Gifts Galore

Christmas has come and gone - all of the weeks of shopping and wrapping presents culminating in one exciting day of gift giving. We had high hopes pinned on this year's Christmas experience with Zachary - hoping that he would find the gifts more entertaining than the wrapping and ribbon. We were headed for disappointment :) - the unwrapping of the gifts seemed only mildly interesting, and once he arrived at the "toy of the year" - there was no more thought to ANY more presents. We actually have unopened presents still at our house as he was so distracted that there was little use. :) Sadly, we'll now have to shift our focus to NEXT Christmas as being "the one!" :) There were entertaining moments throughout the day, and I have included several pictures of the event. All in all, we had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed spending the day with Amy's mom and watching the old classic "The Scarlet Pimpernel" on a lazy afternoon.

We wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Zachary - the human present

Zachary on "the toy of the year" - a motorized 4-wheel ride-on toy.

A Christmas picture of our group to remember the occasion by

Weekend of Active Fun!

This has been a packed weekend for Zachary - he started off the weekend going to "Monkey Joe's" with friends Luke Deininger and Ella Pellindini. Monkey Joe's is an indoor play area for kids where they have tons of play structures around the room - Zachary's favorite is the tall slide! It is a work-out for parents as well who run around helping the kids up and down the different play choices! I've included a series of pictures as Zachary slides down - notice the huge grin on his face!

Today, we ventured forth to Animal Kingdom. Karis and I are not known for going to the Disney parks, as we generally try and avoid the Orlando tourist traps unless we have visitors from out of town, but when you have the good fortune of receiving free tickets - why not go!? We were fortunate in that the weather was very nice for the most part, and Zachary enjoyed the safari ride (tons of animals out and about today!) and the petting zoo.

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas - we've enjoyed getting everyone's Christmas letters!

AHS Christmas Party!

Sorry for the delayed post, but we went to the AHS Christmas party this morning, and I was hoping to have some fun pictures from the experience. There was a lovely brunch at the Disney Coronado Springs Resort, and the Mickey and Minnie Mouse characters dropped by, along with Santa! Zachary was very intrigued by Mickey, and tried to pull his face towards him to get a better look by grabbing his mask - poor Mickey - abused at Christmas! :) Later when Santa arrived, Zachary was engrossed in playing with his friends Anthony and Kiko - and was as mad as a hornet when we took him from their side to go up and get a picture with Santa Claus - note to self, next time just have Anthony and Kiko get in line with us! :)

We're doing some last minute shopping etc this weekend, and hope to have all of our Christmas errands completed. We sent out our Christmas letters late this week, so hopefully everyone will have them by this time next week!

Our post next week will most likely be delayed as well until Sunday as we have tickets to Animal Kingdom, so hope to have some fun pictures of Zachary enjoying the animals there to share with everyone.

Picture with Mickey & Minnie while Zachary grabs poor Mickey's face!
At this moment, considering selling Zachary off to the highest bidder! Any takers? (Just teasing!)

At last, picture with Santa - at least he's not screaming although he's definitely not sure what to make of this person!

New Furniture

Yippee! We got new office furniture for the old "imagination room" for any of you who have been to our house before. For those who have not, our formal living room was 100% empty for years, and then after Zachary's arrival we put in the old office furniture (that had survived our house flood many years ago by a small margin). Because it was empty, we would affectionately tell visitors that it was the "imagination room" because you could use your imagination to decorate it however your personal preference was! :) But after much saving and planning on what we'd buy, the furniture has now arrived! Our next purchase for this room will be a leather sectional and then we should be set - it is our intention that this will be a multipurpose room - computer/office, TV room, and PLAY room - but one step at a time!

This is the old room partially cleaned out (not much else other than an old bookshelf, filing cabinet and junk!:)

The new furniture...corner desk and an entertainment center in the middle with lots of bookshelves for our books! :)

The Gala & The Trip

Karis and I attended the FH Gala two weeks ago - it is always fun to get dressed up in fancy clothes and look at all of the cool stuff that is for auction. We've never bid on anything, but considered it this year when we got to the kids table - there were a lot of fun toys, but mostly for older kids, so we were spared another year! :) Lionel Ritchie was the entertainment this year, and Amy was anticipating the lovely ballads like "Say You, Say Me" and "Once Twice Three Times a Lady" - we had to leave early, so only had the opportunity to listen to 1 1/2 songs, but apparently after we left things got a bit wild. Most of the people attending the gala are not Adventist, and when Lionel invited them to get up and get "moving" they did so. Apparently it got to be quite the rock concert with women standing along the stage shouting at him about how hot he was. Hmm - not quite the ballads that we were expecting. It has caused quite a stir as you might imagine after the fact, so hopefully next year we'll go back to something more "normal."

