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!