2014 Year End :)

This past year has definitely been a good one for the Burdett Family. We started off the year in Cochrane and we are ending it in Orton. Lydia and Brigham have grown so much in the past twelve months. We saw Brigham get his first eye surgery done and found out he will need another. He and all things high are not friends. Haha. He falls off of something at least twice daily. I am hoping this next surgery will help him and his depth perception.

Lydia is just a little cutie. She has an amazing vocabulary (or at least I think so) and she is understanding a whole lot these days. She sings to herself and she has a great imagination. She love to play pretend. Brigham follows right along flapping his arms like a bird or roaring like a lion. Lydia has been learning a little bit of sign and can sign her name.

Brigham has just started to really babble and loves to say grandpa and bubbles and pee! He can copy most things we say now, but I think his favourite word to say these days is yummy! Everytime he sees candy or his favourite foods he repeats yummy and points his arm towards whatever it is he wants to eat. And boy, can that kid eat! He was off of all kinds of milk around 11 months old. It made his tummy upset and I was slightly overjoyed since I didn't want to have to wean him off of any kind of food or drink. He drinks water like a champ. If ever he is slightly unhappy, I just give him water and he is happy as can be.

Another thing Brigham loves are his stuffed animals. Or anything soft for that matter. He just snuggles right in. Lydia loves little babies. She is so kind and gentle whenever she sees ones and just likes to comment on how cute they are. Lydia is excellent at giving compliments as well. Anytime Kayla brings a friend over, she just has to comment on their earrings, shoes, hair, shirt, you name it! She also adores being with the girls. She likes to hang out in Kayla's room while they get ready for whatever the day holds. Lydia actually has invited me into her own room to talk at times. I think it makes her feel special and grown up. haha.

This Christmas we stayed over at my parents house in Lethbridge. My kids quite enjoyed that, and Lydia especially liked having Uncle Brad to play with. She was also pretty excited to talk to her Uncle Jeff on Skype, but when it came down to it, she was just a little too shy to even show her face.

Lydia is really enjoying her presents she got for Christmas including puzzles, a baby doll, chocolate and a play castle. The castle was also for Brigham too! He has mostly enjoyed the food of the season and reading his new books. Oh and he has loved loved loved his soft oversized stuffies. :) So cute.

One of my favourite parts of the Christmas holidays was getting to see our new little one at our ultrasound and finding out that we are having another little girl! We are due May 15th and if she follows suit and comes early, we should get to meet her sometime before Mothers day :)

Here I am at 21 weeks.

And here are some pictures of my cute kids :) Ignore the big scabs on their faces. haha

Way too excited for a stuffed animal. haha

Renovation Overload

These past few months have been so busy out here in Orton. Here are some projects that we have been working on. These first pictures are from August/September when we were converting the upstairs laundry room into another bedroom for Brigham. Now there are three bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. Anthony installed two new windows into the bedroom.

Lydia really enjoys being involved and helping her daddy. 

This is the Family room/TV room downstairs. we took out the click laminate flooring to get rid of the weird squishiness that was under it. It turns out the old carpet was left underneath and it got wet at some point. It stunk so bad!! We scraped up the old carpet and ended up taking out the wall between the room and the wasted space at the bottom of the stairs. I am hoping that we will be able to utilize the space there and make it a more open room. I hate the idea of a TV or a computer in a closed room, so opening this room up will put my parent mind at ease when it comes to kids and TV/computer use.

Kim and her kids helped us take the wall down! 

This project was one that Anthony really wanted done. As you can see there have been a few different windows on this wall before. They are all framed in differently. Before we put our big window in there were two small windows. It was a bit difficult to watch kids playing out front since window space was limited. Now I can do dishes and watch my kids outside! It is really nice. 

We ended up putting in a second light on the other side of the window because when we took the old windows out, there was a wire running in between them! It was an old wire too so we had to hook it up to something since Anthony didn't want to go up into the attic to see where it came from. fair enough. The slope of the roof on this house leaves very little attic space.

This last project here is one that Anthony really loved doing, but had nothing to actually do with our house. We got a dog and in preparation, Anthony built a dog/playhouse. that way when it is cold out, our kids can go play with the dog and still be warm. There are heat lamps in there to keep our little puppy warm. Yes, we live on a acreage and our dog lives outside.

  

 There is our little Luna! the kids and the dog are quite pleased with Anthony's handiwork. 

We managed to solve the heat problem in our house...Well, my dad did. haha. One day our house wouldn't get warmer than about 17 degrees. I was freezing! We built a blanket fort and stayed inside to keep warm. The furnace was running all day long and nothing. I texted my dad to complain and the first thing he asked was when I last replaced the furnace filter. Um, I had been meaning to since we moved in, but I hadn't done it yet. I took out the furnace filter and seriously, five minutes later, we were at 21 degrees. I bought a little furnace filter that lets a lot more air through and we have been nice and toasty ever since. 

Well that is pretty well it for the exciting renovations that we have done thus far. We are still doing little things a bit at a time. It is difficult to get anything done right now seeing as school just ended for Anthony and he has four exams to study for. Little by little we will get things done. :)