For American Thanksgiving, we flew up to Indiana to visit the Hicks. Zachary experienced his first snowfall and some definitely cold weather! It was so fun to see them all, and Zachary quickly developed an attachment to Kevin - following him around begging to be picked up. Zachary slept in the same room as we did, and in the morning because he could see us, he would start yelling "Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi!!!!!.......Mama, HI!!!!" - even though we'd lay there like mummies without twitching a muscle, you can only let that go on for so long without laughing so we had some early mornings. Children's Benadryl was not our Savior on the way back, so while trying to get him to sleep he would scream and cry. We finally gave up the effort and he was much happier the rest of the flight. We were blessed each flight to have a row of three seats to ourselves, so Zachary could actually sit on his own seat. He turns 2 in April, so we won't have much longer anyway of having a free flight for him - not sure which is worse - having him sit and crawl all over you for the entirety of the flight or having to pay for a seat! :)

This picture is of our visit to the local dairy where you get a bus tour of the barns, see where they make the feed, can see baby calves being born, and then get to eat cheese! :)

The Hicks children shared their sunglasses with Zachary, which he quickly came to love and actually keep on his face!

Week of Firsts

This week is one of many "firsts" - we started off the week with going to a new babysitter, Jennifer, last Friday for the first time. She will watch Zachary every Friday as our other babysitter (Amy - yes, strange that her name is Amy as well!) is scaling back to only Monday - Thursday. After much anxiety and prayer, we found Jennifer who is also an Adventist and has a son who is 16 months old - we have to say that we've been truly blessed again and Zachary seems to be having a great time there and is in very good hands.

Next off, this week Zachary graduated to one nap a day. After several weeks of refusing to take an afternoon nap, we've eliminated the morning nap. He seems to be doing quite well with the new schedule although we're not quite out of the woods yet - on Thursday he actually fell asleep in Amy's arms while cuddling for a while and on Friday he walked over to the pack-n-play and "begged" to get in so Jennifer finally put him in and he promptly went to sleep. So, we're in a bit of transition still but it does seem to be going well.

This week is the first time that Florida has gotten "cold" - okay, "crisp" enough to wear pants and a jacket - Zachary looks quite grown-up in his jacket and tennis shoes! Where did the little baby go? Zachary's current favorite place to play is in the van with his car seat (although strangely enough he has thrown a fit or two when being strapped into that same car seat - oh well, they are few and far between luckily).

This weekend is the also first time that Amy's mom will be taking Zachary for an overnight visit to her place. This will be strange to not have Zachary with us, but he'll enjoy the time with grandma and after our initial shock, we'll enjoy the time of being "adults-only" with no worries about Zachary!

This last picture is not a first but rather a "second" - we threw a surprise baby shower for friends Vasti and Trish at the local Cheesecake Factory last Sunday to welcome both of their second boys - both due the first week of January.

We have the Florida Hospital gala this Sunday, and so will try and post pictures next week of that. We are heading up to Indiana to visit friends for Thanksgiving, so won't be posting next weekend - we wish everyone a wonderful American Thanksgiving!

Crazy, Crazy Morning

This week Amy had one of the craziest mornings she's ever had - on Thursday, she was about halfway through blowdrying her hair when the hairdryer literally went up in smoke. What to do now with half a head of wet hair and no other hairdryers in the house?? We have a small floor fan in our bedroom for background noise while we sleep, so you got it - the tiny floor fan that barely puts out a very wimpy amount of air became the substitute. 15 minutes later, the hair (or should we say AFRO!) was finally dry enough to try and do something with a curling iron and hairspray.

