Precious Baby Boy

When Sarah goes to sleep, mommy and the camera come out to play! I thought I would post a few photos of our darling baby boy. We are so in love with this little guy already. Things are going well as we adjust to life with two kids; it's amazing how much busier everything is! Wow, one simple trip to the grocery store or mall seems to be such a big deal. We're so thankful that Calvin is such a content little baby. As with most babies, all he seems to do is eat, sleep and poop; we're getting used to the differences in changing a boy's diaper. Yesterday Calvin went through 5 sleepers, at least a couple of those were due to our lack of preparation...ha ha.


Is he not just too cute?!? It's funny how originally David and I thought Calvin looked a lot like Sarah, but with each passing day, look and photo we agree that he actually looks quite different and not as Asian as we thought he would. Once again, David is surprised how genetics seem to be working out in our family, they are definitely "mixed" kids.

We have been feeling the love of others through food the last couple of days. Our church life group has been amazing in coordinating meals for us. Wow, each dinner time seems like a Christmas surprise! Even Sarah has been loving the awesome variety and foody goodness! Yesterday we had two meals plus a variety of baked goods, apple crisps, etc. Since I am also part of a women's Bible study group through a different local church we seem to be getting double blessed! We're told that the meals will keep coming throughout the week, awesome! Even though we are so far away from the majority of our family and friends we continue to feel the kindness and generosity of others in incredible ways. God is so faithful to show his goodness.

We have also been blessed with a couple of sets of hand me down boy clothes to use. All of the couples in our life group have boys so there seems to be an abundance of boys clothes. My cousin Kristy also dropped off a couple of bags of Kaleb's baby clothes that we are able to use. So amazing!

It's a Boy!

We are thrilled to announce the arrival of Calvin Peter Saysomsack!

Calvin was born Thursday, October 22 at 9:24 am. Weighing 8 lbs 0 oz, and measuring 19.5 inches long. Here we are 4 hours after Calvin was born. Both him and I are doing great and glad to be home.

I've posted more photos on facebook if you're on there, if not, many more will make their way onto our blog in the days ahead. Thank you all for your best wishes, prayers and congratulations!

A Sunday Afternoon in Fall

Yesterday afternoon we headed out the pumpkin patch and then for a nice drive along the Niagara Parkway (along the falls). We plan to do this while my mom is out, but wanted to make sure it would happen, just in case baby comes at around that time. The above photo was taken at the same place we took Sarah's photo last year. Wow, what a difference a year makes! She certainly wasn't able to sit for long this year.

A very curious little girl, having to check everything out.

Me and my little pumpkin...not so little anymore.

Taking a stroll. Some people told me I looked 6m pregnant, yahoo, all baby belly. Yesterday was my first due date. Today I have a doctor's appointment so we'll he what he says. I don't feel like labour is anytime soon, but you never know.

I love how Sarah likes to hold our hand/ fingers when we are in public places (at least most of the time).

Having fun playing with daddy!

After our stop at the pumpkin patch we drove by the falls and noticed this beautiful rainbow over the water.

Sarah looking out over the gorge on the Niagara parkway.

The fall colours aren't quite at the peak of beauty yet, perhaps they'll hold off a little longer until mom, Michael and Rebecca come to visit...less than two weeks now!

Free Green Works Laundry Detergent

Yahoo for free goodies! This morning the Fedex man came to drop off this great assortment of free goodies from the lovely people at Matchstick. Remember that post I wrote a little while back about being one of 50 people "Influencers" in Canada to be selected? Well here are the goods! I got one 30 load bottle of Green Works laundry detergent, one bottle of all purpose cleaner, a tote, delicates bag, 30 full load samples and 30 full value coupons for Green Works laundry detergent to hand out. Not too bad!

I look forward to trying out the goods and letting you know what I think of the stuff in the days ahead. It will also be fun to hand out all the free coupons. With baby on the way, lots of free detergent sounds like a great gift, not to mention the perfect time to try a new product. We'll see how good this stuff really works.

I love little things like this that brighten my day. Still no baby. David thinks I need to be posting daily so that people know what's going on/ or not going on. We'll see what kind of posts I can come up with.

Huge Book Sale...fun, fun!

This afternoon we went to the Book Depot's fill a box sale, which happens four time a year. There is a huge warehouse full of every different kind of book and you can fill a box for $30.00. All of the books are new, some have an imperfection, mark, etc. David and I had both been looking forward to the sale for quite some time, so we were pretty excited. It was a little overwelming due to the sheer quantity of books and how they were just stacked on tables; but it was a great way to spend an afternoon.

