Home Alone

I'm sitting at home alone on the Friday of the long weekend. Starting to feel bored for the first time in months.... I remember when I first moved to Grande Prairie. I knew no one, and was hardly involved in anything outside of work. I don't know what I did with my time, or how I wasn't bored every night! 

Mr. A went away for a few nights. He'll be gone for another few days and I thought I would take advantage of the time by myself to relax and re-group. When he's here, I continually use every minute we have together to finalize wedding plans, and do housework, and get his opinions on things. Without him here I feel like I have all this time available to relax. Only problem is that I don't really know how to do that anymore... After sitting for five minutes I'm already making lists of things to do. Once I finished the things on my list, I sat down, watched tv for an hour, and felt bored already. How did I get to the point where I have to be busy at all times?! I don't know... Maybe this is how God is preparing me for the busyness of marriage and children down the road. 

Anyway... One year ago my life was so different. No man, no plans to stay in Grande Prairie, still had the ability to relax in the evenings without making lists... And then I met the man of my dreams! We just celebrated our one year anniversary. Went out for a lovely dinner, and he gave me these lovely flowers :) 

 A new plant for my living room....

.....AND some gerbera daisies :) 

They are so beautiful and a very nice reminder of my man while he's away working. He'll be gone until the middle of next week now. I'm left at home caring for two puppies... which surprisingly, is MUCH more difficult than watching just one puppy. Walks are much more difficult when you have two big leashes, and one dog pooping every chance he gets, and one puppy not understanding how to go around stop signs properly, and both puppies wanting to travel in different directions, and both puppies wanting to chase after other puppies, and chaos everywhere! Seriously... a walk has never been more challenging! How am I gonna do this when I have a stroller too? I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there. 

Daisy the princess....  

....Joop the prince. 

It's gonna be a fun weekend taking care of these puppies :) Maybe I'll even get another blog post in! 

Cute Puppy!!

Joop is a lucky puppy. When we move into the new house there's a nice dog kennel, but there's no where for Joop to rest and stay warm. So Grandpa Vanderschaaf decided to make Joop his very own dog house!

It was made out of an old cupboard. There are even left-over shingles on the roof! He doesn't really stay in there yet, I'm still tricking him into it with treats. Isn't it adorable?! Maybe he'll be happy about staying outside now??

Learn to Run 5K... Check!

I did it!!! I ran 5K this morning!! Actually 5.1.... but who's counting...

For those of you keeping track, this is pretty much the best month of my life (engagement, house, completing running goal). I'm really proud of myself actually. It took me 43 minutes to do 5.1K, which is probably horrifically long to some people, but I felt really good about it. I don't have a watch or anything to track my distance, so I just run for a while - or until I feel like falling over - and then I walk. I was hoping that I could do 5K today so I pushed myself a bit, but I'm so glad :)

Now the goal is to improve my time a bit before I get to Ontario for a run with my BFF.

Joop and I post-run.

Joop chilling out by my shoes. [side note: As I write this he is passed out and snoring on the couch beside me, lol. I think he was just as tuckered out from the run as I was!]

Messy Puppy...

Hahaha... I actually laughed out loud when I saw what Joop did tonight. I was working away, doing some scrapbooking and whatnot. Meanwhile Joop was chewing on all his toys. Apparently he couldn't decide what to play with and kept going back for new toys, leaving a trail of discarded toys behind him to prove it! (note the basket of toys at the back of the pic!).

Seriously the cutest puppy in the world.

Joop: Cleaning Machine

Not only is Joop super cute, he's also super helpful! Did you know he helps me with all the household chores? Yes, he helps wherever he can. I'll just let these videos speak for themselves....

Helping me vacuum...

and sweep....

and dust...

and make the bed.... If you didn't laugh out loud while watching this, you're not human.

ps - I actually did a better job of cleaning then it appears in the videos, lol.

Christmas Love

Merry Christmas Everyone!!! I hope that everyone had as great a holiday as I did! It was so nice to get some downtime. I apologize to any faithful followers, cause I haven't been updating like I should be! I've been on a bit of a hiatus with all of the Christmas festivities, but I'm back. Mr. A (although I may have to change this name now cause it's getting to his head!) and I decided to open our stockings and presents on Christmas Eve. We came home back to my place after the Christmas Eve service and made some nice Tassimo coffees (thanks Alyssa!) and opened gifts! It was nice cause we weren't rushed on Christmas morning.

