Last Week of Work

Is it really already the end of December? Time is moving so quickly and we are VERY excited for this coming week.

We've had great Christmas concerts the last 2 weeks and are now on to our last 2 this week. Scott does the sound for the Jubilee Christmas concert on Wednesday evening, and my piano students and their families are coming on Tuesday evening for a mini recital at our house! That leaves us with today and tomorrow to get organized and start packing - we leave for Edmonton at 3:30pm on Thursday. Thankfully, I took Thursday afternoon off in order to get things together and everything ready for the dogs so we can leave right after school. We're a little nervous about leaving our puppies. We know they will be in fantastic hands and will be fine, but they truly are our "babies."

I've had a relaxing day today as Scott woke up this morning with a horrible flu. He has not moved from the bed, and the dogs have been sleeping with him all day, so I've gotten lots done! The only sad part is we missed out on a midget hockey game today and our Sunday School Christmas Concert :(

We cannot wait for Friday and to be seeing our 2 beautiful nieces and all of our wonderful family! Christmas is the BEST holiday ever - we love it. I thought I was a little Christmas crazy this past year, but turns out Scott was right there with me. We've had a countdown going, we've enjoyed talking about being with both of our families and Christmas traditions and laughed at the fact that we'll be driving on the 401 where we will be driving with more vehicles in that time span than we have been in an entire year on the road. It's been a year since we've been to Ontario, and now that we're settled into our "home," it has made this Christmas trip that much more exciting. There is no stress to this trip, just pure excitement!

We are truly blessed with the family that we have and the "family" that we've created here. This week brings everyone together with lots of Christmas celebrations happening here and then headed to Ontario to be with our close loved ones.

Christmas Photos

We have a fantastic friend here that has great photography skills, but hasn't fully developed his business yet. We asked him to do our family pictures for us this Christmas, and they are fantastic! Here's my 2 favourites! Our sweet puppy Simon (black and white collie) is a foster puppy. We have been praying that he finds his forever home. He has settled in well and is well trained, but we'd like to see him go to a good home before he gets too attached to us and his surroundings. 



Peyton Valerie Dudgeon

I'm behind on blogging....again. Anyway, I had some posts started that I left and this was one of them, so I figured on a relaxing day like today I'd finish them all, so you will get to read multiple posts!

My sister Kaitlyn delivered a beautiful baby girl, Peyton Valerie on November 29, 2012 at 7:39am weighing 6 lbs 10 oz. She is just so sweet and we have been told very laid back and cuddly. Even better she looks just like my sister and God gave her red hair! Valerie is Kaitlyn's middle name and my Grandmother's first name. We are so looking forward to cuddling this sweet little girl in 5 days!! Here's a few pictures:

A Quick Update

Major busy/exciting points in our life right now consist of the following:


1. I'm practicing piano for a choir concert this coming Sunday. I'm accompanying a choir of about 25 adults in a musical that is 1 1/2 hours long. My wrists are holding up alright, but I've been busy alternating between heat and ice packs and just praying I can make it to the end of the concert.

2. Scott has started his Senior A hockey games, and I love them! They are the one thing that I will not book anything else at the same time and it's my enjoyment time. He has 2 games this coming weekend. He has also lost over 20 pounds. Yes I said 20 pounds, and they're still dropping off him! He will be shaking his head when he sees this, but I had to say it!

3. We are fostering (yes I said fostering and it will stay that way) a lab/collie puppy for the Humane Society named Simon. He is absolutely adorable and we love him, but we know that 3 dogs is just too many. A loving farm would be the perfect place for him so he has some "jobs" of his own to do. We've had him for 3 weeks and will keep him until somebody is approved for adoption.

4. We are going to be an Aunt and Uncle sometime this week! We're already counting down the days until Christmas so we'll be able to meet the new addition to the Dudgeon family. And see sweet Ellee, it's been a year!!

5. We did family pictures on Sunday and am so excited to see how they turned out!! We have some improvements happening in our house in the next couple of weeks and it will be a focal point.