With that crisis out of the way, Amy walked into the kitchen where Zachary was playing on the floor only to notice that he was trying to grab something that she didn't recognize. From across the room, realization slowly dawned that he was grabbing a COCKROACH! Screaming and pell-mell running soon began as Amy tried to avert this nasty disaster to no avail. Sure enough, he managed to grab the cockroach and "smash" it into the floor. Amy is still shuddering from that experience.

Thinking that this morning was surely taking the cake, Amy rushed around trying to get out the door with a slim margin of hope that perhaps, just perhaps, we'd make it to work on time. However, upon arrival at the babysitters, realized that she had forgotten all of his food back at home safely in the refrigerator. So back home and back to the babysitter she went.

Now with no hope of arriving at work on time, she began a leisurely drive towards work only to realize that both Zbaraschuk adults had ignored the gas gauge for far too long - with now fervent prayers that this wouldn't be the icing on the cake, she managed to get into a gas station before totally running out of gas.

This has truly got to be the craziest morning on record for these Z's - but what can you do but just laugh about it! We now are the proud owners of TWO hairdryers (a regular one and a travel size one) so that this hopefully never happens again.

On another note - these pictures of Zachary are from our traditional Sabbath morning walk - the weather has turned "crisp" here in Florida much to Karis' delight so it is fun to be outside and enjoying it. After deciding that all of the running and walking was too tiring, Zachary decided that the sidewalk was a fine place to lay down and take a rest....crazy kid!

WhirlWind Week

Let us start off with saying sorry that we didn't post anything last week - we had the Vohwinkel family staying with us for the weekend, so our focus was on having as much fun as possible! I believe that we accomplished our goal of having fun- so the weekend was a success! The Vohwinkels have two children - Sophia who is 2 1/2 and Lukas who is 4 months - Zachary and Sophia had quite the time running around playing with toys - it is always nice to see another child enjoying the toys that your child has long-ago lost interest in (of course once another child shows interest however, suddenly that toy becomes much more desirable! :)). Lukas is a dream baby - if only all babies were so easy! :) We had a great time and on Sabbath had the Biri family over to visit, and then headed over to the Isidro Fall Pumpkin Fest. For anyone who has ever attended this fest, it was as packed and as fun as always - there were probably 45 people there and of course every dish was made from either pumpkin or squash. It is amazing how creative recipes can get! On Sunday, we made our way over to the Winter Park Boat Ride which is a fun diversion - unless you are Zachary Zbaraschuk and you do not want to wear the required life vest. So, in order to allow the other passengers an enjoyable boat ride, Amy had to sit with Zachary and sing for the entire hour - good thing that Stephanie was there to help throw in additional songs and verses when the "well" began to dry up! :)

Lastly, Monday and Tuesday as the Controller's Conference that Amy puts on every year. It was a smashing success although the weather was dismal - not so great for the planned air-boat ride. There were some brave souls that decided to chance the wind and rain though on the air-boat ride and had a very good time - lots of alligators! It is always a relief to have the conference over and done with though - until next year!

Sorry no pictures this time - we'll try and do better next week!

Beach Trek to Visit the Dodds

This was a busy week - it started off with Amy going to the AHS CFO/CNO Conference down at Captiva Island for the first half of the week. The boys decided to stay home and "batch" it, so Amy enjoyed a little quiet time by herself. The island has recovered from Hurricane Charley and was quite lovely - except for the "no-see-ums" (spelling?) - which left Amy with easily 40 bites all over her arms and legs and itching like crazy. For anyone contemplating a trip to the island, there were two great restaurants - "The Bubble Room" and the "Island Cow" - very fun restaurants with lots of ambiance! Next Amy flew over to Southwestern to do a quick recruiting trip before heading on home.

We ended the week with a visit to the beach to see the Dodd family (Amy's cousins from Tennessee). The day was rainy and grey to begin with, but ended up with blue skies. It was great fun to see everyone and catch up. Karis and the kids had a great time on the newly purchased boogie boards (see earlier September beach post where Karis vowed that he'd never return to the beach without boogie boards!). In the posted picture, Karis and Elizabeth are playing on the boogie boards while Dennis, Aunt Louise, Amy's Mom and Zachary watch intently.

