2 years

2 whole years. Wow. Today is our 2nd anniversary and I can tell you the years have both just flown by, but at the same time it feels like this should be at least our 5th anniversary. It feels like we have been together forever. It's been amazing, but I will say this 2nd year has been more challenging than the 1st. We have definitely had quite the year of learning and trials what with buying our first home, adjusting to that first home and now doing renovations. We've also been learning how to deal with busyness and are working on figuring out our priorities with the busyness so we don't become completely worn out.
 Logan has again proven to be the excellent husband in all aspects. I've learned this year that he is extremely generous and loves to give to others, both of finances and time and labor. He loves the body of Christ and really enjoys being plugged in. He is a diligent and hard worker. Tonight he is working on putting our flooring in the basement and is running into quite a few problems, but he realizes it needs to be done and is powering through. He is responsible with that and i appreciate it very much. He is also my accountability and is amazing and keeping me grounded. I tend to over react and get stressed over ridiculous things, but he's always there to bring me back down to earth and shake me awake to reality. He's not exactly what I thought I would end up with, but he is everything I needed and the Lord knew what he was doing when he put us together. These 2 years have been challenging but amazing. I love sharing life with my best friend. As I always say, I love my Logan!

Gorgeous Jasper!

As you know I'm currently on a "work" trip. We are touring around Jasper, Banff and Lake Louise looking at all the hotels and local attractions etc. Today was awesome!! The highlight of the day was seeing 4 bears in the wild; 1 small black bear, 1 large black bear and then a momma and her baby (which was super tiny!!) Cutest thing ever. I have really been enjoying it. Tomorrow we are doing the columbia icefields tour and staying in Lake Louise so it should be good :)

 Medicine Lake - This lake drains itself every year to underwater rivers and canyons. gorgeous!! 

 Awesome golf cart at Maligne Lake!

 Me at Maligne Lake - I wish the picture would capture the color of the water - it was the most vibrant blue i think i've ever seen! Beautiful.

 The first black bear we saw. He was a little guy, probably only came up to my knee. So awesome! Logan was jealous. When we came to Jasper together he wanted to see a bear SO bad and here i see 4 in one day. Now i know where to find them when we come back :)

The second bear we saw - I couldn't get a good picture and he wouldn't come closer. He was a big one!

My new favorite thing

I have this in my front yard. I guess it flowers every spring. We missed it last year as we moved into our house at the beginning of summer! According to my gardening mother it is a Makamik tree and it will grow to be around 40 ft tall by 35-40 ft wide. It also smells heavenly!! I hope we can stay long enough to see it that big and enjoy the aroma!

Famous

I don't know why the picture is loading like that - but that's me posing for a picture for a picture...:) It's from when i was in college at NAIT and they needed advertising material. My brother in law Terry is doing his electrical apprenticeship there and he found this and sent it to me. Funny after 3 years they are still using it!

One big step finished

 I'm actually writing this post from our bus as I am on a work trip right now and on my way to Jasper. We have about 30 minutes until we arrive, i had my phone with pictures on it and a laptop with an internet connection so why not update :)
My dad came up to Grande Prairie this weekend to help us with tiling our downstairs bathroom. He's done it many times before and actually owned the necessary tools to do it so he was able to come give us a hand and teach us a thing or two about tiling!
He showed up Thursday night and we basically worked on it non stop until Saturday night after grouting the floor. We took a break, ordered pizza and watched a movie. It was lovely :)

Dad and Logan starting the shower stall tiling

 The floor as it is being done! Those tiles are 12x24 so they are massive and they are also EXTREMELY tough. The tile saw by the end of the night refused to cut through any of the big tiles anymore. They also look like wood planks which i was pleasantly surprised by. Close up they just look like grey tiles with white paint brush strokes, but overall they look like a whitewash grey oak type wood. Gorgeous!

The finished shower stall! We still need to grout it but it will pretty much look exactly the same. We are doing black grout in the shower stall to give it a nice contast with the white tile. Also, that decorative strip is actually brown marbled type tile and it perfectly matches our counter top for the sink so it worked out really well!

Overall, I love the bathroom! I'm tempted to move the master bedroom to the basement now so we can enjoy it ;)

Kaden and Amy!

Kaden and Amy got married on April 6 this year. I was lucky to be their photographer! I LOVE how their pictures turned out! Take a peek:

Congrats you two! May the Lord richly bless you in your new life together! We love you both lots and wish you all the best! :)

Crazy Renovations

Needless to say we have been extremely busy lately...hence the no posting. As of now Logan and I are out of the house basically every night (Logan every night except one) and we are in the middle of finishing our basement! *hooray* Logan is currently playing for two bands in town (one band just has one gig he is playing in which is tomorrow night) the other band he is a permanent fixture in and they are quite busy with at least 1-2 gigs per month, so he is usually practicing with them at least once a week. Then he is our worship leader at church so we have church functions 3 days of the week and then he's actually taking a self defense course on fridays and bagpipe lessons on tuesdays. That leaves him Saturday night, which usually books up as well. It's been insane.
Renovations have been coming along nicely though! we are just about done with the drywall, i will be doing the last bit tomorrow night and then our mudder and taper is coming in monday. When he is finished by thursday, we will begin painting, flooring and tiling and hopefully have at least all the tiling done by next weekend. We have about 3 weeks until our friend moves in so we are just boogeying now!

 Logan and the first wall he framed! 

 First bedroom framed in

 Drywalling halfway done - 1st bedroom

 Bedroom section under the stairs. The guy who did our drywall spent three hours alone on that section. He did a good job though!

 The doors to the 2nd bedroom (left) and the bathroom. Laudnry room is the room on the righ side. He hadn't cut the drywall around the door at this point My back is towards the stairs

 Main family room area. Stairs are at my back to the right

 2nd bedroom beside the bathroom - it's quite a small bedroom but will work for an office/music room for now.

 The door from the second bedroom into the main family area

 Looking into the HUGE bathroom - wasn't intended to be this big but due to some careless planning by the builder's it was either a bathroom with a laundry room combined (making the bathroom quite small) or a HUGE bathroom and a small laundry room in the furnace room. We took the latter.

 Bathtub/shower alcove.

 the seriously huge closet beside the bathtub alcove

 looking out from the bathroom into the main family area, nice "hallway" into the bathroom

 The bathroom vanity! I LOVE the top. The top didn't look like this in the picture and i was a little bit worried but it turned out great. The actual cabinet portion is a dark chocolate brown. I'm very excited about it!

Logan and I also went out for our early 2nd anniversary celebration tonight. Tonight is the last night for the next two weeks (until after our anniversary) that we would be able to do anything so we went for dinner, then to a movie (Star Trek: Into Darkness - AMAZING!!) and then for ice cream. It was quite wonderful! Logan has a gig tomorrow night and saturday night, then we have a going away party on sunday for our dear friends the Tyler's as they move to California. Logan is then heading off to Montana for 4 days on Monday to go tour the Gibson factory (Taylor factory last month, Gibson this month lucky duck!) Then when he gets back my parents are coming that same day for four days to help us with the tiling in the bathroom and painting etc. Then I am hitching a ride to Edmonton and going on a work trip through Jasper and Banff for a week. Then we have 1 week at home and then our friend moves in. June is going to go by SO fast...So life is...crazy at the moment. Finding it hard to breathe, but i also find i get bored without the busyness. I was off two days in a row this week and was quite bored the second day, so we'll see how we manage once things slow down a bit!
That is our update as of now - more to come in the near future I'm sure!