6. I love Christmas season!!!! It is my most busiest time as a band teacher, but I absolutely love it. Even more, decorating the house for Christmas, ahhh I could spend a fortune. It doesn't help that Scott loves Christmas too and isn't always the best at saying no to more Christmas decor.

7. 17 days of school left and then we will be on the plane to Ontario. Can't believe it'll be a year since we were there, time is traveling by fast.

30 Days of School Left....

...yes I've started the countdown. I even have students who make sure the countdown is changed on my white board every morning. There is just something about when November hits that it feels that much closer to my favourite holiday of the year than in October.

Scott and I are REALLY looking forward to this coming weekend. We're head to Prince Albert for Friday and Saturday. Scott's coaching in a hockey tournament and it's this weekend that we've turned into a tradition of purchasing our Christmas decor for the year! Last year, we bought all the stuff for our Christmas tree with left over gift cards from our wedding, we were in a basement apartment and I was bound to make it beautiful. This year, we're headed for decor for the house.
Outdoor and indoor lights, garland and my most exciting things yet - shelves!
Scott is building this for the main entrance...

Yes it's from pinterest! We've also decided how to decorate the living room wall over the grand piano, so I'm just so excited!!! In Sask, Rememberance Day is a government holiday, we also get an extra day this weekend for the time we spend doing Parent/Teacher Interviews, so every November we have a 4 day weekend - it is wonderful! We're both looking forward to a fun couple of days out of Meadow Lake, and a couple of relaxing days at home.

 We don't have a lot of over exciting events happening in our life right now, but at the same time we enjoy that. This year is very much more relaxing than last year, and we know what to expect. Last year at this time we were both pulling our hair out with report cards. Yes it is still a busy and stressful time, but a little more relaxing when we know what to expect.  We are learning to treasure life moments and enjoy all that we have been blessed with.

Halloween Youth Night

Scott and I have the privilege of helping out with the youth group at our church every Wednesday night. Once a month, we are the leaders of a small group for Grades 7-10. We have enjoyed getting to know everyone, and every week someone brings a new friend, so our group is growing!

Last night we had all boys, yes 6 boys showed up! Scott led a Bible study on "The world" and talked a lot about practical situations that these boys face everyday, especially at school. After that it was pumpkin carving time - So. Much. Fun! Scott and I stood back and let them go, and it was funny to see the ideas they came up with. Needless to say, our pumpkins are ready to go for Wednesday evening!

One Crazy Day!

2 posts in one day, I'm starting to get caught up!

Gilmour has been having some health issues. We went through a week of antibiotics to get rid of an infection. He was still having lots of trouble with walking, and he wouldn`t go down stairs or run. He loved to go for walks, but as soon as we got on the street, he would limp and move at a snail`s pace. Scott took him into the vet's yesterday, but Gilmour was too excited to stay still enough to have his legs checked. It was decided since he hadn't been neutered yet, that they would do it today as well as x-ray him while he was sedated.

On Tuesday nights I teach piano for 1.5 hours, once I'm done, Scott usually takes off to coach hockey and then to his own practice. After teaching, Scott appeared from the basement with a large swollen cheek, in a lot of pain, and said he wasn't going to hockey. I knew if he wasn't going to hockey, something was really wrong. His wisdom tooth that had already came through his gum was infected. He called our dentist who told him he could pull it at 7am. So this morning, I drove Scott to the dentist for 7am, and took Gilmour to the vet for the day; all before going to work.

When I picked Gilmour up this afternoon I received the prognosis. He has panosteitis which is a bone disease. He may have it the rest of his life, or it may spontaneously go away. It is incredibly painful however, so for the next 2 weeks he's on a strong pain killer and will be re evaluated after that. It also means no long walks. After all of the scares we've had with him the last few weeks, we are incredibly relieved to hear this, as we'll be able to help him out without bursting our bank account!

To top it all off, I have a wonderful husband who wrote me this, this evening:

From the day I said I do

I always knew,

There would come a day

That I would say,

I love you

From a different point of view.

Now I know we've had ups and downs,

We've had smiles and we've had frowns.

But, today I have found,

My heart beating a new sound.

You did everything for me,
And still took care of Gilly.

