I need to vent for a minute.

Please bear with me while I vent.

So, I'm sick, whatever, life goes on. I can barely keep my eyes open, they are watery, I'm blowing non stop, and sneezing more than usual. I don't like taking drugs, but will if I need. I however would like a little bit of lovin from the man of the house, my best friend and life partner. Why is it that when we are sick, we being moms and wives, it's like 'how could you go and get sick and stop doing what you need to be doing to keep this house running?' and when they get sick, they being spouses, it's the end of the world as we know it. I would just like a little back rub, or a shoulder squeeze asking if I'm OK.

As for the drugs, you know it's bad when you go to use some vapour rub and it's expiry date is November of 2003. And the lemony drink, is July of the past year. Now you know that I truly don't really rely on drugs, and speaking of drugs, I think I will go out and buy some more of the expired things this evening, whether I want to or not, I need to, I have too many things to do this week, the week before Christmas. If you could, please say a little prayer for me that I will be all better, soon, and that no one else gets it!!

Thanks and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

The Adventures of Life as a Mother and a Wife

Wow, what a title. But lately I've been thinking alot about being a mother and a wife as well as a daughter, sister and friend. But first and foremost, a mother and a wife. What an incredible experience, it truly is. My husband and I have had some interesting conversations lately about life, and sometimes I wonder if we are the only ones who go through some of these conversations, over and over again it seems. Do you have the same conversations over and over again with your spouse? Or is it just me and my darling husband. Please tell me you do...please. My husband works early in the morning, I however, cough cough, get to 'sleep' in. So when it come to time together to chat or what not, he's tired, and ready for bed. I, well, I could stay up till 1am, not good for me, but I just truly love the quietness that happens at night. Even if the TV is on, which it usually is, I love the quietness that happens at night. Nobody is fighting, nobody is tattling, nobody is crying, nobody is not listening, they are all sleeping soundly in there beds! I LOVE IT!! So anyways, one of our ongoing conversations is about him going to bed earlier than me. Just something that we need to work on, me not being upset that he's in bed and not out here talking to me, him not being upset that I'm out here and not in bed with him.

Anyways, For those who read this, and don't live in Canada, you may have missed the fact that the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS (our local football team) WON the ultimate in championships, they WON THE GREY CUP!!!!! It was a party in Saskatchewan that night!!!! So fun, sooooo soooooo much fun!! We took in the celebratory Parade and saw the players and mascot, and the CUP!!! It was fast and fun, even if it was -35C with the windchill!!

Speaking of windchill, eeeek, Winter has hit and it has hit us hard!!! Yuk Yuk Yuk. The weather has been in the -30 (plus) with the windchill. I can't wait till spring, when we can go Camping again. We totally miss our trailer. We went to 'visit' it the other day, to take the battery off and put in some bounce sheets to help keep the mice away (thanks Laura). That night my husband looked at all the camping pictures from this past summer!!!! Too fun!

Keep warm, where ever you are reading this from!!

Saskatchewan Roughriders!!

Whoot Whoot!! (is that how you say it?) Oh ya, go Green!!!

Yes, the Saskatchewan CFL football club has made it to the West Semi Final. They will be playing on Sunday, and our family will be watching, yah. I'm sooo excited! We were able to take our family to the last regular season home game, and it was C~O~L~D!! I was walking out the door thinking I should grab the mitts, just in case, ya, sure the sun is shinning, but hey, it is November....Well I listened to my husband, that was the first thing I did wrong ;) (love you hun) and I never took the mitts. I need to listen to mothers instinct more!! We froze, and left when there was 9 mins left in the game. But we had lots of fun...just being there all together is fun, seeing the kids learning the game and showing some RIDER PRIDE!!!!! LOL Come on, you knew it was coming...

Okay, so it's not letting me upload the pictures from the game...oh well.

So anyways, enjoy a little football this weekend, and maybe get out and enjoy the last few days before we get some yucky weather. Hey, I'm still wearing my berks, oh ya...and I even stepped into a little snow blanket the other day...a tad bit cold, but I hate wearing socks!

{Our Date}

Was awesome!! It was amazing, so glad we went and splurged on ourselves, I think it has reconnected us a little, and made us thankful in alot of ways too. We sure missed our kids! But they did super fine here without us, and a sweet reunion was had at the airport on Monday evening when we landed! I have soooo many pictures to share, and it takes forever to load them onto here (I think most of my readers have me on facebook and have seen them anyways, if not, and your on facebook, add me and you can see about 95 pictures). The one to the left there is on the Maid of the Mist boat ride, and we got soaked!!! We were right under the falls at this time!

<---This here was the view from our room!! Very nice to wake up to every morning, for 3 mornings!