The Hawk & The Turkey

This week's post is all about birds. In a bizarre twist of events, a HAWK decided that he needed to be inside of our screened-in pool enclosure. In order to gain entrance, he somehow flew into the screen hard enough that he tore an 18 inch gash in the screen and came on in. Karis noticed him that afternoon, and had to devise a way to get the hawk out. Luckily, it would appear that the hawk was exhausted from the efforts to get inside the screen, and Karis was able to gently nudge him with the long pool broom out the door and to freedom. Now we're left with a huge tear in our screen that Karis will attempt to patch. Here is a picture of the hawk sitting on top of our baby-guard fence which separates the house from the pool.

Last week was Canadian Thanksgiving (Happy Belated Thanksgiving!) and we are celebrating this week by having attending a small get-together at the Deininger's home. It will be fun to eat turkey, pumpkin pie and all the general Thanksgiving type foods. It is great to have TWO Thanksgivings every year! :)

Recruiting Trip to Southern

This week I made a quick dash up to Southern to recruit for summer interns and folks looking for full-time employment. I had the opportunity to visit with part of my family while I was there - Kathy, Dennis, Brenden and Elizabeth - it was such fun to visit and catch up! The Dedekers (the other part of my family) were at the school play "The Sound of Music" in which Jason was Captain Von Trapp (spelling?) and Jenna was in several scenes as well. I feel very fortunate to have a great family - albeit they are definitely flung all over between the U.S. and Canada!

The trip was fairly uneventful with the exception of the return flight home in which I was stranded in Atlanta for 4 hours and didn't arrive home until midnight last night. I am too old for this!

Anyway, several observations from my trip:

1. Why did I not go to Southern and avoid the bitter Andrews' winters? Was I crazy? The only reason that I can come up with is that I perhaps would not have married Karis - so in that case, the winters were worth it. Southern is amazingly beautiful and so charming both in terms of the campus itself and the surrounding landscape.

2. I ABHOR the Atlanta airport. Why do I forget this every time and blithely book my flights through this connector city? You can just about guarantee yourself late flights either coming or going, and you're lucky if you don't end up stranded in the airport, which is so over-crowded that you're lucky if you find some breathing room to rest your weary bones!

3. Although it was hard to accept that I am now "middle-aged," I can say without a doubt that I am glad that I am out of the college phase of my life! I could never understand it when adults would say that they wouldn't repeat the highschool/college phase of their life, but I have to say that after interviewing these kids, I don't miss studying, having no money, and wondering if I would ever get married!

Anyway - the Zs have now been reunited and I am trying to catch up on some much-needed rest!

Bookworm

The Zbaraschuk adults definitely love to read, and it appears that we have passed on our love for literature to Zachary. We've started to call him the little bookworm as his favorite past-time is to "read" his books. He is quite content to go into his room to his bookcase and spend anywhere up to an hour in there by himself - he pulls all of his books off of the shelves until he is surrounded with his beloved books. We're hoping that the love of literature will serve him well once he enters into school!

New Bedroom Furniture & Decorations

As previously mentioned, we've redecorated our bedroom by finally purchasing some furniture, putting up drapes and getting a new bedspread - the whole works! We have not 100% completed it (still have the drapery rings and tiebacks to put up, along with the bedskirt still to arrive) but we're getting close. We also have a twin-sleeper chair that is on order for the one side of the room, but that won't be in for another 5-6 weeks or so. Pictures are below of the major pieces of the room - we're quite happy to have gotten this far!

A few months ago, central Florida had several tornadoes rip through that were probably about 20 miles away from us. In order to be "prepared," we have a NOAA weather radio that is set to alert us if there are any tornadoes in the area - and we've promptly then forgot about having the radio until Thursday night when we were woken up out of a dead sleep TWICE to tornado warnings. Luckily they were again probably about 20-30 miles away from us, but it scared the daylights out of us to be jarred out of a sound sleep to realize that we may be in danger. Amy got up to roam around the house, looking out the windows for the tornado only to realize that there wasn't even any rain or wind at our house - so we were quite fortunate. Why do tornadoes seem to come at night? :)

Lastly - we had some friends over today for Sabbath lunch, and quite by accident Luke D and Zachary ended up wearing the same shirt (thanks to Grandma Connie for their first birthday presents!). They also both ended up on Rob's lap reading a book - although Luke was not too pleased to be sharing his Daddy's lap! :) Thought that this was a cute picture of the two boys in their matching shirts!

