GOLDEN OLYMPICS

Wow what an Olympics! I have to say that I have feelings on both sides of the fence regarding the Olympics. When rural schools are being closed or important programs are being axed such as those in the Child Development Centre due to a lack of funding it does make one wonder where are priorities lie. However, I've watched a ridiculous amount of the Olympic games on t.v. and have absolutely loved it. Its not just watching our Olympians take home a medal but more so the patriotism it has brewed throughout our country. Canadians are not known for this and I LOVE seeing red and white being worn with such pride! My brother George decided in the last minute to buy tickets to five events including the closing ceremony and take my cousin Bo to the gold medal hockey game and Mom to everything else which included the gold medal womens curling event! So needless to say they are in the thick of it and mom updates me regularly. She said its so neat down there as the vibes are incredible. Everyone is enthused and she said "even when we took the bus out to the bobsled event this young looking punk with his face completely pierced and his hair all over the place stood up and offered his seat to me!" She has been having a fabulous time and it sounds like the whole experience gives one faith in the human race in more ways than one! Which I think people in this country needWe've all been hit pretty hard with the recession along with many sad situations around the world so for something to give people such patriotism and positive energy across Canada is this not priceless??? Well people what I can say is I'M PROUD TO BE CANADIAN!

Sleeping Guru

Tonight the Sleeping Guru had to be put to work. Alistair was obviously overtired tonight and decided to work himself into this unconsolable tizzy. Thankfully, this has become an irregular occurance but when it happens I either plunk him in the bath with me or Jason puts his miracle arms to work! Its too bad I didn't get him on the video just 5 seconds before as he seemed far from sleep mode. Jason takes him and holds him just as seen in the video and pats his butt up into the air maybe 4 inches a couple times and voila he becomes floppy as a wet noodle and falls into a deep sleep! Its hilarious and of course wonderful for us that we have a couple of very reliable options when our little man gets overtired like this.

As for our new house we've pried off all the baseboard, pulled up the carpet, removed all the kitchen cupboards, cut up a fallen willow out back, and removed all the doors and door casings. So its starting to feel more and more like our home! We even had our first meal there tonight and ordered in a pizza. Very exciting stuff for us folk who tend to live in the rural areas more often then not! Some of the artistic work left behind in our new home!
Yanking up some of the old carpet....its almost in style again!

No trespassing!

Wow I'm a big girl now! House and Kid in tow! We officially took ownership of our new home yesterday. Still feels like we're trespassing as it obviously is going to take a bit to sink in that its actually ours. Very fun though to have mom over and show her our new pad. Plus just to walk around in it and see it from a set of eyes of ownership was different. Luckily we didn't find anything drastically different. Jason had done a great job of his homework to make sure we didn't come across any surprises after the fact. Mom wanted to take us out for dinner. As we were leaving, Mom went to open the door with her command start and she pushed the ALARM button instead! O it was hilarious! To make a long story short we'll just say the whole neighbourhood knows THE MACMILLANS ARE MOVING IN!

Another go with the video!

So not sure why the last video wasn't accessible but we'll try again! I went and grabbed a coffee and had some me time at our new house we officially get tomorrow. Fun to just look about at more details. They seem to have liked rose bushes! Bonus for me!

Valentines Day = Food Food & More Food!

First Chocolates

French Toast

Coffee

Flowers

Cards

More Chocolate!

Valentines Cookies

AND more Chocolate

Scallops & Bacon

LOBSTER

Steak

Pinot Grigio

AND EVEN MORE CHOCOLATES

Ahhh what a great day topped off with a

GOLD medal

by an individual who we can

PROUDLY call Canadian!!!

Thank You Alexandre Bilodeau!!!

Attempting the high chair for the first time.

Looking all snuggly in his outfit from Lisa~ So cosy!

Having an outdoor day

Alistair has decided mothers chin is a good soother!

Now whenever he's upright like this he seeks out my chin!

Alistair looking rather cute! : )

Although the screen is black on the blog if you push play

you get to check out Alistair attempting head control!

COURT

Well its been a challenge for this mama but I kept things low key until we officially became OWNERS just a couple of hours ago to a foreclosure home here in town! I really didn't think we were going to get it as foreclosures are quite the rigamarol...We spent all day in court, yes Alistair too, until finally our case came up. Alistair and I had to sit outside on cushy chairs for most of the day as Alistair decided to become a little vocal misterman! We got a few giggles and a couple cold stares so I figured we had better go hang out outside out of respect for those who were actively having their case reviewed. It would have been interesting though as it wasn't only foreclosures that were being dealt with there were also such things as adoptions and financial disputes. For our case there were two lawyers there as the former owner was trying to make a case but the judge didn't see it in his favor to our delight. He was trying to say the realtor didn't make enough of an effort to sell the property but they did have 63 viewings and 8 offers in aproximately 4 months. So that whole idea was kiboshed. The bank had their lawyer there too which supported our side of things. We also thought there were going to be other realtors and perspective buyers there to challenge our original offer but NO! Whoop whoop. Its quite the experience dealing with foreclosures as even though the bank accepts your offer you can loose it in court. This is due to the fact that competing offers can be brought to court and then you blindly put in a new offer and the highest offer gets it. Quite archaic really but I guess it works.

Our New Home!!