Sarah happily sat in the cart looking at books and playing the musical books over and over again. I thought it was pretty cute how she set up the books so that she could look at several at once. Once we got home we realized there were several kids books in our box that we didn't put there. Sarah would often pick up a book and throw it in the box, so we know where those came from.

While we were browsing around I couldn't help but think of our "reader" friends and wished they could have joined us. Rachel, Dan, Matt, Libby, mom, you would have loved this sale!

I was excited to get three different slow cooker cook books, something that I've wanted to get for quite some time. They worked out to about 75 cents each so I was pretty thrilled. I love using the crock pot. And with fall here and baby on the way, I look forward to putting my crock pot to very good use in the months ahead.

Thanksgiving at Balls Falls

Yesterday we went to Balls Falls in Jordan (about 15 min away). Every Thanksgiving there is a large festival/ craft show at the conservation centre. There were lots of vendors selling handicrafts, art, ceramics, etc. It was nice to have something different to do for the afternoon.

The Main area is kind of like Burnaby Village and/ or Fort Langley. There's an old chuch, mill, homstead, etc.

Sarah loves giving kisses, and we love receiving them! She's just too cute.

Always so happy! We have so... much to be thankful for! We feel so blessed to have Sarah and can hardly imagine having another in just a couple of weeks.

Looking out at the waterfall

The leaves are just starting to get really pretty here. In about a week or so the trees should be at their most beautiful fall look. We're looking forward to going for a couple of drives to enjoy the scenery.

Little monkey girl

Pine Cone Research

Quite some time ago I posted about being a part of a research company. They e-mail me questionnaries to fill out and in return they pay me $5. Each one takes about 10 minutes to complete. On a few occasions they have sent me new food products to try out and then I complete another survey for another $5. Very easy money, especially if you have time to be at the computer at some time in the day, better than doing nothing on facebook.

Anyways, the company is looking for more participants. If you are interested in joining just leave me a comment with your name and e-mail address and I will forward you the referral e-mail that I received so that you can join. You are also welcome to e-mail me at sharindavid@hotmail.com and I'll forward you the e-mail.

Thanks.

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving with friends from our church life group. Two of the couples were out of town, so there were three of us couples and 5 kids (under 2) that got together to eat turkey and spend some time together. We had a great time just hanging out and eating great food. Thanks Adam, Emma, Shane and Michelle!

What's More Fun?

Playing with the toys or playing in the bin where the toys go? This past week Sarah seems to be rediscovering many of her toys. Each day we dump out all her toys in the living room, sort and play. It's interesting how she plays with the toys differently than she did a few months ago. She's much more intentional, enjoys opening and closing items, filling things up and carting them around the house. Sarah continues to LOVE her books! I don't even want to think about the number of times we read/ sing Baby Beluga in a day and make the animal sounds from her animal books. We are loving her curiousity and desire to learn and discover new things.

End of the Gardening Season

(Photos from our garden about a week ago)

I realized that I haven't posted on here in nearly a week, so I figured it was time again. David often checks our blog in the evening and keeps asking me why I haven't posted anything new. Well, not much new and/ or exciting has been going on here these days. I've been getting ready for baby, spending as much quality time with Sarah as possible, working on card orders and taking it easy in between. Not to mention that my "computer time" is often spent working on "business/work" stuff.

This week has seemed to officially be the end of gardening season for us. The cooler, windy weather is upon us and the sun suddenly doesn't seem to be shining as much. So the other day I pulled the tomato plants out...ahh.. so sad. We have been amazed at the amount of veggies that we have got out of our little garden this summer. In some ways it has been a love/ hate relationship. We have loved all the fresh produce but not always loved how we always had to figure out what to do with it. At one point we had 30 zucchini's ready to be used. The other week David used up the last of the tomatoes, a bunch of fresh basil and red onions to make amazing spaghetti sauce from scratch..yum! Sarah and I are already missing all the fresh tomatoes!

We also got quite a few little sugar pumpkins from the garden. I planted the seeds specifically to use for pumpkin pies. I've already baked two of the pumpkins. I made a couple of pumpkin pies and then pumpkin cheesecake squares the second time around. I had never used fresh pumpkin before, but it was all surprisingly easy and everything turned out really well.

We still have lots of carrots in the garden, I'm not too sure what I'll do with those. I suppose I'll just keep cooking them up; Sarah likes to eat them with her meals.

This week I'd like to bring the outdoor toys/ furniture into the garage and finish getting cleaned up before the days get even cooler and/ or I just don't feel like doing it anymore.