We have a house!!

We have been looking for a place to live almost every weekend since Christmas. We searched the papers, internet and drove around all over looking at places, calling people and hoping we would at least find something to rent. One weekend we must have called 10 people but no one answered and no one called us back. We looked at several places and were hopeful, but every time we got our hopes up, something went wrong. We were starting to get a little frustrated. Then one day the last week of January, Jim got a call out of the blue from one of the people we had called from a for sale by owner sign we saw on a house. The guy was the builder and he said he would meet us to look at it and he seemed very willing to help us out any way he could to make a deal happen. And it did! We met with him and his brother on Saturday, talked a little while, and we gave him some money. We will have to close later in the month because he is going on a week long fishing trip. :) So we will be moving at the end of the month. Yeah! We are so excited to actually own a house again and not pay someone else's mortgage. :) It feels great to have a great place to put down roots and raise our girls in a home.

Kitchen - they are putting in a stove and fridge

Master Bath - you can see the garden tub and big tile shower in mirror

Front Door - We are going to paint the trim, door and add some shutters to make it more appealing, but I like the glass in the door.

The girl's bathroom - I love the tile

The deck - It is bigger than this, you can't see it all in this picture.


The house is brand new built in 2007, but we will be the first owners. The builders did such a nice job and we love it. It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath with a nice open floor plan. It has plenty of room for the girls to play and roam around. The baths have 18' tile on the floors, beautiful tile in the showers, the cabinets are the big oak cabinets and it has a great covered deck off the back. It is on 1.24 acres on a corner lot. The yard will need some work to get grass to grow because they brought some dirt in to level the yard, but Jim needs a good project to work on. The front needs some color and some curb appeal added to it, but we will work on making it ours and it is going to be a great place to raise our girls. It is in Callahan, FL just northwest of Jacksonville. We chose to live there because we like more of a country living feel. We also love the church family we have there. We lived in that area before and loved it there. It is still close to Jim's family. We are so excited to get moved and settled in. I'll add some more pics later, these I just took real quick while we were looking at it.

Where's your ear?

Where's your ear?

Where's your sissy's ear?

Good Job! My smart, adorable, funny girls!

Sweet Alyssa

Alyssa loves to blow kisses. :) And she is standing
up on her own. She is taking a few steps, but we
think that in her mind walking is not efficient enough.
She likes to go fast, so crawling is still the best form
of travel for her.

Alyssa also loves to hug and kiss her sister.

I love my sissy!

Alyssa will even tackle Hannah to give her a kiss.

I love that they love each other. They fight over a toy sometimes, but most of the time they get along great. They play together, and chit chat with each other so nicely. They are such wonderful babies!

Hannah is on the move

Look mom no hands!

Here I go!

The shoes slow her down a little.
She can go faster barefoot.

Yeah! I made it!

It is amazing to watch them both grow and change so much everyday. I am really in awe that they will be a year old soon. At one time in our lives we thought we may not have children. Now we are blessed with these precious girls that bring so much joy and love to our lives. They are worth all the waiting. They are amazing!

Some fun since Christmas

New bath robes and slippers from Aunt Tami

Hannah's crazy hair after a bath.

Fun in a basket!

Christmas with babies

Celebrating Christmas has always been a wonderful day for me, but having babies makes it even better. I didn't even care if I opened presents. I just loved watching the babies rip the paper and look inside. They were having so much fun ripping the paper. They played with a few toys, but then wanted to rip some more paper. :) They just got right into it. They loved all the excitement. Seeing the joy in their eyes just made it all the better for us.
When we went to Christmas diner at Jim's uncle's house the babies were the star of the show. They were passed around to each person and googled over. They did wonderful. They are very social babies and loved meeting new people. They had fun playing with all their new cousins. They were not shy or cranky at all. We have been so blessed with beautiful, happy, healthy, wonderful baby girls.
We are so thankful to our Heavenly Father for these blessings and all the blessings He has given us. We are especially thankful for our Savior being born, the example His life was, and His Death and Resurrection that makes it possible for us to return to live with Him. We are so grateful to be an eternal family and to know that we will be together forever.

Babies' First Christmas

Christmas Cuties

Christmas Portraits

We had pictures taken the other day. I think they turned out great. The babies were in a good mood and smiled well. Hope you enjoy them.

The Girls

We are in Jacksonville.

Just in case you are wondering where in the world we are, we are now in Jacksonville,FL. Things didn't work out in Canada as we hoped. We were concerned for the safety of the babies. Also Jim's mom is ill. We decided it would be best for us to return home. We will see what is in store for us next. :) I'll add more pictures soon.