So ya we are so pleased that we didn't have to go any higher as now we have a nice cushion if something else surprises us as new owners of an older home. Anyhooo about the house! Its a 2500 sq ft home on three city lots around downtown PG over by Conaught Hill. Its in an older part of town but this particular area is starting to get fixed up and everytime we went for a drive by (every few days) people were outside shoveling their walks and carrying for their homes. In otherwords it didn't look like rentville...It looks like quite a well settled area. Anyhoo it also has a detached single car garage and a huge front yard with spruce, mountain ash, and birch trees. It needs quite a lot of work to make it pretty and updated but Jason had a good look from the attic to the basement foundation and found it overall to be quite a solid structure. So bonus for being married to a carpenter! So yeppers we are quite pleased to have done so well with our percedings especially considering we are both first time home buyers!! So now out comes the good ol' Bargain Finder, some trips to the Habitat for Humanity warehouse, and scanning of the flyers to see what kind of deals we may get for our new home. It'll be quite some time yet before we can actually move in but until then it'll be fun to fix up and make our own! Once again WHOOP WHOOP for us! Looking down the center of the house

The view out the front window...nice big front yard!

~ Hope you all had a great day cause we sure did! Cheerio Julie

Olympic Torch

Mr Bo Man Carrying the torch!

My proud mother with her nephew

The Hedges/MacMillan Clan with the Olympian

Ah yes the flame came our way and what a housefull it created! My cousin Bo, who I bragged about in the last post, came up and carried the torch in Hixon. It was such a special time...unexpectedly it gave me a lump in my throat to see Bo carrying the torch and as I looked about I saw a few other shinny eyeballs. It really was a wonderful site. Him carrying it in Hixon proved to be a bonus as the whole famdamily got to run along side the whole time he carried it. The security had their eyes on us all the way though insuring we didn't get to darn close. Can you imagine if someone jumped Bo while my whole family was there?? Just look at the pics...I would recommend anyone else but Bo to jump!!! LOL Anyhow it was great.

My Bro with Bo

My brother George surprised us and turned up the night before along with 8 other family members from Ft St John. So our house was jam packed once again with 13 people laying their heads down for a snooze. That night we had some more fun playing Rumoli and "The Construction Game" until midnight. Good times O if you want to see more pics of the event George posted them at this link http://picasaweb.google.com/ghedges/RobertsTorchRelay#

As for the cloth diapers YES we are still happily doing the cloth diapering. The fuzzibunz are the choice brand for me even though they are pricey. Even when my kids diaper is heavy his skin is dry. Absolutely no rash issues with them. So yep I'm pretty happy with my self to bid the disposables goodbye.

We had our neurology appointment and we not changing anything. Just a bit more blood work and a MRI for 2 yrs of age. The doc figured what I saw since Dec was "extra movement" and not seizure activity. Not sure how she figures that one when he was contracting significantly to the side for 3-4 sec three times in a row but hey I'm not going to argue when he seems to be progressing in the right direction. At least the activity he is having is less than before. Just an interesting position to be in as a parent and not feel that you are being validated for what you know, see, and feel as a parent. Alistair may as well have gone in on his own in that appointment.....ya enough on that subject.

Alistair is a munchin man!! We went in and got his 4 needles the other day for H1N1, flu shot, high risk pneumoccocal, and the typical combo needle for whooping cough, tetanus etc... He had a good cry for 20 sec and finito the fist was in his mouth and he contently drooled away. I gave him some tylenol a couple times more for me than him as when I had the H1n1 i felt like crap and complained about my shoulder pain so tylenol he got. But it really was uneventful to my relief. One interesting tidbit though was looking into the H1N1 and the adjuvant. I asked about getting the nonadjuvant version of the vaccine and found out they don't give nonadjuvant H1N1 for under 3 yr olds. Adjuvant is often included in vaccines to enhance the recipients immune response to a supplied antigen while keeping the infected foreign material at a minimum. I just wanted to look into the options as there is so much hype out there about going for the nonadjuvant vaccine. Well when the public health nurse and i looked into it the nonadjuvanted vaccine had more thiomersal, a mecury containing compound, in it then the adjuvant vaccine. the thiomersal is placed in the vaccine as a perservative. But interesting really when people are so concerned with the mecury side of things.....Anyhow I decided to go with all four needles as I figure the risks of having an adverse reaction to the vaccines outway the risk of acquiring one of the conditions itself. So needles he did get.....and he remains to be a happy camper.

Actually my kid is in the "Oooo thats my voice" stage!! For the past 4 days or so he wakes up around 4 or 5am for a feed (another growth spurt I think) and then precedes to chat quite loudly till mama decides she can't sleep through it anymore. Yes at this stage in the game Mr Alistair would acquire his own room if we had our own home but for now we are one happy family sleeping together within the same four walls! : )

Ooo one more tidbit...Alistair has reached 13 lbs. Yep he is a growen up a storm and nicely tracking along on the the percentile chart. This is just a little chart the medical world likes to track you on to ensure that you are growing appropriately. They measure the head size, length, and weight and plot your kid on a graph and if your kid is making any drastic changes in the wrong direction they refer you to a specialist and down the specialist road you go....Anyhow we are tracking along it well. So yippeee. It must be all the chicken Alistair is consuming...Here is a little video of him using a utensil! Yessiery the little man grabbed the spoon from my hand the other day and promptly stuck it in his mouth. So now we need two spoons when eatting...Good times!

K toodallooo folks ~ Juels