Christmas time in Fernie has been super fun. Grandma Sandy made her way back to Fernie in early December and jumped right back in with two feet to help out with our chaotic household. This visit was made significantly more pleasant now since Lucy wasn't quite as fussy as she was a few weeks ago :) Grandma Sandy was amazed at how much the babies had grown in a few short weeks.
Having a 3 year old at Christmas time just makes everything a little more Merry! Ruby was seriously into Christmas in all the right ways. She was mostly keen on the decorating, the baking, the singing, and the giving and not too focused on the getting (we'll take advantage of this while it lasts!). Ruby's preschool put on a little Christmas "concert" consisting of two songs and it was just super cute. Grandma Nandy and the babies came along for the party too and had a great time.
The Klantzers arrived on Christmas Eve day and stayed until Dec 29. It was just awesome to have them here. Ruby was thrilled to have her cousins here to play with (thank you Madi and Emma for being so great with Ruby) and we were thrilled to add another 5 sets of hands all willing to hold babies!! We spent lots of time outside, tobogganing, hot tubbing, and going for a couple of hikes in Mt Fernie Provincial Park. We watched a few movies, played a little bit of Beatles Rock Band and took the babies to the Aquatic Centre for the first time. Christmas morning was absolute chaos in the most wonderful way.
Reality set in in early November as Grandma Sandy headed home and we faced life without any extra help for the first time since the twins were born. Ruby has been an amazing little helper. She loves to help in any way with the babies and in general has been pretty understanding considering all of the changes going on at once. We've had some snow this month and it appears to be sticking around (yikes!). Dennis and Ruby have built a snow slide off of our back deck and the intention is to keep adding snow to it to make it as big and fast as possible! Ruby has made some new friends at preschool, her strongest connection with a lttle boy named Brodie. We had more visitors, this time from Calgary. Our friends Craig and Pippa came for a visit with their 1 year old twin girls Avery and Addision. We celebrated their 1st birthday while they were here. It was great to see them and also get a sense of what's to come for us!
Luckily, two days after Mamie headed home, Grandma Sandy arrived as our next wave of help. Sandy jumped right in where Mamie left off and having the extra help was again completely appreciated and much needed. Thanks Grandma Sandy! The babies both grew and thrived but our little Lucy became a bit of a fussbudget (I'm being kind). We're hoping it will taper off in the coming weeks :) Ruby started preschool in early October and right from the start has loved it.
We had our friends Mel and Andrew and their kids Charlie and Frankie come for a visit for a few days. It was so great to see them and Ruby had a ball with Charlie and Frankie. Charlie even went with Ruby to her preschool for a couple of days! Ruby was a ladybug for Halloween and we met up with her new buddy Brodie to go trick-or-treating. It was rainy and windy on Halloween night but we stuck it out for a couple of blocks and had a great time getting candy, seeing lots of really cool Halloween decorations and even going through a haunted house (a local guy spends the better part of the year turning his garage into a haunted house and it was AMAZING). Sandy even screamed going through it!
We've been having our share of Mountain Living and Den even went out to the bush with some neighbour/friends a few times to cut down a few standing dead trees to collect large amounts of firewood as we've been heating the house exclusively with the wood stove. Though this requires daily runs out to the woodshed to split and collect wheelbarrows of wood, it's been a very pleasant & authentic experience. Not to mention a huge money saver.
The excitement began late in the evening on August 19 when Nicole's water broke at home. Our little girls were born early morning of August 20. Lucy Andrea was born at 6:54am and weighed 6lb 3oz. At 7:43am, Charlotte Sandra made her appearance and weighed 5lb 7oz. Lucy made her entrance into the world the old fashioned way but little Charlie got a bit stuck and ended up having to come out via a c-section. Despite their good weights, they were only 35 weeks so they did have to spend a few days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Lucy came home first and Charlie a few days later. Auntie Andrea was able to come up to meet the girls and Ruby came to visit them a number of times. She was so so excited to meet her new little sisters! Mamie moved her trip ahead as the girls arrived early and arrived just a couple of days after they were born. What an amazing help it was to have Mamie with us.
Since the babies were so little, breastfeeding didn't exactly take off right away so they were bottlefed breastmilk for the first number of weeks. This meant that Daddy and Mamie could be a lot more involved in feeding the babes. Paloma was also a huge help during these first few weeks. She was great with the babies and got right in there, feeding, cuddling and even changing some dirty diapers! It took about 8 weeks of Nicole feeling like Bessy the Cow but we finally got off of bottles and the girls are complete champs on the boob now!
When the babies were about 4 weeks old, we made the move to Fernie. Our stay in Calgary was quite short (1 year) but we really enjoyed meeting some new friends and hope they visit us in Fernie! We've rented a very nice house on 5 acres and our plan is to spend the year here to see if we think we'd like to make Fernie our permanent home for the next number of years to raise the girls. For those of you who don't know, Dennis has taken this year off of work to help with the kids. Quite frankly, I don't think I could be doing it without him!