The pic on the far left is a close up of the falls from our room, and the middle is a rainbow obviously, also a view from our room (we did leave the room, seriously) and the last was the view from our seat on the plane, my hubby took it cause I was too sick to look out of the window!!

We went to this amazing Brazilian Steak House! It was sooo good! You have unlimited sides on a salad bar, and waiters come around to your table with meat on a skewer and cut off a piece. In the end we tried about 10 different tastes of meat!! Fabulous!! We went on a wine tour and tried the wonderful Ice Wine, mmmm, but it's incredibly expensive to buy here. Cheap to buy in Ontario, and they don't ship to Saskatchewan (or anywhere in Canada), but get this, if your in the Toronto Airport and you are flying to the states, or another country, you can get all the wine you want (well 6 bottles 3 each) at the duty free shop, and carry it on the plane with you, but if your a Canadian flying within Canada you can't shop at the duty free shop!! How bad is that.

I'm already looking forward to our next 'date'. But in between now and then I'm also looking forward to taking a family trip somewhere fun and new, a place we all haven't been to. Not sure yet where that will be, but I can't wait!! Tell me about your exciting future plans!

A Date!!

My husband and I are going on a date, to Niagara Falls in Ontario!! Breanna, the youngest, was the one who called it a date!! You can call it a date, a third honeymoon, or a mini vacation, whatever it is, we are flying there for 4 days and flying home! We are sooo excited, and nervous at the same time! It's been a while since we've flown, 9 yrs! Ya, I know, it's only 4 days, but still....We need it though, every husband and wife need something like this every once in a while! To reconnect and to recall the days before children!! It's necessary!!

My mother is blessing us by caring for them while we are gone, and doing the running around with them as well to there activities! I'm so thankful for her, and the kids are thrilled to have the chance go to her house as well, they love it there!

It's been really busy around here with all different kinds of activities, birthday parties, activities, van maintenance, shopping, never ending house work, childcare, schooling, and all the other things that life throws at you when you least expect it! I am sooo thankful for God in our lives to set us straight once in a while and to make sure we are grounded, without Him, I'm sure i would be the frazzle dazzled mom and wife that no one likes or wants to be around. When you have a moment, thank God for all you have been blessed with in your life, it feels good to be thankful!!

God Bless!!

It feels good to declutter!!!

We did alot of it this past thanksgiving weekend. I'm sure about 6 or 7 large black garbage bags left this house! We worked on Noah's room, which was long over do, and hopefully will be kept up this time....Noah!! And we did the basement, office, laundry room, toy room, and I moved my stamping area down there!! I love it!! I even stamped yesterday, first time is 6 months!! I can't share what I made, because it's a gift that has yet to be given!!

But here is the basement now...you'll see green tape on the ground, that is where I hope some real walls will be built, but for now, those are the faux walls, no one is allowed in that area, 'room', unless I am in that area, and kids seem to like to tattle on each other, so I think it's all good!! teeheeheehee

I love it, I can watch TV if I want, we watched the Rider game down here yesterday!! Yah Riders!!

I hope that this 'room', area, will inspire me to do more stamping and scrapbooking, cause I really miss it!!

I hopefully share my stamped piece with you later this week!! Stay tuned ;)

{autumn} & {Angel Hair for Kids}

My my, what a beautiful fall we are having. I love this time of year when the weather is like this! I take back what I said in a previous post about going from summer to winter here. Sometimes it is like that though, but not this year!!! It is gorgeous out! I wish we could have one more sleep over in our trailer, but it is already being winterized :(

Our girls got there hair chopped off last week, and we have sent it away for Angel Hair for Kids (a program that makes hair into wigs for less fortunate kids with illness' that causes hair loss) in Ontario!!

Here is a Before Shot of Alexa:














Brace yourself;

And the After Shot!!














And here is Emmalee's before shot:














And her After shot!!!!

And both of them with the hair braids and the hairdresser, their Auntie!!

One last Hurrah

Well, we did it, we went camping this past weekend, and it was soo much fun! We got there on Thursday afternoon, and there was NO ONE there except one couple passing through. It was so neat, cold, but neat. We enjoyed a couple fires, and marshmallows and smores of course! We also enjoyed a couple of pizza's from the local diner as we watched the football game on a little 14' tv we brought along. But that will be our last one this year, we enjoyed it tremendously, and are looking forward to going next year!

Now we plan on working on the house this winter, we have alot of plans, but the plans I talked about in a post awhile back didn't pan out, so we start again, planning! I hope by the new year the basement bathroom will be complete, and possibly build my own stamp room downstairs!! Then I will have no excuse not to stamp and scrapbook!! Looking forward to that happening really soon!! We are also going to go on a few trips this fall! My hubby and I are going on a 'date' to Niagara Falls, and in the late fall quite possibly we will take a trip south of the border. Oh the things to look forward to!! Love it!! What kinds of things are you looking forward too in the coming months?

