Update!

WOW

First post in a long, long time.

SORRY!!

The past few months have just whizzed by, they have been crazy and hectic and very tiring and lots has been going on hence, my lack of posting.

The basement suite is done! We have three college aged guys living down there and besides the random late night guitar hero sessions and squealing of tires down our street once in a while they are really good renters. One of them even made us homemade caramel apples and brought them upstairs to us last night! Its really nice to have the extra help with our mortgage payments and it ll be nice to have them around in the winter time when Jo-Ben goes out of town too- a little added security... not that Joey the pup wont suffice. :)

Speaking of which Joey is doing SO good... hes not having any accidents in the house anymore, except for when he was sick- poor thing. He has learned some trick pretty fast. He knows how to sit, lay down, speak (Jo-Ben is not too happy that I taught him that one although he still doesn't "speak" when people come to the door or at strangers or anything like that... once in a while he will "speak" with bugs in the yard but that's normal I think. Jo-Ben is in the process of teaching him how to play dead and hes sort of catching on... Jo-Ben is trying to just point at him like his had is a gun and say bang! as the command.... its so cute. Also Joey knows how to come here when you call him but for some reason he only responds to the command "come back" and he responds much better to Jo-Ben... sometimes he just looks at me and keeps walking or just ignores me all together.

my cute lil guy snoozing

A pic of one of the farms in the area

This is a pic of the street that we lived on last year, I really miss the mature foiliage now that we live in a newer neighborhood, the trees are so pretty.

Three Hills is quite pretty right now... we have been having nice weather (btwn 20-25 degrees) and always sunny... the colors on all the leaves are changing. I just LOVE this time of year... you can almost feel the change in the air. Its so great. Getting back into routines, new things like school supplies and back to school outfits and shoes, new classes and lessons stating up, and my personal fave, FALL FOOD.

I love to cook for fall, I got my fall issue of the Kraft magazine and called my mom right away... we always call each other when we get it and talk about recipes that we want to try or have tried or whatever... She got hers a day earlier than me and made the Harvest Fruit desert and raved about it (she made hers with Nectarines rather than Apples and Plums as the recipe called for) So, I made one too last weekend and it was AMAZING... I made mine with Plums, Peaches and Blueberries and it sort of turned out like a cross between a cheesecake and a fruit tart. It calls for you to make it in a Spring form pan but I couldn't fin mine so I just made it in a pretty tart/pie plate that I have and it turned out beautifully. Wish I had pics but we had company over and didn't even think of it. oh well. There are lots of other great recipes in the magazine this month, I totally recommend signing up for it... you can have it sent to you for free, just go to kraftfoods.ca and sign up! I made the Minni BBQ meatloaves on the last page and had the boys from downstairs up for supper and they loved them. One of my favorite things to cook in the Fall time is soups and stews... Jo-Ben its very fond of them, he particularly thinks that stew is really bland but I found a slow cooker recipe that uses instant ground coffee and BBQ sauce in it... I am thinking of trying it on him! We have has coffee rubbed steaks before and they were really really good so I think that the coffee and a good spicy BBQ sauce in the stew will make it taste really rich and deepen the flavor.

So nice to have our yard all done, especially as we are anticipating worse and worse weather to come... no more muddy paws when Joey comes in from doing his buisness. YAY! Last night I planted my first ever flower bed... it was so fun and felt so good! I bought a wide range of bulb flowers (Tulips, Daffodils, Crocuses, Hyacinth, etc) in reds,yellows and purples and planted about 100 bulbs in my flower bed in the front of our house. today I bought 30 more bulbs that are purple flowers that look like snowdrops (cant remember the name right now) and am planting them in an urn that has some curly willow in it on our front stoop around the curly willow. I think itll look really pretty. Cant wait for the spring to see what pops up and when. I am hoping to find a hydrangea bush to plant on the left side of our front stoop before the fall is over... hydrangeas are my favorite flower and I would just love a bush of them right outside my front door. I might have to break down and buy one. Jo-Ben's friends mom is going to dig up a bunch of perennials out of hr garden for me to tuck away in my front flower bed as well so next spring I should have some pleasant surprises! My favorite one that she is giving me is called Hens and Chicks ... its this little green plant that reminds me of a squashed fresh artichoke. So cute! So, we will see come May/June weather I have a green thumb or not! Yikes!

Here are some pics of some of the flowers that I hope to come up in my flower beds this spring.

Jo-Ben did allot of schooling and testing this Summer for his level 2 NDT ticket (which I know means nothing to all of you) basically it ll allow him to run a truck all by himself at his job and he will hopefully make more money :) He did AMAZING on his written exams... has a 90% fail rate and he got an 80, 88 and 88 on the three parts- YAY Jo-Ben! The practical exams are much harder... there are basically 6 parts and you have two days to do them... you have three trys to take the practical and every time you don't have to do whatever you passed the last try... The first go at it Jo-Ben attempted 50% of the exam because that's all he had time for and he passed what he tried. Last week he had his second attempt and did the second half and we get the results back next weekish. We are both really nervous and just cant wait for this phase to be done for him. In other Jo-Ben news, his team, the Red Deer Royals won second place in the Red Deer outdoor men's league. It was a very fun season and considering that they were at the bottom of the totem pole last summer they did VERY well for themselves this season- much improved! It came down to a shoot out in the second to last game in playoffs and Jo-Ben had one of the shots- SO nerve wracking.... my stomach was in knots!! He made it and I was so proud of him. Also, in the game before that, when my parents were in town visiting, Jo-Ben got 4 goals in one game which is like unheard of... he said he had to score lots because he knew my parents wouldn't really be paying attention so he had to make sure that they saw at least one of his goals. What a guy.

So yeah, that's the gist of things lately... hope none of you out there in bloggy land were too TOO worried about me! Ill try not to have such an enormous gap between posts!

Take care, Amanda*