Happy New Year!

Christmas Day! My mom and dad meeting their new great grandson for the very first time. Son Ryan lookin' a little weary.....
The three sheepies! The little one in the middle is Flannery, with Reilly on the left and Maggie on the right.

William...having a quiet moment...poor wee William has colic...momma and daddy aren't getting much rest I'm afraid...

Little Afton wanted a drink of juice and as I was getting it she plunked down almost on top of Reilly...looked so darn cute that we just had to have a picture!

The living room on Christmas Eve....all was quiet.....

Well Christmas Day has come and gone...and now today is New Year's Eve! Time to think about the year that has past and to think of what may come in the next year....This time last year we had no idea that the Lord would bless us with a brand new grandbaby...and even with the colic, he is just the cutest little guy....and thankfully colic does pass,..although I'm sure his mommy and daddy aren't convinced of that! My mom and dad are becoming more and more fragile...it fills you with apprehension when you think of the months to come......army son is no longer 'army' and has moved back home for a bit and is looking for a job to be able to put gas in the beast of a truck he drives..(also to support his brand new relationship with his very first serious girlfriend!).....and to move back out and get his own place......

Second eldest daughter moved out and got her own place and is hoping and planning for some positive changes this coming year....yea Lauren!

We wont talk about second oldest son but I do hope he manages to stay out of jail this year!

Third eldest daughter is suppose to take on a new co-op this coming semester...something new, in the health care system....it's all day and hopefully will result in a job that she can move to upon graduation this June!

Eldest daughter and I have a humongous decision to make as to whether we will continue leading the Sunday School program this coming year (September)...there have been some pretty rough stumbling blocks the last few months that have caused us to question whether someone else would be better for the position......

Praying that eldest son will get a teaching position this year and finish his dissertation...and graduate!!!! Yea!!! My son the doctor! (Years ago, when he was a teenager, he joked around when he filled out an application for a gas charge card and filled out the name as Dr. Ryan W..........., we all laughed at that at the time...seemed impossible...now, it's soooooooo close, you could touch it) C'mon Ryan, you can do it!

My family...some I haven't mentioned.....like Emma......frittering her school time away.....Megan and Ben......well, what's to say about Megan and Ben.......unfortunately not too much right now....except many people have been telling me that I need to get some respite from parenting them......sometimes the process of getting help is harder than just doing it yourself and putting up with everything.... We'll see.

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied: Go out into the darkness and put your hand in the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than an known way.

~King GeorgeVI 1939 Christmas message.

Happy New Year everyone!

Good Morning Company Girls!

Rachel mentioned in her note today about Christmas memories and it got me to thinking....thinking about Christmases as a child...a couple of memories came to mind.....one was when I was quite young, probably about six or seven....I had gone to bed with a loose tooth....but when I awoke it was nowhere to be found! I was quite dismayed and upset..it was no where in my bed,..I must have swallowed it! My dad, now I really can't remember why he did this but he took me to the bathroom because just the thought of swallowing my tooth gave me a stomach ache...so, there we were Christmas morning, in the bathroom..my dad and I...I'm sitting there and my dad is keeping me company, holding my hand. My older sister had run downstairs and was so excited and kept running to the bottom of the stairs to tell me what was under the tree..I remember dad telling her not to do that,..to let me see on my own....when I finally got to go downstairs, I found that my sister and I had received new dollies from Santa...Betsy Wetsy dolls...you gave her a bottle and she wet her diaper! Mine had blond hair and my sister's had brown. I kept mine for years and gave it to my eldest daughter when she was a toddler!

The other memory was when my sister and I were older...probably into our teens...we'd always planned to get up in the middle of the night...my poor parents..quite often they would have just finally gotten into bed...and we'd sneak out of our bedrooms and when we got to the living room, we'd make all sorts of noise to wake them up! One year my dad played a trick on us...back then we ate a lot of potatoes.....no pasta or rice in our house growing up!......my dad bought them in 50lb bags........well, one Christmas Eve, my sister and I had gone to bed and woke up around 2:30 or 3 a.m.,.....we snuck to our bedroom door........slowwwwwwwly opening the door..as quietly as possible....when we both let out a humongous scream!!!!! My dad had tied the empty potato bag so it was hanging in front of our door! Dad was quite pleased with his joke and how he had finally gotten back at us after all those years of us waking them up in the middle of the night!

The funny thing is that my hubby is very firm about when our kids get up...it used to be 8a.m., but now it's 9 a.m.,.....the older we get the longer they have to wait! The one blessing with having teens is that they usually like to sleep in anyways!

Memories....they can be a wonderful thing....hope you and yours will be making wonderful memories this Christmas season as we celebrate the birth of our King!

Merry Christmas everyone!

A Few of My Favourite Things....

These are a few of my favourite things.......(cue Julie Andrews singing).... For the last few years we've gone tree hunting at this particular tree farm...the grandkids have had their pic taken each year...of course when we first started out there weren't that many..... :0) ...now, you have to admit that they are just darlin'...agreed?

Just after James cut their tree down.....

Paul and his girl Sara came tree hunting this year...Sara wanted a small tree for her bedroom....Paul was going for the northern lumberjack look!

There's hubby after he cut ours down...it's a fine specimen this year..if I do say so myself.....(of course I chose it)

Lauren and her beau Ryan cut theirs down...first time for Ryan and he wasn't exactly convinced it was a good thing...but he did just fine.

Jairus and Honour in front of our tree before hubby cut it down....

Now, we move onto my stay last week, up north, where they actually had 3-4' of snow!!!! This is the baby quilt that I made for little William....it's usually folded over him, keeping him snuggly warm in his wee bassinet....

William

William and I did a lot of cuddling last week....enjoyed every moment....

