H1N1

So I thought I would blog about our experience today while getting Maija's H1N1 shot. We showed up to the Avenida Mall clinic at around 8:30-9 am, and lined up for only about 5 minutes, and got a number, and a time to come back. We were told we could come back between 10:30-11-30 am, and wait for our number to be called. We went for a long walk, and we had breakfast, and went to the park, which was so much nicer, than sitting outside in a long line up.
We came back, at around 10:15 am, and they were a bit off in the time for when to come back, so we went to check out a kids' clothing store, and then by 12:30 we went in after our number was called. I was so impressed with the nurses, and other health care workers. Considering they were dealing with hundreds of crying children, they were pleasant, and professional, and boy were they working fast! Our nurse was so kind, and well, I was also SOOOO proud of Maija, she didn't even cry at all (the nurse said she was her best girl today! I was so proud of her!)! It was a good experience overall. Although I know it took just as long as it did for people to get the vaccine last week, it was so much better than it would have been to sit in a long line for hours, and hours....

Happy Birthday Wyatt!!!!!

I just wanted to send out a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the nicest, coolest, kindness guy ever. Happy Birthday Wyatt, Maija and I are so lucky to have you in our lives. You are a great father, an awesome husband, and my very best friend, thank you! I don't say it enough, but I am so grateful for you, for your listening ear, for your sense of humor, you really make me happy! Thanks!. Our lives are a lot like our hikes, and poor Wyatt has to spend a lot of time encouraging, and pushing me forward, and I am so glad for that! I love you Wyatt!

Memories....

I have to admit I am not the greatest at keeping my journal up to date, but you know what is fun, reading back on it! I just spend the last hour reading back on my dating days, it was fun, and neat to see how much thought, and prayer went into finding Wyatt. It was also a laugh to read back on funny moments with roommates (hello Trois Rivieres!).
I found that I tend to express my feelings about people a lot better in writing, most of my entries finish by talking about how cool and awesome my hubby is! ...also I have never before referred to Wyatt As my HUBBY! So yes Wyatt, I love you, you are cool.
But what I loved the most about reading my journal, is seeing the role that Heavenly Father has played in my life. It is great to see how blessed I am, and how lucky I am to have the values, and believes that I do have. It was great to look back on moments like my mission, finding Wyatt, and my wedding day, so if any of you guys are like me, remember that although it is hard to write the journal, it is a really uplifting, and fun experience to read back on it.

Girl's camp

A few months back I was called as Camp Director for YW's camp, and I was super hesitant about the whole thing, how could I leave Maija for 4 whole days!?!?! I prayed, thought about it, and then realized that Wyatt is a very intelligent, and capable man (did you guys see the last post? the guy is a genius!), anyway, with a big prayer in my heart, I left for camp, and it was GREAT! The girls were wonderful, the spirit was there, and the activities were, although tiring (the hike was SO long, and my pants were literally in pieces when I got back down the mountain), VERY fun, and more importantly, Maija, and Wyatt were A OK. Although, I have to admit, I was glad to know they missed me, that evening I got about 45 minutes worth of hugs from each of them! I love my little family!! I will post pictures soon.
Camp Impeesa ROCKED!

Drum Master

I really should have posted about this a long time ago. Wyatt has been working on a project for almost a year, on and off. But he is finally getting close to completing it.

When Wyatt and I got married he owned a set of drums, which he unfortunately had to get rid of since we moved into a condo, at that time he decided to purchase an electronic drum set, and was pretty happy with it, since it allowed him to play without getting us kicked out of our home ;) But then a few years later, in the typical Wyatt way, he decided "hey I should just build my own electronic drum set!" and so he has.

He has made the frame for his set, written the program that allows the set to actually work, design a circuit board for the electronic component of this project. Honestly my explanation of it won't even do it justice, so if any of you guys are interested, and will like to learn more, click here, and you can learn about the design, theory, schematics, and more regarding his Drum Master Brain. It honestly blows my mind!

Here is a picture of his set, I find it really impressive, this guy REALLY never ceases to amaze me!

Maija's Room

So we painted Maija's room about a year ago, but sadly it took us so long to paint it, that I was too scared to actually damage the walls, and put holes so that we could put pictures up..Yes I know sad! But finally after a while, and some encouragement from Wyatt, I decided that I needed a project, and Maija's room needed some color, so I went all out, and painted a mural on one of her walls...Here is a picture of me working on the mural.



Maija has Grandma days every Friday, so thanks to grandma, I was able to dedicate a good 8 hours to this project. Maija loves puppies, and lately is really into Spot books, so I thought it would be cool to do a picture that, she is really into, so here is the final mural.