Enjoy the pictures!

Baby it's getting cold outside!

I looked at the forecast this morning because my hubby is biking to work still, and the low for Sunday night is -6. GULP....I'm not ready for that. It goes from summer to winter here in Canada. It's kinda sad actually. I really hope that we will get a nice September. Not going to be fun camping next weekend if it dips down to -10 or something crazy. Ya, we are going camping, one last trip I guess. My husband really wants to camp when the leaves are turning and falling. Glad we have a furnace in the little trailer!!


We've been busily doing school every day. Most of the kids do it without question, or sighing, in fact 3 out of 4 do it happily. On the off day, my 1 and only son, will not be happy about doing school. Most days, he will happily work on his school books. We haven't done anything fun yet, I hope that I can do more fun things in the future with them. I love doing fun things, and not doing school books...but the 'principle' (daddy) prefers the school books ;)

Maybe we will do a study on BATS:

This was at our front door one day after we came back from running errands :-O

Or Skunks:

This little guy was at our camp site almost every night while we were there.

Caterpillars:

They found quite a few of these at the end of a hike we took

maybe Ground Squirrels:

These were regular visitors at our campsite.

or Chickadees:

Only saw these little birds once when they flew into our site to say hi!

Those are a few of the critters we saw while camping, minus the bat, which we saw at out house here in the city!!

First Day of School!!

I was so procrastinating about when to start school, I didn't have the desire to set a date. So much to do to get ready, organize books, clean the school room, right up our plan, photo copy receipt's, and send it all in to the school board. I was not very energetic...until we got a little toy to help me along, and to assist in the school room:

A new laptop, which we took along to the farm with us so I could write up our lesson plans out there and a schedule as well, about how the perfect day of school should go in the Keffer house. So far we haven't had a perfect day, but hey, we've been at it for 2 days now!! LOL I doubt we will have a perfect day, a mom can only dream, right!! The kids were excited to start their books and our newest little addition to the school routine is Breanna, she has started doing some preschool books, and is pretty excited!!

The look so grown up!! I love this picture too! Emmalee and Noah are 2 yrs apart, he's gonna pass her soon!! And Alexa is 13 1/2 months behind Noah. Breanna is 2 yrs younger than Alexa. My lovely little family.

We are heading out of town again this weekend, to help build a garage at my parents place. It is replacing the one that my oldest brother burnt down, oh about 20 yrs ago, well maybe less than that, but not much. We are taking the trailer, so it will be like camping a little! Looking forward to it! Hope to get out to Rowans again this month before it snows!! I gotta get a post about the little critters at our campsite still...not tonight though.

Dragon Boats & Harvest!

The annual Dragon Boat races were held on the Saturday of the long weekend, and this is the 3rd year my husband and his work have put in a team. The first year they did awesome, the second year the steering wasn't so good in one of the races, they actually knocked one of the dragon heads off the front of another teams boat cause they got out of there lane and hit the boat, but they were so far ahead, it knocked the dragon head off. This year, well lets just blame it on the wind, it was SOOOO windy!! They actually steered out of there lane on all three races, but never hit a boat!!!! They steered out of there lane the last race, but got back in and won it!! They are a fast team. There's always next year. I love love going to watch, but it makes for a hard long day and my kids are not well at sitting still for very long...

After the races were over, we went home and packed up for a long weekend at the farm, helping with harvest!


All the little ones got to ride in the combine and had a blast! (That's Noah there in the pic)








The radio you may be wondering about, well, this is how we listened to the big Labour Day Classic Rider Game on Sunday, the whole, um maybe 10 -15 mins that we actually got to listen to. I was actually driving truck alot (standard, I don't drive standard, but I did!), and my husband was driving even more truck that I was (because I couldn't back up to dump, so he had to take his truck and my truck to go dump), he basically only heard the last 5 mins because he happened to be in the tractor (the only working radio) when it was ending.


This last picture is just so neat, well, I think it is anyway, that is highway #2 behind the field there, and I thought how amazing, there is a man in a combine working hard for this country making wheat (in this case it was barley) and people just driving on by unaware of the man/family who is making a living by this field. In the spring he seeds, and fertilize, all summer prays for a good weather year, and then hopes for a good yield!!
More to come!!

Favorite Camping Pictures from Duck Mountain Provincial Park

Random shot inside the trailer on one of the rainy days (the first I think)

Playing with playdough :)

a view on the hike we took, gorgeous!

evidence of a bear?

at the end of the trail, it took 3 pictures to get one of them all smiling, prolly cause I told them we'd be getting ice cream right away!! teehee

Another post soon to come of the critters who visited our site and critters we saw in the park!

Happily Ever After-12 year so far!

Our morning started with breakfast made by our lovely children. It was so cute. They all made cards too!!