In the morning I got to Skype my family back home :) My brothers don't seem to care very much about seeing me, but I was definitely glad to see all of them. It's just nice to hear the typical Van Strien banter. Makes me feel like Christmas is a little more normal. Then we spent Christmas day with Mr. A's family and some family friends. It was a very full house, with very good food, and very good company. I had a lot of fun. Oh - and I forgot to mention... we took the quads out for a Christmas afternoon spin! Truly an Albertan Christmas now!

It was great and it flew by, and now I'm gearing up for the New Years celebrations tonight :)

Here are all the presents and stockings! Mr. A got a board games and some coffee mugs and a really nice travel coffee mug! And Santa brought us framed pictures of us together too :)

Joopers was not forgotten! He got a yummy bone (in his mouth!), and nice new jacket (for the cold Albertan winters), and a penguin squicky toy (which is now half demolished).

And that's what I got!! Isn't it beautiful!! It's an eco drive watch so I never have to change the batteries! And its got diamonds all along the sides of the face of the watch. AND he engraved the back to say "Christmas 2011" - I think that implies that he wants more Christmases with me....

Just relaxing before we opened the Christmas presents :)

I am very grateful this year to have such a wonderful man in my life. I missed my family dearly, but I had a great holiday. See you in the New Year everyone!!

Scrapbooking Again

I was not gifted in life with artistic skills. Drawing, sketching, painting, scultping... I am awful at all of them. Scrapbooking is my only artistic outlet. I don't know why I enjoy doing it so much. I find it very satisfying to keep a book of the finished products though. I recently got into scrapbooking again after a somewhat long hiatus.

Here are the pages I've done recently:

This one is a page of pictures from my mama and grandmama's visit to Grande Prairie! We had a great time :)

This is a page of some pics of my manfriend and I. The colours are a bit brighter than in the picture. I pictures make me smile and the owls that we made look amazing.

This is a page of Joopers! I can't believe I haven't made a scrapbooking page about the pup yet. Watching him run around with his boots on outside had me laughing so hard I was snorting. So I decided to make a page of his cute pictures!

If anyone ever wants to scrapbook with me let me know. I think the dog one is my favourite of the three pages I just did. Fun, easy, quick, relatively inexpensive hobby. Maybe I'll post some more pages as I make them :)

Fetch.

Is it really that hard. (1) I throw ball. (2) You get ball. (3) You bring ball back. Joop consistently forgets step 3. The game is not called throw-ball-so-dog-can-run-away-from-me-for-a-whole-hour! Geez louise.

Yet, I still love him.

The other week I left the pup with a friend so that I could travel home and it turns out he's a total TWAT WAFFLE when I'm not around! He tried to eat her food, puked on the carpet, ran around so he didn't have to go in the bedroom in the morning, wimpered all day and night, and just generally didn't listen. Thanks for your patience Winnepeg! Stupid little pup. Then he thought he ruled the house and proceeded to not listen to me when I got home. I had to whip that little pup back into shape. Twat Waffle. It only took him a few days, but what a stubborn little guy.

Yet, I still love him.

Fetch, Joopje! FETCH!

Resolution Shmesolution (continued...)

Joopje (pronounced "yope-yuh") reminded me about his resolutions:

1) Bark less. He doesn't want to annoy the neighbours.

2) Put his toys away in his toy basket. Messy dog.

3) Stop trying to get his adorable bandanas off.

Now we are both ready for the new year!

Joopje, where's the poop??

Sooo.... winter in grande prairie is COLD! FYI.

This week it reached a low of -30 and -36 with wind chill. Also, it's going to get colder.... Although I don't mind the cold, little Joopers didn't seem to like it very much. Here's a pic of little Joop with his paws up in the air cause his little feets were too cold. Poor dog. Our walks started turning into 5 minutes or less pee breaks. He didn't poop for 3 days!! He wouldn't stay outside long enough, so obviously I was starting to get concerned for the little puppy.

So I talked to some native grande prairians to learn that dog booties were pretty standard around here. I was generally against any kind of boot, sweater, clothing, etc. combination on principle. But my poor little dog couldn't walk in the snow, so I caved in.....

Here are the booties I bought him. (20% off I might add!)

Then I had him put them on.

And here's his first attempt at wearing them.... (Note: he kicks two of them off within about ten seconds.

But eventually he figured it out. Here he is wearing all four of them!

He still doesn't love them, and usually kicks a couple off by the end of the walk. But he's getting use to them. And we had the longest walk today! Well, the longest walk in a few weeks anyway.