I really don't know how,
To say thank you now.

All the things you have done
Not many of them fun.
To take care of me,
I must really be lucky.

From way before the day I said I do,
I have loved you.

Thanksgiving

Scott's Grandma Reatta decided she would like to come visit, and Thanksgiving weekend worked out perfectly. Mom and Dad Fransky came with her, and we had a great weekend! Best of all, we had a full turkey supper. It is my plan one day to learn how to cook a turkey, but for now, I'm okay with letting those that enjoy making it do it for us. We had the full supper, stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, pie....Everything! It was fantastic!



We were so happy to have Grandma here, and feel blessed that she chose to come visit us. Time travels so quickly, and often we overlook some things in our life that we can be thankful for. It`s hard to believe that we are already well into our second year of work/living in Meadow Lake. God has given us so much to be thankful for!
 

He hears everything

In all honesty, I woke up last Sunday in tears.  It was one of those mornings where you just plain miss all of your family. We LOVE it here, and by 'LOVE,' we'd be content to live here the rest of our lives, but there are those days that it's sad to know that our closest loved ones are 3 provinces away. We headed to church, and had a great rest of the day relaxing before Monday came. Sunday night we received a phone call, Ken and Lucy Turgeon were out west and wanted a visit. We used to go to church with them at Farrand Street Bible Chapel in Thunder Bay - I was so excited! We can't say thank you enough to them, it made our week fantastic, and we loved seeing them. Even more, they came with spiritual encouragement for us, which is invaluable. Thank you so much for coming to see us!!

 I had my first supervision of this year done last Thursday as well. The superintendent of our school comes in to watch us teach 3 times during the year of all first and second year teachers on a permanent position. It went awesome, and only 2 left to go this year! Scott has his first one for the  year the first week of October. Always a bit nerve wracking, but really nice to hear a good report after you're done.

We're looking forward to Thanksgiving this year as well, Scott's parents are coming out with Grandma Reatta. We are so excited to know that she is coming to visit - we are so blessed with the family we have!

This week is another busy one too. We say that every time, but every week seems to get busier and busier. My concert band starts rehearsals this week, fundraising for the trip begins Friday, I'm loving teaching piano, hockey coaching has started, hockey practices start this week or next and curling starts in 3 weeks! I love fall though and am really stretching ahead, but looking forward to decorating for Christmas in the next couple of months. Since we leave for Ontario for all of Christmas, it's my excuse to have a tree and decorate in November!! Scott has been fighting a really bad cold since Thursday, moving from his head to his chest. Of course, he won't stay still, so he's not feeling much better. I'm waiting for him to crash, and hoping that I do not get it!

Here's a peak at what we put up yesterday in our bedroom! Solitude is a store in town that specializes in framing and decals, Stacey did a phenomenal job for us as we've been working on this project for over a month now - we absolutely love it!

I have to get some tape to get the bottom row of pictures to hang perfectly straight, but otherwise, we absolutely love it!

September Update

We have been busy to say the least, but we love it. We feel as this year has started, that we are more settled, and excited to do the things that we know that we love. Last year was a bit of a blur with everything new to us, and Scott admits regularly that the word "no" is not in his vocabulary. Needless to say, summer was a good break as we were able to take some time to plan out the new year. We aren't any less busy, but we feel we are able to put 100% into everything we have chosen to do.

The thing that we are expecting to find most challenging and rewarding this year is helping out with the youth group at our church. We are so excited! After much prayer, we felt that this is something that we'd love to do, but also is a way that God can work through us. We already had a "kick-off" evening where we got to meet everyone, and last Wednesday was our first Bible Study. One thing about having a house and no children is the ability to have all the youth here whenever needed and not having to worry about them waking any little ones up.

Scott is planning to play hockey this year, which I am so excited about! Last year he helped coach the Midget AA team, and while it was great and we got to see a lot of Saskatchewan because of it, we are both excited for him to have this opportunity. He is still going to help out with the Midget team when he can, however I think he's going to love playing! A nice lady at church this morning agreed wholeheartedly with his decision to play this year and said "Certain activities in life fit better at certain times, example, you will want to coach your children once you have them, so now is the time to play and doing things you'd really love to do." We definitely appreciated her comment!

