One Month On

One month ago God blessed us with the precious gift of a healthy baby girl, whom is no longer Penguin but Megan Ruth Goertzen. During the pregnancy I had to learn to trust God with the health of our baby we could not see and trust Him for His perfect timing. Megan arrived in the time that Kelssa was here visiting us, which was an incredible blessing as Kelssa was a wonderful help to us in those two weeks. The time of depending on God and trusting Him continues, I may be able to see our baby now but I am still at a loss many times as to what I can do to help her and having the energy to do so.

The week of her birth did not go the way we would have planned but we can see God's good hand in it and were so thankful to hold our little girl in our arms after some long days. 

It was a joy to see her and have her hold both our fingers soon after being born.

The ladies from church organised a baby shower for us. It is normal here to have them after the baby is born rather than before. It was an enjoyable afternoon with some fun games and conversations, as well as a short devotional from Davis' Mom reminding us that no matter how big or small a trouble seems we can come before God to obtain mercy and find grace and help in our time of need. They also wrote notes on nappies for me to read when changing Megan in the night. Some are funny, some encouraging; it was a great idea!

We may be a small congregation but there is no lack of children around her age. These three were all born within a month of each other, with Megan being in the middle. 

Getting her started on learning her New Zealand ABC's :-)

Quitls and Cushions

Last winter when I was not able to work and it was too cold to be outside I began working on various sewing projects, some with the thought of having children in the future (I will post some of those later). One was a New Zealand ABC quilt. When my nephew in NZ saw it he said "Aunty, can you make me a blanky like that". Well, I thought seeing as I had extra fabric I would love to do that for him. And then began the projects as then I wanted to make one for each of the NZ nieces and nephews.

This was the first one I made for Curtis, he loves Lego and these were the colours that I had. 

The circles are fabric yoyos
with batting in them and
sewn upside down. Because
they stick up I could only
quilt around the outside
edge and then sew around
the individual rectangles.

When looking in the local sewing shop I saw a panel hanging on a wall. Thinking it looked familiar I saw that it was in fact the NZ emergency vehicles. So after much thought decided that it would be less work to use a panel and that it would work well for Zeth.

Then for the girls, I started with a simple tri-coloured square pattern for Emily.

For Leira I worked out a pattern that would work with the amount of fabric I had left and added the brown which was left over from a project I did for a friend. The quilting pattern took away from it a bit but the flowers in the centre and corners are embroidered.



We wanted to get the quilts to the children for Christmas, and so decided to post them as there are no plans for anyone coming to take them back. So I had a deadline and that meant hand quilting would take way to long. I was able to use a long-arm quilting machine at the sewing shop which was fun to learn to use.

One day when some of our Canadian nieces and nephew were visiting, one of the girls asked if I could make her one too. I told her that I was doing them for the NZ nieces and nephews because I don't get to visit them and wanted them to know we think of them. She told me that she would rather have me spend time with them than have a quilt. I thought that was pretty special and when I was not able to do much due to being sick with pregnancy I began work on a project for the Canadian nieces and nephews. The first three cushions are made with what I had left over from other projects.

I got to the point where sewing was too much for me and so Davis' Mom taught me to knit. Then I got an idea, why not knit cushions for our other niece and nephews. Well, that was sure a trickier job than I had thought but this was the finished project.

Growing Family

Here is a picture of the youngest member of our family whom we shall call Penguin till the day we get to met and hold him/her. We expect Penguin to join us in this cold world (I say cold as we got out first real snow fall today and it will almost certainly still be white when Penguin is born) in March.

This past week has been exciting with feeling movement for the first time and getting to see Penguin in the ultrasound.

We are thankful for the blessing of new life and for all the ways in which God is already teaching us through this little one. I am already learning a lot about patience, trusting and depending on God for each day. We are aware that life is going to change (already has really) once Penguin joins us and will be trusting God for strength and wisdom to raise this little one for His glory.

Visiting in Jasper

In November we had planned to make a trip to Jasper to visit Davis' Grandma Nickel but the weather was not suitable to travelling. We got something like 15 cm of snow that weekend and there was also freezing rain. A combination that does not make for good roads.

With Davis' work being closed over Christmas-New Year we planned to head off again. And this time we had good weather, even if it was rather cold. We forgot our camera so Davis' phone had to suffice in trying to capture the beauty of that area.

