He Melts My Heart

My first born baby melts my heart.  He's fostering this ever growing love for Jesus and the Jesus Christmas story!  He's been asking and asking to go get a "Baby Jesus set" (Nativity) for weeks and weeks!  Finally, yesterday Dan and Spencer went out to choose one for the boys bedroom!  He was so excited to come home and set it all up!  He had put so much thought into it and was so proud of how it turned out!  I just love that he's excited about it!  He always is reciting prayers he learns in school and sharing all his new knowledge with us!!  Makes me excited!  When we move back to the city one of the first things on our priority list is to find a Church!  I'm so excited for my kids to have a church to call home!  It'll be good for this family of mine!

Holy Crap!

It's December 1st.  I haven't hardly started Christmas shopping.  I'm still decorating the house.  Have not done any baking.  Something is terribly wrong with me!  I'm so so so behind in everything holiday related this year!  Hoping this weekend I can make a huge dent in a few of my 'to do' lists! We've also got Dan's Christmas party to go to this weekend.  Paisley will be partying with us!  I just can't leave this little girl anywhere!!  Anyway, that will be all for this completely uninspired post tonight!

3 Months

Miss Paisley turned 3 months old on Saturday!  Here are a few pictures from her day!

 Also, cousin Ethan came to our house to finally meet all his cousins for the first time!  Well, he'd already met Paisley, twice, but not the big boys!  It was fun to have 2 babies in the house for a couple days!  Definitely don't think I could ever handle twins, though!  Even though Ethan's Mama was here as well, I felt like I couldn't get a thing done around the house!! 

Baby Ethan

Auntie Kimberlea and a few children!

6 weeks apart and the same size!

Spencer and Ethan

Ethan and Paisley

Love!

Ethan and Uncle Dan!

Noley Oley!

In the morning light

My day started at 4am. It's 8am, any guesses how many cups of coffee I've had?

Fall Family Photos!

Way back at the beginning of October, we all loaded up in the van and went down to the city for family photos!  I happen to think they turned out pretty super!  Wanna see?

You Gotta Start Somewhere!

The start of my gallery wall.  Going to rearrange the frames a little bit and pick up some more to make it perfect!!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas...

Remembrance day fell on a Friday this year.  So that means, I had the whole weekend to start decorating for Christmas!  I'm a crazy one who likes to decorate for Christmas as early as I possibly can!  So, because I feel that it's wrong to decorate before Remembrance Day, I get right into it on the 12th.  The day after Remembrance Day. 

I started this year with Paisley's tree.  I went and bought some decorations that matched the colours of her bedding.  I didn't want to go too crazy so I just got a box of pink and a box of green and one spool of ribbon.  I think it turned out absolutely perfect.  See?

Next up, the kids tree downstairs.  We had to go through all the decorations and put away any of the glass balls or breakable ones.  We have a few children who can't seem to keep a hold of themselves when it comes to tree ornaments!  The boys had a good time decorating.  Actually, Nolan had a blast playing with me and the camera while the big boys and Daddy had fun decorating!  Paisley napped and missed out on the action!

After the kids tree, Dan and I decorated the big tree in the living room.  I absolutely love this tree!  Every year we decorate it I just sit and stare at the finished product!  It's so beautiful!

I'm going to slowly get the rest of the house decorated through the coming weeks!  Should be interesting with little hands that like to follow me around and undo everything I've done!  Little stinkers!  Good thing they're cute!



And just because my kids are the cutest, here's a few others from the past few days!

Trying out Paisley's new flowers!

Lovely!

Sunday Morning Mario Kart

Thursday Morning smiles for Mama!



Paisley Grace Thackeray

In August, our family was blessed with a beautiful baby girl!  She is the perfect little completion to our family!  We couldn't have asked for a better baby!  She's so laid back, rarely cries and is surrounded with love all day!  Her brothers think the world of her, and her Daddy is already wrapped around her tiny little finger!  I feel as though I'm living a dream, having 4 healthy children, 3 beautiful boys and one perfect little girl! 

I had A LOT of fun preparing for our daughter's arrival!  I started by moving the 2 biggest boys downstairs to the former guest room!  Of course I painted it and decorated it to their taste...and of course I have no pictures of that room!  I do, however have pictures of their former room, which was decorated exactly as their current room is!  Here they are!

After we got Spencer and Liam all settled into their new digs downstairs, I moved the toy room out of the last remaining bedroom downstairs and converted it into a new little cozy spare room.  Again, no pictures, but trust me!  It's nice!  We got a new bed to go in there and some new bedding!  I haven't hung curtains yet, but will get on that as soon as I have 5 spare minutes!

Next, it was time to start Paisley's room!  Bring on the pink!  I chose a very very light pink to paint on the walls.  It's called Heirloom!  I love it!  I searched and searched for bedding that would be perfect for our little Paisley!  I eventually found a vendor on Etsy who makes infant bedding and contacted her to sew me up some beautiful pretties for Paisley's room!  It turned out perfectly!  The line was called "Gypsy Bandanna"  It's beautiful.  The colours are so bright and vibrant and stimulating for a little girl!  Of course I had to get a few pieces with a paisley print on them!  I love how the room came together! 

Also, I have always said that if we were ever blessed with a daughter, I'd love to put a chandelier in her room.  So, I did! 

Although Paisley isn't actually sleeping in her room yet (she's in a bassinet right smack beside me in our room!) she still spends lots of time in there!  Playing in her crib, playing on the floor, having her tiny tushie changed! 

Paisley will be three months old already, on the 25th of this month!  I can't believe how fast time if flying by!  I always get sad with how fast my babies grow up!  There's nothing like snuggling a tiny squishy newborn baby!  I wish they'd stay that way for a little longer!! 

First time wearing a dress!

One Month

Two Months

So there you have it!  Paisley Grace!  I love being a mother to a daughter!  And to my sons!  Life is perfect!

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!!