I wasn't going to blog tonight but as I have nothing else to do, here I am. It was another beautiful, sunny day here in Calgary, with a temp around 3 or 4 degrees. Not too bad at all. I started my day off with my favorite class at the gym, kickboxing. I then cycled for 30 minutes, came home, cleaned up and walked up to the park with 3/4 of my children. Kelly and Holden came with us.
  I should mention that Kelly, and her family moved here at the beginning of this month. She is my sister in law, married to my brother Andrew. I think Leif must have prayed them here. When we lived in B.C they were our neighbors in our complex. We shared a wall. Our boys lived at each others houses and were very close. Moving here was particularly heartbreaking for Leif. He used to ask me to go back to B.C and get Theo and Holden and bring them back to live with us. Every night when he said his prayers he prayed that they could come to Calgary too. Well, it only took 4 months of diligent prayers to get them to Calgary. My brother Andrew got a mechanic job out here, and they decided to head this way. I don't know if it ever would have happened had we not moved out here first. I am so glad they are here though. Kelly is one of my closest friends and we love their family. Bonus that I found them a place only three km away from us.

Lilli and Leif wiped out at exactly the same time. They were having too much fun to get upset though

 Anyways, back to today. We played at the park for an hour and then skidded around on the melting ice by our community center. Out here there are make-shift ice rinks in every community. I still need to get skates for Chris, Leif and Violet. They may be the only three people in Calgary who have never skated before. I think it's kind of a thing here. The rest of the day was spent wrestling, playing hide and seek with the kids, making cookies, and of corse the usual fights and drama in between. It was a nice family day though, and it felt good for me to participate in the fun and games. Usually I am cooking, or cleaning, or napping while Chris entertains the children. I forgot how fun it can be to play games with my kids. It makes them so happy, and it's a great way to stay active.

There are a lot of things I love about living in Calgary. It is always sunny here. The sunsets are spectacular, the sky is so big and the moon always seems closer. I love how open it is. However I miss living in a community. Everything here is Calgary. I miss going to the Superstore and always seeing someone I know. Everywhere was closer in B.C, although the shopping here is 50 times better. I miss my mom heaps. I hate that my parents are getting older and I am not there to help out and eventually take care of them. I want to be able to help care for them and I can't do that this far away. It would be terrible if anything should ever happen to them and I couldn't be there. I am going to miss watching my cute new baby niece grow. 

Here Sariah is just a few days old. Violet was so in love with her

One of the things I miss the most about B.C is being close to music. I know there is lots of fun and activity here, but I have already missed seeing several of my favorite bands, and there are several more that I'm going to miss in the spring. Maybe it is worldly of me, but we all have our things and mine is music. I love music, and I love going to live shows, and very few good bands come to Calgary. We are just to out of the way here. It sounds so shallow, I know. But when I hear about these great shows that I am missing it drives me crazy. I also miss green, moss covered trees, and I know by summer I will miss my ocean and going to the lake with my kids. My best memories with my children are days spent at White Rock and the many local lakes. I know we will make new, great memories here. I don't miss the dark, gloomy B.C winters and the endless rain. I would take sun and cold over dark and rainy any day. We have wonderful Chinooks here, and I love those. It's such a treat after a few days of -20 weather for it to warm up to 9 or even 3 degrees. However, my kids miss their cousins like crazy and Lilli's kindred spirit and soulmate is back in B.C. I miss our old homeschool program as well. There were more activities for our kids to do and all the same kids at activities, so they actually had homeschool friends and familiarity. There are great kids from church here though. Miete has a real sweet group of girls her age that she fits in with here. She never had a place among the girls in Maple Ridge. They were always kind to her, she just didn't click with them or feel like she belonged. She was always sitting on the outside. Here she is among others, who are happy to see her, and give her a friendly hug when they meet up . I love seeing her have friends, and that is worth more than my loneliness. I do have Kelly now, and am slowly making a few other friends. I just wish my mom and all my sisters could be here. I love my family dearly and have always been so close to my sisters and sisters in law. They are my best friends.

 Anyways, I just had to get that out. That is the extremely edited version. Tomorrow I am going to add some recipes that are mostly healthy, and mostly easy, and super delicious.