Picture Overload!

Hello! Thought I would do a little blog catch up. Before the baby makes it's debut... hoping it is sometime this week. I'm so ready to be able to bend over and put my shoes on again. Don't know if a baby born on leap day would be fun or not. My Grandma's birthday was March 3th so that would be nice. Like I have control - ha!

Anyway before Christmas I dragged Dean and Emerson out to the Twelve Days of Christmas Event at Heritage Park. Mostly because we got our hands on some free tickets. It was the last Saturday before Christmas (mistake #1) and we ended up going in the afternoon (mistake #2, as Emerson was tired). So like most family outings that I drag my family to - it was not as much fun as we thought it would be. Waiting in line at the bakery for 40 minutes and then waiting in line to get out of the parking lot for over an hour... yeah not really fun! However, we got to see real Reindeer and eat cinnamon rolls at the bakery that were to die for. The highlight for Emerson was definitely the model trains set up (stopped in there 3 times) and the "ice rink".

We had a good Christmas despite the stomach flu moving through us all. We went up north to visit family. As usual we were spoiled and came back with a full vehicle! Emerson got a power wheels jeep from Grandpa and Grandma. He is still learning how to drive it - I'm thinking of creating a toddler's driving training course ;) It snowed on Christmas Day while we were there and then stayed fairly cold. Some of the highlights were a quick hair cut from GG up at the vet clinic. A ride on a real tractor at Uncle Phil's. We also got to see Unle Phil's week old piglets and all the farm animals. And it was so funny to see Emerson's reaction to all the big dogs up there. Everyone has a big dog. Grandma and Grandpa actually have a new lab "puppy", Gunnar, that is huge! He is a very sweet dog but Emerson wasn't quite sure of all the dogs. But cats he had no problem with - in fact he loves them. As you can see by the picture of him mauling GG's cat Jasmine. It was so nice to see family and spend time together but I will admit that traveling was a bit of a challenge for me being pregnant.

(This was Emerson waiting while Dad packed the van on our last day)


The week after we got back Emerson got quite sick with the influenza bug going around this year. It developed into an ear infection and he was miserable for almost 2 weeks. Then it was Dad's turn and finally mom caught the darn bug. It literally took all month to clear out of the house. Several Kleenex boxes and loads of laundry later we are feeling better. Although Dean's sinus' are still recovering. I've actually resorted to sleeping with ear plugs at night because of the snoring :)

Let's see... anything else exciting happen in the last little while... Dean finished re-trimming and painting the room for the baby. My mom and Aunty Amy come over one night to help paint too. It looks so nice and I am feeling relieved that it is done. I feel frustrated that there is a lot I can't do right now: move heavy objects, paint, wrestle with Emerson or even pick him up some days. I'm sure Dean is also frustrated because the minute Dean walk through the door each evening Emerson says: "Chase me Daddy! Chase me!". Emerson has become quite the Daddy's boy. He really doesn't leave him alone when he's home. I guess all the book reading and coloring I do with him during the day gets boring for an active 3 year old boy! We've had some really nice play dates with friends - I think that is my saving grace as a mother right now. I just don't have the energy to keep up to him. I am looking forward to the summer when the postpartum fog will be gone and we can all get outside and burn off some energy.

Anyway here's hoping that the next post has a picture of the new baby! Don't expect anything for awhile now... hahaha!

Merry Christmas!

One of the blogs I follow has a Christmas letter blog. I thought it was a great idea, so I hope she doesn't mind me using her idea (thanks Sarah). I am also not organized enough this year to mail out cards. So here is our Christmas card/blog/letter/message to you out there...



Merry Christmas! This year has been a roller coaster for us. It started out with the privilege of caring for my Aunt Carolyn who was very ill. Emerson and I spent 3 days a week with her for a total of 5 months. At the time it felt like so much time out of our busy lives but now it feels like it wasn't enough. She passed away in May. I miss her terribly and think about her everyday. She was a beautiful person and I consider her to be my second mom. So the first half of the year was really spent with her.

