both Mr. Abma and Mr. Olivier sitting up in the sport check zone too - we all know how rowdy and unruly those two guys can be!!

We tried to take as many pictures as we could... but it was hard to get some good shots sitting so far up. I've included some pictures of the cute little kids who got to play a game on the ice during the first intermission as well as the one-man act from Las Vegas who preformed during the second. Over all, even though we lost, we still had a really good time.

There is more hockey to come this week.. including Mark's play off game tonight for his men's league, the Flames game tomorrow against San Jose and then again on Saturday when they take on Edmonton. What will we ever do once the season is over???

Ovechkin!!

Just getting in the "hockey mood" for tonight's big game. This is one of our FAVORITE commercials!!

Enjoy!!

(I posted this yesterday afternoon, but accidentally erased it and am now having to repost it.)