Happy Birthday Grandma!

Well, it is almost midnight so I think by the time I post this it will be March 31, or at least close to it. March 31 , 2007 is a special day because it is my Grandma's 80th birthday. So here is a post in honour of Ruth Marla Chatham, a wonderful Mom, Grandma, Nana, Sister, Cousin, Auntie, and Friend. She is a strong, courageous, loving, giving woman and I'm proud to have her blood running through my veins.

Here we are, the women in my family. This picture was taken in about 1984, I believe.

Grandma and I, sometime in the eighties. Mom, maybe you can explain why I am wearing a cape?

Grandma, on the right, and her sister Evelyn.

Grandma, Auntie Ev, and my Nana (Grandma's mom)

Apparently this picture was taken in 1944. Grandma is in the middle with her sister and cousins. Misty, if you're reading this, I think you look like your Grandma in this picture.

Grandma and Grandpa's wedding day, I'm going to have to ask Mom when that was, early 50's I think.

Gotta love this one, early 70's! Roy, I love your outfit!!

Grandma, by the ocean, where she loves to be.

Grandma and Ray

Grandma holding Byron. I want to say this one was taken out at Boundary Bay but correct me if I'm wrong.
Grandma and Auntie Arlee at Brian's wedding, 1997.

Off to bed I go. Happy Birthday Grandma, we'll see you at Manning!

Love Christa

Boys and Girls

OK, so I haven't blogged in ages and now this is my second post in one day. I guess I feel like I need to catch up or something. I just had to document this. I have been really interested in the differences between boys and girls lately. I've been reading a book called "Why Gender Matters" by Leonard Sax. "Experts" tried telling us for quite a few years that the only differences between girls and boys are those that our society has instilled (girls play with dolls, boys play with trucks, etc.) Dr. Sax writes that this is entirely untrue and there is scientific proof that boys and girls hear, see, think and learn very differently.
All this rambling is a lead up to something I just witnessed in my own home. Evan and Grace both have a friend over right now. The girls are upstairs playing a game and the boys are playing downstairs. I went down to check on the boys and found them in the rec room where, to my great surprise, they were playing with the doll house! Now, Evan can often be convinced to play dolls with his sisters (we have a prince barbie) but I must say I was shocked to see that, with no girls in sight, these two boys were thoroughly engaged in playing with the dollhouse. That is, until I paid a little bit more attention to what they were playing. It turns out the two boys were playing with the dollhouse because they were using the elevator to crush things!!! :) By the time I had come upstairs to get my camera and tiptoed back down to take a picture of them, they had moved on to something else, but I just had to blog about it because I thought it was so funny.

Lots of updating to do!

Ok, this is a nice long post with lots of pictures to make up for the fact that I have been terrible at updating this blog over the last few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Sam, Jake, and Lanae while James and Elise were at a wedding. Lanae was a little fussy and didn't want to go to sleep but she was happy when Evan was reading to her - it was very sweet. We just coulnd't resist taking a picture of Grace and Sam sitting in Grace's desk together, working on their pictures.

Devon and Carter, the kids I do daycare for two days a week, were on spring break for the alst two weeks so they were here all day instead of just after school. Devon loves crafts and she organized everyone (except Evan who was into a good book) to make this cardboard box into a wagon for the barbies to ride in. It was fun to see the way they all worked together so well.

Last Friday, we had a baby shower here for Carla and her new baby, Janessa. Tammy's baby, Julie is just two months older than Janessa but that two months makes a big difference in how alert they are. Both of these little girls have a head full of hair!

Carmen was in town for her friend's wedding so she was able to come to the shower. It was great to have a visit with you Carm!

We took a "spring break" from homeschooling last week but it wasn't much of a break for me because we were doing a bunch of cleaning, sorting, organizing and rearranging in order to get ready for some renovations we are going to do in our basement this spring. We spent all of last weekend moving toys, clothes and furniture and the end result was that Evan has a new bedroom downstairs and Rachel moved out of the room she and Grace have been sharing and into Evan's old room. We are going to paint it for her in the next couple of weeks so I will post pictures when it is finished. In the meantime, here are some pictures of Evan's new room. I have to admit, it was hard for me to sleep the first night we had him downstairs, even though we had the baby monitor set up so we could hear if he woke up with a bad dream or anything. He is doing just fine and loving his new "big kid room" while I am having a hard time letting my baby grow up! :)

It poured rain last week when we had spring break, but it has been much nicer this week. Spring has definitely sprung - my tulips are popping up and the magnolia tre in our backyard is getting ready to show its stuff. It will be beautiful for a few weeks and then it will drop white petals all over the yard!


A great thing about the spring weather is that the kids have had lots of time outside. My Mom bought a book for Rachel called "Mudpie Annie" and it is definitely appropriate for our two mudpie girls! They absolutely love to be outside and get dirty. They make mud pies, mud cakes, mud soups and many other concoctions with flowers, grass, sticks and other things they find outside.