This type of project is actually not as hard as I thought it would be, and it was great fun just painting away, so if anyone is looking to do a mural, and will like some help painting, please let me know, I really did have lots of fun doing it! and I have some left over paint. I used sample cans from Rona, so the whole project was only about $38 total, and it really brighten up Maija's room.


Maija wakes up, and falls asleep lately saying "Puppa" or puppy. I'm so please with it, mostly because the person that it was intended for really likes it! I got the Maija stamp of approval!
For the other wall, we decided to keep within the same theme (art, painting), and I used photographs taken by Wyatt, and a painting done by our very own resident artist MAIJA!! I really like how it has all turned out.



So finally after a year, Maija's room is done! Thanks Wyatt for all your help, and encouragement! I was really freaked about drawing on our nice clean wall, but looking back, I'm glad I did it!

Oil Paintings- Cardston Alberta Temple

So I finally finished, I still have to varnish the painting, and eventually frame it, but this is a quick preview of what the finished, unframed painting looks like. I'm very proud of it, as this is my first completely original work. Wyatt took the photo, so this is not a copy of someone else's painting.
Unfortunately you can't really see the details, for example the trees have a lot of green highlights that you can't see in the picture, but overall it does give a fair impression of the final work.

Officially in Nursery!!

My Baby is no longer a tiny baby, she is a TODDLER!! Maija turned 18 months old, and this Sunday was her first official full day of nursery! I am very thankful for that program! I hope Maija learns to love her church time. We were a little curious as to how she was doing, so we popped in a few times to check on her (well mostly Wyatt did), it looked as though nursery is going to be great for her! Here is a picture of Maija before church yesterday morning.

Gold Medal!!

I just wanted to send out a HUGE congratulations to Wyatt. He participated on his first Kickboxing/Karate competition today, and not only did he go against fighters that had much more experience, but he actually was awarded a gold medal, when he fought against them! Wyatt you never cease to amaze me!!! You Rock!!

Here is a picture of his first match, all of his opponents were yellow belts, Wyatt is a white belt since his training is in Kickboxing, and not Karate. He later on competed in the men's open match against a brown belt, which I thought was very brave of him, I was worried, those guys were total ninjas!

Installing a Husband

This totally made me laugh, have a great day everyone!

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0 .

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programmes, such as:
· Romance 9.5 and
· Personal Attention 6.5,
and then installed undesirable programmes such as :
· SKYSPORTS 5.0,
· Football 3.0 and
· Golf Clubs 4...1 ..

Also Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2. 6 simply crashes the system.

· Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate.


DEAR DESPERATE ,

First, keep in mind,
· Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while
· Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update.
· If that application works as designed , Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application n can cause Husband 1.0 to default toGrumpy Silence 2.5 , Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1 ..
· Please note that Beer 6. 1 is a very bad programme that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 -programme these are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0 .

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great programme, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend
· Cooking 3.0 and
· Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck!
Tech Support

TV and babies, not a good mix...

So this article I think is just simple common sense, but I thought I would pass it along. It is an article from cnn.com today that shows research regarding educational DVDs for babies, here it is. oh I know most of my friends share this opinion regarding television, and their children, but instead of ranting about too much TV, I thought I would let the media do it. Have a great day everyone! I also thought it would be interesting to see what other views are out there regarding educational DVDs, so please feel free to comment.

Oil Painting- THANK YOU

I just wanted to say thanks for all the encouragement, and the nice comments about my oil paintings, you guys are all super nice, once my next one is done I will post the final result! I'll be sad when March comes since I won't be continuing my art classes for the spring, and summer sessions, but these seasons mean SUNNY DAYS, so we'll be busy trying to get Maija brown like her mommy!

Cool photos

So Wyatt did such a good job on the photos for Wes and Jacquie's wedding, you can check them out here, but this ring one is pretty cool. I wish he had done my wedding portraits, but wait what do we do about the pictures with the groom??? lol

Wes and Jacquie's wedding

So today, FRIDAY 13th! we were able to attend Wes, and Jacquie Olson's wedding. It is neat to see how each wedding just reflects the individual personalities of the bride and groom. This was a beautiful, tasteful, funny, and modest wedding. There was just a very good spirit about it. I love that as Latter Day Saints we have the chance to truly review the covenants we made with our spouse, and our Heavenly Father every time we attend a wedding in the temple.
Also they had the most awesome photographer EVER! Ok I'm a bit bias, but honestly Wyatt did an awesome job on the pictures! Congrats to the bride a groom.
ps: no wedding photos posted yet, this picture of the temple is one from last summer, I will post a link as soon as Wyatt has today's pictures up on the web page...but I saw the preview tonight, and they look awesome!