All I Want For Christmas....

Is my two front teeth! Well, it has finally happened - after how many years of playing hockey, Karis has finally said "adieu" to his two front teeth. Last Sunday, a fateful stick met his teeth and won the battle. Alas Karis had considered purchasing a full face shield the week prior (okay, as a female, the full face shield would have been purchased Day 1, but I digress...) but he hadn't gotten around to it. So, off to the dentist he went and is now sporting two temporary crowns which will be replaced with permanent ones in two weeks. He was fortunate and did not currently require root canals (although the doctor said that he would most likely in the future) - but Karis said that the needles associated with just the temporary crown work was enough to ensure that if he ever does have to have a root canal, he'll be asking for general anesthesia! :) Sadly we don't have a picture of Karis without his two front teeth, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Sand & Surf

Last weekend we enjoyed our holiday for Labor Day by trekking out to DeLeon Springs on Sunday morning to enjoy a restaurant in an old sugar mill where you make your own pancakes on the griddle that is in the middle of each table. Very unique experience - but not for the faint of heart as there is no air conditioning! Go early and go in the Spring or Fall when you won't die from heat stroke! :)

Next we took ourselves to the beach to enjoy the sand. Zachary had a great time playing in the waves with his Grandma B and digging in the sand. Karis remained firmly entrenched under the umbrella. :)

Zachary has discovered a new favorite playtoy - a construction hat. He doesn't always get it on his head properly - actually SEEING where you walk is optional apparently but don't worry - even if you run into the wall it won't hurt because you have a construction hat on! :)

The entire Z-clan has come down with a cold this weekend, so we're just laying low and trying to avoid spreading our germs! I have my suspicions that those germs came from this shady character - Luke D - am including an awfully cute picture of this feller (from the beach) so that you can be sure to keep your eye out! :) Actually, who knows where the germs came from, but it is an awfully cute picture!

May I Introduce....

...the newly minted manual therapy certified Mr. Karis Zbaraschuk, MSPT, CSC, COMT. Yippee! After waiting a LONG time to find out the results of Karis' manual therapy test that he took in Chicago during June (the one that he was sure that he failed), we have received the results that in fact Karis passed all three portions of the exam. We are quite excited about this, and Karis is happy that he won't have to study again for the exam in October! Karis now has more initials after his name than his actual name - which is hard with a name like Zbaraschuk! :)

We hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend - we hope to head out to the beach on Sunday, so will post more pictures next week.

Canada Trip - Part II

We've arrived back in Orlando safe and sound after our 10 day vacation to Canada. Our trip was a real treat to visit with family. We started off the trip by going to Alberta to visit with Amy's Aunt Elaine, Uncle Murray, Grandma, Cousins Kim and Scott, and Kim's husband Yan and son Nicholas. We had awesome Ukrainian food - perogies and nelishneky (no way on this earth did I just spell that right, but trust me when I say that it is delicious!). Zachary had a great time on the farm and got to wear a jean jacket just like a farmer and even saw real-live buffalo for the first time! He seemed quite interested in baby Nicholas although we had to be watchful that he was gentle enough around the baby. Karis was able to hang out with Uncle Murray and do farm "stuff" that he loves so much, so he was quite happy! I loved visiting with the family - it was such a treat to have everyone there at once!

Zachary in his jean jacket - ready for exploring!

Zachary and Uncle Murray meeting the buffalo

Amy and Kim going four-wheeling (first time for Amy!)

Kim, Nicholas, Grandma (aka Baba), Amy and Zachary

After our visit in Alberta, we journeyed to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to visit with Karis' family. Zachary had a great time with his cousins Emily and Connor. Emily knows almost all of the Saskatchewan wildflowers, so we went on a wildflower walk which was quite educational for Amy! The weather was a little cold and rainy while we were in Prince Albert, so not as much farmwork was done as Karis had hoped. We enjoyed a too-short visit with friends Eldon and Aris (Zachary developed a crush on Aris - poor girl, she had to lug him around most of the day!). Zachary had his first taste of a crab-apple, which was quite funny to see his "sour" faces but he kept coming back for more! He also had his first interactions with a friendly cat. Baby Kaylie is an angel baby - cute as can be and sleeps most of the time!

