Yesterday marked three years since Brady’s surgery. Officially three years of Brady being paralyzed. Goodness. Those memories do not come without cost.

I don’t know why, but this is one of my favorite pictures ever from when Brady was in the hospital. We were so happy to be together. We both accidentally wore Office shirts. We look well. It’s a nice bright spot. How fortunate we are that none of the appearances here were put on for the camera. We LOVED each other so very much in this picture, and we still do. So very much. More than ever.

We did not dwell on Brady’s surgaversary yesterday. Not at all. We didn’t even talk about it until the afternoon. We worked hard yesterday. Thanks to a couple of willing friends with strong arms, we knocked a lot off the list, and after the work was done, Brady and I collapsed in the living room and sat quietly together for a little while. We didn’t get too deep into it, but I let him know my body was really feeling it.

It feels SO SELFISH to “suffer” with the memories of Brady’s surgery, but I did :/ I do. Yesterday, I felt pretty overdone before the day had even begun. Struggly. Short with the kids. Exhausted. It was just hard all around. I actually fell asleep in the middle of the day, which NEVER happens.

No one faulted me for it. But I am rarely tired enough to fall asleep in the daytime and then still sleep like a rock overnight. But yesterday was that day. I didn’t consciously feel sad about Bradys surgery and our time of change in there, but my body must’ve screamed and cried all day long.

This is jumbled. So am I. But I think thats ok. I’m just trying to make it known that I know I’m a bit of a mess 😅 I also know my best is good enough, and that grief is allowed to show up in the midst of me doing my best. And I trust that those who are truly invested in our family will not judge me or think I’m selfish. Body memory is a very real thing, and I’m navigating it the best I can.

Anyway. Happy three years post-op, Brady. Truly. HAPPY years. I love you more than you know.

It is our last weekend of owning two homes, and I’m ready for it to be done. Its been a wild few weeks, and its time to get all the loose ends tied up once and for all. Meanwhile, I’ve already made a run into the city this morning, and Brady has been doing some work around the house. So far, he’s fixed our storm door and built me some laundry shelving! Woot! We will continue our work here, but while we do that, there is still buzzing at the other house! Cher and Laela are there doing the end of the cleaning (Thank you so much, guys) and some furniture is being moved out as we speak. But this is the list. This is whats left.

-have bed frame picked up

-have freezer picked up

-bring the swing set over

-bring the picnic tables over

-load up the firewood and bring it over

-dig my special rock out of my flowerbed

-take down the baby gates.

-take down tv bracket

-take down garage lights

-leave out surveyors certificate

-label keys

-leave codes

And guys. I THINK thats it! Hopefully today and tomorrow, we can knock that all out and be officially DONE over there.

And the work continues over here! Now that I have laundry shelves, I should get some of that going. A fridge will be picked up, hopefully this weekend, and another appliance brought downstairs hopefully soon. That would sure free up the kitchen. We could still use some muscle if anyone has a free evening and feels like slinging some boxes. But if not, things are still getting done 🙂 Just a bit slower, which is ok, too. Things feel a bit oddly daunting at the moment, but I think some of that will come to a close once we only own ONE home.

Happy Saturday, everyone 💜 I hope your stuff gets done.

Today specifically, I’m feeling a lot of pressure. I’m not sure if its real, or if its in my head, or an unhealthy mix of both, but I’m feeling quite weary this evening. My eyes already ache so I know some of it is fatigue. Anxiety is always worse when you’re tired.

There is still more to do tonight, so I think I will work HARD to get the last things off my plate for the night so I can either hop into bed with a heating pad, or run a bath. Either would suffice.

Don’t get me wrong and think I’m unhappy or unwell. I’m not. There is just a lot looming these days and it’s feeling quite heavy on my back. But we will come through. We always do, by the power of God and absolutely nothing else!

The final days of owning two houses are upon us. Its almost done. Again, while we have LOVED the house we built those years ago, we are wholly committed to our new home, and are ready to let the old place go to its new owners 💜 We REALLY hope they are truly happy there!

In these next few days, we need to tie up the loose ends. This evening, we went over there and started bringing the last load of things home. At least that was the plan. We got rid of a bunch of garbage (tomorrow is garbage day, guys!) and loaded what we could into the bus. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do it all. But tomorrow is another day. And this weekend is more days. But there are only a few left.

In the coming days, we need to get the end of the freezer stuff brought over, and get out the last few items of furniture, all of which are spoken for and just need picking up. We have to get some baby gates taken off the wall, as well as the bracket that held the tv. There are also unfortunately a handful of bigger things that need to be brought over from the backyard :/ Thats going to be harder to swing, but hopefully we can make it happen. Thankfully, the cleaning has been poured over by Cher, as well as my two big kids, and is NOT something that I have to worry about! Thank you so very much 💜

So. The race is on. The end is near. And I am ready!

