I need your creativity!

Hi Everyone!

We're moving in 4 days and I'm wanting to change email to gmail. This time I really want a fun, creative email address. Tim's new one is tim-the-pastor, which I thought was a really good one. So what can you come up with for me? There's an Ikea prize in it for you :) Well, I WILL be going to Ikea shortly after we get there.

a place to crash

I'm completely exhausted from sorting and packing so I thought I'd sit down and update you all about our lives. We move in 6 days and yesterday we were still scrambling for a rental place. We've been trying to book appointments for our contact people in Edmonton, but they've all fallen through. We finally know why. Yesterday morning we got an email from our administrative assistant at church, Castle Downs, asking if we would be interested in a basement suite her parents have. It's 3 bedrooms, newly renovated and about a 5 minute drive to the church. I made a call, she emailed some photos, I called some more and it was a sealed deal! I can't believe how easy it was....Thank you God.

So we have a place to live when we move on Monday. I don't think we've ever made a move where we planned the move date and booked the U-Haul before we had an address. Now we just need to sell our house. We've shown it 3 times in the last few days. But still no offers yet. We called a real estate agent who is coming to see the house tomorrow. So soon it will be out of our hands. Honestly, it's a relief. It's so stressful to have your house ripped apart for packing and then get a call on the house. And usually people want to see it with in a few hours.

Does anyone have a story about how God sold your house in a mighty way?

since we've been home

Since we've been home we've realized that we only have, or had, 12 days to pack and move. We have not secured a rental unit and haven't started packing. So the crunch is on. We are madly trying to do both and really praying God brings this together soon.
Since Tim has been done work and we've been sleeping in, Nadia and Colin have been playing before we get out of bed. Nadia dumps all her stuffed animals, and Colin's, plus all his toys and books into his crib. This picture doesn't do the pile justice.

Nadia and Colin watching a movie from their sofa house.

Easter in Edmonton

We went to Edmonton for a visit at Easter. We got to stay with our board chair and family. They really go all out for Easter. They planned and had 3 seperate Easter hunts. One for the little kids, one for the big kids and one for the adults. I think the adult hunt took about 2-3 hours.
And the gifts....wow. We were very overwhelmed how the gifts just kept coming. Thank you everyone. Nadia especially loves her new porcelain doll.
While the adults were hunting, there were crafts for the kids. They coloured and used glitter glue to decorate the wooden eggs.
Colin went nuts over the bubbles. He LOVES them. Especially to chase them.
The kids loved to blow this steam maker bird bath type ornament. Colin is making a funny face for his newest girl friend. :)

We went to church on Sunday and Tim got to lead music and preach. The church usually has about 70-80 people and we had 112! We were so excited and there is such a buzz. God is doing great things and we can't wait to get there and ride the wave.

outside...finally

It was finally warm enough to go outside this week. So I found some rubber boots and out we ventured. Nadia got this new umbrella in BC. We don't really get rain in SK, so the next best thing is to stand under the melting snow drip from the roof.
We were getting a little bored, just walking around the small patch of grass we have exposed, so I pulled out some of the sandbox toys. And the kids went wild shoveling snow into their buckets.
Yesterday was almost hot on our deck. There was no wind and no bugs. The perfect weather for a picnic. It was so cute to watch them, especially Colin, who copied every thing Nadia did. Now Nadia asks to have a picnic for every meal.
And a little play-doh fun. Nadia made this cake for me. It's a purple circle with stars all the way around. She spent a very long time making those. My sweeties, I love them so much.

vacation

We went to BC to visit my parents and Grand parents. They were generous enough to pay our way and rent us a car. We did some hanging out and then some power shopping. But the high light for the kids was the Vancouver Aquarium. It really is a fabulous place. We must have spent about 5 hours there. (Juanita the turtle picture is for you.) And today Colin learned to say turtle. I think it's so cute when he perfectly pronounces words with his little high voice.
Nadia especially loved the West Coast area where she could climb on the 'rocks' in front of the display tanks.

2 of my 3 sweeties.

After climbing on the 'rocks' I am happy to report that they were interested in checking out the tanks too.
They have a new jelly fish and frog section, which display the jelly fish so well.

And the kids section at the end of the indoor exhibits was redone and very cool. We had to pry the kids out of there.

How did Opa escape this photo?

Outside we saw the beluga, dolphin and raptor shows. Here is the bald eagle from the raptor show. I think he was trying to munch the trainers microphone. I had no idea just how big those birds are. It was a really cool show. One at a time they brought out birds of prey and they swooped down and all around. The one trainer was only about 10 feet from where we were standing, so we got a really good look at the birds. There was also a turkey vulture and a red tailed hawk.
My Grandma and Grandpa. Such sweeties, showering Nadia with gifts and candy every time she walked in to their place.
And even though it was a short trip, we got to see great Oma too. And at 91 she even prepared a delicious supper for us, fancy deserts and all.

before vacation

The night before we left on vacation to BC I took Nadia to the Doodlebops concert. I have to say that I was very impressed at the show. They were very hard to photograph because they are always singing and dancing.

Nadia was quite taken by the whole thing. She was in awe for the first bit and then really started to get into it near the end. They had 3 other dancers on stage, for the songs and shortly after they came out, Nadia told me that "the other 3 should get off the stage because it's better when it's just the Doodlebops". Although I can see why they had the extra dancers. I think Dee Dee was mostly just trying keep that wig from falling off. I'm sure that would be quiet a tragedy at a show full of 2-5 year olds.

news...finally

I'm so sorry that I keep forgetting to post about Edmonton. It's been a very busy few weeks, between Langley and Saskatoon. For those who are awaiting the news...here it is. Castle Downs Baptist Church in Edmonton asked us to come for a meet and greet weekend, or pre-candidating. So we took the whole family and it was very much like candidating. Actually, I'm not sure what we would have done different to candidate. The board felt overwhelmingly that we were a great fit for the church and wanted to just vote to have us come. So they did and the vote was an excited and unanimous yes. They felt so strongly that this was God's will that they didn't need us to come back to officially candidate, so they proposed to the congregation that they vote for us to come. A few weeks later they had the congregational vote and it was another unanimous yes. There was even cheering we're told. So we are very excited about starting this next chapter of our lives.

As I type, Tim is working on his sermon for the Easter weekend when we'll be there visiting. He officially starts May 1st, so we have about a month to pack and move. About that. We are still waiting for an offer on our house. And we need wisdom about what to do. Wait longer or just find a temporary rental and pay a deposit now. We need your prayers about that.

We do praise God for selling our second car today. God never works the way we plan, but he continues to take care of our finances and we are truly grateful for that.

Stay tuned...vacation photos will appear soon.