Connor with his Canadian tattoos ("Made in Canada" and Canadian Maple Leaf)

Emily and Zachary hanging out in the wheel barrow

Zachary had a fascination with barley - he'll be a farmer yet!

Grandpa and Grandma Z with their grandkids - Connor, Emily, Kaylie and Zachary

The flights there and back were so-so - on the way up Zachary managed to pee all over himself and Amy - with no change of clothes packed for either of us (where was my brain when I was packing???), we had a "shopping spree" in the Minneapolis airport. Not a bad airport to have that happen however, so we both managed to get some dry clothes for the second flight. The second flight we were upgraded to first class which was very cushy to say the least (Karis was the only one who was upgraded initially - to which Amy told him that he would be DEAD MEAT if she had to ride back in coach with a child while he lounged in first class! So, being a smart man, he went up to the counter to see if Amy could either be upgraded or he could be de-graded - luckily the lady was quite nice and upgraded us both!). On the way back, we had to get up at an unearthly hour of 4AM to make our flight. Zachary AGAIN managed to pee all over Amy and himself, but we were prepared this time. The first segment of the return flight found Zachary screaming and crying most of the way (Children's Benadryl was NOT doing the trick!!!) - Amy was seriously considering locating that 'return receipt' and exchanging him in for one of those angel babies referenced earlier! :) However, the second flight was uneventful and he slept like a champ. Hallelujah!

From the Starting Line to the Finish Line.

The big news of this week is the arrival of Kaylie Allison Zbaraschuk (newest member of Kent Zbaraschuk's family) on July 31st. Her two older siblings Emily and Connor seem to be as pleased as punch for now - let's hope it lasts! :) She is as cute as can be, and we're looking forward to holding her in person when we visit Saskatchewan next week. We've timed this trip quite well! Mom and baby are now at home where they can actually get some much-needed rest. Kaylie - may you have many fun adventures in this life!
Zachary is finishing up his swimming lessons - he may have one more lesson next week, but other than that he'll be done. This week he went into the pool fully clothed - today he was in a fleece sleeper to really test his ability to float in any circumstance. He did amazingly well (although let's be clear, he still isn't happy about this experience!). At one point though he didn't get back up into a float as quickly as he needed to, so we've decided that one or two lessons in the sleeper may be warranted. Karis went into the pool with him and the instructor to learn some of the techniques so that we can keep it up over the rest of the summer. Zachary seems to cry less when Daddy is in there with him (all things are good when Daddy is around!)
We'll be heading to Canada for our 10 day vacation next week, so we won't have another update until probably the weekend of August 25th. We hear that it is hotter in Canada than it is in Orlando, so we're definitely hoping for a cold front to move on through!

Boys & Their Toys

A few years ago, Karis decided that the Florida sun had finally knocked all of the stuffing out of him and that every time he did lawn work (which is often down here) he was going to be on the edge of having a heart attack. So, with that mental image in mind, we trotted off to buy a small lawn tractor to minimize the amount of time that he was outside in the heat of the day (not entirely clear that the heart attack wasn't just clever manipulation in order to convince Amy to buy the tractor, but that's a topic for another day. :)). Now that Zachary has gotten a little older, the farmer in Karis has decided that there can be nothing more fun than for Zachary to ride around on the tractor with his dad!

Last week we had a rare treat - our close family friend, Norma James, came down with a few of her friends from Canada to visit Orlando. They stayed with Amy's mom and had quite a fun time - exploring places like SeaWorld, Holy Land, Blue Man Group, the malls and last but not least "La Nouba." The visit was entirely too short, but it was great fun to see them and catch up.

New Landscaping!

We finally bit the bullet and decided that it was time to make a long over-due change to our front entrance. For all that have been to our house, you'll remember that there were two overgrown trees at the entrance that were constantly encroaching on the walkway. In addition to that, there was a jolly green giant Hibiscus bush at the front of the walk - which was absolutely lovely when it was in bloom but it would get so big that our visitors would have to walk on the grass to get around it and my car would "drive" through it in an attempt to get into the garage! So, we've finally removed the offenders and put in some new plants. It isn't quite finished as we have some re-painting to do along with a few more plants etc and decorative wall hangings, but we're getting there. The next landscaping project will be to remove the dreadful bird of paradise plant in our back pool - the thing has grown through our pool screen so many times it is ridiculous! That hasn't occurred yet, so we'll share more pictures as our projects progress!