...being held by his papa when he came to fetch me home...although, the snow was so bad that they closed the major highway just outside of town and we had to spend another night in Parry Sound, Ontario!

Family Shot!

So there's some pics of what has been going on in our family the last few weeks! It's been a busy time....now, the crunch is on to get all the Christmas preparations done! A lot of work still needs to be done...even the tree isn't completely decorated yet....so far we've got the lights done......

a tree with just lights on is okay..isn't it? I mean..do we really need all the decorations?

He's Here!!!!!!!

This is William Ward Wettlaufer.....he decided to be a December baby and was born at 2:30 a.m. on December 1st.

A moment between new mom and dad.....

It all started on Monday morning...first hubby was up at 5:30 a.m. to leave for the airport on time to catch his 9:15 a.m. flight...we live about an hour or so from the airport......so it started out as a very early morning.

I decided to go to quilt class as usual because I knew that Jennifer was being induced, but I also knew that the method (applying inducing gel) was a very slow method. Returned from quilting in time for the kids to get home from school....Ryan had already texted me a few times saying that nothing really was happening.....
Around five o'clock, another text said the contractions were steady and they'd be having a baby that night. I texted hubby in California and he texted back that he thought I should go 'up'...Jenn and Ryan live about three hours north of us..hence the 'up'....well, I'm afraid that's all the encouragement I needed....fortunately army boy, (who hence forth shall be known as Paul because he's no longer in the army as of Monday morning) had just returned home and agreed to watch over the teens so they did not kill themselves or others in my absence!

So I left around 5:45pm, and unbeknownst to me there was a winter storm taking place just out of the city where Ryan and Jenn live!!!!!!! Ryan sent me a text...while I was driving....that I tried to read,..while I was driving....ya, I know....you don't have to tell me..I already slapped my own hand.....but it's really hard to pull over on a major multi laned highway to read a text....plus I didn't have my reading glasses on...just my distant ones...so I made out something about snow between a city called Barrie and their city...and to go slow.....well, after a detour to Vaughn Mills, the Bass Pro shop...to be specific...you see, when I had to change from one highway to the next...and I was just congratulating myself on this because there's about ten million lanes of traffic at this point...and I thought I was on the right one...but I looked up and it said I was suppose to be way over on the other side of all the lanes....too late....(hubby did say later that I probably would have been okay)...so I quickly took the next exit....and because I am woman, hear me roar...I stepped into the very first place to ask for directions...and use their facilities because I was desperate at this time....pressure has that affect, ya know......so the nice clerk at the Bass Pro shop, told me how to get back to the highway...unfortunately cause she lives around there she wasn't specific enough and I was wondering up this road, looking for the highway signs, when my cell phone rang...it was hubby, calling from California...I figured it was the Lord's doing cause I was just talking to myself and the Lord, wondering if I had made yet another wrong turn.....well, he stayed on the line (my cell phone bill's going to be humongous!) and helped me get back onto the major highway.

So, I'm just going along...at a steady 110 km/hr...roads were clear and good...no snow....further north I went the roads were wet from a light rain but no snow....I was just thinking to myself....well, this is good...I'm making good time.....just me and Andrea Bocelli singing his new Christmas album...well, that may have been a mistake.......when somebody is singing let it snow, let it snow, let it snow......well,maybe I should have put in a different c.d.!

About 40kms from Ryan and Jenn's town, the snow started.....I thought...'okay, here's the snow'...'I can do this'.....in a flash, it went from I can do this, to oh no, I can't see!!!!!! I had two vehicles behind me and none in front of me...the snow on the road was already thick enough that I couldn't see any road markings.....I was in a panic....hands clutching the steering wheel, leaning forward, trying desperately to see....anything....there was nothing...the odd time I would see a rutted tire track that hadn't filled in yet...mostly I just watched the roadside markers to try and stay on the road...I had no idea what kind of terrain was just off the road.....the snow was coming in huge flakes, hitting the windshield faster than my wipers could handle. ....and all the while good old Andrea kept singing merrily away....but I daren't even take my hands off the steering wheel for a second to shut it off.....finally, the exit came up for Ryan and Jenn's town and I slowly crept off the highway. At the first McDonalds I came to, I stopped and called hubby......who was enjoying himself at a bar-b-que in the nice California warmth!!!! Then, of course I had to visit their washroom....then on to the hospital....as soon as I could stop shaking!

When I arrived Ryan met me...we really weren't sure how this was going to play out cause of the H1N1 thing...they were suppose to be strict about visitors, but I pretended to be invisible and got in! Jenn and her mom were walking the hallways, stopping once in awhile for a contraction.....
We quickly got to to room that she was labouring in and I sat there, trying to be quiet as a mouse and invisible so a nurse wouldn't kick me out. I don't know if it was because it was later in the evening or what, but they let me stay....and about five hours later...I witnessed the birth of my grandson....we think he's a beauty! At first he cried some and then he just opened up those dark eyes and was looking around everywhere...Jennifer did an amazing job....she was very determined and tireless in her effort to bring forth her son.....I was very proud of her and my son, who stayed by her side, supporting her...he admitted that if it were him he thought he would just ask them to put him out....much more civilised!

So, there it is...my adventure into the wintery north.....(I will admit to being scared to come home when Ryan said it's like that on that stretch of road from now til spring!)..after 4 hours of sleep, and putting William's name on his quilt...I left the little town of Parry Sound and drove home.....the roads were clear and for the most part, dry.....I had been praying and I know others had too,...especially my worried hubby, thousands of miles away.....it's the first time that I've ever travelled so far, all alone.....on the way home I listened to Lonestar.....wasn't taking any chances!

Welcome to the family William...we're sure glad you're here!