Verbs and Nouns

Here we are....week 17 of pregnancy. There were some days, when Christine was cuddling cozily up with her porcelain friend Flushy, that I thought to myself that it is certainly amazing that the human race has made it this far. I mean, if every woman feels like this while pregnant (and yes not all do but for the sake of my point they all do) I can't imagine wanting to put yourself through this more than once. Perhaps it is like winter and summer in Winnipeg. Winter is kind of like the crappy parts of pregnancy; uncomfortable, long, and tiring. Once the summer arrives we all forget about how dumb of an idea it was to build a city in such a bitterly cold and ruthless environment and thus, the cycle continues. I guess in the end it is all worth it. I mean, I do like summer and especially summer in Winnipeg. It's just that when you feel like your eyeballs are freezing solid well it's not an experience one wants to repeat. I am sure once I see our little one working away in the wheat field I will want/need another to pick berries or something.

Anyways, the nausea has let up. I do not want to jinx it but we are quite happy about this. Our next ultrasound will be in a couple of weeks and at that point it should resemble a baby rather than an odd looking alien object. In other news, we have heard the heart twice and that was pretty neat.

Well, we hope everyone has a safe, relaxing, and family/friend filled Thanksgiving weekend.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

In the morning when I rise...

The sounds of geese getting ready for flight wake us up every morning. Well...they wake me up every morning. Christine has this superhuman ability to sleep through anything! This is a quality that, for people like me who find it difficult to sleep at the best of times, I wish I had. However...she can't clap with one hand! Point me.

Things in Waterloo are settling down. We, by we I mean I, no longer go the grocery store every day, classes are now a month into the semester, and the leaves are changing colours. This was something I missed dearly when I moved to Winnipeg. Since it becomes cold so quickly the leaves don't have the chance to die a slow colourful death, which I guess is more humane if you are a leaf activist but by golly I like the reds, yellows, and shades in between. Anyways, things here are going quite well.

Speaking of well, that would be the opposite of how Christine has been feeling lately. Nausea or when will it stop I am at sixteen weeks enough is enough already, as we call it, has become the fourth member of the house. It is kind of like one of those house guests who never tells you when it is going to arrive or when it is going to leave and, on top of it all, stays long enough just to make it's presence felt even in it's absence. At this point, as I am sure many pregnant women are apt to say, one is enough. In any case, as far as the pregnancy goes, things are going quite well. Nausea is apparently a sign that the pregnancy is strong and healthy. For that we are thankful.

Well, I think that is all for now. We enjoy getting calls from people so please feel free to call us. It is always nice to have a call from home.

Toben

The wonderful adventures of Toben!

Playing hide and seek at the hotel in Thunder Bay

Fun with blankets

Helping Christine do some work

Goin' out clubbin'

Playing with the camera

Another game of hide and go seek

Playing with his Golden Compass bucket

I love dress up

Autumn's beginnings

Autumn's beginnings...

David's wilderness adventure OR I saw three deer and all I got was a picture of their bums

Since my life is not terribly exciting right now i.e. no job and house-husbanding, I tend to find certain things, that some people would think mundane, very exciting. Take today for example. I just walked out of the door (to do my third activity grocery shopping) and there was a deer standing about 20 feet away from me giving me a stare down. I immediately ran back to get the camera to capture this unbelievable event for Christine and those of you who read these posts. Dashing out of the door with the camera, it looked like it had disappeared but ohhhh no. There were, in fact, 3 of them! In my attempts to get closer I kind of scared them off. It was probably because of my blindingly white skin and goofy excited look on my face. I mean, who wouldn't be excited to see 3 deer directly behind their house? After a few attempts of getting a decent shot I just watched them hop away. And as quickly as they had come they disappeared. Thus, all I got was a picture of their bums jumping away.

I wonder why they didn't find me as interesting?

We made it 3 months!

The ultrasound picture is now a couple of weeks old. In the past few days I have what in pregnant-lingo is called "popped." So it feels like I am actually pregnant right in time for the morning/all-day sickness to begin to dissipate. Thank goodness for our wonderful midwife and her access to anti-nausea drugs!! Countdown: 6 more months to go!

Ultrasound # 1

Here is the first of our little ultrasound blob...in other words our little bundle of cells.

