Cruisin'

Last night I had a wonderful experience cruising on the Norwegian Pearl from Seattle to Vancouver. I went with my family and took my sister in law Alison with me (Marc was starting his new job) and while it was quite a tiring experience it definitely was a fun one. It's always nice when the family gets together. There is a lot of joking and laughing and yes...a little mocking too. We ate waaaaaay toooo much but when you are on a place where there are ten restaurants and food available whenever you want it, it's easy to just keep on eating. Here are a few pictures.

Two Princesses and a Car

My children are finally getting into the swing of things and getting along (for now anyway). Here is a picture of them playing dress-up. They haven't done this in a while but Hannah really likes to dress her little brother up like a girl and Ben doesn't seem to mind it. He does make a pretty cute looking princess.
So you would think because we are almost into the third week of September that we would have everything figured out already. Nope! Last week was interesting what with Marc being sick at home. In the midst of that he had the opportunity to apply for a job at a different school. He loves Abby Collegiate but after seven years he was really looking for a change. So as of next week he will be the new English teacher at Robert Bateman Secondary. He's really excited (but sad to leave some friends)about this new job but it also presented us with a new bunch of problems. As most of you know Marc usually bikes to work. Well, because Bateman is farther away it seemed like biking would be more of a stress than a solution. Finally, after 13 years of having one vehicle in our family we bit the bullet and got a new one. It's going to be very weird having flexibility when we are so used to having to work everything out. We feel very blessed!

ALL GROWN UP!

What a busy week! We've gotten into the routine of things (I think) and I am feeling quite busy! I blame this mainly on the beautiful weather because it seems I get nothing done when it is so nice outside. Who wants to be inside doing laundry, vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen when you can be at the waterpark or visiting outside with friends? I am actually looking forward to cooler weather so things can be more ordinary(???).

So my little boy is growing up. I remember when Hannah took her first swimming lesson and her new baby brother was sitting next to me while I watched her. Now Ben has begun swimming lessons and he is doing great. I wondered whether he would want to be in the water without his mom but he could care less if I was around. I guess that 's a good thing. His favourite things have been using a bucket to dump water on his head and being pulled around the pool on a floatie while he kicks and blows bubbles. He just loves it!

Hannah is really enjoying school but doesn't thing Ben and I should be doing things when she is not around. I guess the whole world is supposed to stop so that she doesn't miss out on anything. She has another great teacher this year and is slowly getting used to the fact that there are about twice as many kids in her class than last year.

Marc is sick and tired...literally. He's got a horrible cold and feels kind of lame for having to call in a TOC during the second week of school. We are praying that he will get better soon so that he can have a better start to this school year. In the mean time, it means one more person to pick up after and take care of. Oh well, I really do feel blessed to be able to stay home with my family.

Back to School!

Well today is the day it all started up again and I'm surprised how much stuff I got done. Hannah started grade 1 and is very excited about learning new things. It was nice to catch up with the other moms and see how their summers went.
Marc went back to work and is very tired and would like to actually get a good nights sleep for once (he's been a bit anxiety-ridden). Poor guy, I made him bike to work on his first day in the pouring rain.
I started back at the gym again today and will hopefully be able to do that a few times a week. I also started doing a little preschool program with Ben. I figure if I can get 45 mins out of him a day doing some sort of learning than I have succeeded. He hasn't got quite the attention span to do much more than that at this point. I also even managed to get three loads of laundry done and squeeze in my "stories" for the day.
I'm hoping that today was a good idea of what the rest of the school year holds. I hope Hannah continues to love learning, I hope Marc continues to love teaching, and I hope I continue to be a good mom to my son. I guess with God's help anything is possible.

Fun and Burnt Faces!

Today Marc and I went golfing. You might ask "Why would you go golfing on the hottest day of the month?" Well, we were asking ourselves the same question. Marc told me Meadowlands is a beautiful course and one that I would love. HA! Not quite. Yes it is beautiful but not the easiest to play. Marc also told me there is a lot of shade at Meadowlands and almost always a nice breeze. HA! Not quite. But in his defense, there are some nicely situated benches at the start of each hole that did give us a glimpse of shade (for the 30 seconds we got to sit down). I'm not trying to complain because I actually like playing golf. If we would have started on the 9th hole I could say I played fabulously. Unfortunately the first 8 were pitiful. But we had a great time together and that's what playing golf is all about for me. It's 4+ hours of uninterrupted time together where we can talk about anything and everything. And despite the heat and the burnt faces, it was a perfect way to spend the day together especially seeing the hectic schedule of life starts in less than a week. Yikes!

ARE WE INTERESTING ENOUGH??

I guess I spend a lot of time reading other people's blogs and I thought maybe I had enough to say that I could start one too. But then I wondered "Are we Bergens interesting enough for people to want to read our blog?" and "what really is the purpose of blogs anyway?" I came to the conclusion that perhaps friends and family from afar may want to have an idea of what is going on in our life, and in a time when we forget how to pick up the phone maybe this isn't such a bad alternative (although my husband would definitely argue with me). So I now am attempting to conquer another tool of the internet (when would you say that you use too many???). I hope that some of you find this interesting or at least some of you use this to lessen the boredom of your day. Who knows? Once in a while there just might be something worth knowing about the Bergens.