April 2016

Long time no blog.

I guess life has gotten busier with moving up north 3 years ago.

We now live in a cozy 4 bedroom house that we bought last year for a good price. It's a fixer upper and we are in the midst of renovations. That means no walls and ceilings in the kitchen and living room and no kitchen cabinets.

Glen was off for 8 months from work so he went a little stir crazy to say the least. With my less than modest income that meant we had to stop buying materials so we could pay for our shell and put food on the table and fall a little behind on bills. It sucks being middle income and only one paycheck coming in.

Glen just started driving for a new company out of Winnipeg. He is expecting to be on the road for a few months before we see him. Hopefully he can come back next month when I go out of town for training and he will be back at the end of June for Aidan's grade 8 graduation.

Glen had left the house last summer for five months. He was going through a rough time with himself and left us. He still took the kids as often as he could and got his own place. It was time that we needed apart as it was not a good relationship that we were in at that moment. He moved back in in December following his mom's passing and we have taken it one day at at time.

I am working full time as store manager for our KL McD's. It is a rough job as I am in charge of 50+ staff and I have little direction from my supervisor and high expectations. It is a job, i think that I am good at it but I have lots of learning to do.

I stepped back from my part time job as medical receptionist at the Methadone clinic. It was way too many hours now that I am running the store. I had hoped to keep both jobs, but it didn't leave me with enough time for family and for myself.

I just started getting back into the fitness side of things. It has been two years since my knee surgery and I am feeling the need to run again. Hopefully It doesn't make things worse. I am going to modestly run this time. three times a week tops hopefully building up to 10 k. As my relationship with my husband goes, I will do the same with my exercise. One day at a time, one step at a time. I am using the couch to 10k application on my phone so to build up my endurance and distance. On my off days, I am doing stretching and light yoga to build up my muscles to prevent/reduce injury to my knees.

Liam is in grade 10 at KLDCS. He has been struggling with motivation to do his assignments and it is reflecting in his grades. He is trying and we are doing a  new approach to his homework and test preparation. He has been working at McDonalds for over a year now and enjoys making the money. He is going to Comic Con with some students from the High school next month. He has quite the portfolio of drawings and likes to live stream while he is drawing.

Aidan will be graduation from Grade 8 next month from the Intermediate program at KLDCS. His marks are amazing and he is a great student and peer as per his teachers. He spends his spare time playing video games and hanging out with his friends. He has been helping out a lot with Helyn lately too. He has quite the personality. He loves to do quirky little things that make us laugh.

Helyn is in grade 5 at Sacred Heart Catholic School. She is quite the little budding artist with the inspiration from her older brother Liam. She is turing out to be quite the young lady. She enjoys cooking and drawing. She got a cupcake maker for Christmas and makes us treats all the time. She is so sweet and loves helping her family.

Mom had a hard year battling colorectal cancer. She had chemotherapy and radiation treatments followed by surgery and an Illiostomy bag to help her heal following the surgery. The surgeon was confident that they removed all the cancerous tumors. She just had her bag removed so that is a new adjustment and recovery from surgery. It has been two weeks now and she is healing.

Dad is still out in Winnipeg. Looks like he will finally be retiring from truck driving. Nancy just moved back home to the apartment after a brief stint in retirement housing. Dad will be her primary caregiver with home care and nurses coming to check in on her daily and meals on wheels.

I will keep up a little more often now.

Chris

New adventure

Here we are three weeks into our new adventure in ole KL. 

I am working retail. It's interesting. Not horrible but not where I saw myself being. I like working with women and so I can continue to do that. 

Glen is working with my brother in his renovation/ construction business. 

The kids are adjusting. Today seems like a difficult day. Helyn misses her old school and her old teacher and friends. She is sleeping between Glen and I right now. She feels safe. Ill be calling her teacher tomorrow to ask her about Helyns work and this Nathan boy who is upsetting her. 

Aidan yo-yos as well. He likes the kids in his class. He is having issues with one of his teachers. We have been making extra time for him. 

Liam doesn't have an opinion about school. He is trying hard to fit in and make friends. He is a good kid with his head on his shoulders. He went out fishing with Matty ( my moms bf) and he caught a big pike and was shown how to akin it and prepare it. It was pretty cool. 

Our house closes in August so money is right right now as we are paying for expenses there and here. Just two more months to go. 