On Monday we had a lovely visit with Jim and Reta who were down from Prince George for a convention. It was so good to see them and to spend a little time with Danica. It's sad that she lives so far away and so she doesn't know us. Forrest and Cynthia came for dinner too. It's not very often Ryan, Forrest and Jim get to hang out anymore so it was great to have them all here together.

Oops, I snapped the picture just as Ryan answered his phone. He really was visiting with Jim before that.

Evan was having so much fun with the bubbles, I just had to take some pictures!

As you can tell, I really like the function of my "picasa" program that allows me to make collages with my pictures. Thanks for the tip Carm!

Here are some pictures of the girls snuggling and reading in Rachels' bed in her new room. I love the way they love to be together. Even though they don't share a room anymore, they always snuggle in each others beds when they wake up in the morning.

That's all for me right now. We are going to Manning park this weekend to celebrate my Grandma's 80th birthday so I'm sure I will have lots of pictures to post from that.

Grand Prix!

OK, so I've had a really crazy couple of weeks and I have not been blogging. I have been making time to check in on Susan's blog for news of her new arrival but nothing so far.

Anyway, I have many things I should be doing but I am very gifted at procrastinating so I will take a few minutes to update my faithful readers (all 2 or 3 of you) about what we have been doing.

Last weekend was really busy. Friday, we had the wrap-up pizza party for Evan's Friday Night Basketball, which was fun but it made for a late night for everyone. Saturday was the Grand Prix race for Pioneer clubs. Evan has been working on his car at clubs for a few weeks. The races were a lot of fun and Evan won 3rd place in his age group for speed.

I feel like this past week has just flown by. Not because anything really extraordinary has happened but because of all the little things piling up. Also, my portfolios had to be in to our homeschool teacher this week to show what the kids have been learning this term. That has added some extra stress in my life - and I have to admit I haven't quite finished them yet! Those of you who know me well are not surprised by that I'm sure! :)

Anyway, I do need to go finish them up. I'll post again soon.

An Amazing Ministry

Last night I went to a women's meeting at church. It was a music/talent night. Some of the ladies did silly things. Those of you who know Leanne, Marnie, Anne and Marilyn will not be surprised to know that they did an airband in the style of a southern gospel choir. :) Other people had more serious talents! Marguerite Bysouth is this incredible woman who can recite chapters and chapters of Scripture from memory. It is so moving to hear her.

After the talent show part of the night, it was time for the speaker, Marie Ens. She is a 72 year old woman who has been a missionary to the Cambodian people since the 1960's. I won't take the time to tell her whole story here because I couldn't possibly do it justice. I have added a link on the right side of the blog, about the work she is doing now, called "Place of Rescue." Also, if you click on her name, above, you will see a cbc news interview with her.

Most of you probably know that I spent 3 weeks in Cambodia and Thailand after graduating from highschool. Since that time I have had a soft spot for the people of Cambodia, especially the children. Marie had a whole board full of pictures of all of "her" children who live in the Place of Rescue orphanage. Seeing the pictures of those beautiful children made me want to hop on a plane to Cambodia! When I came home and told Ryan about my evening, I couldn't stop crying. I don't have any idea what it will look like, but I do know that God has given me a passion and excitement about this ministry and I want to do something about it. I would sure appreciate your prayers about it.

A Fun Day

We had a lovely, lazy Saturday morning today with lots of snuggling and eating breakfast in our jammies. Then we all got ready and went to Superstore to get our pictures taken. I can't believe it actually happened this time. I have had appointments to get the kids' pictures taken since November but between the flu, birthday parties and a black eye, we have had to keep rescheduling - so no disasters happened today and we made it to the portrait studio! Then this afternoon Ryan took Grace on a date to buy her her own ball glove since she will be starting t-ball next month. She is left-handed so she couldn't use Evan's old t-ball glove. When they got home, Evan was so excited he asked Grace to go outside and practise with him. He was very excited to teach her all he knows - very sweet.

Then we had a wonderful visit with some old friends. We had fun reminiscing about Vernon and youth group and Eagle Bay days with Ange & Scott, and Forrest and Cynthia.

Grace's new favourite game is Spoons with Uno cards so we had to play a few rounds of that before bed time. Ange and Evan are the reigning champs. Sorry Cynthia, better luck next time. :o)

I'm off to bed, it's been a busy day. Take care all! If you're reading this, feel free to leave me a comment and let me know - it will do wonders for my self-esteem! :o)

Fun in the snow

This is what we were doing on Thursday morning after Wednesday evening's snow storm. It was a beautiful day, sunny and just cold enough for the snow to stay but not too cold for us to be outside - my favourite kind of weather. We had lots of fun playing fox and goose, making snow angels and a little snowman, and shovelling. The kids had so much fun helping me shovel that we just moved on and did our neighbours' driveways too. I had to include the picture of my poor daffodils. The snow is gone now so hopefully they weren't too traumatized!