So much happens in a year!

Happy New Year to EVERYONE! Looking back on 2006, I really can't believe how much has happened and how much we've done.
January brought on Steve's 27th birthday and my dreaded surgery. What was supposed to be day surgery ended up being 8 weeks of HELL.
February brought on wedding plans while still recovering from the 8 weeks of hell
March brought us our beautiful wedding day! Still can't believe we're married!
April... hmmmmm Happy Easter?
May brought me my 27th birthday and a new kitten.
June brought us summer weather and kids got out of school!
July brought me day after day after day of HOT grueling rehearsals for the musical The Fantasticks.
August brought even hotter weather and my performance of the Fantasticks. My dad stayed with us for a week (?) which was nice too. August was also our much planned and enjoyed Family Vacation! SO MUCH FUN! WOOOO!
September brought the relief of having a routine. Kids back to school and normal bedtimes for everyone.
October brought us a super fun Halloween!
November brought Makenna's FOURTH birthday! It also brought on days and nights of rehearsals for the play Bed and Breakfast that I was in. As well as the beginning of Music Man rehearsals.
December brought Mayanne and JP's 9th and 6th birthdays and a really great family Christmas! Haaaappppyyyyyy New Year!

JP's new room

JP has patiently waited for his new room birthday present. It's 18 days late, but done! And darn it all anyway, I forgot to take a before picture!!! I'm so mad at myself for forgetting that. It's not as dramatic or as impressive of a change as what the girls had, but we're happy with the results.

I asked JP what he thought, and he said it's the best room in the whole house! His opinion is the only one that matters really. He's got sooooo much stuff! We had a really hard time organizing it all. Poor thing has the smallest room in the house.

Wow, Christmas Mania!

Christmas was so much fun this year. The kids were super spoiled of course. I had not intended on spoiling them at all, but somehow everytime I went to the store I saw something that one of them would love. My dad and farmor (gramma) came to visit us this Christmas, which made everything even more special. Anyway, here are some pics of our great day!

Sushi anyone?

I try to make something somewhat original for every party we have at the office. So this year for christmas I made candy sushi! It's so cute, easy to make and tastes good too!
For halloween I made kitty litter cake. I thought the girls at the office would get a kick out of it considering we have 2 insurance kitties at work.

Inga (named after ING Insurance) and Aviva (named after Aviva Elite Insurance).

If anyone else wants to make candy sushi just go to the food network website and type in candy sushi in the search area. It's so easy and makes an interesting party snack!

Mayanne is growing up

I was near tears this evening as I dropped Mayanne off at her very 1st dance.
She says to me before we got there at 7:30, "Mom can you please stay with me till 8 or 8:30?" She was really nervous and worried about the whole event, but wanted to give it a try with mama by her side. So of course I agreed to stay. WELL... we got there, she saw her friends, they came running, she dropped my hand, and she yelled "BYE MOM!"

So that was that. Now that she's 9 years old, she's too big for mom. I had such a weird pit in my stomach as I left the gym. My eyes were welling up as I approached my van. I remember clear as day being 9 years old. What has happened to time? Wasn't I just nine? I remember beginning to mature at that age. Talking to my friends about all of the somewhat unknown. That was the beginning of "I know everything, you can't tell me otherwise".
Next thing you know there will be the drama of boyfriends, 1st kisses, who-likes-who, hormones, arguments with friends being the end of the world, I-dare-you, spin the bottle, babysitting jobs, going for walks with friends alone, and more dances!
I just can't believe Mayanne is growing up so fast.

Could this really be my basement?

My basement has officially been totally torn apart pretty much. There are no more floors and the bottoms of the walls have all been removed. It's weird. I went from a completely finished basement to well... a disaster area. My laundry is piled to the sky again. Our washer and dryer have been disconnected while the men are working down there. Off to the laundry mat I go! Makenna has been wearing pajama pants for the past few days because she's got no more clean pants. She looks like an orphan. I hope to at least have the washer and dryer hooked up soon. But the restoration company says they have to clean out my appliances because they've got poo water in them too. Anyway, here are my last few pics before they start making things like new.

POO IN MY BASEMENT AGAIN!