Zachary is "racing" towards walking independently and now will walk for quite a space between two people. I am including two pictures of his new accomplishment - the first is a picture of him walking between Auntie Kelli and Karis - you'll notice that his eyes are closed (not a recommended feature of walking!) and that he has a sock in his mouth - aka the "French Boa" Don't ask me how this name has been attached to socks, but Zachary has developed a fetish for socks - he loves to carry them around with him and try to put them around his neck - hence the "boa" - I think that the "french boa" was added just to give it an air of sophistication! :)

The second picture is of him wearing a shirt that I received from work - the shirt says "Super-Duper Controller" in honor of the fact that I am the Controller for AHS. I thought that it was quite cute and clever.

P.S - I realized after making this post that the first picture of Zachary has his eyes open - apparently it was two different pictures that had the funny things going on - so I've posted the extra picture below.

New Car!

The excitement this week was the fact that Amy's mom has a new car now! We went around and test-drove the Toyota Rav-4 and Honda CRV with her - which was quite fun as Amy loves nothing more than making lists of pros and cons! :) The decision was made to go the route of the Honda CRV and the purchase was finalized this week. New cars are such fun - new car smell is awesome!

Zachary has decided that just pulling the tupperware out of the cabinet is no longer exciting enough - we must get INTO the cabinet for our fun to be complete!

On other things, we have finalized our plans for the Canada Trip Part 2 and will be flying up August 11 and back on August 21. We're looking forward to spending time at Amy's Aunt and Uncle's farm in Alberta and then at Karis' farm in Saskatchewan.

Practice Makes Perfect

Zachary has decided that walking may not be for the birds after all, so we've spent much time walking around the house while Zachary practices. Has he walked alone yet? Not our Mr. Safety Man! :) But, we'll take what we can get - at least we're progressing in the right direction! We've enjoyed the week - we celebrated the 4th over at the Hilliard's for the "Splash Bash" - what fun!

Parlez Vous Anglais?

Our first trip to Canada in 2007 was a wonderful experience - we spent the first weekend in Manitoba (where Amy grew up) and then flew to Quebec City where we spent the rest of the week.

----------Picture with Grandpa Gene---------

In Portage la Prairie (French for "crossing the prairie with a canoe on your shoulders!") - we enjoyed our stay with Amy's Dad (we had a delicious feast of perogies and cabbage rolls), attended church (many memories of attending church school in the basement and playing with the other kids), travelled into Winnipeg to see Grandma Norma (who taught Zachary how to crawl up and down stairs! :)), and capped off the visit with a stroll down memory lane with Amy's childhood friend Nicole and her family. Amy toured Karis around the small town so that he could have a visual image now of where she spent many childhood years! It was a much too short visit, but we're thankful that we could be there for any amount of time! Thanks to everyone for the hospitality!

--Rintoul Family with Patriotic Canadian Flag!--

Then, we were off to Quebec City where the Z's had never been. We were a little apprehensive at first about not speaking French, but we were pleased to see that most people spoke both French and English (We wish that we were diligent enough to know two languages!) Quebec City is absolutely beautiful and has a very European feel to it - quaint little shops with flower boxes everywhere, lots of historical sites, cobblestone streets and delicious little French cafes. We spent some of our trip exploring the countryside - it is amazing how green and hilly it is - along with spectacular waterfalls. One day we met up with Amy's cousin Kim and her family - which we were eagerly awaiting! It was awesome to meet Yan and Nicholas (he was so small and adorable - it brings back memories of when Zachary was small - why do they grow so fast!)

--------------St. Anne's Canyon -------------

------------Picture with Kim, Yan & Nicholas------------

Zachary was a trooper on the trip - he got very little sleep but still managed to fairly happy until the end of the week when he'd just had enough (and we'd had enough of trying to keep the 'wild man' happy!) - lucky that we were heading home soon! Children's Benadryl may just be the most miraculous drug ever invented - Zach slept for almost all of the flights which was a blessing!

Happy Canada Day (one day late) and Happy Fourth of July!