Miss Beans and Jessie and "Where the wild things are"

David and I took Breanna (aka Beans) and Jessie to the movie "Where the wild things are" are at the Towne Cinema downtown (where I worked in high school, best job ever to have at that age).

Breanna enjoyed the film but I think the movie themes were a bit too mature for Jessie and I think she lost interest. I had a feeling they would be but I wanted an outing that included both of them. David is pumped about taking teen Beans to the movie Zombieland and apparently I am not invited to this future outing.

It was nice to see both girls and to hear what's going on with both of them.
Breanna started grade at Glenlawn collegiate this year and despite her initial concerns about jr high, she appears to be doing quite well (team captain for volleyball and was selected early for soccer in the spring).

Miss homebody Jessie is grudgingly warming up this full day school thing and is settling into grade 1.

David's new thing - knitting

David has taken up a new hobby - for those who know him well know that David has many hobbies including typewriter hoarding, instrument collecting and playing (the violin has been recently added to his repertoire), YouTube searching/viewing, hunting and and gathering large rocks and stones, fire starter, "safe league" hockey player etc....

Gody, Naomi and Emma's spent their last night in the city before the big move at our house. During the visit, Dave demonstrated his first attempts at knitting. Apparently (as told to me by Dave) Gody quietly watched Dave knit and then decided to ask to try it himself and to perhaps show Dave a few things to help him improve his technique. Apparently while knitting Gody commented that knitting is very similar to tying knots for Hydro work. David said Gody became so engrossed with knitting (see picture) that he ceased to watch the hockey game that was on tv. Gody, please feel free to use the comments section to correct my second hand telling of the story.

When I arrived home from work today, Dave was excited to show me that he taught himself how to cast off.

Fall Harvest

Despite our unusually cold and wet summer our garden grew, as did our grapes. Unfortunately the Italian plum and crab apple trees did not produce this year.
We managed to can some cucumbers to make dill pickles (Dave is counting down the days until he can open up a jar) and I managed to make some tomato sauce to freeze. We still have carrots sweetening in the garden soil and last night Dave and I made some grape jelly with plans to make juice with the remaining grapes (if we can muster up the energy sometime this week).

Dave was impressed with the amount of work required to make 8 little jars of jelly.

summer catch up post #3 - our big news

This summer was significant for us because I became pregnant! We found out in July and shared the news with family the first week of September and with friends shortly after. The summer months were a bit rough for me as I was terribly fatigued and queasy and Dave was on the the train (lucky him, as he missed most of the first trimester).

It was interesting attempting to hide a pregnancy at all of the weddings we attended. My lack of drinking at Gody and Naomi's wedding was noted and got the tongues wagging!

summer catch up post #2 - weddings weddings and more weddings

It was the summer of many weddings. well it started in the spring with our friends Michelle and Andreas' wedding in April (our city wedding in a nice old building that we got to explore). It was a very sweet and personalized affair (the bride wore a billowing blue dress!).
this was followed by our friends Jacquie and Herve's wedding in July. They live in France but they had the full on Manitoba wedding experience. David was a groomsmen and I was the marriage commissioner. It was held out of town and the weekend was beautiful, lots of sun and good times. David also dj'd in between the band's sets. It was great because we got to meet Herve's family as well as some fabulous girl friends who stayed at our house in the days leading up to the weekend extravaganza.
The next wedding was a very important one for the Streit family- Gody and Naomi's wedding which really deserves a separate post. David was the best man and I was the marriage commissioner. Shirley was in heaven planning and implementing the growth of the wedding from "just a simple ceremony at the lake" to a larger production that required a small army of volunteers. Who knew that the airport hall could be transformed into such a lovely venue! David was dj at the wedding and had a great time interspersing songs with call outs to the crowd. It was a beautiful night enjoyed by all. Miss Emma and Jessie were fast friends and danced many songs together.
The last wedding of the summer was Meaghan and Steven's. Miss megs and the teven planned a very personalized and lovely wedding that reflected their love and life together. The wedding transitioned into a fabulous outdoor party with dancing under the stars with music supplied by the now much experienced David at the DJ helm.

Copper (summer catch up post #1)

At the end of June David and I became the proud owners of a very handsome 7 year old golden retriever named Copper. We will be his third family. My sister's partner owned him just previously but he could no longer could take care of a large dog and wanted him to go to a good home, so we offered. Dave has long wanted a dog and the fact that copper was a golder retriever was just too much.

Copper quickly became part of our family. He was slowly introduced to the "girls" (our cats Miss Mineu and her daughter Miss Hibou) by being crated for the first week or so. It didn't take long for everyone to get along and Copper is very good with cats. Mineu tends to keeps her distance but Hibou is quite curious and likes to get very close and sniff Copper's nose, which he enjoys.

Dave requested that I share two videos on this post. One is Copper at Clearwater Lake (for Gody and Naomi's wedding in August, which will be a subject for a future post). Copper LOVES the water and when we were at the lake he spent most of the time in the water

The second video is Dave's recent homecoming after being away for a few days. Perhaps it's because Copper is a boy but he has a much stronger preference for males. He likes me but absolutely adores Dave. I try not to take it personally.

long overdue post

It's been a long time since we added a post to our blog, the last one was dated June 6th and now we're already at the end of September! So i guess you could say we took a break over the summer. Lots happened over those summer months so we'll try to catch up over the next few posts. i chatted with dave this morning when I drove him to the VIA station and got some direction on what to share in the first summer catch up post.