And so the cleanup starts again. On Monday night our basement flooded with poo water AGAIN. This time instead of starting to clean it up ourselves, we got out the camera, called the city, called a restoration company and our insurance company. The City guys were on the scene within 10 minutes of calling them. I was quite happy with that considering it was 9:00pm. Turns out the sewer line on the street outside our house was super plugged. They fixed that and within minutes the poo water started draining through the drain in our basement floor. I guess I was wrong about it being our ancient toilet the last time. It was the sewers all along.

The restoration guys sucked out the remaining of the water and sprayed some kind of sticky antibacterial stuff all over the place. Because this is the 2nd time in just a week that this has happenend, the lino downstairs started peeling up. I had no idea how toxic this water is. I was not supposed to clean up the stuff the 1st time, apparantely everything this water touches is considered garbage. So, the past few days, i've been taking inventory as things go into the garbage.

This is a huge loss to us. However, on the bright side... Steve gets the ultimate christmas/birthday present of new flooring downstairs! The walls also have to be restored. This I'm a little sad about because we took so much time in painting every single wall down there when we moved in. I was very proud of my laundry room paint job.
Anyway, this will probably end up being a 2 month ordeal. We won't have our house to ourselves for quite sometime.

Music Man Fundraiser

I attended our fundraiser for the production of our up coming musical last nite. It was a very nice turn out, and was very successful. We raised almost $5000 so far. It's a great start for the new theatre society we are. There was an AMAZING amount of things donated for the silent auction. I got a brand new 20" Samsung virtual flat screen TV for $96!! That was the only thing i bid on all nite. I wanted it so bad because the TV in our room bombed out on us. What a steal it was for 96 bucks! I dressed up in a costume that made me look about 250 pounds. I looked huge, but it was still fun and entertaining for our guests to see.

My mom's friend Leila was the big auction winner of the night. She got a Canucks jersey signed by the entire team, and two 17th row game tickets. It's going to be the ULTIMATE christmas present for her Canuck-Fan son.

There was a russian gypsie singer that came to perform for us all the way from Vancouver. His name was Raoul. There were many russians in the crowd that happily sang along with him. The CD's he brought to sell were a hit with our local Russian people.

All in all, it was a very nice evening for all that came.

Oh CRAP... no really, crap....

Just taking a break from CLEANING the smelliest disaster ever. Our old toilet downstairs decided it was time to break and flood the basement. The ENTIRE basement. The water was ankle deep and went from the toilet through the walls to the workshop, guest room and family room. Our whole house smelled like a sewer before we got the water cleaned up. I'm just taking a break from carpet cleaning, laundry, and organizing. I don't wanna do another thing, but I gotta get back to work now. This has forced us to get rid of a bunch of stuff we have been meaning to take to the dump and thrift store for a long time. WHAT A HEADACHE, WHAT A MESS...!

Oh my God it's DONE!

Well, 2 days worth of work, $150, and wow, wow, wow. What a nice room Annie has. It's absolutely adorable. And it's something that she won't grow out of for quite some time. Tinkerbell is the theme. We figure since Tinkerbell's been around for about 50 years, she's not going to go out of style for a long time yet. I'd like a Tinkerbell room too, but I think Steve wouldn't like that too much.

Today is the dreaded beginning

Annies room. WHAT A MESS!!!!!! I'm about to embark on hours of frustrating cleaning. Mayanne and I are going to put everything in one GIANT pile in the middle of the floor and sort. Garbage, Thrift Store or Keep piles. Then on Sunday, Steve and I will tear up the crappy carpet, move all the furniture and start painting. I will post the after pictures probably on Monday.

How I started my day....

Makenna got a really cute Disney Princess tea party set for her birthday. She absolutely loves it. Everyday we've been having tea parties. Not just her and I, but the whole family has been getting involved in this extraveganza. She's so adorable as she pours the tea and tries to hide her 'proud' smile while she does it. We have big people conversations and use all our manners. She's 4 and all grown up now. Oh what fun!