Now. If you’ll excuse me. Its almost 10pm, and I still have some desserty leftovers from yesterday to eat. So. ✌️

It was fifteen years ago when a couple of young things got married.

I’m not totally sure whether that feels like ages ago, or like it was just the other day. I have had the privilege of having Brady by my side for my entire adult life, so its hard to say. What a gift he has been to me, and to our family.

There is simply no one else I would rather go through thick and thin with.

These days, there are many challenges. Different levels of learning. New territory, for sure. Few things are simple. But between you and I, there is ease and comfort. I truly am HAPPY to wake up to you every single day. Sometimes I feel guilt about how beautiful our relationship is, but I turn it around to gratefulness to God.

This year, we have the honour the share this special day with our morsel! 🥰 The first birthday we get to celebrate with one of our bonus babes!!

Today we celebrate another day of clapping, waving, high fives, crawling, babbling, squawking, drooling, and making cheese faces, not knowing how many more we’ll get to share together 💜 Brutal and beautiful all rolled into one. How we LOVE this child.

And to you, Brady, today we celebrate the tip of our iceberg 💜 I love you, dear, and I miss you. See you after work 💜 Be safe in this weather.

Can we talk a little bit more about the kitchen? And the dreams I have for it? K thanks.

So I showed you most of this yesterday, but we’re going to go into a bit more detail on a few things.

The sink is first. The sink that doesn’t plug on the one side. So the left side of this sink plugs. It also has a garburator, which is awesome! We didn’t have one in the other place, and its a really nice little feature. However, thats all this sink has to offer. The faucet is very very old, and the sink is very shallow. So in my perusing online, I found a great sink that is virtually the same size, two basins, about 3″ deeper, with a pull down faucet and a little soap guy in the corner. For a really nice price! Thanks, Costco! So we ordered it, and its sitting on the floor in the middle of the house, waiting to be installed. I hope we can transfer the garburator over. I’m sure we can. Can’t we? Regardless, that sink can’t be installed soon enough, hahaha!

You may or may not have noticed this empty patch in our cabinets. We had to take some cabinets out, and move some cabinets over, to make room for our superfridge, and the cabinet boxes weren’t exactly the same on the wall as well as the base, which is totally normal, but a bummer when you’re just trying to shift things, lol! It left us with this little empty zone. My hopes for this little space is that it’ll hold my spices and seasonings. See this kitchen has lots of cupboard space, but everything is a little on the smaller side, and most of our things (in this case, spices) are large. I don’t have a crazy variety, but what I do have is in big containers. And now that I spend a lot more time in the kitchen, I use them a lot more. The box on the counter below this little space is holding all my spices, and while its a system that works, I would just LOVE to get this box off my counter 😅 So. Shelves in here. As well as in the supply closet. And in the laundry room… I digress. Shelves.

Right beside that little space is my oven/microwave area. Now, I like this space. I raved a bit about how great my oven was yesterday, and I stand by that. It is a GREAT convection oven. I fit six big muffin pans in there at once yesterday! I still do have to shuffle them around a bit, but not too much at all. It did the BEST job on my banana bread. Like, it turned out PERFECTLY. I was THRILLED. My single beef with this oven is that its a bit narrow. While I can fit two muffin trays side by side, I can’t fit two cookie sheets side by side unless they’re the fairly small ones. Like, my smallest sized ones. And I got rid of most of those long ago for obvious reasons. So I wish that were a bit different. In my IDEAL world, I would love to ditch the microwave, and use this space up with a double wall oven 😍 Thats the dream! But in the meantime, I’m VERY grateful 💜 Don’t get me wrong, please! But. Someday. Wall oven.

There is still much to do in this place, but we are so happy to be here 💜 Our stack of projects is tall, but very few of them are BIG projects. Just a BIG list of SMALL projects, hahaha! And a handful of dreams that we’ll hem and haw over for the years to come.

I have yet to bake since moving into our new home. I baked a LOT before we moved in order to not run out too fast. And then I ran out too fast anyway, but I had lovely people in my life step in and make us some meals, as well as some baked good! With that, we’ve been able to keep up with similar foods along the way! But this morning, the kids informed me that they had finished off the end of the baking, and I knew that today needed to be the day. I had to make some big batches of things to get us back on track!

So today feels like as good a time as any to show you whats all going on with our kitchen! This is what were working with!

So while there is a decent amount of counter space, there are fewer surfaces than I’ve used to dealing with. The island is quite a bit smaller in general, plus the stovetop is sharing it as well. Note the EPIC fridges (yes, those are both fridges) and the teeny toes in the bottom left corner. Someone can (and does) get into my ziploc container drawer.

If and when we redo our kitchen, this island will be much larger.

A fun development was learning that one of our sink basins just does not plug. Nope nope nope. We even bought new ones. Nothing doing. So foolishly, I took out pumpkin to defrost it for baking, and put it in a sink of water. And then I couldn’t do dishes, because that sink doesn’t plug. Like. Not at all. It doesn’t even leak. It flows.