The second half of the year has been settling into a new home. We had been feeling that a move was in our future for probably the last 2 years. The crime in the area we were living in was rising and I wasn't happy with the school district we were in. We wanted to do some upgrading to the the house before we put the house on the market, as the market is not great for selling right now in Calgary. We thought it might help make our house stand out from others. In January Dean's jeep was stolen right off our driveway. We knew then that that was our clear indication that we needed to make a move. So we worked like mad horses to paint and get the house ready to sell. Dean's mom came for a visit and we put her to work painting and changing light fixtures. The house never looked better - I kept thinking: "why didn't we do this sooner, so we could enjoy it more!" Well the house went up on a Thursday afternoon and by Friday evening it was sold. We had just under a month to find another house and so by the following Monday we had found our new home. Definitely feel that God's hand is in our lives. We now live 25 minutes east of Calgary in a 'hamlet' called Langdon. It has 1.5 schools. A post office, a doctors office, a dental office a couple restaurants and a bakery. We are really enjoying it here. Dean loves the piece and quiet and I love the sense of safety and community out here. Emerson loves the back yard. Most of the house lots are built on 1/4 acre lots - so lots of yard. The previous owners left their wooden play set in the backyard, which is great fun for him. On the first evening we arrived as we were sitting at the table eating our pizza Emerson pointed out the window and said: "Can I play at the park?" :) The house needed and still needs a little TLC. Dean's summer was busy building new front steps and doing minor repairs around the house. I built and planted a small flower garden in the front, which was so fun - we'll see if they all come back next year :)


Dean is now a scout leader for the 12-13 year old boys. Scouts Canada is the program the boys follow at their weekly meetings. He is enjoying the activities and is looking forward to some summer camps. Dean has a bit of 'cleaning up' to do but always has entertaining stories to share when he comes home from the activites. He has pulled out the smoker BBQ quite a few times this summer. One of our favorites was a 'bacon bomb' he made this summer - just what it sounds like... bacon, pork and sausage. Delicious!


Emerson turned 3 in November. We had a space themed party for him and invited a few of his little friends over. Someone asked him the other day how old he was. He replied: "I'm 3. I just had a birthday!" The person then asked: "What was your favorite present that you got?" Emerson thought for a second and replied: "I had all my friends there... there was Sophie and Caleb.... and Brenna and Clayton... and Christopher too." He is a social butterfly - loves nothing more than to play with friends. He is excited to start school. We thought we would start him in January but with the new baby coming and still trying to iron out the potty training I think we'll wait until September. He loves playing with the other children at church and we are sure to have frequent play dates with his friends - hopefully that will stave him off until September :) He is a very smart little boy. Loves counting and singing the ABC songs. Dad has been teaching him a nice repertoire of jokes. His favorite one to tell is "Why'd the chicken cross the road?"


I of course have been busy growing a baby. I am very happy to be pregnant again and the baby appears to be growing well. I'm excited to have a little baby around again. I miss the gentle cuddles a baby brings. Those opportunities are fleeting with Emerson these days - usually only when he gets hurt or isn't feeling well. I am able to keep my hours at work part-time, working only 2-3 evenings (or weekend days) per week. I really like the people I work with and feel grateful for the convenience of the job. I'm looking forward to mat-leave though - it will be nice to have evenings with Dean at home and return to relaxing Saturday mornings.


Anyway, Merry Christmas! The scripture I have been thinking a lot about this year is Luke 2:14 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." We hope you feel peace and are able to offer (and receive) some good will this Christmas season!


Love From,
The Doll Family.

We've got a bun in the oven!

Yup that's right... ETA March 2012. No baby bump photos yet but hopefully soon. I don't tend to look pregnant until much later than most lovely looking pregnant woman. I think that I just look like I've eaten too many donuts or something. We are pretty excited to meet our new family member!

As a side note I convinced a friend to come over and help me make homemade buns today. First time ever making them and they turned out beautiful, if I do say so my self. I'm so proud! Of course if I try to make them on my own again they probably won't turn out so well, right?.

Golly... it's Halloween!

Here is our little Mickey Mouse. Dean tried to teach him to talk like Mickey. Saying things like "Golly" and "Gee-wees" or laugh Mickey's little laugh. His naturally high pitched voice helped.

