baby boom

Wow... busy days have lead to busy days and it's been forever since I've had time to be online for longer than 30 seconds.

Updates are:
2 new friends are pregnant (wooo!)

I'm so overwhelmed by the baby boom thats hitting my church and my work (by next year at this time there will be 7 new babies at the Winter Conference in Toronto!). It seems like everyone is picking this as the time to start trying or are lucky enough to have conceived.

It makes me long to be able to post "YAY I'M PREGNANT!" and it also makes me nervous knowing how possible miscarriages are. For some reason this is plaguing me the more I hear of friends being pregs (normally because it's during their 1st or 2nd month).

For now, the baby boom is an exhausting, emotional reality. I think I'll be in it for a while so I'll be posting my thoughts as they come :)

My "Ga" and I (Mom's Mom)


Ga and Lisa's favourite gift from Andrew - A Snuggie!


:)



Our Christmas Eve feast tradition - Dad makes the chicken wings, ribs, and we all drink champagne

Christmas with the Family

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Spas have nothing on the relaxing sensation of staring at your parents 12 foot Christmas tree on a comfy couch with Mom, Dad, and Brad. Nothing!

We've done a lot of traveling from North Africa to France (for work the week before the festivities began) to Newmarket (Brad's mom and her husband, his kids, her kids, 8 people in total!), to Fonthill (my family - Lisa and her boyfriend Andrew, about 5 aunts and 5 uncles, 2 grandmas, and lots of lovely reunions) and now to Toronto (Winter Conference, again with work) but I am relaxed indeed.

Maybe it's the turkey drugs hitting me from last night, or the glow of the tree that is the largest residential tree I've ever seen, or the peace of Christmas - knowing that Jesus was born to bring the ultimate peace between man to God. But I am loving this Christmas, dispite the hectic travels and commotion.

How wonderful would it be to spend next Christmas with a baby??

In the trail of my addictions...

Lately I'm hooked on candles. I blame Jamie, who needs one burning to survive. She especially introduced me to the scented jar candles that we found for $5 at Zellers, but their much-longer-burning-higher-class counterparts are from Yankee Candle. Either way, I'm burning them often and ending up with unburned wax and empty jars galore.

Enter the creation of scented wax tarts and more storage for my kitchen!

The wax melts really evenly, I use muffin tins but would use mini muffin tins if I had them. Make sure you don't put too much wax in each because the wax may melt over once you put it in the tea-light holder. Those were form Dollarama for $1 by the way.

So just put them in the oven at 150 or 200 for 10 minutes or so and let them harden afterward for at least an hour or pop them in the freezer and voila!

where it all began

Today Brad and I leave for North Africa - the part of the world where we first met officially and soon thereafter fell in "like".

Brad was leading a Missions Trip and I was a 3rd year student at the time, with intentions of joining staff with Campus for Christ. He had already been working for C4C for 3 years at the time.

I remember the first day I saw him I thought he was cute and that he spoke really good French, but it was still pretty superficial until fate would have us on the same team and we got to know each other more... It wasn't long until I had a huge-must-be-kept secret crush since dating on the project wasn't allowed and let's face it, it was kind of sketchy that he was the staff and I was the student even though we're 4 years apart!

Anyway, years later we're married and returning to the same place where it all began. We're going for 1 week to visit with missionaries over there and also do some planning for the trip we're going on this summer with a bunch of other staff and students for 6 weeks.

How weird will it be to be back there as husband and wife, trying for a baby???