2010 Review

It's officially 2011. Can you believe it? I'm surprised how much we have done this year. In case you are new to the blog, or just forgetful here's our review of the year:

In 2009 our family moved from our first house in Toronto, to a campground and then to another home in Toronto. We had to move shortly afterwards and on Dec 30th 2009, we began our move into our current house.

2010 brought our family into a new house. We live on the main floor of this house and we love it. It is a wonderful house and a great landlord and wonderful neighbours!

January we spent getting used to our new house. The boys went with Arnold to "Winter Camping". This is a family camp that our church puts on. Last year the boys went with their dad because we didn't have enough money for all of us to go. But truth be told I really enjoyed the time alone in the house. In January I also began our "New Food" goal. I wanted to make 40 to 50 new foods for our family to try. My first one was Southwestern White Chili
.

February was something that doesn't happen too often. It was the Olympics. We loved watching them. Arnold brought home some "bunny ears" from work and we got to watch it almost 24/7. A bonus of it being in Canada was that nothing *too* exciting happen while K was at work. The boys began a new love for Curling. We made a post for Grandpa Visser of the boys watching curling.

Kyler turned "a whole hand" in March. He loves getting bigger and knowing each year he will be older and be able to do more things. In March we also held our first ever "March Break Camp". Amber came to visit and hang out with us for a week. We are very excited to do this again this year. Along with all this fun we were able to have our first bike ride of 2010.

April bought alot of first for us as well. Our first swimming lessons finished, our first lawn cutting, our first speech therapy for Q, our first earth day/week at school, and our first Easter at our new house. We did get a few photos of our swimming lessons. The boys loved it. Swimming lessons are alot of fun for our boys. We have started again and the boys love it still.

In May we began to enjoy the outside weather. We even reminded ourselves of the year before that we moved to the campground. I'm just glad to have a solid non-leaking roof over my head. We also had a super exciting thing happen. The Tooth Fairy came to visit. Kyler lost his first tooth and it was so exciting for us.

Kyler finished school in June. It was hard for him to understand but I'm positive that spending a week at Nana and Papa's house helped alot. Quinton learned to ride a big boy bike! But the biggest, and most noteworthy thing that happen in June 2010 was "surviving the Toronto Earthquake".

July was crazy for us. We had alot of fun and were so busy. But we did have some great time outside enjoying the wonderful weather. I spent ALOT of this month training and thanks to some wonderful babysitters, and their siblings I managed to get in about 2 hours a day of training every work day. On the weekends I would train when I had time. This month I also went from New Food #27 to New Food #36. It was a busy month. My favourite was Strawberry pie!

Arnold and I took our very first "non-child" vacation! We went to Regina for a weekend to see a friend of ours from university, Tim, and his new wife, Deanna, get married. It was so nice to put a "face to the name" from the past few months and to see Tim's family again. We had an early Halloween at our house. Thanks to our INCREDIBLE neighbours we were able to have our pumpkins carved (the real reason for doing Halloween early), kids in costumes and even have them go trick-or-treating. They loved it. Something else our family did was go to my first ever Triathlon. It was great. I got some photos from mom and posted them here as well. I'm very excited to do that again this year!

September brought our family back into a routine. We had our "Heslop Family Weekend". Then Kyler headed back to school as a Sr. Kindergarten. We did our final harvest from the garden. I have some big plans for next years garden. Our family was so blessed to have Grandma and Grandpa Visser come and visit. It was so wonderful! The boys enjoyed them being here and we had alot of fun during their visit.

In October we did alot. We had "World Animal Day" at the zoo, Thanksgiving -indoors (first time in a few years), my birthday, apples, Halloween. And Kyler headed off to his first day at the Keli Program. He LOVES being a "Keli Kid!"

Arnold and I really enjoyed November. We had the chance to celebrate
Thanksgiving with our Young Adults Group. It was so much fun for me to cook, and celebrate with them. We made shoe boxes for the "Operation Shoe boxes" and Arnold went to "Promise Keepers" which was a great way for him to celebrate his birthday.

And, as December pasted by, I realized that yes, it is one of our busier months but it is also one of my favourite months. From tree cutting, decorating the house, playing in the snow and just enjoying every moment we have it's wonderful. Here's a great update post.

All in all a wonderful 2010.

We are praying God will bless us this year. As always we have a few "requests" but I know all things happen in His time.

The verse for this month is:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~ Jeremiah 29:11