This one's for Marylin!

Hi Auntie Marylin

I heard you liked the picture of Sadie eating grilled cheese and that you were bummed that it's no longer the title shot.  So, just because I love you and just because I'm too lazy to go get the cable to upload new photos from my camera, here is the entire photo shoot.  Enjoy:

By the way, we went for a lovely hike this weekend and I will be putting photos from that up soon.

Sadie's Three!

Sadie is now three.  She's been waiting a long time to say that, and now she says it often.  This is her walking with us on her birthday by the river.  

This is Sadie on the phone with Gran, after the walk, on her birthday.  

Thanks for the bath stickies, Sebastian!  She loves them!

We're having an excellent holiday so far!

The biggest thing so far is that we got a new puppy.  We had chosen a female black lab named J.Z. (Junior Zoe - Zoe is the mom's name) but when we went to pick her up we learned that she had been stolen.  So we brought home a boy puppy. 

 UPDATE (added the next day):  The owners of the litter just phoned me last night, and told me that the two puppies that went missing have been returned!  they were on their doorstep in the morning.  Weird.  Well, I'm still very happy to have Z.  He's great - very chill, loves to nap, does his business outside AND is a boy - I'm less outnumbered now.  

Introducing our new dog, Z ('Zee'):

We decorated Easter eggs at home.

All the eggs in one basket:

We spent a couple days at the West Edmonton Mall.  We saw Monsters versus Aliens in 3D at the Imax theatre, spent a day at the wave pool, and Amy made a teddy bear.  

Here we are in the jacuzzi of the 'Ice Room' at FantasyLand Hotel.
Touie (Sadie's rat), Howard (Amy's female bear), and Tiger (Erin's lion):

Sleighride

Skating Gala videos

As promised, here are some vids from the skating gala.  

For some reason I only have pictures of Erin's group from the skating gala.  I know I have video of Amy's too, as well as videos of the best parts of the entire gala, which I'll be putting up soon once the camera is charged.  So here are some photos of Erin's group - they skated to "Bettie Davis Eyes".  

I know Sherrie's got some photos of Amy's group in her camera - She's left that at work.  I'll get them up soon.  

This is Erin and Amy on the path along the river.  Amy's on the roller blades, Erin's on the bike.  I'll work on getting the training wheels off this spring.  

The ridge above our neighbourhood is a lovely place to walk.  Here are some shots from it.

Like I said, I'll be putting the rest of the vids and photos from the skating gala up very soon, like tomorrow.  We're going to a weenie roast and final sleigh ride tomorrow after school, and on Thursday I'm going to go jam with the surf band at the studio, and then on Saturday we're going to Edmonton for a few days - we're staying in a nice hotel at the big mall.  I'll have photos of that too soon.

talk to you later.

The latest on the newest Kos

I couldn't say it any better, so I've just cut and pasted the latest email from Sonja:

The full official name is.......... Samantha Paige Kos   We are hoping to take our little girl home by Monday...she just has to get the hang of eating all of her food without needing to be topped up with the tube feeding and gain weight. She is keeping her oxygen levels where they need to be. She has had a slight weight loss and is now 6 lbs., 9 oz., and still has a bit of jaundice.  This should fade as she eats more. She hates to be bathed but loves to be wrapped up tightly.   Well, we're off to the hospital again to try feeding her again. Will keep you posted on any new events. Love, Mike & Sonja

SAMANTHA!

Here she is folks:  Baby Samantha Kos.  Still not out of the hospital but doing fine by all accounts.  I'm having trouble getting in touch with anyone in Toronto right now (Mom's probably at the hospital with the new parents, and cell phones are probably off) so haven't found out the middle name yet - I'll let you know when I find out.  

Congratulations Sonja and Mike!

She has arrived!  The beautiful young newest Kos was born at 9:26 pm on the 22nd, just a couple of days ago.  Both mom and baby are doing fine.  As she was three weeks premature and delivered by C section, the beautiful bundle is in the intensive care for a short while.  This means that mom and dad have not really gotten to hold her much and figure out her name.  I've been assured that a name will be coming very soon, and then I'll let you all know.  

Cute, though, isn't she?

And hey - check out the guy in the shower cap - what a dork! (just kidding Mike-I love you man)

I think she looks like me.  tee hee.

Also in the news...

Sadie seems to be quite the popular girl at the toy library these days.  I could throw in an inuendo about which one of them is going to be a doctor, but it doesn't seem right just now.  

Erin has gone to school with her face painted a couple of times in teh past week or so.  She really likes it.  I call this one 'waiting for spring'.

And skating lessons are coming to a close - below are photos of the girls with their medals.  The gala is on Saturday - Amy's performing to a medley of hits from the forties and Erin's skating to 'Bettie Davis Eyes' from the eighties - can't for the life of me remember who sang it.  

Here they are at the awards ceremony and pizza party with their new medals.  I'm so proud!

