So Much Fun!

I never would have dreamed that I'd have so much fun dressing up my little girl. She received so many different types of outfits at the babyshower that I have an endless supply for the next couple of years to play with. This little one above is from cousin Eden. The funny thing is it was the one thing I couldn't wait to put Alistair in was coveralls. I ended up not using them much as they were too restrictive for him. However, with Francis she's just a little mover and shaker so nothing seems to be restricting her!

The good ol' Costco pajamas. Love them. Mom bought these and I think she'll get to wear them perhaps one or two times....she's just growing SOOOOO fast. 

 Uncle Larry and Aunt Beverely from Quebec sent this little outfit just in time to head to the beach.

 Tummy Time! She wasn't so fond of this tummy time stuff to start with but now she gets pretty pleased with herself.

 Another fun set of coveralls from cousin Eden.

I was so sure Francis would be wearing these well past Christmas time and boy was I so wrong! Again, another outfit I'll be lucky to squeeze her into a couple more times.

I ♥ Chocolate Pudding!

After trying the vanilla & butterscotch high calorie

 puddings we hit the jackpot with the chocolate!

Road Worthy Stimulation

Well we just got back from a road trip to the North. We ended up clocking over 1000km and I didn't have to stop and buy ear plugs! Alistair, if you can believe it, laughed and giggled all the way up! Did he know Mom was preparing for the worst? It actually went so well that I ended up staying up North four extra days then I had anticipated.

Alistair & Francis just seemed to want to lap up all the attention they could get. I was worried Alistair may get to a point of being overstimmed and really just the evenings he'd have a good ol' melt down and then he seemed to wake ready for the next day.

 Actually a few times during the day he needed some down time but that isn't any different then being here at home. It actually made me so happy to see how much attention Little Mr Man did get. I'm sure I've said it many times before but some people just don't know what to do with him so he may as well be a materialistic object. But my whole family seemed to be just so comfortable with him. Some kids just couldn't get enough of him.

As for Francis there were several little mother hens that just couldn't get enough of her either!

It was quite fun to watch how she responded to everyone as well.

Anyways, thanks to my Auntie Rosie she planned a "Decade Party" (family reunion). This year there was someone to represent each decade from zero to seventy hence Francis is in the picture above.

Jason even took a break from work to come up and hang out with the family.

There were several fun events planned over the weekend. Obvious a "Dead Horse Creek Ranch" version of golf, a three hour intense MANTRACKER! which would have been worthy of a reality show: cousins jumping into dugouts, riders falling off into dugouts, runners coming across black bears, horses swimming in dugouts, the works!

To top it off a fair number of our runners were under the age of 8. Fun Times. We also played a good ol' family card came of hoss which we of course didn't start till 1130pm and it didn't finish till 3 in the morning! Needless to say this trip was not about getting in extra ZZzzzzz's

Oooo this is just an intermission for a cute picture HA HA HA

So after leaving the ranches and saying goodbye to Mom and Jason I headed into town and caught up with several groups of friends. Some from my nursing days in the north,

some from my cooking on the pipeline days and then I just spent some more days having one on one time with cousins. I just kept getting invited to stay so I did! We then took a small trip towards Prince George and spent the night in Hudson Hope and shared a hotel with Jason where he is working for the week. It was kind of fun to hotel it there rather than zoom on by like I usually do.

En route home I did learn a few extra tricks to put up my sleeve. Alistair was so tired and started to winge and I noticed in the rearview mear he was becoming a bobble head. So I suddenly got the idea to take Francis's head support and give it to Alistair finishing it off with a safety pin in front. Within minutes he was asleep.

The other thing that I've incorportated into our lives in the last few months is this piece of high density foam. I noticed one day that Alistair was alot more curious to roll about at Mom's place where she had brand new plush carpets where when he got home he wouldn't roll nearly as much with the foam pads and small area rug. So I went and got this from our local foam store and what a difference its made. He's rolling like crazy and now consistently throughout the day he's getting up on his hands and knees as then when he does fall forward on his head he's got a cushion to catch him. Anyways, I found if I roll it up snuggly it will fit nicely between the front and back rows in the SUV. So everywhere we were at this piece of foam got yarded out. It was in living rooms, tents, back yards, decks, and here in this picture I threw it down at the provincial park while we had some lunch and both kidlets promptly fell asleep afterwards. So as you can tell it was a very successful road trip which was just good for me in itself as I came to realize I'm not nearly as house bound as I once thought!

Sneakin in more pics!

We got so many gorgeous pics done at Francis photo shoot that I want to get the majority of my favs on the blog so that one day when I get around to putting the book into hard cover for the family they will be included. Sometimes thats my motivator in regards to blogging. Now it provides a great family journal for myself and the kidlets to look back on.

It will be my winter project to get the blog year by year into hard cover as it honestly makes me nervous to have all this history in writing with no back up!

It is relatively easy to do just really time consuming and right now my time seems so precious! I really don't have any spare time until the evening when the kidlets go to sleep. I feel I wake up breast feeding, spoon feeding, working with Alistair, playing with the kidlets and then back to feeding, etc... I think thats the life of mamahood.

I read copious amounts of little posts stating that going to the grocery store for moms is a brain break or enjoyable just due to the fact one gets out of the house! I never would have imagined believing such a thing but ooo its so true. Sometimes I drive Jason's employees home as he knows it gives me a change of pace! LOL

I have to say I do truly enjoy motherhood but I sure look at life differently. If I'm sitting in the park and see teenagers horsing around now I see the carefree, unattached, zero responsibility spirit. Where before I would see an indecisive annoying kid thats trying to hard with everything.

Now they make me laugh and I truly get a kick out of teenagers as its really such an amazing time in ones life only caring about oneself and the color and style of clothes you'll wear that day in order to acquire the impact you hope to get.

Anyhow, we're off on another road trip. Hopefully Alistair will be a good little traveller. We have a good five hour drive ahead of us. We're heading North past Ft St John to my Uncle and Aunts cattle ranches for a family "decade party" There is someone in the family to represent each decade. Francis will be the one representing "zero"! LOL I'm sure I"ll have lots of great pictures to share when I get back. Toodallooo till then~ Julie

Daddy's Little Girl

Little Miss Francis definitely has features thanks to various members of the family. However, her hair, eye lashes, and nose are definitely from her daddy! I still can't get over how much hair she came into this world with. It makes her look a lot older than she really is. We were just in getting her first set of immunizations and she looked massive beside this other little guy who was a day older than her. Mind you she is in the 85% percentile so no problemo gaining weight thats forsure!

This is her hair just after a bath. Its so incredibly curly and just like her dad it doesn't take much to turn it into a frizzy afro!! Shall be fun watching it grow with her.

The photo shoot captured her features beautifully.

She basically just slept throughout the whole thing.

Here you get a good glimpse of her stunning little eyelashes. Love them!

The head dresses she got to wear were fantastic too. I wasn't so sure at the time, but now in hind sight they make the pictures all the more fun.