The move to Fernie went smoothly but unpacking took a looooong time. Mamie was instrumental in getting us packed up in Calgary and unpacked in Fernie. She also kept us afloat with lots of homemade cooking and she spent tonnes of time with all 3 of her grandchildren. We can't thank her enough for all of her help!! We tried to take advantage of the spectacular September weather despite trying to unpack, managing the babies, and dealing with Nicole healing from the delivery. We were out for a number of nice walks, attended "Taste of Fernie" (a culinary festival), did a trip to Surveyor's Lake and have spent time outside around the property.
Coming soon!
Summer finally arrived in Calgary in July and we've had lots going on, hosting a few rounds of company, trying to adjust to life with Nicole being more or less completely useless (due to the size of my belly and the fatigue factor), and mentally getting prepared for the arrival of the twins (we're still not sorted on names so we've decided to go with Silver and Bronze). You'll notice from the pics that a good chunk of our play time is spent around water, both in Calgary and in Fernie. Whether it's the Elk River, the falls in Mt Fernie Prov Park, Surveyor's Lake or the rivers here in Calgary, both Ruby and Java seem to love exploring and hanging out by the water (now swimming's a completely different story...Ruby's a bit more conservative there). Our friends and Steveston neighbours Fred and Roxsane came for a visit to Fernie in early July which was lots of fun. The Klantzers arrived shortly after that for a bit of a vacation. For the 3rd year in a row, they kindly took Ruby and Java for 3 whole nights so Dennis and I were able to get away for a little R&R (huge thanks again Klantzers!). The next crew arrived in Calgary shortly after, our friends Ted and Tina and their kids Genevieve and Nicolas. They spent most of the week exploring on their own in and around Calgary and then we headed to Fernie for the weekend. Ruby celebrated her 3rd birthday in Fernie. Since every day in Fernie is a pretty fun day, we didn't do much different for her birthday. We headed to the playground for a while, then to James White Park to explore in the river, and then Ruby and Genevieve had a fun time decorating cupcakes. We opened some gifts later in the afternoon and had a fun play in the sprinkler too! Our most recent visitors were our Steveston friends Kristina and her daughter Taya. Ruby and Taya have known each other basically since birth and more or less act like sisters. Let's just say they play and fight with equal enthusiasm! Since Kristina was our last visitor, she got to experience Nicole at her finest. Basically unable to even walk to the park (it's really not that far), I'm sure Kristina felt like she had travelled back in time and was doing daycare again as she had to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to going to the park and getting down on the ground to play, etc. A big big thank you to all of our visitors over the past month for being so self sufficient and helping out Dennis (who has been absolutely amazing basically doing EVERYTHING due to my compromised state). I'll be 33 weeks next week so we're really sneaking up on finally meeting these two new little girls. We'll keep everyone posted!
Despite continuing to not have very seasonal weather, we've had a fun spring. Ruby and Nicole took off to the coast for a visit in mid-April. Dennis was already there for work so he was able to join us part way through our visit. We stayed with our friends Tracy and Gord again (thanks guys!) and visited lots with the Steveston gang. We had an Easter Egg hunt and a birthday party for Bailey. It was great to connect with lots of friends and familiar faces! Nicole's mom Sandy came for a 3 week visit shortly after Easter. Ruby LOVES her Grandma Nandy!! We made good use of our weekends and did a bunch of fun stuff...took the C-train to Science World, visited the Calgary Farmer's Market, spent Mother's Day at Elbow Falls in Kananaskis and also spent a weekend in Fernie. Ruby usually learns a new song every time Grandma Nandy comes to town and this time it was Zippety Doo Da. The rest of our spring has mostly revolved around watching Nicole's belly grow at an alarming rate and spending our weekends in Fernie. We're learning that there's never a shortage of things to do when you own an acreage and Dennis is embracing rural living by even buying a ride-on lawn mower :)
Wow...what a winter we've had. According to virtually everybody we know from Calgary, this has been the worst winter in about 10 years. We have had just a silly amount of snow in the city and very cold temperatures which hasn't allowed it to melt very quickly. Contrast that to Fernie where we didn't get nearly the normal amount of snowfall so it wasn't the best ski season. We still managed to get out a fair bit and Ruby had a pretty fun first season of skiing. Things are finally starting to feel a bit more Spring-like in the city. Despite getting a couple of big dumps of snow in late March, almost all of the snow is gone and we've started to get into Spring mode - going to the park, bike riding, etc. We had a fantastic Easter in Fernie. The Klantzers joined us (everyone minus Kait who had theatre commitments in Kelowna) and we had a blast. We had pretty good weather most of the weekend so we took advantage with lots of time outside both in town and on the property. The dogs had a blast playing in the river and Dennis and Rob spent a fair amount of time doing some clean up on the property. We had a fire late in the day on Good Friday and made smores which was lots of fun. Madi and Emma were just awesome big cousins to Ruby the whole weekend. They were incredibly patient and included her in everything. It was the most lax parenting weekend that Dennis and I have ever had :) Ruby has been talking about them for days now and can't wait to see them again in July!