I feel bad that we are stealing my moms space but happy that the kids are getting to know her and Matty. They are good people who extended their lives and home to us while we try and get a place of our own. 

Apartments/ rentals are hard to come by around here. We have been looking but nothin big enough or safe enough. 

One of Liam's and one of Mattys fish 

Baby girl 

A long overdue update

Well here we are mid October 2011. Liam is playing football this year. Full contact. It's a great starter program. No games but two practices a week.
In the spring they will play other teams.
He is really enjoying it.
Liam is in grade 6 this year. This is his last year in grade school. We are having a hard time with that as he is only going to be 12 And being mixed in with 18 year olds. He is a mature boy, but he is so easily influenced. :(

Aidan is in grade 4 this year. He isn't in any programs as of right now but we are registering him for swimming next session. We has him at open doors for a few months. It is a counseling program which helped us work on his self esteem. He learned quite a bit. It was. Good program for him.

Helyn just turned 6 in September and is in grade 1. Where did my baby girl go?
She is doing well. She really enjoys playing with her friends and doing arts and crafts. She is such a sweet little girl full of love and sweetness.

I am still working for the midwives. It's full time now. It's always busy with lots to do. I really enjoy it and learn new things everyday.

Glen is still working hard with his business. Hard to believe its been two and a half years.

We added a new member to the family in march. A new puppy named jagermeister or jäger do short. He loves driving our 10 year old Sophie nuts and chases our cat Steve around for fun.

So that's it for now. I will start updating on a more regular basis.

I'm still here

Back to update. I will post more updates now that I have the blogger ap on my phone. Stay tuned

Ugh

Liam was in a cross country run for his school yesterday. He came in 45/60. A big improvment from last year where he came in 58th. He was happy with his accomplisment.We are proud of him too.

He has been having a hard time with Beckwith School lately. There is a girl in his class that likes to make his life hell. She controls what goes on in their lunch soccer game and likes to tell Liam to go to the other team when he ends up on hers. We are trying to teach him to speak up for himself... we feel if he makes his voice heard, she will let down eventually, we hope. He wants to go back to his other school. He has only been there for a month and he told us the reason he wanted to go there in the first place was to learn french so we are trying to convince him to stay a little longer. He is making some friends so that helps as well.





Aidan had his birthday party over the weekend. I will never have that many children over for a sleepover ever ever again! It was insanity. No huge problems, just a bunch of different personalities that didn't mess all the time and neither Glen nor I had enough patience or energy to keep up with them all the time. The moral of the story is Aidan had fun, the boys had fun and that's all we can ask for right? Thank you to Ethan, Aiden, James, Sam, Tye, Rylan for coming and for the wonderful gifts. :)

Helyn went shopping last night with her birthday money from Nanny and picked out a ..... gasp..... Barbie! This is new to her, but she is enjoying dolls lately.. not sure what I think about it, but she is a girl so I guess its welcome LOL. Where did this little girl come from? She still enjoys playing lego and pokemon with the boys, but when it comes down to it, she enjoys the barbies and polly pockets more. Ahhhh.

Long and Overdue update

It has been quite the year.

We lost our Papa Murray on Valentine's day this year.

My baby sister got married and is expecting their second baby in April next year.

Liam has switched schools from Arklan Public School to Beckwith so he could take the French Immersion program.It is quite the adjustment for him, he is having his good days and bad days, but he is trying and that is all that matters.

Helyn is going to Senior Kindergarten and the Ready to Learn Program at the Daycare.. so she is all day every day for school this year. She is loving school and learning so much.

Aidan is in the 3rd Grade and doing wonderfully. He is enjoying his time with friends and doing his best at school. Can't believe he is going to be 8 on Monday. Where does the time go?

Hey Hey

Christmas is over.
The kids had a good one.

Money was tight this year, but we were still able to pull of some nice presents.
There was a lot of lego, board games and other non electrical toys this year which was a good thing as we had no power for most of Boxing day. LOL.

It was great to see them enjoy their toys.

Glen's work is keeping him busy at the moment which is good. We are trying to bank on it and stay ahead.

Work for me is good. I was off for nearly 2 weeks with a cold. I am back tomorrow.
Feeling better now thank goodness. Funny, no one else got sick thankfully.... I was the only one who got the H1N1 Shot. Hmmm co inky dink??

Going to have a quiet new years too. Having a few friends over for drinks and the kids will be here so nothing too wild.

Hope you all had a great holiday and have a fabulous new year.