1 Year

It's been one year since I last posted. 365 days. 52 weeks. Wow. LOTS has happened (obviously)in the past year.

My last post was about Baby Beaudin's Baby Blanket. Baby Beaudin turned out to be a little boy, and his Mama and Daddy named him Tate. He's adorable. I'm sad we don't live closer so our boys can be closer to their cousin.

Last December, the 29th to be exact, we...correction, I, found out I was pregnant. I sat on the news for a little while trying to figure out the perfect way to tell my husband. This is what I came up with...

I painted on a little newborn sized onesie "4"...of course we didn't get a picture of it. :) It was hilarious watching Dan process the information!

We had a rocky start to this pregnancy. A few complications here and there that made it a really scary first trimester. Thankfully, everything worked out wonderfully and we made it through the rest of the pregnancy complication free! We found out on April 16th that we were having a ... GIRL!!! We decided to name her Paisley Grace Thackeray!!

Also on April 16th, we lost a very important member of our little family. Nemo finally showed us that he was giving up his fight with his neurological problems that he'd been battling his whole little life. Even though he was a little cat, he was a huge part of this family. We miss him every day.

May was an extremely eventful and stressful month. On May 14th, 2 separate wildfires started on either side of the town of Slave Lake. On May 15th, the entire town was evacuated as the one fire on the west side of Slave Lake ripped through a little more than a third of the town. Many many people lost their homes. We were very fortunate. Our house was spared. Our entire corner of town was spared from any sort of damage. We were evacuated from our town for 2 long weeks. We had enough forethought to pack up some sentimentals the night before when we saw the two fires burning. I wasn't taking any chances. We packed up pictures, clothes, jewellery and loaded up the van. On Sunday when it was very apparent that something very bad was about to happen, all we had to do was load up the family and the pets and flee to safety. It was a terrifying drive out of town as we had to drive through the fire burning east of Slave Lake. I'll never forget it as long as I live.

In June, Slave Lake was hit with record rainfalls. To add insult to injury there was a lot of flooding through what was left of the town. Again, we were spared. Our sump pump was definitely working overtime, though!

July we went to the cabin at Moose Lake. It was a desperately needed getaway and we were fortunate enough to be able to spend nearly 2 weeks completely disconnected from every day life. The time we spent together as a family before the addition of Paisley was so so refreshing. We can't wait to do it again next summer!

August brought the birth of our 4th child - our daughter, Paisley Grace. She came into this world healthy on August 25th at 9:25am. We are so thankful for this beautiful precious little girl. She's a dream baby and we couldn't have asked for a better baby to complete our family!

September brought another huge change to our house - Spencer started Kindergarten! We're so proud of how independent he's become! He loves school and dreads the weekends when he has to stay home! I hope he's this enthusiastic all through his school career!

October brought the birth of our second nephew. Ethan Ray was born on Nolan's second birthday! A pretty spectacular birthday gift, if you ask me!

So its been a busy year, but also a memorable one!! We'll see if this year I can blog a little more frequently!!