I'm teaching piano 2 evenings a week in our home and started this past Monday - I love it! It is relaxing for me, and I definitely miss the focus on piano in my life. I'm slowly practicing through my repertoire for ARCT, and plan to do it when the time is right in the next couple of years.

After all of this fit into our schedule, we knew we needed some evenings together. We are not the greatest at thinking about planning that into our schedule, but it's something that we quickly forget about if we don't. We are going to curl in a mixed league on Thursday nights together, and have left Monday's open.

What can I say, we are active people and independent, but so thankful we are both very supportive of each other's activities. I don't miss a hockey game that Scott is coaching and will be playing in, and we spend a lot of time at the arena watching our students play, especially students that are in Scott's Grade 4 class. He is constantly encouraging me to practice piano to complete my ARCT, has planned his schedule so he's home when I teach to look after the dogs, and helps me out with the sound for all of the band concert's I put on at school.

We are so thankful for the life that we have, and we look forward to the year where we can meet more people and build relationships. We have really noticed the difference in relationships when you start out in a new place where neither of you know anyone. It makes us more grateful to have each other, but it makes us miss our family more some days as well. We have enjoyed opening our home, and seem to always have people here which we enjoy a lot. We know as time passes that we will become close with the people that we are just now meeting, but for now God is teaching us to have patience.

I haven't been very good with the camera lately, but I will get some pictures of our classrooms, and the new additions to our house soon!

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Back to Work We Go...

...and we are tired! We have had a fantastic summer, and have gotten LOTS done on our house, more then we planned to do this summer, but I would gladly take a couple more weeks before heading back to work. I haven't been doing good at keeping up with the blog for August because we've been busy working and had some great visitors for a week. Busy for me, means not carrying a camera around, so I've finally got myself organized and taken pictures of all of our projects!

We finished painting our basement and I got to decorating!

 I wasn't so sure about the green/yellow called "celestial ray" however Scott was certain it would look good, and he's right!



Family sent from heaven above to cherish and to love.

We finally got our bedroom sanded and painted after Scott and my dad knocked the wall out in July. We absolutely love it! We are waiting for some beautiful decals and our framed wedding pictures to be done in order to finish up the decorating.

Master bathroom painted light blue.

Our initials are going above the bed in white.

We are beyond thankful for family! We just finished up our bedroom, when Scott's family came for a week in August, and Scott and his dad moved the laundry downstairs and built a room for it! We are so lucky to have the family that we have!

Our new mudroom!

Our entry from the bottom of the stairs to the laundry room.



Knocked a wall down and moved all the plumbing, and dryer vent downstairs.

We are currently working on getting the main hallway upstairs, mudroom, and main hallway downstairs ready for painting. Scott's been putting putty on and sanding all day today and yesterday. In the meantime though, he decided to build in the bottom of our deck as these 2 beautiful boys...

...enjoy digging holes and Gilmour rolls in them. After 2 days of rain, we had enough of mud coming through the house, so Scott did this:

I'm thankful for the "handy" husband that I have and for the great people that taught him how to do this stuff!

We have so much excitement happening in our lives. Scott's family's visit deserves a post all on its own, Kale and Gilmour are growing and truly are the "babies" in our house, we are busy getting ready for back to school, and my sister is getting married! I'm too tired to add more, but I will get caught up in the next month with all of our exciting adventures and more pictures. 

In One Year...

.... our life has changed immensely. We look back to our wedding day and can't believe everything we've done after that day together. We are so happy, and God is so good! We love the city we live in and our jobs. We have a new church that we plan to become more involved in and we have a God that keeps putting new ideas into our head of possiblities in the future. We were the couple that had a list of 20 things we wanted to do after we were married, today when we look at the list, we've done a few of those things, and the rest of the items are no longer a priority. God is working in both of us. As we pulled into the mountains last night, Scott had the worship station playing away and said "Wow God is amazing."







