CONGRATULATIONS!

Ingrid and Andrew are the proud parents of a beautiful and healthy baby boy.

Welcome Anthony!

We can't wait to meet you.

Happy Halloween!

I wanted to dress Neva up this year for Halloween. I am not sure why - just had to. It was surprising that I had a couple of choices for outfits. Amazing how the stores cater to the expats out here.

When I saw this outfit and knew it was the one. Our little lioness.

We had a trial run at home to see if she would go for it. Yup, a little hard getting her into it but she was a-ok and ran around the house for a bit with it on.

That afternoon we went and visited a community where some of my friends live (and where we are moving in a few weeks, yay).

"trick or treat"

One house and we were done. Neva just wanted to go inside and play. Our social little girl. :)

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around and seeing some of the sights in the community.

Great day had by all.

Highs of 35!

Hi. It is slowly cooling down. So great to spend more time outdoors. Here are some shots of the past month.

More hat wearing.

Learning to walk and then learning to carry things while she walks.
Visiting with friends. Notice Neva snuggles right in.
Taking the stroller for a walk.
Seeing some beautiful sights.
The PARK! It is finally a decent enough temperature to play outside. Yipee. I am still amazed that many parks have metal slides. +40 + metal slide = OUCH!

Posing. Is this "blue steel" or "le tigre?"
More exploring

The latest:

-We have decided to stay another year. We were going to come home (calgary) in the spring but this has been pushed back until the end of the year.

- The carpet is a mess. I will take a picture so you can see for yourself. We have given up fixing it so everyone just drives over the scrunched up, folded mess.

Lots of love to everyone!

Seriously

None of the tenants in our building want to renew their leases. Why? Well, the grass, stone, etc. that was promised never showed. There is garbage everywhere, we can smell whatever anyone else is cooking, our windows leak, blah blah blah.

Our landlords heard about everyone's displeasure and decided that a big clean up would do the trick. So they showed up, wrecked our water system for a day and "cleaned." This cleaning involved far more work for me...they sprayed the windows (our windows leak) and then hosed down the doors (our doors really leak). I will mention that they did come in and mop up the small pond that developed inside our front door.

As the landlord and his crew are leaving, he turns and says, "tomorrow we bring carpet." Bruce and I figure it is a translational thing and he is going to start paving, putting in stones, whatever. Nope, he meant carpet.

Here is the before shot:

VOILA!! Carpet right over the sand outside of our villa.

Here are some close ups of the wonderful colours that they chose.

Bruce felt very important when he told the guys at work that he parks his car on carpet.

Uh. still not renewing our lease. Can't wait to see what the first wind/sand storm does.

Flames Fan

Neva will instantly remove a hat from her head (unless it is tied on). The only exception t is this black cowboy hat. For some reason she loves it. She will find it, hand it to us, and then get this goofy look on her face and she makes a big production of crawling around with it on. What a goof!

See Mel

Told you - I never comb out her hair.... ;)

Summer Time!

Here are just a few pictures of our time in Canada. It was so great to see friends and family. At the same time, it was really frustrating because we did not get to see everyone we wanted to, and/or visit as much as we wanted. Ah well. Apologies to those that we missed...see you in the spring.

Our time in Ontario:

I love this shot because Neva was so excited to see her dad every time we came around.

Fun times
You can see her head of hair as she is pushing her cousin around on her favourite toy at Grandma and Grandpa's.

The toy.
Family. :)

Getting used to grass.
1st birthday!
Alberta:

Our hike in the mountains

Golf...sort of. This was a great weekend at Gull Lake.

Disc golf - this was one of my favourite evenings while we were home. Spectacular weather, mountain views (Fernie), great friends, OUTSIDE, and beer. Doesn't get much better.

More family.

First few steps...thanks to Auntie Mich.

There were so many wonderful events this summer. I am missing many, many, pictures.....