Halloween

Just a quick one to show you pictures of our halloween. Costumes didn't actually stay on too long; Jackson didn't like his dangly ghost "wings" or his ghost hat, but he loooooooved all the danglies and shiny things on MY costume (for chewing and yanking), plus wanted to nurse every five seconds, and I was wearing like fifty layers of clothing, so we put the kibosh on that pretty quick. Still, we had a fun time. Only got a handful of trick or treaters though.

Here we all are. Shawn's kids got a big kick out of his costume at school.

Cutest little ghost ever

My jack o' lantern

Shawn's jack o' lantern

What The . . . ??

 Seriously, Mother Nature? SERIOUSLY!?!??

 Our street, taken yesterday morning

All that white stuff melted off by late afternoon, but I mean come ON. Okay, weather whining over :D

In other news, it's official: we bought the house. Inspection came back fine, we had them fix an issue on the roof, since the roof was recently done and it should have been done then, and now everything's signed and pretty much done. We take possession June 1st. Pretty excited!

I do have a cute video of Jackson this week, but it's after his bath and he's totally nakeys. Now, I only give this blog address to friends and family, and the blog is unsearchable, but this is still the internet and there still are creepers out there, so I decided not to post it. If you'd like to see it, email me and I'll send it to you.

A couple other random things that I thought were neat this week:

Mmm, mac 'n'  . . . squash??

Yep, it looks like homemade mac 'n' cheese, but it's actually mac 'n' squash sauce, spiced to kind of make you feel like you're eating mac 'n' cheese. It actually turned out really well, especially for an experiment. Let me know if you want the recipe.

And one last random thing. Look what I bought at the local grocery store:

Hey Chris, jealous much?

We Bought A House!

Trailer. We bought a trailer. With an addition. On its own land. Okay technically we haven't bought it yet. We still have to have our inspection done and get the finances finalized, but they accepted our offer and we signed the dotted line, so as long as the inspection comes back clean and something freaky doesn't go down at the bank (I don't see how it would, but there is a part of me that wakes the rest of me up in the middle of the night, afraid that the bank is going to go "No! Go away you two fakers, and come back when you are actual bona fide Responsible Adults! You suck!" and throw staplers and calculators at us on the way out the door) then it's ours. Like Shawn said earlier tonight, this is kind of scarier than having a baby. But exciting! Still, I won't believe it until everything is finalized, which will be in a couple of weeks. Actually, I probably won't believe it until they give us the key. And I still won't believe it. Someone will give us the key, and I'll go "ha ha, suckers!" and run away with it before they can change their minds. Kinda like that Ikea commercial:

Anyway, pictures:

Cute, isn't it?

 Not a bad little kitchen. Has a dishwasher (comes with appliances)

Here's the other side of the small dining room area

 Living room, beside the kitchen

 I wish I would have gotten a better picture of this. It's the family room (part of the addition). It's got a gas fireplace-stove thing for additional heat (yay!). So, what's with the ladder in the family room? Well . . .

Our house has a treehouse in it :D It's a little kid's play room above the family room.

And yes, there are also bedrooms and a bathroom (2 and 1 respectively), and there is a third bedroom, but it only has one door and no windows, so it's not a legal bedroom. We plan to put another door in so we can use it as a bedroom. There's also a little laundry nook at the end of the hall, conveniently right between the bathroom and where we'll change the baby. Oh, and no stairs. Yay. Don't get me wrong, I like toning my butt going up those stairs all day long to change diapers, but it's a bit sketchy holding a wiggle monster at the same time.

The absolute best thing about this house though, besides the location, which is AWESOME, is the yard:

 *drool*

 These are pictures that were taken in the summer by the owners, they were on the house listing

 Look at that beautiful big fenced backyard! 0.27 acres

(Fifth wheel not included)

Plenty of room for forts and kiddie pools and sandboxes, and a big fat veggie garden and fruit trees :D. Here are some more pics that we took when we were there before all the plants started to wake back up for spring:

 The front walk

 Kind of a messy picture, but it shows the side of the house. Under that little overhang are the steps that go down to the half basement, which is a workshop/storage. And a barbeque.

 Nice big deck

 Little patio by the pond

 They really did a nice job with the rock walls and stone mulch

Isn't it cute?

I see much picking up of rocks from off the pavement and out of the pond in my future, but that's okay. Jackson and his yet-to-be-made sibling will have a lot of fun here. So will their mom and dad :D

So, the location. It's about 5 - 10 minutes outside of Vernon, up the hill from the truck weigh scales on the highway (far up the hill, not close to the highway) in a nice family neighbourhood. The whole hillside up there is family homes, little hobby farms with horses and orchards. There is a little play park about five houses down from us. Here's a map:

View Larger Map

You can zoom in if you click "view larger map". Our house is the one on the end of the street on the left, next to the hay field. You can see the little play park up the street (it's the little circle in the middle).

So, now we wait for everything to go through, then wait some more (unless the home inspector tells us to run away fast or the bank throws staplers at us) until we take possession on June 1st. Wow.

PS - sorry for the lack of posting, this is what we've been doing for the past couple of weeks.

Nanana

I think Jackson really likes homemade hamburgers, because he really had a lot to say during dinner this evening:

There ya go, Nana! Listen to all that talkin'.

In other news, the car hit a milestone on our way back from Obedience class:

Wow, that's alotta clicks! Good car! Who's a good car? Good girl!

