Christmas in the 80's

Mom had been lamenting how some of her ornaments were too old and she needed some upgrades. Maryn, after looking at the tree for awhile says to Mom "Yup, these ornaments have seen better days. They're like from the 80's when you were born!"

Another Blog to Follow

I know, I know, you're loving all this interesting bloggy news, but it's so hard to follow in all these different places! Brent and Chantelle have their own blog, knappedy.blogspot.com so you can follow that for updates on them and the new baby.

Baby on the Way!

Brent and Chantelle are announcing that they are having a baby on or around May 23rd!! We are so excited for them! Kenna and Brooks will love having a cousin, and I'm sure Mom will love having a grandbaby near enough to snuggle:-) Congrats, we can't until May to meet the little guy/girl (named Truck or Pinder, if Brent had his way. Eeew!)

When you THINK you thought it

As I'm sure most of you know by now, Brian has taken a full time job with a commercial contracting company called The Woodard Group. Work has been very slow because of such an unstable economy, so when this opportunity arose, it was perfect timing. He is currently learning the ropes of a commercial superintendent, and will get on to estimating and job managing in the future. This is very valuable mangerial experience, as well as experience with commercial building, which he has almost no experience with in the past. We have still kept our company "open" and will take on side/sub work. Brian worked so hard for his Class A, it would be silly to let it go. He thinks he'd like to stick with The Woodard Group for awhile, but if the economy really picks up, we always have the option to go back to True Tangent (the name of our company). It's a real shift for him, instead of actually doing the work, he watches other people do work, he said it's actually pretty exhausting! :-)

All that background to say...the other day he was in their carpenters shop and met the cabinet maker. He talked with him for awhile, and helped him with a few things. He said it was very funny...you know when you think you are just thinking something, but instead you say it outloud?...well this guy accidentally said "Nice guy, strange hair" to Brian. Haha!! Brian said it was like, oops! I told him that would be the perfect name for his blog, if he had one. Nice Guy, Strange Hair. Hilarious.

Darn It!

Kenna has recently been getting in a lot of trouble for being saucy, talking back and/or arguing with an instruction (she has way better ideas:-)...
Today in the store I gave her a piece of gum with the wrapper still on it and she was struggling to get it free. "Darn it!" she says, "Kenna, we do not say darn it, those are angry words" I told her. A moment later she says, "but Mom, I am". "You are what?" "Angry!" she said her most emphatic voice. Yikes. I guess I am getting my payback now from my childhood days:-)

Alberta Friends & Family

Some pics stolen from Kari. Kari is almost family, as she is Chantelle's cousin...here are some great shots she posted of the boys etc. If not for Kari I don't think they'd have nearly as many nice pics from AB. She is going to photography school and has an amazing camera.

Davis, Kaden & Logan, up on the train tracks

Brent and his bewildered face!

Davis and Kari

Kaden and Kari, niiiice...

Kari and Logan

Kari and Chantelle

Logan & Kari, again.

Brent & Chantelle Kennedy!

July 5th, 2008 Brent and Chantelle said "I do"! The wedding was at 3pm, and the day started out lovely. It wasn't too hot or too cold, really. We had a few moments of drama during the ceremony, as Chantelle whispers 'vows' to Mom and mom realized they were in the van. Somehow this fell on me to run to the van and retrieve them. I made it back, vows in hand, literally without a second to spare and completely winded. Naturally right after the vows I had to sing! It was a very nice ceremony and the church was decorated nicely. Kenna and Brooks remained seated and happy during their travels up the aisle (in a John Deere wagon), so that made Mommy happy. Kenna even managed to toss a handful or two of petals out onto the floor.

After the ceremony we headed to the park for a "picnic" as Kenna called it. Unfortunately it started to rain, mostly softly (with sun shining) which was great for pics, but bad for my hair. Towards the end it was coming down hard so we wrapped it up quickly and went on to the reception hall.

The reception was very nice, we had a turkey dinner, with an open juice and pop/soda (for Brian's sake) bar. Dessert was wedding cake made by Chantelle's aunt. There were 4 layers, and each one was a different kind of cake. Speeches were nice, powerpoint glitched but worked, emcee's were very funny. All in all it was a wonderful day and it was as perfect as you could have a wedding be. Congrats to the newlyweds!

We have some (about 500!) candid shots of the wedding, park, and reception, however with dialup it isn't very feasible to post many of them right now. I will be home on the 22nd and will post tons of pics as quickly as possible. Promise!

Note: I (Darla am posting this with my mom, showing her how, we set her up to contribute to the blog, so hopefully she can every now and again...it's a little dicey with dialup)