This is Erin with her instructor, one of the assistant coaches.  She completed level 1!

Amy got her level 2!

Not bad coming from West Africa if you ask me.

Well, I knew it wouldn't take long before Sadie'd want into Amy's action - so here's her, uh, tower that she and I built this week.  She spent most of the time assuring me that she wasn't going to hurt herself with the gluegun.  Yes, I let her use it and no, she didn't burn herself even once!  I burn myself at least three times each time I pick the thing up.  She really is careful.

This is a typical scene on any weekday afternoon.  The girls are having lunch with their friend, Talon, who lives down the street.  They often go to his place too.  

March

Hello everyone!  Sorry for taking so long - What can I say?  I've been busy and I'm not taking too many pictures lately.  Here are a couple of recent ones:

Sherrie getting ready to go to work.  Pretty busy that girl.

Amy's getting into architectural modeling.  She's really into it!

Erin's a bit sick this weekend.  She just wanted to lie on the sofa and not do much this weekend.  

Ok - I think I'm back to doing this weekly now.  I'll be more regular from now on.  

Talk to you soon

Steve

Ok I'm falling behind here.   Let's see, in the time between the last posting, my brother Mike got married (!), my neice had a birthday, and we did lots of cool things here.  I can't really remember them all, but here are a few photos:

This is at the big pond hockey tournament.  It's really much bigger than my pitiful photos let on.  There are about twenty rinks on a frozen lake and there are many teams all playing for an entire weekend.  It's really quite spectacular to see - unfortunately it was pretty cold and I didn't think to pack the girls' snowpants, so we didn't last there too long.  

Sadie and I had a lovely stroll around the rinks while Amy and Erin hung in the big tents having hot chocolate.  

I really wish I had better photos.  It was a remarkable thing to see.  Maybe next year.  

We went to the dentist too.  Sorry I didn't get a photo of Erin, but here are the three that I did take:

Sadie was happy that they supplied sunglasses.

This is a film taken by Sherrie on a typical day at work.  Wow!

A Few things about folks around here.

I'm not sure if these are Alberta things or just Peace River things.  Maybe it's applicable to the entirety of this half of the country - I don't know - but I feel compelled to share a few findings with you all about the people here:

• No one says "eh" at the end of a sentence.  MANY people, however, say "hey" at the end of a sentence, in the same fashion that we all expect "eh" to be used.
• Hot dogs aren't hot dogs.  They're smokies.
• Many many people keep their cars running for long periods of time.  This could be attributed to the cold on some days, but now that I've been here for a while I'm seeing cars left running at the grocery store and such in just minus five degree weather.  There should really be a program put in place by the government here to educate people about just how bad that is.  I made the mistake of telling someone they left their car running once, thinking they did it by accident.  I was stared at like I had two heads.  Weird.
• Anyone who comes over for coffee says 'cream'.  I'm wondering if I'm insulting them when I pull out our 1% milk...
• Ok this one is great and is specific to Alberta....CKUA.  Yes, it'a a radio station.  you simply have to check out this station - my god what a perfect thing.  It's one of the major contributors to my love of this place.  Completely ecclectic, you never know what they're going to play, and the djs program their own stuff!  They go down to the vaults and pull up whatever they want before they go on, kind of like WKRP.  Amazing.  The djs' taste is excellent too - Michael Frente, Etta James, The Band, Tom Waits, lots of Canadian and local talent, lots of folk and blues, you name it.  There are many excellent regular programs too, like Baba's groove, Roy's Record Room (I'm listening to now - a two hour special on Buddy Holly!) Mulligan Stew (remember Terry David Mulligan from City TV and Much Music?  He's been hosting this two hour show for many years now) and so many more.  I HIGHLY recommend you check out this station if you can.  Apparently they're online as well.  I am sure I'll never find a better radio station anywhere.  

And now for some photos:

We had a great weekend.  We went to a fun fair at a local school, a birthday party, a hockey game and swimming.  Threw in a couple of late movie nights with the projector in the basement for the kids too (our projector is now permanently on the ceiling in the basement and shoots an approximately eight foot image on the wall down there.  Great for having friends over).  These two images are from the hockey game on Sunday, which we were able to walk to from the swimming pool.  Apparently we have a good team, but they lost the two games we've seen.

Amy decided to get her ears pierced this week too.  She was very brave.  You can see the desire to cry in her little eyes in this shot though.  It's after the first ear was done and she's about to have the second one done.  She's now very happy and so proud of herself.  They look great too!

These next shots are from the family fun fair at a local school.  Amy and Sadie and I went to it, while Sherrie and Erin were at a birthday party.  

Oh and I threw this one in really just to bug Sherrie - a few of the parents from the toy library came over with their little ones today to play Scrabble and have lunch.  There were six kids here (including Sadie) and it was a madhouse.  It was really fun though.  I know I should have been cleaning or something, but this was great!

That's all for now... I have to go tidy.