The Fantasticks

I've got sooooo many things to blog! I'm trying to treat this as a bit of a scrapbook type thing, so I want to have as many memories as possible in my blogger thing. Forgive me for talking about all the things in the past. A lot of the time I'll be blogging stuff about me. Hopefully all this "me" talk won't horribly bore the people who read this.

In the summer I was in another musical. The Fantasticks. It's one of Broadways longest running shows ever. There are only 8 people in the play, but it's incredibly entertaining. It was a lot of work, but worth it in the end. I ended up stressing out, as I do with most of the plays I've been in. This time though, I gave myself an ulcer. I'll be sure not to stress myself out that badly again.

Our wedding day...

We got married on March 25th, 2006. It was a super small, but perfect wedding. I still can't believe I'm Mrs. Burrows. So weird. We had 11 guests at our wedding. I originally wanted to invite everyone we know, but now looking back I'm very happy with the decision we made. The wedding was planned in 4 weeks. My dress was $9.99, my shoes were $9.99, my hair was $30 and my bouquet was $40. I made my veil for about $3. I was a VERY BUDGET BRIDE. However, I felt like I was worth a million bucks that day. The ceremony and dinner were at Golden Heights Restaurant. Such a pretty place.
I had no intentions of crying on my wedding day, but the second I started walking down the isle, the tears started flowing. Why do people cry at weddings? I just can't understand the emotions behind it. Even Steve had a hard time keeping the tears back. My 2 grammas, mom, dad, 2 best friends, and steve's gramma were all bawling. How could I not cry with all those other tearful faces looking at me? The kids were all very good that day. All 3 walked me down the isle with pride written all over thier faces. Mayanne and Makenna were my bridesmaids and JP was Steve's best man and ring bearer. So cute. I decided to have the kids walk me down the isle rather than my dad because dad's are supposed to give their daughters away. I kinda figured I gave myself away a long time ago to Steve (with dad's blessing of course), so having him walk me down the isle seemed to have no traditional meaning left behind it. I wanted the kids to be a huge part of the wedding process, and they were.
Anyway, it was a wonderful day. I'm so glad we took our relationship that extra step. I love what we've got, I cherish every moment we have together as a family. I'm so glad our closest family members and friends were there to share our special day.

Happy Birthday Makenna!

Geez, my baby girl is 4 already. Shes growing up way too fast. Like all parents seem to say, "it was yesterday when she way born". I remember it so clearly. I decided to go for a walk on November 18th with the other 2 kids. 1/2 way through my walk I started thinking "geez, I'm gonna get diarrhea". My stomach was killing me, so I walked to steve's work and asked to use the bathroom. No poop, just really bad tummy cramps. I was in total denial of being in labour and just told steve to finish his day at work. When he got home my stomach cramping was now coming in waves, and believe it or not, I was STILL in denial. It was MY THIRD CHILD, and I refused to believe I was in labour. So dumb. Well around 7 pm I said, "alright I'm in labour, lets go to the hospital". So we went, the nurse said I was in labour for sure, but was not yet dialated, so I went home. I only lasted until about 9:30 pm at home and I told Steve I HAD to go back. The pain got pretty intense. Well, I was dialated to around 5 cm's which was good enough for them to keep me at the hospital. ALL NIGHT LONG I had horrible contractions every 3 minutes or so. Poor poor Steve. He was exhausted from working all day, and fell asleep in between each contraction (so did i). Dr. Sebastian broke my water at around 7am (I was so mad at him because I knew it'd make the pain way worse), and at 8 am on November 19th 2002, out came Makenna!! It was a epidural free delivery, the best way to go I'd say. The 1st two kids were epidural deliveries, and it just made it way to hard to push. My body literally heaved Makenna out.
Anyway, HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY MAKENNA! We love you so much.

Makenna's new room

I really wish I had taken a before and after picture of Makennas room. I'm kicking myself for not doing that!

For the kids birthdays (nov 19, dec 8 and dec 11) they are getting room makeovers. Makennas room was 1st, and she was TOTALLY THRILLED! All week she's been handing out hugs and kisses to Steve and I to say thank you for her new room. For Mayanne and JP's rooms, i'll do a before and after shot of each. For now, here's pics of Makennas new room that she is sooooo proud of.