Well it has been an interesting Christmas season. Our little family has been through quite a bit this December. Ryan has been doing his practicum at a middle school this month teaching grade nine. This means that he has been gone Monday - Friday 7:30am to 5:00pm. To some of you this may seem quite normal because this is the schedule you have and are use to. Well for us it is pretty difficult. None of us are use to Daddie being away so much. The kids missed him a lot and so did I. Ryan found it fairly difficult as well. He loved the teaching and working with the students but it was hard to make the switch from taking classes to teaching them and for so many hours a week. But he did a great job and we all survived.

I started a new job this month. I am now the Arts Coordinator at the Siloam Mission here in Winnipeg. I am running a program that I have been working on for many months now. It feels so great to finally be working with the patrons and seeing amazing work being done by them. Right now the program consists of an Art drop-in where the patrons come in and can work on a painting or drawing using many different mediums Thursday and Friday mornings from 10-12. The response has been amazing and I hope to expand the program slowly by branching into workshops and getting the patrons work out for display and sale.

The kids are well although they have both had the flu and a terrible cold all month. They both suffered from a 5 day flu the end of November beginning of December. Then after being well for a few days both caught a cold that Trinity is still battling. This month they both got to experience childcare. On Thursday and Friday mornings when I was working and Ryan was at school Trinity went to an amazing ladies house and she had a great time. She would ask almost everyday if she going to "the ladies house today?" Silver would go home with his good friend from school for lunch and play video games. He LOVED that. As good as the kids where and as much as they loved it I am glad that Ryan and I can once again work our schedules out so one of us is always with our children.

On Thursday December 21st our van was stolen from a Walmart parking lot while I was picking up some last minute presents. It was horrible to walk out of the store to find that the van was gone. Here is a link to our story as it was written in the Winnipeg Free Press. We had great support and wanted to thank everyone who helped. Some people that didn't appear in our story where some family in Southern Ontario and our old church in Thunder Bay who sent us money as well as close family who prayed for us and helped us feel much better! Thanks to everyone!