(PS - it was dog obedience class, not car obedience (as Shawn would say, "yay semantics")  although technically I need the training way more than Ben. And our car doesn't need obedience classes, it does everything perfectly, just to clarify. There, clear as mud? Awesome.)

Tough Week, But Lookin' Up Now

Ugh. This last week with Jackson was haaaaaaaard. He was one seriously unhappy boy, to the point that I took him to see both his doctor and to the ER in one day (he was fine, it was probably just some really painful gas and intestinal cramps). Not much was impressing our poor little man. Chris and Mel were over, which cheered him up some (and of course Shawn and I were very happy to visit with them), but I think I was the worst hostess ever because I was just frazzled beyond my limit with my poor fussy baby. So I didn't get one picture of them while they were here. Oops. Oh well.

But the good news is that, not only is Jackson feeling better now, he is happier and more rambunctious than I've ever seen him. Yay! He is just a-bouncin' and a-squealin' away, and he gets that mischievous little munchkin look in his eye. He hasn't started trying to crawl or walk yet, but he's getting more opinionated about things, so I have a feeling that independent travel won't be too far away.

I dug out his playpen (excuse, me, play yard, that's what they're called now, although we usually call it baby jail) since now he's sitting up so well and he needs more changes of pace in the day to stay entertained. He likes it:

 Yay, happy lil' man!

 Oh hey Mom, just playin' with my new toy

 Now that babe can sit up so well, I can put him on my back in the pocket sling and wear him if he's fussy but I've got to get some stuff done. Sometimes it's the only thing that cheers him up:

 Pic from his miserable week. I think I'm making lunch.

 Trust me, this was cheerful for him that week

And, on a non-baby-related note, I've been saying to a couple of people that I was going to take pictures of me cutting my own hair, so here's a couple. You can see, I just comb it into a ponytail at the very top of my head, then snip across the top:

 Snipped-off ponytail end. What is with my Jack Nicholson eyebrow??

(almost) instant haircut

I love it. It takes less than five minutes, I don't have to drive to the mall, make awkward small talk with a hair stylist and fork over a bunch of money. And it's not a bad haircut. Admittedly, the hair near the bottom of my head isn't getting trimmed yet because it's not long enough, but if it starts to bug me I can just snip along the bottom to clean it up. Ha ha, I think I have the cheapest hair in the Okanagan. No, wait, I think Shawn's got me beat :D (he doesn't need to use vinegar on his head)

I'm pretty excited for the rest of the week. It's suppose to get above freezing during the day for most of the week (holy crap!), and the sidewalks around Armstrong are getting more clear, so it looks like babe, dog and I will be going on lots of adventures. Finally!

(Is it spring yet? Seriously, we just got snowed on again this weekend. It's knee-deep in our yard. Enough already.)

Christmas Pictures

Okay, here it is! The video's not working yet, but here's the picture post I promised:

Well, Mr. Man had a great time over Christmas, and so did we. It was a bit hectic, what with all the traveling, but it was great to see the grandparents and uncles and aunts. Jackson traveled really well, and was only cranky twice, which actually means that Jackson traveled way better than his mommy ;)

You'd think that I'd have a billion pictures and video from over Christmas, but honestly we were too busy enjoying the visits to remember to pick up the camera very often. But we did get some:

Here's a video of Jackson opening his presents at Brian and Cathie's. He loooooooved ripping the wrapping paper. We've kind of created a monster there. But what a cute monster:

Edit, Jan 13: I think the video isn't working because of an update to a plugin on my computer, so it won't upload properly. This will take some time to figure out.

My folks were of course super excited to have a few days with the cute little baby pterodactyl. Here are some pics of the visit:

 

Looking at the pretty tree

 

Playin' with toys in Grandpa's lap

Coolest onesie ever

Uncle Chris sacrificed his own shirt to make that onesie for Jackson. We called it the hypno-shirt, because when they came to visit, Jackson would just sit and stare in amazement at the shirt.

Crackin' each other up

Ha ha, my Dad said more than once that we'll have to check Grandma's coat when we leave, my Mom kept calling Jackson "my baby", as in, "where's my baby, I wanna hold my baby!". Which is totally fine. I'm glad they got to spend so much time together.

One other thing I have to show you is a picture of the cookies Mom and Mel made (thanks Mom for the picture). Pretty sure Mel did the decorating, she's pretty boss at it.

Deliciously awesome cookies. Almost too awesome to eat.

He's Got A New Trick

Look what this guy's doing now:

Whee! I'm so strong now!

Just like in the video, Jackon's continuing to be happy these days. Yay, yay, YAY!!! :D :D :D. What a relief!

On another note, it's been pretty darn cold lately, especially with the wind. Ben is still loving the snow and acting like a huge puppy every time we go out. I enjoy myself too, but I do need to suit up:

 That is me, under there, wearing all my clothes at once ;)

I dunno, can you see the water on my eyelashes and eyebrows? That was ice a minute before.

I'm thinkin' maybe I should walk the dog a wee bit earlier. Like before midnight. Just maybe.

Snow!

No Jackson pictures, thought I'd warn ya right away :D. But some pictures of the grand-dog. The first snow was actually last night, but I didn't think to bring the camera until halfway through our walk. Oops. But I brought it tonight. Here's some pics of puppy and of our snowy walk tonight:

 Out of focus, but look how happy he is!

 What a beautiful night for a walk

 Note the "droolsicle" on the left :D

 Walkin' down the train tracks downtown

 Downtown's so pretty in the snow

 The old train station

Warming up after