Weiwei's Birthday

This weekend we celebrated Weiwei's birthday! Micah and I decided to cook up something new for this special occasion; so we dug to the bottom of our freezer to find the crown roast we had bought this summer. For all of you who don't know what a crown roast is, its like a bunch of pork chops tied together with the bones sticking up to make the shape of a crown. Here is the king of the kitchen himself with his crown! hehehe....


With a little bit of advice from Rhonda on how to cook it our roast was a success. Weiwei was very excited to dig into this work of art!




Micah who is a gravy lover decided that this would not be a feast without making gravy from the drippings. So after getting some advice from his aunt Carol (who he believes to be a gravy master) he was hard at work mixing up gravy for the special meal. It turn out to be really flavorful, however it was a little bit thick as it wouldn't even pour out of the gravy dish we had it in!




We ended our meal with a delicious Crapple Crisp (Crapple is a combination of apples and cranberries) and ice cream! We ended the evening with a couple rounds of a new game that Stephen and Maria purchased this weekend called Sequence. It was a lot of fun to play!

Pumpkins at Pauls

This past Saturday we went over to our friend Paul's house for Pizza and Pumpkins! First we enjoyed many different kinds of pizza for supper before we got down to work; carving our pumpkins.


Micah and I worked together as a team. I got to do the dirty work and clean the pumpkin out while my artistic husband carved the pumpkin.


While Micah was busy creating a pumpkin master piece I was hard at work in the kitchen cookin up the pumpkin seeds. They are so yummy baked in the oven with a little bit of olive oil and of course lots of salt. Everyone was very creative with their pumpkin creations. Here is the outcome of ours!



You might not be able to tell what that is so here is a better picture we took the following day at home in the light.



Maybe you can tell better from this picture that its a stork carrying a baby! What a creative husband I have.

New Blog

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to let all you wonderful readers know that I have started a new blog called Kate's Kitchen


It's something I have wanted to start for a while now and with some free time on my hands I decided to give it a go. This blog will have lots of nutrition information along with yummy delicious recipes! Feel free to check it out as I have already posted some stuff!

Settling In

Sunday morning we started off with some praise and prayer in our new home before heading off to church. When we got home from church we were all so tired from the late night before that everyone needed a rest.

Meanwhile back in St. Stephen my parents were not resting as they were trying to pile everything they could onto the back of Dad's truck to bring up to us. I think they managed to get more then we excepted to come on the truck.


Mom arrived late in the afternoon. We once again unloaded all the stuff that she had brought up. Before we knew it the boys had the tree trimmers out, that she brought up, and were working on the back yard. For the next hour or so everyone was cutting branches down and hauling them off to a conner in the yard. Mom and Rhonda were a little intense as they were right up on the ladders using a hack saw to get at some pretty big branches.



The next day mom and I were off to the old apartment to give it a good cleaning. We did make some time to do a little bit of house shopping. We purchased some curtains and when we got home mom put them up before she headed out side to mow the lawn.


While mom was outside doing work I was busy inside taking pictures of our new home !!


This is my beautiful kitchen. Its the first room you enter when you come in the back door. I really love that its yellow; it makes it very warm feeling. My second favorite thing about the kitchen is the mugs that are hanging!!! I just love the idea to have our mugs hanging over by the coffee pot.



This is a shot of the living room, which was taken from the kitchen. This is what sold us the house, we just love that the kitchen opens into the living room through an arch way.

This is the washroom. We really like the color blue in this room and I love how our old shower curtain from our first apartment made an excellent bathroom curtain when we cut a lot of the length off of it.




When Micah came home from work him and mom were hard at work putting the crib together.





It took a little bit of time to figure out where all the parts went and to figure out the length of the screws that we needed but they continued to work at it.




And then finally...they had figured it all out! It looks great! The nursery still needs a bit of work before we show the real final pictures of this room. A creative man from our church is working on a mural for the baby's room of Noah's arch, its going to look so cute!