Today we are starting another new journey, with "The Love Dare" we have heard nothing but great things about this study and we thought it would be great to start today. It's a 40 day marriage challenge and we thought it would be something different for us to try aside from our regular reading and praying this summer.

We are excited for a great celebration day ahead as we venture up the mountains and enjoy the love that we know God has given us for each other and Him.

Dad & Mom Kelly's Stay

We are lucky enough to have the best family members! Dad and Mom came to visit for the week and from Monday to Friday, Dad and Scott did not stop working. Our home is beautiful - we love it - but there are two things that we need to change in order to make it work for us.  This week was one of them - the master bedroom and spare room became one room this week! On top of just knocking out the wall, they had to drywall a door in, lay the missing hardwood floor, and rewire multiple outlets. Below are some pictures of them working hard.

In the midst of all this, they managed to fix our doorbell and our garage door too. The minute Mom and Dad headed for the plane, Scott was in the garage organizing it all. He is so happy to finally have 2 working garage doors!

Mom and I had a great time visiting, baking, shopping and spending time with Kale and Gilmour!

Our boys were definitely sad when Nana and Papa left....

 

Saturday afternoon after mom and dad had left, Kale and Gilmour worked together to chew the garden around the fence and have a wonderful lunch of onions, carrots and cucumbers.

I spent yesterday a little teary eyed all day as I was sad to see Mom and Dad go, but Scott did a good job of making sure I was occupied. By the end of last night we had chosen a paint colour for the rest of the basement living room, taped the room, sanded our bedroom again and made stairs for Gilmour to get up to our bed on!

While Scott and Dad were taking the trim off in our bedroom, they found this:

"Each new day is a beautiful gift from God."

As I was going to bed last night I saw it sitting on the table, it reminded me that He will always look after us. Yesterday was definitely a "homesick" day for me, but it's not home I miss, but rather the love of my family. We are so happy here with our life, and our jobs, and that wouldn't be true if we didn't have Him. We are looking forward to getting this project finished and enjoying the next few weeks of summer until our next group of loving family members fly in.

House Projects

We are getting pretty excited with all of the things that are happening in our new house, and being teachers, everything happens in the summer. Our days currently consist of waking up whenever Gilmour and Kale do, which is usually between 7 and 8am, drinking coffee, reading, and making lists. We are the king and queen of making lists. Currently Scott has a list for what we'll be doing next week and another list for what he needs to buy, and finally a list for what he's doing today. It is safe to say that this household can't stand being bored! Here's some updates on what we're doing this summer:

Project #1
Today we will finish the decorating for the basement. I have spent days going through pictures, and looking for frames to fit the wall and have finally found a verse to put on it as well. So this......

....will hopefully look a million times better by 10pm tonight!

Project #2
My parents fly in Monday and we're currently waiting for the dry wall to be delivered this morning so we have everything for Dad and Scott's big project. They are taking out a wall between the master bedroom and a spare room in order to make the master bigger, as our furniture doesn't all fit.

I cannot wait to get rid of the green in 2 weeks!!

This also means filling in a door and running the tv wires to another wall. I am so thankful to have a husband that is "handy," because I'm definitely not, but he has everything ready to go for Monday and is pretty excited about it. I'm excited to see how my 2 favourite men in the world work together!

Project #3
One room that has come together really well is our main living room:

The piano completely helps with the decorating situation, but I still have one more major project to do on the wall over the piano. Mom and Dad are bringing all of our wedding pictures with them, which is pretty exciting! Being 2 provinces over from the photographer has made picking up our package difficult, so Mom and Dad have done it for us. I can't wait to have them in order to finish the project for this room, and so people can see them.

We picked up a coffee table for this room on Thursday when we were in Saskatoon, and I think it just completes the room. Partially because trying to read and drink coffee in the morning and show attention to our 2 dogs that always want to sit on top of us makes it difficult when there's nowhere to set your coffee. I was emphatic that it had a shelf underneath for our bibles and magazines to sit on, and after searching, we found the perfect one in Wal-Mart!

And to top it off, I woke up Friday morning to this:

Scott's sister and brother-in-law sent us this frame as a housewarming gift - he certainly knows how to make his wife feel special in the most simple ways!