Monday, February 23, 2009

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

Wow...... I can't believe I haven't been here since November.... but... a lot has happened since then.

The biggest excitement for me was getting a full time teaching contract for 2 months. I spent 8 weeks teaching Socials 10 and 11 at Timberline. I was terrified of the "big kids" as I hadn't even TOC'd at the Secondary level. However, it was better than I expected and absolutely loved my time there. The kids were fantastic, the staff were wonderful helping out the "newbie" and it was an all around great experience. I'd go back there in a heart beat.

However, with me working and planning full time, it was hard on the kids. We had a few regressions and lots of behaviour troubles -mostly near the end when I was starting to transition back home. But, our kids are amazing and have bounced right back.. we are once again sailing on smooth waters!

Christmas was a blast.... although we really wanted to give the kids a trip to Disneyland for Christmas - the drop in the dollar - along with the uncertainty of how long my contract would last - we decided to change our plans. This also meant I had to do some fast shopping. We didn't go to "Black Friday" this year so I was no where near ready!

We decided and bought the kids Rock Band for the Wii... but soon found out that it really a shell of the game that you get on the X-Box. So we returned the Wii Rock Band and went all out and bought the family and X-Box 360 AND Rock Band. And because we needed a second guitar we also got Guitar Hero World Tour.

A few of there other "big" gifts were digital cameras - tickets to see the Canucks SuperSkills Comptetion and tickets to see WWE (wrestling) in Victoria. Yes...... they were totally spoiled!!

Butch spoiled me as well.. I got a Cricut Expression and a whole lot of goodies to go with it. My mom bought me a CuttleBug ... and a bunch of other scrapbook related items. I told everyone that I had a Provocraft Christmas!

The boys and I bought Butch a Nintendo DS - so that he had something to do on his nightshifts. He loved it!

January had the kids back at school and back at sports .. and me still teaching.

February started with a bang - and we had/have only one 'free' weekend.

February 1st was the Canucks SuperSkills so we went to Vancouver with Meg and her family for the day.

February 6th my niece Devyn and I went to Victoria to watch a Storm game and do some shopping - it was a fun weekend and something we will definitely do again.

February 7th - Butch and the boys headed to Victoria for the WWE wrestling - Carsyn had the thrill of his life when his favourite wrestler touched him.

February 13-15 we travelled to Port Hardy for a hockey tournament for Brayden. We took a trip into Port Alice to show the boys where I grew up. Of course we had to stop for lunch at our favourite restaurant "The Victorian Steak House". The food was awesome as always. It was fun to take the kids and show them the church we got married in and the park where we had our wedding pictures done. It was a little sad to see that they had replaced all of the park playground equipment that my dad had built. But understandable that it was old and probably unsafe.

We took pictures of the Friggen Islands and then headed on our way to Port Hardy.
The team had a lousy first game - but then played some amazing hockey. In the playoffs (for 5th place) the lost in a shoot out.

Brayden got sick on the last day and didn't play much. Both boys ended up missing a day of school.

This past weekend was our weekend off... Butch went to play in Matt's monthly poker game... and Brayden had a couple of hockey games - but otherwise it was just a nice, relaxing weekend at home......... other than the trip to emerg with Brayden on Sunday morning... poor guy has a nasty throat infection and is home in bed.

Well.......... I'm going to try and update this a little more often......... and I will also add some more pictures to this post as soon as I download them from the camera!