It was homemade costume of course and had a skeleton twist to is - more for dad though. Dad thought he should be a Jedi, or a Transformer or Superman. My response was that he doesn't even know who those characters are yet! Anyway here are some photos from Halloween night.



It was pretty tough to get decent pictures of Mr. Mickey here. He was too excited to stay still I think. Here are a series of photos. I'll let you decide what I was telling him... I think the facial expressions are pretty self explanatory...

This is what most of the pictures ended up looking like...

Finally he holds still and agrees to keep the costume on...

Examining his loot at the end of the night...

See Ya Later Sis

My little sister moved out to Prince Edward Island last month. We did some quick family photos before she left. Here is a silly one of my sisters and I...

Saskatoon Berry Picking

In August a sister in our ward told us she had 5 acres of saskatoon bushes and welcomed us out to pick as much as we wanted. Dean took Emerson and met another family in our ward to go berry picking one night while I was at work. They brought home 2 gallons!! So now we have lots of berries in the freezer for pie and Dean made 8 jars of jam - all on his own! Not really a surprise to those of you who know Dean. He is much better in the kitchen than I am. Although this summer I did can peaches and make strawberry jam (and both turned out successful).

Anyway as you can see Emerson had fun cleaning up after getting dirty that night...

Emerson's 1st Camping Experience

So we decided to take Emerson camping for the first time this summer. Dean and I love to camp. We've gone at least once every summer since we were married. We usually bring our bikes, a good book and lots of yummy campfire food. We love to camp in Kananaskis at the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. Its got lakes, is only 1-2 hours away from home and has lots of trees. The down side is that because its in the mountains the weather is unpredictable and it gets really cold at night.

When Emerson came along camping somehow seemed very intimidating. We thought we'd brave it though. I'll make a long, cold, wet story short: a trailer is a must for our next camping adventure. Emerson had a blast though. His favorite thing to do was throw rocks in the lake. We brought his little mickey mouse stuffy and he carted him along every we went. He also enjoyed sleeping with mommy and daddy in the tent at night. And reading bedtime stories by flashlight. As you will see by the pictures it didn't rain for the whole 4 days... only for about the first 2 days (which was more than enough in my opinion).


Braving the rain and cold to go throw rocks...

A glimpse of blue sky one evening...

Warming up by the fire with none other than Mickey Mouse...

We drove into Banff National Park to try and attend church on Sunday. Traffic into the park was insane and the parking in town was even more insane. We didn't end up making it in time. So we decided to not let our $20 fee, to get into the park, go to waste and went for a walk and had a picnic lunch that we had brought. These are some pictures when we stopped by the Falls...

He was crazy about smores...

Hanging out with Mickey in the cup holder...

Nanton Days Pictures

Here are a few of the pictures from our trip to Nanton and the Museum. You can read the previous post about Small Town Days fro a little more info...

Excited...

Waiting intently....

Covering his ears while still trying to hold onto the bag of popcorn...

Potty Pains

This is a shout out to all those parents trying to get their children to use the potty. Emerson has been at it for proabably 5 months - he'll be 3 years old in November. Now before you go and judge me as his primary potty trainer. I will tell you what I have tried. I have tried the routine potty visits every 1-2 hours - didn't work he and I were in tears by the end of each day. I have tried the big boy under wear - same as a diaper in his opinon. I have also tried the bare bum method - most successful here but we run into problems when we are out of the house and have friends over to play. The one thing I have not tried is the reward method. I was hoping I wouldn't have to bribe him to go potty but I'm thinking that this is my only other option.

We talk about going potty a fair amount. I tell him if he wants to go to school and do big boy things he has to learn to pee and poo in the potty but he doesn't seem to care. In fact he rarely, if ever, will tell me that he needs his pants changed - we usually smell the evidence and then he flat out denies that there's anything in there. So the question I keep asking is: Is he ready?? Well this morning I think I got my answer.

