A Year of Firsts

The year 2008 was a year of firsts for us in our new house. We took possession on    January 4, but didn’t spend our first night in our house until the 7th. That night Tansley was sick, and vomited a few times...fun stuff. Daniel had given her a quick shower in the middle of the night, and noticed that water was kinda bubbling up in the drain, so he had stuffed a towel down in the drain. Tuesday, January 8th was Kathryn’s first day of kindergarten at her new school. That morning, after giving the kids a bath, we discovered the water had backed up in the basement. It was a good thing Daniel had stuffed the towel in the drain, it could have been a lot worse. Nothing like water all over your new laundry room(luckily not all over our carpeted family room and only a little in the girls room) to welcome you to your new house. We didn’t have the phone hooked up yet, so Daniel took care of getting someone to fix our little problem from work. It was a fun day. Luckily for us things only got better from that day on.

                              
From the day we knew the house was really going to be ours I was already looking forward to all of the first we would enjoy that year. Spring, Summer, Birthdays, Fall, Halloween and most of all Christmas. But I tried to not look to far forward, and enjoy each new experience in our very own  first house.

Winter didn't hit in our part of the world until well into January. But when it did it didn't go away. Though we got a lot of snow, Milk River seemed to be the stopping point for all of snow blowing around the prairies, it didn't ever get really cold(not at all like it has this winter). I learned pretty quickly that shoveling the long drive in the back and the sidewalks and the driveway to the garage was quite a work out. But it gave a girls an excuse to come out and play in the snow.

As winter melted into spring, we enjoyed going for walks around our new town. We walked to the library weekly, frequent trips to the grocery store (which then delivered my groceries to me for free!!), and walks to the post office to pick up the mail. During these walks the girls began thier rock collection, which would come in handy in the summer. We also enjoyed watching Milk River come to life, but not as much as we loved watching our yard come to life. Many people had told us that we would be in for a treat when our yard bloomed, because the lady that lived in the house previous to the lady we bought it from, was an avid gardener and had planted the yard full of perennials. They were right. We had fun.

In May we celebrated Tansley's 3rd birthday by inviting all of our family both the Court side and the Forsyth side out to our house for a wiener roast and of course to show off our fabulous new house. The weather cooperated nicely and we were able to enjoy our nice big yard. My dad and mom help me identify some of the plants that were coming up in our yard. It was a great day.

As summer began to creep up on us, we tried to get our very own vegetable garden spot ready. That was a lot of work. We were late getting our garden in because the weather was not cooperating. But we did it...and look forward to not having to do all of the prep work next year.

Summer was everything I had hoped it would be in our new place. Our yard was beautiful! We loved to be outside as much as possible. We played in the pool, we ran through sprinklers, we weeded the gardens, we played games, we laid in the sun, we built forts, the girls sold Koolaid and painted rocks(remember the rock collection), we enjoyed ourselves. The flowers that bloomed were amazing.

These are just a very small sample of the flowers we saw bloom in our yard. Kymberly turned 1 on July 31. We celebrated her birthday in Waterton with a tonne of Paxman family a few days early. On her real birthday we stayed at home and celebrated with just our little family. In August, we got to ride on the Church float for Bonanza Days!

The girls loved every minute of it.

The green of summer blended into the yellows and oranges of fall. And oh how beautiful the world was. We had bags and bags of leaves to rake. But it wasn't a task, or a terrible job. Kathryn would come home from school and ask if she could rake leaves. In fact for Kathryn's 6th birthday party in September, if I hadn't planned anything the kids would have been fine with just playing in the leaves for two hours. So we played abbreviated games and then I let them go to town in the leaves.

Our harvest was amazing, for the most part, especially considering that we got a late start. We are still eating fresh carrots from our garden and will be for the next few months.

And even though we had to pick our tomatoes while they were still green to save them from frost, they ripened nicely in the safety of our garage and I was able to make plenty of delicious salsa.

Halloween was super fun, the weather was actually nice this year, kids going around with our jackets on. We had decorated our house all up, pumpkin leaf bags and spider leaf bags all over the yard (we didn't have a shortage of leaves). Daniel took the girls out trick or treating and Kymberly and I stayed behind to hand out candy. I like Halloween in a small town. I look forward to doing it again, but we've learned a thing or two and next time we are going to have on of the best Halloween houses in town.

The dullness of fall, once all the leaves were gone and everything was just brown, seemed to go on for ever and ever. But then in the middle of December, winter hit, and hit hard. Temperatures plummeted to -39C (-45C with the windchill). The snow came, and came and came. This is the first time in years that we have enjoyed a white Christmas. Christmas was the season most of all that I looked forward to in our new house.

I looked forward to decorating our house. To putting up the Christmas tree. To playing in the snow. To hosting Christmas festivities at our house. Oh it was all so glorious. And we had the snow to go with it. The weather even cooperated and it was only about -16C(give or take a few degrees) for Christmas eve, Christmas day and Boxing day. We were able to play in the snow. Daniel created an ice rink in our back yard...he's pretty proud of it. I have to admit, I wasn't sure if it was going to work out. But take a look, I think it is pretty impressive.

So now it has been a whole year. Today marks one full year living in this house. To celebrate in away, the chinook came in and moisten the snow so that we could actually build something. So Tansley and I went outside while Kymberly was napping and we built two snowmen.

Something the kids have being dying to do since it has started snowing but the snow has been to dry. It was a good thing we went out and did it when we did (It was +7C), because now it is cold again, the wind has turned cold and it is trying to snow again.
It has been a great year! I look forward to this coming year and all the fun that will be had in this wonderful house. It already feels like we've lived here forever, in a good way. We have made some wonderful friends, we love our small little ward. We have been so blessed, and have seen the hand of the Lord at work in bringing us to this place.