And here’s Ben’s school picture.  So much nicer than the ones I remember getting when I was little.  What happened to the cheesy, fake backgrounds?  Ben says they actually went outside for these pictures and that’s a real tree!

Woohoo!  It was a good picture day.   We now have Ben’s school pictures and we got our family pictures back.  They all turned out great.  Here’s a couple of my favorites…

Tomorrow will be one year since Marek died.  I’m having such a huge mix of emotions.  I miss him terribly.  I’ll always be angry that we lost.  I’m sad for the life he didn’t get to live.  I’m sad too that Ben is missing out on having a sibling.  They were so close .  But I”m also happy that we’re recoving together as a family.  Ben laughs a lot.  And he’s finding his independant self again.  Life is mostly normal again.  Work is good, too.  I’m my boss now, instead of my own employee.  It’s a subtle distcinction, but it’s good to be management – so far anyway – I’ve only been there a couple of weeks.  But it’s a good step in the right direction.

I hope tomorrow isn’t too hard.  Technically it’s just another day.  But the memories are a little more “there”, you know?

Ooooh.  My blog book is almost done.  I added a whole bunch of pictures of Marek to the end of the book.  A bunch that weren’t in the orignial blog postings.  The rest is exactly as it was in the blog.  I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

Ok.  As promised, pictures of Ben’s birthday…

I made a Wall-e cake for Ben.  It’s basically a Wall-e toy sitting on a rectangle cake with some “cubes” piled up in front of Wall-e.  I did the whole thing from scratch.  Even the icing, which was a whipped cream icing.  I was so proud that the whipped cream stayed firm.  I was so worried that it would melt and go all runny.  Wouldn’t that have been attractive?

Ben was so funny.  As he opened his gifts, he was placing them behind him, in sort of a pyramid.  By the end, it looked like a toy store display!

I still can’t believe he’s 5.  Definitely a little man now!

Ben is 5 years old!  His official birthday was yesterday.  I can’t believe he’s so big now.  Where did the last 5 years go?  I’ll post some birthday pictures as soon as I can.  But this is what he looks like now:

Ben has also started skating lessons.  His tiny skates are soooo cute!  He did WAY better than I did when I first started skating.  Apparently I just stood there and cried.  Here’s my little man – his first time ever on skates.  NHL here we come! 

Ugh.  What a COLD thanksgiving!  It was freezing in Canmore.  The great thing about Canmore is, it’s nice anyway – even if it’s super cold.  I just can’t believe it’s essentially winter.  As I write this, it’s blizzardy outside.  It’s way too early!  I was hoping for another nice fall, but we went straight to winter.  Ugh.

But we really did have an awesome thanksgiving.  We played a ton of cards and had a ton of good food.  Merv and I even went to the Banff Springs hotel for our slightly belated anniversary dinner.  We had fondue and it was soooooo good!   This is us in Banff:

Next week is Ben’s birthday.  I can’t believe he’s going to be 5 already!  I’ll definitely post some pics….

Busy Busy Busy….

Yesterday was our anniversary.  7 years already.  Where does the time go?

Ben’s birthday is in 2 weeks.  He’s going to be 5 already.  Where does the time go?  Oh wait.  I said that already.

I’m busy taking this blog and turning it into a book.  I’ve taken all the posts, pictures and comments from all of 2008 and put them in a book format.  Now I’m doing the editing.  It’s a huge job, but I think it’s going to turn out great.  And it’ll be a great way to have a documented story of Marek’s life and someday, Ben can read it himself.  I’ll let you know how it turns out!

Well, Ben is settling in well at school.  And I went to meet the teacher night this week.  I took my mom too, which was fun because it’s the school she used to teach at and now she’s on the other side of the whole parent-teacher thing.  Anyway, I love Ben’s teacher and I think it’s going to be a great year.  It’s french immersion, but it’s not quite as much “immersion” as I would have liked.   She still speaks a lot of english to the kids, but Ben’s pretty fluent already, so hopefully there will be more and more french.  He loves it though and that’s the important part.

Ben has also started gymnastics and I think he likes that almost as much as kindergarten.  Almost every day, he asks if it’s a gymnastics day.  Nope, only Saturdays.  But it’s so much fun to watch him run and jump and climb.

And this past weekend we went to a show.  Merv and I took Ben to see the Backyardigans.  The whole thing was a tiny bit cheesy, but the kids loved it.  It’s total chaos in the audience, but it was fun.

This weekend we’re getting family pictures done.  We haven’t had one done in ages, so it’ll be good.  I’ll post a good one or two when we get them back.  I hope the weather holds because we’re planning the photo shoot outside!

Today was the first day of kindergarten.   I was so excited about it, you’d think it was MY first day of kindergarten.  People asked if I was going to cry when I dropped Ben off.  Yeah right.  Ben quickly waved “Bye Mom!” and was gone.  Even, if I’d wanted to cry, I wouldn’t have had time.  Besides, it was way too exciting.  His teacher is super nice and I think he’s going to have a great time there.   And it’s neat to think he’s going to the same school I did.  Here’s his first day of school picture.  Enjoy!   Before we know it, he’ll be headed off to University!