Even after all the work that we did with our parents there was still more to be done this weekend. Micah's grandparents decided it was their turn to come and put there expertise to work.

Dora is a great painter so once the boys had the doors off and outside she was hard at work. She painted three doors for us that didn't have any paint on them and even did a touch up job in the spare bedroom closet.


The boys were busy at work scouting out the landscaping stuff early in the morning and then getting right to work building shelfs. Micah took a quick run to the hardware store to pick up some boards and he came back with this pretty cool stud finder!





Gramp did most of the cutting while Micah was busy inside finding the studs; so the shelfs would be strong!





They worked hard all day and by the end of the day they had put 7 shelfs in the spare room closet for our books and one longer shelf in the baby's room closet.




We feel so blessed to have had so much help getting us settled into our new house. There is still work that needs to be done but we feel we are well on our way of making our new house a home!

Moving Day!

It was an early morning on Saturday as it was moving day! Micah and his dad took off around 8:15 to go get the U-haul truck that we rented. They arrived back to the apartment a little before 9:00; it just so happened it was the same time many of our good friends had shown up to help us. Once the truck was in place the boys started packing it up. Within 1 hour the truck was packed and they were on there way to get some stuff that we were storing at our friends house. By 10:30 the truck was at our new home and it was being unpacked.



The boys had great team work as they unloaded the truck, brought the items in and received direction from me as to where to put stuff...however there was so much stuff it was hard to direct everyone where to go with it.




While the boys were unloading the truck our girl friends where also very busy. They were helping put away all the boxes that were coming in, making the beds, re arranging the furniture in the bedrooms, cleaning out the cupboards and cleaning the bathroom!



Rhonda was also hard at work cooking seafood chowder for our helpers.


Before we knew it the truck was empty and everything that we own was squished into our new home. It wasn't even 11:30 when Micah was pulling out of here with an empty U-Haul to take back. When Micah arrived back home I was told to meet him outside with the camera. I went outside to find my husband sitting in the trunk of our friends car with a rocking chair that he had just picked up at a yard sale for $5.00! It was just what I had mentioned that I wanted for the baby's room earlier that week!


After enjoying a delicious lunch of seafood chowder, biscuits and banana bread for dessert it was back to work as we tried to make the house look like we lived there.



Our two friends Jamie and Stephen put together our conner computer desk,

We tried to orangize the food and dishes in the kitchen,


And Micah and his dad decided to clean out the attic so we could put some more insulation up there....they ended up finding some wacky and cool things! (this is Micah inside of an old TV)


The rest of our day was filled with more cleaning, putting up shelfs, getting a curtain rod for the bathroom and putting things away in the basement. By the end of our first day in our new home things were looking great!

Labour Day Weekend

After finishing up my internship, Micah and I decided that we needed a vacation to celebrate not only my graduation accomplishment but also our two year anniversary. So on Saturday Sept 1st we headed to Nova Scotia for a wedding. After the wedding we headed into Halifax to spend the night at a hotel. On Sunday we decided to get up early to attend a lovely church in Lower Sackville (Yeah Gateway!). After the service we went back to the pastor's house with his family and 2 of our close friends to enjoy the yummiest craziest salad ever made! It was such a beautiful day that we decided after lunch to pack into the Aveo and head out to Peggy's Cove.


It was my first time there; I couldn't believe how amazing the view of the ocean was.








We had such a fun afternoon taking lots of pictures,


Climbing through the rocks,

And even taking a break to stop and chit chat for a while


Once we were tried out from all the rock climbing we decided it was time to head back home. What a great vacation!!

Graduation

After 48 weeks I finally graduated from The Moncton Hospital Graduate Internship Program. The ceremony took place on Friday August 31st in the afternoon. The four of us had family members and friends come to share in this proud moment as we received our internship diplomas, Dietitian pins and a dozen roses.




I was very blessed to have both my parents and Micah's parents come up as well as Dave and Dora (Micah's grandparents). I also had some close friends from our church attend the ceremony and other invited friends.