Sorry about the blurriness the baby was moving around like a jumping jellybean

A labour day visit

We took a nice trip to Oshawa yesterday to visit with my brother Jason, his fiancée Michelle, our nieces, Brittany, and Lorisa, and our nephew Lucas. Here are some pictures.

Lucas chewing on his safety glasses

Pretty much my favourite picture

Lorisa smiling because she is so excited to see her favourite aunt and uncle

Brittany on one of her random tangents

A delicious dinner which was also fun to play with

From prune to plum

Welcome to this weeks update!

Our little prune has now achieved good sized plum status! I am not sure why pregnancy websites and books compare developing fetus'/developing babies to fruit and vegetables but I guess it is a much more pleasant thought to think of a plum than say a rock, or a soft ball (which in case you didn't know isn't exactly "soft"). "Your baby is now the size of a good sized rock" doesn't sound as appealing I guess.
In any case, we are hoping in the next few weeks to hear the lub dub of our little plum's heart. This is something I am rather excited about. While the first ultrasound was pretty impressive, it was quite difficult to visualize this tiny object turning into a full-on talking, walking, somersaulting, watermelon....I mean baby. Ultrasound number two comes with stereo sound. This makes it so much more real...

Inside our new place

At long last... pictures from inside our home. Well, at least the inside of some of it. Some parts of it are not ready yet... we are still deciding where things go, etc.

Main floor: Our living room

Kitchen Angle #1

Kitchen Angle #2 (Notice lovely view of dumpster out the window...)

Front hall: to the left are stairs leading down into the basement

Upstairs: bathroom

That's all for now. Check back soon to see more. :-) Enjoy what's left of the long weekend before school starts back next week.

More Camping Trip Photos

Boots, the teething puppy

Roasting marshmallows

Karen & Patricia

Will's attempt at climbing trees in Algonquin Park

Family Camping Trip

Although a week has already passed since we returned home, I thought it would be worth it to post some pictures of our camping trip to Algonquin Park last weekend. David and I picked up Will and Vinna in Toronto (after some detouring in search of the QEW, which does not have an exit on the 401), and then met Gord, Ellen, cousin Vickie, Uncle Ed and cousins Patricia and Karen for a weekend of swimming, sunbathing, marshmallow roasting, reading, eating and relaxing. Highlights for the weekend included all the s'mores, Patricia and Karen's puppy Boots, who is just so cute (!!), enjoying the floaty chairs in the water, Vinna using her secret weapon to scare the bears away at night, and hanging out around the campfire.

Frisbee on Pog Lake

Sunbathing: Patricia, Vickie, Vinna

Relaxing by the fire... is this breakfast or lunch? (Will, Dave, Vickie)

This picture is the only one of me, so this is to prove I was actually on the camping trip. :-)

Johnny 5, Gord & Ellen's dog

Our little prune...

This last year has been one of ups and downs with sometimes more downs than ups. Through it all we never lost faith in our relationship or in God's ability to guide, strengthen, and protect us.
Now, since it seems fitting with new beginnings in a new place, we are pleased to announce that we are expecting our first child. We are looking forward to sharing our pregnancy journey with our friends and family.

Thus far, he/she is the size of a prune though not as wrinkly. He/she enjoys eating, swimming, and developing from an alien like good sized raspberry to a big strong prune sized lump.

Check back for frequent updates!

Frog Wars

So... the weather around here has been really wet lately, and although wet weather in Manitoba is conducive to lots of mosquitoes, here, it seems to be conducive to lots of frogs. We live in a quiet corner of the neighbourhood, a little distance away from the playground and the community centre... but in the back of our house is a wet, marshy area that is pretty bog-like, and which has been the scene of a broiling battle among the neighbourhood kids.
Team A is led by two brothers who never take off their bicycle helmets. The helmets are black and have red and yellow flames jumping up the sides of them... I think they have a bit of a superhero complex, because they catch the frogs with their bare hands. Team B is more sophisticated and is made up primarily of little girls, led by what seems to us to be the only white kid in the entire community. This team leader has an enormous butterfly net that he uses to capture his frogs. At last count, Team A was a couple of frogs behind, but then we saw the Team B captain being marched out behind our house to dump a huge spaghetti pot of frogs out into the bog. So, I'm not sure how that affected the tally. The kids are really into it, and are up to chatting about their adventures with anyone.
Other wildlife recently spotted in the area... bright yellow birds (don't know what they are) and an enormous ground hog, which scared the living daylights out of me when we were walking to Sobey's the other day. It looked like a miniature beaver scuttling along. Anyway, for your viewing pleasure... spoils of the frog wars.