Then later in the day we went out for supper to a great place, The Black Pepper Italian Eatery. Yumm-o. I can't wait to go back!! I love these pictures of us! We spent the evening at home with the kids, my parents stopped in, and we watch the Sask Rider game!! Just a note for those who care, the riders are in first place in the entire CFL league, the first time I believe since 1976!!! (please correct me if I'm wrong if you know)

It is September on Saturday, bet you didn't know that did you ;)

We've been kinda busy with stuff, VBS, Camping, life, homemaking, and now Harvest. We are heading out to help with harvest. It will be fun I think. I like having supper in the field. It really something you have to experience.

I want to blog some camping pictures, but I don't want to bore you, so I will make another post of some of my favorite pictures from the week we went camping to Duck Mountain!

A Fresh New Look!

Here I am:

I am always on the other side of the camera, and I don't mind usually, cause I'm not big on pictures of myself. But I decided that after my hair appointment today, I would take my picture, cause I just love how my hair turns out when my hairdresser does it ;) (thanks sis)

So, here is a picture of me, 30 yrs old, momma to 4, wife to Michael for 12 yrs (anniversary is Sat. Aug. 18th) and daughter of two wonderful parents!

Have a great weekend y'all, I'll be celebrating with my husband, 12 yrs of marriage!

I Did It Mom!!

That is what my 4 yr old announced as the morning of VBS wrapped up!!! I was so thrilled for her! She's the typical 'baby' of the family, even though I have vowed not to treat her like the 'baby', it has just happened I guess. She's more clingy than the others were at this age, and she is alot more cuddly too at this age than any of the others. But today she was a big girl and went to VBS for 3 hours all by herself, "I did it mom!" Sweet words to a mothers ears!!

My Baby!

It's August

In case anyone was wondering!!

We've been busy busy. Every weekend seems to be something. This weekend we are jetting out to my hubby's farm for the day, and Sunday him and I are in nursery and our two oldest kids have a birthday party in the afternoon. Tonight, is the Rider Game!!! Go Riders!

We went out to a small town last night, an hour NE of the city, to a thing called A Maze in Corn!! It was alot of fun:

It probably took us a little less than an hour to finish, but was totally a blast! We will definitely go back!

We have been camping again as well! We went back to the same place, kind of last minute with my brother and sister in law and niece! We shared a site and it was alot of fun as well!!

The kids will be going to Vacation Bible School every morning next week, and I am going to enjoy every day! I'm sure by the second morning I will be missing them huge, but 5 mornings, without kids, whatever will I do with myself?? I have a strange feeling though, that my littlest, will not want to stay at VBS. This is her first year. I've been talking to her about it and pumping it up, how much fun she will have, but momma instinct again. Pray she will NOT want to come home with me!!! ;)

Well, I still haven't stamped, or scrapbooked....I'm hoping that my friend will have a club this year, so that at least once a month I am guaranteed to be able to stamp!!

Later...

Plus Forty Four

That is what it feels like with the humidity today, it really is +34. YIKES. It's been like this for a few days and no end in sight. I'm so thankful we have a little window air conditioning unit, makes it bearable in here and we are all happier because of that (me anyways).

We haven't been up to much lately, nothing exciting anyways. We had a garage sale on Saturday, the Saturday previous to that we went out of town to my aunt and uncles 25th wedding anniversary. It was nice to get out of town again for a bit. Also have had the odd visitor, my sister and her little ones whom I can't get enough of, Aubrie (she's soooo cute!!)

I have been babysitting Isabella (my brother's daughter) this past week, and again for another week. It's been different having a little one around again. I'm not used to being followed, it's been a while (my baby is 4). Looking so big in the double bed!!

We've also been sick aswell, a little flu that has been going around the family. Noah and Breanna on Wednesday, me on Thursday and Em and Alexa today. Hubby feels yucky too. But we are on the mend. We have made some time to go to the spray park a few times: (I though this pic was so good, I took it about 10 feet away from the play structure, and they all happened to be in the picture, and no other kid fully visible, and there were quite a few there!!!!)

No stamping (cept a very quick card for my aunt and uncle) No scrapbooking. I'm going through some serious withdrawls. I think I need to do something about it and soon!! Any suggestions??

Have a HOT week, I'm mean great week!!

A glimpse into our weekend

We had some fun on the beach. A little too much sun though, I got really burnt, and so did Noah and Alexa and my hubby too! But we had so much fun!














We had naps (Em, hubby and I while the other 3 played sooo nicely)









We washed dishes (mostly I did, but I had help from a few others)









We went fishing (I forgot the camera, but this is noah looking through his tackle box)




Our first camping trip to Rowans Ravine was fun! Saturday morning I was ready to go home, but sunday morning I was telling my husband was we were driving away, I want to go back...We are looking forward to our trip in August!!