We always go potty first thing in the morning, it's kind of a rule/routine. He usually protests but we go anyway. So this morning he must of been super hungry cause he says to me: "I'm hungry mama". So I say: "Alright lets go potty and then have breakfast". And he replies: "OK! Lets go... no wait... I do it... OK?" And before I can even pull myself out of the bed he has run to the bathroom, closed the door and locked it behind him. I proceed to hear the struggle of him trying to get his pyjama bottoms and diaper off. We can hear him muttering and humming to himself. And then to my amazment I hear the tickling of pee in the pot. Then he knocks on the door to get out because he hasn't yet figured out how to open the door he locked. I jimmy the door open and he exclaims: "I did it! I went pee!". Sure enough he did do it - all by himself!! So he's ready, right? That means he's ready, right? I just need to be more firm or diligent or whatever it is that parents are, that have 2 year olds potty trained. Right??

To be honest I'm not sure what to think - he was on a "I do it myself" kick today. While getting ready for church he had to put his tie on himself - thank goodness it was a clip-on. He had to pour the juice himself - mommy convinced him to let her help. He had to put his shoes on himself - despite the fact we were running late and didn't have 10mins to wait for him.

I guess time will tell. People keep telling me that: "boys are harder to train than girls" or "there's just a switch that goes off and one day they'll be ready". It seems like a longer process than I thought. Wish I could somehow make the switch go off somehow. For now I'm trying to keep the pressure off us both and just gently persuade. Hopefully that switch will go off soon.

Small Town Days

I think every small town here in southern Alberta puts on a weekend of events. Most I think are called __________ Days (fill in the blank with name of small town). Well we got to experience our first "Langdon Days". It's a town wide event that involves a parade, pancake breakfast, lots of loud bands that play late into the night and fireworks. All our neighbors have told us about it since we moved in May and we were excited to see what it was all about. We attended the parade which was fun. Lots of cars, horses, candy and water guns. Emerson loved it! Funny story - we walked down to the main street with our camp chairs for the parade only to come home and have our neighbor tell us that the parade goes right down our street past our house - guess we'll know better for next year! We also went for the pancake breakfast at the outdoor arena - not bad. We skipped out on the kids-carnival, as it was held in the afternoon and we were already hot and tired from the parade and breakfast - can't do it all when you're 2 years old. Although we decided that Emerson is "old enough" to experience his first fireworks. He loved them in his own 2 year old - cover his ears the whole time type of way. He talked about them for the next 3 days, so he must of enjoyed it - he probably also enjoyed staying up till 11:30pm :)

We also attended Nanton Days. Another small town about an hour away from us. Nanton is well known for 2 things: their
bomber command museum and their candy store. So of course for our family Nanton is the ideal Saturday day-trip. Part of Nanton Day's was turning on the engines of the old WW II Lancaster Bomber at the museum. Dean was thrilled - pretty cool to watch! Of course we stopped at the candy store and got some ice cream to help us cool down, as it was a very warm day.

It's been a nice relaxing summer for us so far. We took Em camping for the first time too- I'll save that for another blog entry.

Here are some pics of Langdon Days... I'll add the pics of Nanton Days later (really sunny day, so they need some touch ups):

A Comeback

Hello everybody out there in cyberspace... As some of you have noticed (or not noticed) I have been gone for some time now. I regret to inform you that my absence has not been due to a long warm beach vacation, sudden influx of money allowing us to move to a bigger, better house or because I accomplished some huge life achievement. No, I'm afraid life has hit us with some pretty hard blows the last little while. My absence was more a result of conserving energy and strength to face the trials. I will not bore you with the depressing details... most of you who need to know already know. But be rest assured that Dean and I are still happily married and Emerson is still happy and healthy. Hmmm... typing that gives me perspective - is there much else that matters?

Here is a quick recap of the happy events of the past little while...

This fall we spent lots of time outside enjoying the nice warm weather here. This was a family date night back in October. We went to get some fall photos and then went for ice cream after - it was a very nice night for us:

We had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner out in Grandma's back yard. Tanner and Emerson enjoyed playing in the leaves:

This is Em's Halloween costume. We enjoyed a very loud but fun Halloween party at the church:

Finally and probably most exciting Emerson turned 2 years old! We had a gymnastics's party with some good friends and great family:

Thank you to all of you out there who love us and support us. We are so grateful to have awesome family and friends who care and show concern. We love you all!! I'll try to post again soon and I guess I should dust the camera off and take some more pictures... last ones we took were at Em's birthday party... yikes!