Best of all Micah had the day off to come and celebrate this achievement with me. I know that without his support throughout this year I would not have made it.


After the ceremony we all headed over to Pizza Hut to celebrate over pizza and chocolate milk (it was one of my cravings at the time).

We bought a house

With the internship coming to an end and baby's due date getting closer, Micah and I were on the hunt for a house. We spent many nights driving around taking down realtors' phone numbers. One night as Micah was calling a phone number we had randomly copied down he met a nice realtor who was willing to help us find a house. After Micah met with him, we had a appointment to see 6 houses on Saturday afternoon.

After several disappointing visits..... we ended up at this cute 3 bed room bungalow!!

Right away Micah loved this house as it has much potential. After praying about it and talking with our families we decided to make an offer. To make a long story short, this is the house that God wanted us to have and two days after we put the offer, it got accepted at just the price we needed! So the plan is that on September 17th we take the keys and become owners of this cute fixer upper starter home! We are excited to see how God will use us in this neighborhood! We will be posting more pictures as we begin to clean it up and make it our own home!

Rob's Birthday

On Aug 12th we left for an adventure to Keswick Ridge for our friend Rob's surprise birthday party. He's a quarter of a century old!!

We enjoyed lots of yummy food as his family hosted a wonderful BBQ for this celebration. We also got to see many friends from the Fredericton and Saint John area that we don't get to see to often.

After Supper we all enjoyed a fun game of sherades and ice cream cake!

Kate at Camp

This summer I had the privileged as an intern to go to Camp Dia-best. This is a camp that is held each summer at Camp Rotary specifically for children with diabetes. There were also 2 other interns from other nutrition programs selected to go; along with two registered Dietitians. When we arrived on Friday evening we were told that we would no longer be known by our real names but we were each given camp names; so for the rest of the week the camp staff and children referred to me as Tangy.

Our days were filled from morning to evening. We were responsible for posting all the nutrition information for each meal and snack on poster board around the dinning room. During meal times we were each in charge of one cabin. It was our responsibility to make sure that the children accurately counted the right amount of carbohydrates that they consumed. During snack time we handed out snacks and counted carbs. The afternoons where great as we spent them on the beach swimming with the kids.

One of our big jobs was during rest time. One cabin each day would come to the chapel to play nutrition games that we had created. We made these games to help them know how to create a balanced meal, how to read labels and better visualize what a proper portion of food was. This is me with the dietitian Spicy; we were in charge of the label game.




Camp wasn't just all work for us as we got to play and party with the campers as well. This picture was taken the last night during their carnival.

Josh's Graduation Party!

While Micah's Minnesota family was still down visiting, Deja (our sister in law) hosted a Graduation BBQ party for her husband Josh! Josh had been going through blocks of school to complete his electrician papers. As of this summer he is officially done! What a blessing it was to share in this special day with him along with many friends and family members.

Frank and Lilian's Wedding

July was the month of weddings for us. We had 3 in a row! The last wedding we attended in July was a renewing of vows by our dear friends Frank and Lilian. We first met Lilian two years ago when we moved to Moncton. Right away her outgoing and loving spirit made us feel so welcomed. She opened up to us right away and told us about her dear Frank who she had married 3 years earlier, before coming to Canada with her family and they had been praying for Frank to receive a visa so he to could come to Canada. Our prayer group prayed for him every Friday night and one year later we greeted Frank into Canada. It took Lilian a little more time then Deborah to plan the wedding so this summer we were blessed to attend their wedding ceremony.


Now the difference between Canadian weddings and African weddings (besides everyone being MORE then fashionably late : ) is that the Africans NEVER stop dancing. They dance up and down the aisles, people dance around the bride and groom and the best part was when Lilian's brother Calvin and friend Lea danced the cake knife and server up the reception aisle!!


Now the dancing didn't stop there. After the speeches and eating all the guest headed to the dance floor to learn some new moves. Here is Calvin teaching Micah how to really bust a groove!

After all these weddings Micah has really turned into a dancing machine!!