Rayleen showing off for Uncle Mike at our house.

Mike reading Dixon a story! How sweet:)

I think that this picture is pretty self explanitory!

Christmas at Mom and Dad D's just got a little more interesting.

Here are the girls at their program. They are such beautiful girls!

What a Christmas!!!

This Christmas has been the busiest one yet for me. We started off on the 23rd with Jada, Isabella and Hailey's Christmas program. They all did a fabulous job. We stayed over at Mom and Dad D.'s for the night and had Christmas with my family on the 24th. We had a great time. Dad rented the rink in Austin so we went skating for about an hour. It was a lot of fun!! Mike and I drove back to Brandon late on the 24th so that we could have our first Christmas alone together in the morning. After doing some dishes, laundry and packing, Mike and I drove out to Boissevain for Christmas with his family. I got to go for a snowmobile ride, which is something that I have not done in years (Mike even let me drive!!!). It was a great day!! We spent the night and woke up early to head to Winkler for some boxing day shopping and then to Altona for Christmas with Grandma Wiebe. I always enjoy going to see Grandma and spending some time with our relatives on that side. We spent the night there. The next day (which was the 27th) Mom P, Grandma and myself went to visit Grandma's sister Mary. We visited there for about 45 minutes and then we had to get going. I had promised Kim that I would babysit for Rayleen so we had to be back in Brandon by 6. Babysitting was a blast, Rayleen was so happy to spend time with us:) Now it is New Years Eve and we are off again. There is nothing like the busyness of the season to make time fly, but it has been a lot of fun and I look forward to more fun tonight and in the coming days.

It's Christmas time!!

When Christmas comes around, things just start to get busy. For Mike and myself, things have been flying by because we are so busy. This friday was our last day of school and it was pretty exciting. Mike was a real sweetheart and bought me this beautiful rose. In the evening, Mike went to watch "I am Legond" with Thomas Beamish while Shelda, Laurel N. and myself exchanged baked goods. It was really fun. I made white chocolate with oreos; Shelda made cream cookies and Laurel made m & m cookies. Nike was also apart of the swap although she could not be there. She made butter tarts. After the swap we rented a chic flick and made popcorn, it was fun.

Today was also a very busy day. Matt Janzen ( a friend of mine from university) was out from Red Deer so he came out to visit. We played some games and then went for supper at Montana's. After everyone left to go to their own homes, Mike and I attempted to make a gingerbread house. The roof would not stay on no matter how much icing we put on it so I gave up. Now I am just procrastinating doing the dishes. I did take pictures though so the above pictures are of my weekend so far.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I have not been all that great with taking pictures. Either I forget my camera at home or I forget that I brought it along, so there are no pictures to go along with this blog. Mike and I had a really busy weekend. We had the church Christmas supper on friday night, Mike's work supper on saturday night and the Driedger Christmas gathering on sunday for lunch. Needless to say we had SOOOO much food this weekend. We had a great time at each one of the get togethers ( I only wish I had brought my camera). I would have to say that Mike's work supper was the most entertaining. It was a progressive supper so what they did was rent a bus to haul us around. We left our car at the victoria inn and boarded the bus. From there it took us to the first house for appetizers, we stayed for and hour and then boarded the bus for the next place which was salads then entrees and then dessert. Each place we stayed an hour before the bus came to take us to the next location. Although the people we were with were doing some excessive drinking they did provide some good, clean entertainment for us!! The church supper was also really good. For those of you who do not know Mike and I are now attending McDiarmid Drive Alliance Church. We have met a lot of young couples there and we are really enjoying it. The supper made for a perfect opportunity to meet and get to know more couples. Anyways, I will try to take some more pictures so you can put pictures to my stories, but I thought that if I waited until I had pictures then you would never read another blog this year.

Oh Christmas tree, O Christmas tree!!

I think I mentioned in a previous blog that Mike and I took a trip to Minot to do some Christmas shopping but what I failed to do was put a picture of our beautiful Christmas tree. So here it is! Mike and I wanted to have a Christmas tree but all the ones we found in Brandon were really expensive. None of them looked very realistic and they cost a lot of money. While we were in the states shopping we came across this 7.5 foot tree and just could not say no. The price was half of what we would have paid in Brandon and the tree just looked so much better. We were even able to buy cheep lights to put on the tree. I was so excited that the day we got home was the same day we trimmed the tree. I have never had my own Christmas tree and every year that mom and dad had one I was never there to help set it up so this was even more exciting for me. As you can see there are presents under the tree and yes I am done my christmas shopping, well almost I still have one more to buy and I am stumped. So if you know of any good gifts for a guy for $15 or less then let me know cause I just can't seem to find something that would just be that I like. Ok so from here on in I will do my best to keep up with this blogging thing. My sister told me that I should take more pictures so maybe if I do that then I will have more to put up for you.

Ok so I am really bad at this!!

Ok, so I am really bad at keeping up with my posts so I am going to have to do more than one today just to make up for my procrastination. I will start with the most recent and then take a quick trip back a little farther just to get you caught up. This last weekend Mike and I went to mom and dad D's house for mom's birthday. The plan was that Mike and I would be coming out around 8 or 9 in the evening on saturday. Chris came out to Brandon in the morning that day so I just went back with her so that I could surprise mom a little more. She was confused as to why I was there early, happy but surprised. Little did she know that the rest of her family (her brothers and sisters) would be showing up at the house. We had pleasant evening full of visiting and games. On sunday Kim & Darcy and the girls and Dwayne came for lunch so it was a family gathering. Judy was not able to make and we missed her there. We took family pictures so that mom could give out Christmas card pictures where we were in the snow. They turned out really nice. I decided that I need an updated picture of me with my nieces so there it is. It was great to see all my family again.

Halloween

Halloween has come and gone and I am really happy about that! Mike and I did dress up however. Mike was Dwight from "The Office" and I dressed up as someone from the 50's. It was fun for the afternoon but I was really glad when I got home from school and was able to change into comfortable clothes. I was a little unsure as to how much candy to buy because I was not sure how many children actually lived on our bay. Well it turns out that there are not actually that many. I had three large bowls of candy ready to go. So the children that did come to our house received a whole lot more than they thought they thought they would and we still have tons of candy left. I guess I will know better for next year. Mike and I had people over for somewhat of a party after all the trick-or-treaters were gone. We had about 12 people over to help us finish off some of the candy, the only problem was that they all brought the left over candy from their houses so there was more than enough sugar for all of us. All around it was a really good day.