Youch!

I can see now why they call them WISDOM teeth - because it would be much WISER to keep them in! On Saturday I went under the knife and got all four wisdom teeth removed. I refused to think about what was going to happen ahead of time, and good thing, too. If I had known how hard this resulting week was going to be, I would have been a ball of nerves! My pride told me I was going to be one of those 'tough cookies' that was eating steak the night after surgery. NOPE! Apparently 'Jacki' and 'tough cookie' are no longer synonymous (if they ever were). The picture above was taken the day of the surgery, when my swelling was still minor. I slept most of that day and night, as the anesthetic took a loooong time to wear off.

The following two days I blew up till my cheeks looked and felt like they were going to bust open. I seriously looked like some sort of alien creature, or in Rob's words, "Like you let loose for six months and only ate frosting." Hehe! Someone called our house on Monday and talked to Ellie, who told them mommy was resting at Nana's house because, "her cheeks blowed up." I refused to get my picture taken on those days, because every time I looked in a mirror I felt like crying (and sometimes did). Anyhow, I didn't actually write this post to complain. I'm now on day 4 and am still swollen, but mostly just bruised and sleepy and somewhat drugged up. So I haven't had the space of mind to blog. Excuse number two, in addition to our internet still being on the fritz!
Will post more updates on the cute ones in the family when my brain is off drugs!

The sun will come out tomorrow!! (we hope)

Sorry about the slackiness in blog posts lately...but our internet crashed. And we're not trying to fix it. Some days it drives me absolutely mental that I can't look up the weather forecast or see pictures of Lisa's gorgeous new baby....but mostly it's been wonderful. I didn't think I spent much time on the internet, but I'm truly getting a lot more done without it! Naptimes are actually more refreshing without Facebook! Huh! Who would have guessed! ANYHOW, I'm at my parents' place now, and I will continue to post from here every two weeks or so until we decide to get the computer problem fixed.

For today I've decided to post all our happiest memories from the last two weeks. If I were to post pictures of today there would be SNOWFLAKES - that's right - SNOWFLAKES in the picture! We are totally experiencing Manitoba at it's worst! But we have had some beautiful days and some beautiful fun. (p.s. I just noticed that Joshua is wearing the same thing in every photo. No, these aren't all taken on the same day! The child can walk, but chooses to crawl. His little track suit is saving the life of all his pants :) Just in case y'all were wondering!)

Enjoy!

A Saturday's grocery shopping trip for picnic food and a morning at the park!

Random fun:

The overwhelming enthusiasm of a little boy permitted to play with water!

What happens when Ellie combs her own hair. :)

Joshua + Sippy Cup = True Love

My favourite girl on this planet!
The messiest boy on this planet!

An evening at Southwood School park:




"Hey there. Like my soother?"


The perfect end to a great evening: Dairy Queen!


Mother's Day wiener roast in Sandilands:

Ellie making Nana eat her homemade pretend soup.

Doing 'guy stuff'.
My birthday pie!!! YUMMMMM!!!

Surprise, Nana!!

Writing out Nana's card.

These two are inseparable!

Quite pleased about the Dorito chips!

The adorable Drew!!


Ellie conning Auntie Dana into eating her homemade pretend soup.
Jon and Dexter.

Sweet cousins!

Ellie-isms Part IV

As Ellie grows she continues to distract us from the fact that we don't have TV in the house - because she is the entertainment! (along with her side-kick Josh, of course. I'm sure I'll be doing Josh-isms any day now with the amount of spunk, humor, and cuteness he is currently displaying).

One of Ellie's favourite games to play (fairly regularly) is Miriam and Moses. Any time she spies an empty basket, the temptation proves to be too much for her. She quickly locates any willing candidate to be Moses (in this case, "Pink Piggy"), drapes her blanky over her head and becomes his big sister Miriam:Another favourite activity is role-playing the story of Zacchaeus and Jesus (from Luke 19 if you're not familiar with it.) Usually it's Ellie who climbs up onto the top of the chair and yells for "Jesus" to come catch her (any one of us will do). In this particular case she decided Rob needed to be Zacchaeus in the tree:

They had me giggling when "Zacchaeus" jumped into "Jesus'" arms.