George

Millie

Jeremiah

CLV North

Columbia Village North: Our New Neighbourhood
Here are some pictures of what our new neighbourhood looks like. Ethnically, it is very diverse, and there are many, many children running around everywhere. There are a few events planned for August, such as an End-of-Summer BBQ, where we hope to actually meet some of our neighbours. So far, everyone has been very friendly, and even the kids way and say hi, it will just be nice to put some names to the faces.

This is known by the locals as "the cornfield." Not sure if there's actually corn planted here or not.

A view of the back of our place with our little patio. We hope to get some outdoor chairs at least, so we can enjoy the outdoors sans mosquitos.

The view from our front door. Unfortunately, we have a dumpster in our front yard.

As you may notice... these houses all look so much the same. :-)

Our stuff has arrived!!

So on Tuesday morning, two movers, a big truck and all of our possessions showed up on our doorstep. Finally. I was already so sick and tired of sleeping on the floor. It was terribly humid, and having our front door open for two hours brought a lot of that humidity into our otherwise cool and comfortable house. Oh well. Now all of our stuff is here, if a little worse for wear, and we can finally start the process of settling in. There are still boxes standing in every room, but our bed is standing (hooray for mattresses!!), as is our couch, coffee table, etc. and we are no longer eating out of plastic dishes with plastic cutlery. Mission Move In Adventure Camping is officially over. Once we have the rest of the boxes unpacked and everything is in order, we'll post some pictures of our new home.

Our new place in KW

And now today, we moved into our new townhouse, on the edge of the married students' residence, right beside what they call the "Corn Field". It is so quiet here, you never hear a siren or anything. Totally unlike downtown Winnipeg. Our furniture is not here, and may not arrive for another few days... it is MIA in Toronto right now.

Our new house: Unit 277

Our Trip "Out East"

So... after a 3 day cross-Canada extravaganza with Team Adventure (David, Christine & Jeremy Kroeker), with a very stinky stop in Dryden (holy, seriously, this is the stinkiest town in all of Canada), we marveled at the Sleeping Giant in Thunder Bay,

Sorry, I know it's blurry... but you can make out the giant silhouette

Then, we made it to the Soo (Sault Ste. Marie), which is kind of like Winnipeg, in a lot of ways. At least it reminded me of Winnipeg. We also made a stop in Wawa, to look at the famous big giant goose:

Note Jeremy posing dutifully with said goose

Toben enjoying the air conditioning blowing up his butt in our Soo hotel

Then after a crazy, white-knuckle rainstorm, we made it to our accommodations in Kitchener... Toben felt right at home there. David & Jeremy went for a Canada's Wonderland Adventure, and what an adventure it was. They rode the Behemoth rollercoaster, apparently it is new and scary, went to the water park, ate the biggest hot dogs in the world, and ended up accidentally stealing some poor guy's shorts.

This is about as excited as Jeremy gets... rollercoasters...YAY!

Biggest. Hot Dog. Ever.

Giving it another try...

Okay, so we're going to try this blogging thing again, to be in touch with family and friends who are far away, and to have a bit of a record of our day to day experiences... Facebook is getting a bit too all-knowing, if you know what I mean. So here we go, planning to chronicle our life experiences for our family and friends, all of you who love us.
What has happened since we last posted:
1. We got married. It was a wonderful party and we had a fabulous time. :-)
2. We started new jobs, at U of W for me teaching German, and for David at a French immersion elementary school as an EA.
3. We dealt with and continue to deal with severe health issues... so many doctors' appointments...
4. In between we've tried to have some fun, too, going to concerts, painting pottery, watching movies and playing Wii.
5. We've both applied to schools in Ontario for the coming fall. We hope to be living in Waterloo come the summer time, Christine at U of W for grad school and David at Laurier for his education degree. We'll see what happens.
Keep in touch.