Mewhorts Abroad

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Let it snow...

We've had a very "normal" winter this year, so that included snow for Christmas and hoar frost over the holidays. That's where the frost builds up on the everything and frosts it... Very pretty and probably interesting to those who don't have this kind of climate! The background of the collage is a chain link fence and Clarissa was showing off snowflakes on her black mitten...

Christmas '07

It was good to be with family at Christmas, we were priviledged to have Doug's dad, Jim, our friends Michael (whom we met in Malaysia) and Kevin join us for Christmas Eve dinner at my brother Craig's house. My whole family attended, including brother David from Vancouver Island. Ashlyn (with Max, oops I mean Doug) had learned to close her eyes until after the flash... We went on to open one gift each, Sophia became Scary Sophia of the Seven Seas and Ashlyn was benched for high sticking before we all headed off to sleep so Santa could arrive.
Christmas morning started out slow, with stockings and reading, but once Uncle David, Tanya, Granny and Poppa arrived and the Wii was opened, it got more crazy and fun was had by all!

Halloween

By Halloween we were into winter clothes, but no snow thank goodness. Clarissa was a vampire princess and Miranda went as the corpse bride, but found it necessary to wear a hoody to stay warm. The first house in the picture is ours, the second is our neighbor's on our west side (you can see the side of our house).

Home again, home again...

This was the state of the house, and it took considerable work to get things cleaned, sorted, repaired and organized. I was blessed that the children were willing to do so much for me, like making dinner and cleaning up while I was painting in a frenzy. We got the master bedroom, the basement and our family room painted before Doug landed at the end of Sept. Here's the family room, now with a red feature wall!

Road trip with Sophia!

In what some may consider a questionable decision, two weeks after arriving home (August 23rd) I volunteered to drive to Jasper to pick up my girls on a camping trip with my parents. I took along my niece, Sophia, who was not quite three at that point. We did very well together and had a nice 24 hours before all four of us drove home to Edmonton. For those no familiar with the distance involved, it is a four drive each way not counting pit stops including a memorable dinner with Sophia covered in spaghetti sauce. (No, I didn't go for a psychiatric exam, although in retrospect perhaps I should have...)

The trip home, 6 mo. ago...

Well, I'll start with an apology for how long it's taken to get around to this... We were catapulted into home repairs, work and school very quickly and just now are we starting to catch our breath. As you can see, our 12 hours in Hawaii was nice. We drove around for six hours or so and we managed to catch too much sun and not enough sleep (Miranda was passed out on the tile floor of the Honolulu airport once my jet lag/ lack of sleep caught up with me and we returned early to the airport).