And some other excerpts from Ellie's journal...

Mommy: "Ellie, what is your full name?"
Ellie: "Ellie Joy MRS. Balfour!"
Ellie's take on the four seasons: "Now comes snow, then spring, then fall and then GRASS!"

To Rob, upon finding my bra lying on my bed (while I was at work): "*Gasp* Look! It's mommy's BOOBY thing!"

One morning I turned on some praise and worship music to listen to. Ellie asked if I was going to listen to Brain Doerksen (Rob's favourite). "Nope," I replied,"I'm going to listen to Kathryn Scott." Ellie thought about this for a while and then said, "My worship leader is called RAFFI."
(Any old Raffi fans out there?)

One afternoon Ellie was playing pretend with Rob, who was feeling rather sluggish and wouldn't get off the couch. So Ellie improvised: "You can be 'Mr. On-The-Couch' and I will be 'Mrs. Mommy-In-The-Whole-Wide-World.'"

One can tell very easily that Ellie is a firstborn girl who has had no exposure to guns. She loves to play camping. And there's always a bear that comes along. Ellie bravely goes out to 'hunt' the bear (having heard the word 'hunt' before), and proceeds to jump around yelling "HUNT! HUNT! HUNT!" She's always a little unsure what to do with her hands. I love it. I wonder how long until Josh teaches her how it's really done? :)

Ever since she received one for her birthday, Ellie has had an unusual way of pronouncing the word "cash register". One day Ellie, Rob and I were all in the kitchen getting supper ready one when I realized that Josh was being very quiet by himself in the living room. "Ellie," I said, "Could you go to the living room and make sure Joshua isn't getting into trouble?" "I'll go see," says Ellie. So she took a few steps, peered into the living room and said,
"Nope!
He's not in trouble.
He's just playing with the CASTRATOR."

For Grandpa on his 90th Birthday

Hi Grandpa,

We're really sorry we couldn't be there for your party. Instead, Rob tapped into the poet within and made this little video in your honor. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Lots of love,
Rob and Jacki and Josh and Ellie
p.s. The quality is quite poor. We couldn't seem to get it to run any better.

Hangin' Out

When I uploaded my photos onto the computer the other day, I realized (to a true blogger's delight) that if I stretched it a little bit (okay, maybe a lot), they all had something in common: HANGIN' OUT. Let me illustrate:

We had a grand total of TWO nice days last week (I feel like I'm in Vancouver again!) but we enjoyed every moment of them. Ellie was ecstatic to be allowed to HANG OUT on our newly snow-free deck...
And Joshua was too! There is nothing that quite compares to watching the wonder on a baby's face as they discover a world they can't remember from the year before. Joshua was busy for a loong time crawling in and out of our patio doors, amazed that there was actually a way out of our apartment that he could navigate himself! He, too, was more than thrilled to HANG OUT in the great outdoors:

Lately Ellie has discovered a new favourite place to HANG OUT:On top of Daddy. In fact HANGING OFF of Daddy is just as, if not more fun:

(Ellie likes to called Daddy "Rinky Dinky Donkey" when she rides his back. I can't decide if it's downright hilarious or borderline disrespectful. :)

Last week when our friend Tyler was over, he taught Joshua a skill he'd been trying to master for months: getting on the couch (strangely enough, Tyler was here two years ago when Ellie learned the same thing.) So this is most definitely Joshua's favourite place to HANG OUT:Ellie, of course, also appreciates the couch, but has recently learned it's more fun to HANG upside-down, often pretending to be a bat......but sometimes for a good read, as well.

Lately it's become apparent that I have TWO big fans of dressing up in the house. I guess Joshua is just following the only example he knows - Ellie. Here she is with her 25 cents worth of necklaces from our local thrift store. The necklaces are, of course HANGING around her neck.

It's not uncommon for us to find things HANGING around Joshua's neck quite regularly, like this necklace and headband combo, for instance:

Or his ultimate favourite, a stethoscope:

And speaking of all things HANGING, here's one more to leave you with - the concentration drool. Always hanging! It's the most disgusting when he starts to play with the sticky drool strings.

So there you have it. You're more than welcome to come HANG OUT with us anytime. :)