Oil Painting

On Sep 2008 I started taking Oil painting classes with Chris Jordan, it has been a really neat experience I always wanted to do this, so much, that I even studied art...well art history, but was always too chicken to try it myself, but not anymore!! Thanks to Wyatt's encouragement, and that one talk by Elder Ballard telling the women of the church to take time to develop their talents. So here are some pictures of my first two paintings, they are both copies from paintings found in Art of the West and Southwest Art.
This one is called "Lost Opportunity" the original was done by Luke Frazier I thought it would be neat to try out a landscape as my first painting, after all our home is filled with beautiful outdoor pictures taken by Wyatt, so I thought I could add to the same theme.


And this is the original that I used



For this next painting I lost the reference to the original artist, that's too bad, since I think He or She did all the work, I'm simply trying to learn from them.



And this is the original that I worked from



My next painting is going to be truly original, this time I will be working from a photograph that Wyatt took of the Cardston Alberta Temple, here is a preview, here I am working on the under drawing.

FHE

Does anyone have any good ideas for Family Home Evening with a 15 month old????? I want to involve Maija, but I don't know how, any help will be welcomed

Olson update and family portraits

This is not a New Years resolutions, but I thought it would be fun to update all our friends out there on what is happening with our little family. Maija is almost 15 months! and doing great, she is a great eater, she sleeps well (although we did have our ups and downs there for a little while), honestly we have very little to complain about, even through her teething she is mostly a cheerful little girl. She is learning all kinds of skills...just like her daddy 'she got skillz" like Yoga (downward dog), and Kickboxing (she has a mean front kick ;) Maija is also a big reader, well at least when it comes to books like Dr. Seuss' ABC, and Hand Hand Fingers Thum. It is great to see her grow, one of my favorite moments in watching her grow up, has been to see her learn how to pray. When we all sit down to eat and she hears the word 'Prayer" or 'Oración" she quickly folds her arms, and she even says "men" at the end, it is adorable! Here is Maija this past summer sitting in Winchester bridge

Wyatt is still with the same company, which by the way had a really fun Christmas party, it was a treat to go away just the two of us, and hang out in Banff with his co-workers, thanks to Ama (that's what Maija calls Grandma Olson, for always helping us with Maija, and letting her have sleep overs so Wyatt and I can hang out on our own)
Wyatt has been working VERY hard on our belated Christmas present, we got a wonderful new bathroom for Christmas, and we are really looking forward to it, once it is done I will try to post some pictures. I am really proud of how little by little our house is becoming more our own. I was not too convinced on the idea of buying an 'older' home, but I think it is neat to see it improve....Although if you had asked Wyatt about that while he was trying to replace the Flange in our bathroom his reply would not be a positive one. In the topic of Skillz Wyatt has had to learn how to put lino, do some plumbing work, put up drywall, etc, I'm very proud of all the hard work that he has put into our place.
Wyatt is also really getting into his photography, here is his web page. He mostly specializes in outdoor photos, and he is working on his outdoor portraits now. All the photos in this post were taken by Wyatt.
Here is one of Maija in Fish Creek Park

I usually don't like to post pictures of me, but I think Wyatt did a good job on this photo

As for me, I too am getting some new Skillz, in Sep 2008 I started taking Oil Painting classes with Chris Jordan, you can check out his page here, he has an art studio near by, and I have learn a lot. He is a really good artist, and mostly works with realism, which in my opinion is the best form of art. I have finished one painting, and I'm very close to finishing my second. Also in Sep I started working part time at Southland Leisure Center, as a babysitter, it is very different from Intuit, which I do miss at times, but I can bring Maija to work, and she gets to play with other kids, and I can also use their gym, pool, etc, so it is not a bad deal. Well guys I hope this message finds you well, Happy 2009!

Happy 2009

OK, so it is finally time to set up those New Years resolutions: So here they go...I hope I can do it
1) Reading 5 Classics (Don Quijote, Les Miserables, Crime & Punishment, Christmas Carol, Sense and Sensibility)
I am currently working on Don Quijote, we will see...this is about it for my reading goals, I know it sounds like a little bit, but I am somewhat of a slow reader.
2) Exercising at least 3 times per week.
3) Continue my Oil Painting from 2008
4) Read the Book of Mormon in English, French, and Spanish at least once this year, and the Doctrine and Covenants.

Well wish me luck!
Happy New Year!