The price of gas was good for a road trip also!

Us with Grandma Nickel, she is 92.

Taken from standing on Lac Beauvert.
They were frozen enough for walking or skating on
but we decided the wind was too cold for skating.

Athabasca Falls - partially frozen

On the last section going into Jasper I was commenting on how it almost felt like I was back in NZ, narrow road with corners, mountains, water and there was even a section with sand. But the snow falling then a herd of elk on the side of the road quickly changed that perception. The road was to busy to stop for a photo but on the way out we saw a group of bull elk which we were able to stop to admire.

Two of the four bull elk.

A Coyote that ran beside us nicely for the photo.

While in Jasper we had our third Christmas dinner with Grandma and Davis' Uncle Roy's family. It was an enjoayble time and it was so lovely to meet Grandma Nickel and some others from Davis' family. 

We were very thankful for good roads as one never knows what you will get at this time of a year. I will end with two sets of pictures taken two days after we got back.

Photos are taken 24 hours apart.

By the end of the day
over 30cm of snow had fallen.

Sewing with Denim

When the gardening season came to an end I thought I would have to find something else that I would be able to do when I was home. We didn't have a picnic blanket to use on the picnics we had, so after seeing some denim ones I thought I would give it a try. 

I got a bag full of old jeans (from someone sized bigger than me) for free so began to cut them into squares.

This was my first one. After completing it I realised that it was on the smaller side even just for the two of us so I began a second.

I got a little more creative on this one, using different shades of denim to make a pattern.

After completing that one I thought I would try to be just a little more creative and try my hand at embroidery. It certainly took longer to make this one form beginning to finish, with the embroidery and the bigger size but I enjoyed it. 



The Embroidered squares on the outside are bigger versions in colour of the pictures on the inside.

Still having some fabric left and sometime before I could begin a new sewing project with cotton I thought I would use some of it to make some gifts. 

These are hot mats.

Skirts for my Canadian nieces.

I am enjoying the time that I am spending sewing, some projects for our use now, some for the future and others to give away. I am learning things along the way, such as sewing with stretch denim makes it really hard to get a flat result!

Grandad's Visit

For the past two weeks we had the lovely privilege of having my Grandad Harris come and stay with us. It was very special to have a visitor from New Zealand and special that it was him.

When he arrived the weather was milder and there were still autumn coloured leaves on the trees. During that week we did some sight seeing around the area and went for walks. 

When it was cool in the mornings and evenings we worked on puzzles. Five were completed during his stay.

We went for drives to see some of the touristy things and the landscape. One was this curved wooden bridge built in 1943. We also went to a couple of museums to learn about the building of the Alaska Highway and history of Fort St John.

In our travels we didn't see a whole lot of wildlife but this moose was spotted on our way to church.

  
On two evenings we went out hunting bear with Davis' Dad. The first night we just saw some deer. On the second night we saw two bears. One of them we got close enough to that we certainly didn't need the binoculars. It was probably about 5 meters away then the height up the tree he climbed. It was too small to shoot so didn't get to see that part of the hunting action.

On Monday it was Canadian Thanksgiving so we had a thanksgiving meal with the Goertzen family. There was the traditional turkey then some bear roast so that Grandad could have a taste. 

On the second Wednesday we awoke to some snow. It was quite wet and the road out the the Thiessen's farm was on the icy slippery side (giving Grandad an idea of transitional winter roads).

It was hard to say goodbye at the airport on the Friday after having such a lovely time together. The time went by too fast. We look forward to seeing others from NZ either here or when we get back there.

The end of summer.

On Saturday it was a lovely sunny day with a high of 26....
On Sunday it was snowing and a high of 6. The temperature here can certainly change quickly!

Knowing what the forecast was I decided that my plants would most likely not survive several days of below ten degrees so got to picking all the tomatoes and cucumbers. The tomatoes will ripen inside over the next while, at least I am hoping that most of them will :-)

The carrots and beetroot are still in the garden, waiting to be picked in about a week.

As we drove to church on Sunday there were some flurries but not much snow to be seen.

This is what it looked like when we came out of church. There is snow falling at our place but it is melting when it gets to the ground. We had a high of 2 today.

I am thankful that when snow comes it doesn't always stay for the rest of winter, as it is technically still Autumn, but melts away. We have some warmer sunny days on the forecast for the end of the week.