What I can tell you is that the oven is amazing. I had a fake convection oven in the old house, so it was basically just an oven with a fan in the back. It was better than some, but it was nothing like the real thing, which I have now 😍

So. I made about twelve dozen muffins and four banana bread loafs. With crumble!

While I can’t say these are the best items I’ve ever baked, I got LOTS done and its all going to be delicious and get us back in our groove of breakfasts and lunches! I see some flaws in what I baked, but it appears they passed the taste test!

One day, this space will be more organized. I’ll have random stuff off my counter. My island top will be bigger. But I am SO unbelievably grateful for everything I have. All the ingredients I have to make yummy things. A great oven with huge fridges. Thank you Lord for providing for us, always! 💜

I haven’t been at church in a good while! My family has made it a few more times than I have, as I tend to stick home with the sickies, or the babies, whenever that is needed. And it has been. A handful of times recently! So today, after a quick drive in to Saskatoon, I made it home back and into the church with less than a minute before the service began 😅 Whew!

Of course I was barely in the service, as our morsel was particularly active this morning. Sunday mornings are hard with babies, thats just the facts. So the morsel and I hung around in the foyer, sipping the coffee of the church and eating the Cheerios of others. We visited with friends and neighbours as they came in and out of the service, and when it all wrapped up, we brought our loud selves back into the sanctuary to join our family and reconnect with some friends 💜 It was really, really nice to be back.

We lingered at church until we were among the last handful of people to leave. We are so often those people, haha! We finally made it home and had a glamorous late lunch of leftovers before heading back into the city. For two days of freezing rain, the roads were not as bad as I anticipated. It was a smooth outing, and we made it back just in time for a normally timed light supper, hahaha! My mom and I whipped up a quick batch of Big Mac salad for the group, and very shortly after supper came bedtime.

It was a funny day today. It felt like we just ran and ran, but I know we didn’t. I’ll do a bit more sitting tomorrow, I think. Or I’ll find myself crazy busy instead, haha! Who knows! But it should be a bit more relaxed. My body is asking for a bit more rest than its getting these days, and I’d like to stay afloat. So wish me luck, friends! Tomorrow 🙌 we rest!

Today was a day of training for Brady and I! We haven’t had a long, full, training Saturday in a while, but today was that day! We were expecting to take this particular session in November, but happened to receive a placement the day before, and we decided that settling the spoonful in to the new digs was more important. So today was the day to finally get into it.

And we did! Tom and Rae willingly took the kids for the day, which was a HUGE ask, and they were very generous to accept! They only had five for the first bit, as the two older ones got into some deep cleaning at the old house with Cher 💜 By mid-afternoon, it was time for the kids to retire to Tom and Raes, so they were at two against seven. Plus a dog. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated the care and time and effort you guys all put into us today. Thank you Cher, Rae, and Tom 💜 What a gigantic help!

Brady and I trained from 9am until just shy of 4pm. We had a lunch break and two short coffee breaks, so there was some breathing room in there. On one hand, it was a very peaceful, restful day! No parenting. No diapers. No real worky work. But you can relate, I’m sure, to being run fairly dry of mental energy. And that was us.

And how beautiful of a gift was it when Rae offered to keep the kids for supper so we could go out for supper! Man alive it was SO nice. So we did it! We hit the Caesar Mill in Martensville, and the food did not disappoint! The company wasn’t half bad either.

Ya baby. It was SO delicious. Brady said its remarkably quieter at lunch, but it was still delicious, and we were SO grateful for the time away to get our training on, and then get our bellies fed. All kid free! There’s really no one else I’d rather spend the day with, or watch pick their teeth with a kabob stick.

We drove back to town and went straight to pick up the children. All seven of them. Reading in their entrance. Hanging out peacefully. They came home happy, and went to bed well.

Aaaaand now we SLEEP! Because today was huge, and good, and a lot, and I’m so ready to rest my body and brain!

Happy February, guys 💜 I hope you stood outside and listened to the birds chirp today. What a bizarre season in which we find ourselves!

They may not be mighty oaks, but we have moved into a home with a mature yard, and that means TREES. I’m all for planting trees. People actually came to our last house and criticized us for not planting any trees, and not planning to plant any trees. Our yard was just too small there. And here, its not! And there are treeeees! That they can CLIMB!

Laela figured this glorious opportunity first.

But she wasn’t alone for long!!

They had SO MUCH FUN!!! And its not even summer yet!!

Its only going to get better and better 💜 I am so thrilled! I remember, when we were telling the kids all about the house and the yard, they asked kind of abruptly “Does it have apple trees??” And how cool it was to be able to say yes! Not even crab apple trees. APPLE apple trees!!!

So very much to be thankful for 💜