Our long journey to Canada.

So, I know I haven't added much lately but we have been busy. As you may have read below, we left Jacksonville in September and drove for 6 days to visit our new job in Calgary. We thought that was a huge journey, but now we know that was just the beginning. We were asked by the Canadian immigration office in Washington DC to come for an interview. They would not let us do the interview here. We had to do it in DC since we had sent our application to that office. We had to leave Canada by the 7th of Oct. anyway, so we headed out to DC for another long journey across the states. The company would have sent us on a plane, but we still had to pick up our trailer in MT and we didn't want to be stranded there in case they said no they wouldn't give us a work permit. We thought it would just take a few days and we could head back, but it was a month later when we finally arrived back. We got our trailer in MT and headed to VA to stay with my cousin. That drive took 5 days. Once we got there, the trailer was stuck in her driveway because we came in at night and missed the driveway a little. We had to get the insurance to send a tow truck and do a claim. Then we actually went to DC for the interview and it only took her about 15 minutes to talk to us. She was not very nice and we thought she may say no. So we had to wait a couple more days for her to call us back. While we waited we did some tourist stuff like Williamsburg, Yorktown and Busch Gardens. When we got her call, luckily it was good news. We were finally approved to go back to Canada. Then we headed back for another 6 day journey to our new home in Calgary. It was a long month, but we did lots of fun things as a family and got to see lots of the country. The babies did fairly well traveling and sleeping in hotels. We are all so happy to finally be here. Our new kids were happy to see us again too. Now we are working on getting settled in and beginning a new routine as a family of 9. :)

We finally made it!

We are finally in Calgary and working in our new position as teaching parents. It took much longer than we had anticipated and much more traveling, but we perservered and made it to our new home. We are enjoying the new company and the people we work for. The kids are great and have welcomed us in warmly. We are getting settled in and getting used to having 7 kids. These kids need a little more direction than our last place. We are finding it to be a rewarding challenge. The babies are doing great. Growing quickly and learning something new everyday. Hannah is now standing straight up from the floor without pulling up on anything. Alyssa loves to mimic any sounds we make. They are both talking and motoring all over the place. They are 9 months old now, but no teeth yet. They have outgrown all their clothes and are now in 12 month clothes. They needed more warm clothes any way. :) It is snowing here and I can't wait to get them snowsuits and see how they like playing in the snow. I have to go make dinner for my family now, but I will add more pictures soon.

Banff National Park

We were going stir crazy sitting around the house, not able to officially work yet, and just waiting and thinking about getting our permit. So, our company sent us on a day trip to Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. It was beautiful. The mountains are beautiful and majestic. We had such a great time. We rode up to the top of a mountain in a gondola and saw breathtaking views of the mountains. The girls loved being out in the fresh air. They were so good. I love making family memories like this.

Next time we go Jim wants to do some hiking and ride in this giant 4 wheel drive bus out on the Glacier!

They do have WalMart and IKEA in Canada!!

One of the first stores we went to when we got here was IKEA. We love this store. There was one in Orlando that we fell in love with and we were so happy when we found one in Calgary. We go there for dates. There is a restaurant in there and lots of cool stuff to look at. We want to fill our whole bedroom with IKEA stuff. The view of the downtown is nice. You can see for miles from where we live. The house we are in is really nice in a great neighborhood. The kids all have to have their own room so we have 7 bedrooms and 3 &1/2 baths. It is very comfortable. It is really close to all the stores we need. They also have this great grocery/home goods store (like WalMart but 10x better) called Canadian Superstore. They have so much stuff, the produce section is enormous. The aisles are longer than ours and have so much to choose from. They also have health foods and gourmet foods like specialty grocery stores and reasonable prices. We love it.

Updated photos of the girls

Having fun, hanging out in Calgary.

Trip from MT to Calgary

We were only 16 miles from the border in MT, so we made it to the border quickly. We went through the US customs very quickly, said goodbye to the good ole USA (temporarily) and Hello to Canada. We were at the Canadian customs for 2 hours. We told them we were just coming for a 2 week visit, which is true. We had a bit too much stuff though I guess cause they were susspicious. They pulled us up on their system and found we had applied for a work permit. They let us come in once we told them that we were just going to visit with the kids in the home and not work with them yet. They gave us a 3 week pass and we finally entered into Saskatchawan. Then we drove another full dayto get into Alberta and over to Calgary. The landscape is very similar to the US, lots of farms. The city of Clagary is very nice, clean, nice houses, lots of businesses. It is surrounded by beautiful mountains in the distance. We are happy to finally be here. The girls are so happy to finally get out of the carseats. :)