Alex

Yesterday was Alex's first birthday. We celebrated with homemade pizza and store-bought cake (I was at work all day; no time to bake).
Here's Alex enjoying his pizza.
Here he is blowing on the cake after the candle had already been blown out by his brother and father. He enjoyed the cake very much. Here is a series of pictures illustrating how much he enjoyed it:
After a quick bath, we gave him his presents. He got a Cars pillow from Kenny and a toy phone from Avril and me.
In other news, Avril spent last week down south looking for a house to buy in Picture Butte. Our mortgage broker said that we should be able to get a mortgage up to $170,000. We made an offer on a 1/2 duplex, and the offer has been accepted and the contract signed. Now we're just waiting for the mortgage to be approved. The house needs a lot of work (new shingles, new flooring upstairs, new appliances, new windows), so we're trying to get a little extra money on the mortgage to cover those costs. We're paying $138,500 on the house itself.

Picture Butte

I spent last week down in Picture Butte for what Dad calls a "job audition." And the audition went well. I awed them with my grant-application-writing skills, and they offered me a job as Assistant Administrator. (No, not Assistant to the Administrator.) Picture Butte is a nice little town 20 minutes north of Lethbridge, and the town's staff is fairly small. They have a great bakery, and a good golf course. I start May 11. Since I was offered the job, Avril and the boys have stayed down south to look for a place to live. If we can buy a place, that'll be great, but I've been told that banks these days won't give you a mortgage until you've been working at your current job for six months, so we'll probably end up renting Mum and Dad's retirement house in Lethbridge until we're allowed to buy. In the meantime, I'm living like a bachelor if bachelors had nice family houses. This involves eating poorly, playing Rock Band 2 really loud, being lonely, and sleeping great. Most of this week will actually be spent at the Local Government Administrators Association convention in Red Deer, anyway.

Pictures from Internship Wrap-Up

I received a bunch of pictures today from Alberta Municipal Affairs from the Internship Wrap-Up session.
The interns at the Alberta Legislature Building


The interns with Deputy Minister Ray Gilmore


Me receiving a certificate from Deputy Minister Gilmore

Internship Wrap-Up

After work last Tuesday, we went up to Edmonton for the last of three conferences for the Alberta Municipal Interns. I enjoyed meeting up with my fellow interns, and it's too bad that this was our last official time getting together. I will, however, see most of them again in two weeks for the Local Government Administrators Association convention in Red Deer. The highlight of the three-day conference was the tour of the Alberta Legislature Building. We got the public servants' tour, which is supposedly better than the normal tour. Having never been on the normal tour, I'm not sure what we got to see that most people don't get to see. I didn't have my camera with me, but I should be getting pictures sent to me by the people in charge of the Internship, which I will post here once I receive them.
When I wasn't networking, I got to hang out with Sara and her family. (Mum, too, but I don't have any pictures of her.) Above is Alex and Eloise watching TV from behind bars.
We had Swiss Chalet twice while we were up there. It's my favourite restaurant, and the closest one is in Calgary (gag!). Alex and Kenny were both being very cute. Kenny especially was not being his usual shy self and was showing off how cute and smart he is.
For any of you who follow Sara's blog, you already read about Kenny, Max, and Charlie playing tag, so I won't tell you about it again. Just enjoy the pictures.

We came home Saturday afternoon, and I went back to work on Monday. I had been working in Three Hills since the second week of December, and this is my first week back in Trochu in a while. I won't work in Three Hills again. The rest of my internship will be in Trochu, with the exception of next week, which I will be spending in Picture Butte.

On The Mend

It was a rough weekend. Everyone was sick except for me. Kenny got it first, then Alex and Avril fell ill. It was a pretty bad cold. Somehow, I haven't come down with it yet. It's probably holding off until I get to Edmonton later this week, as is the tradition. None of us slept well over the weekend, and there was a lot of phlegm flying around. The three of them seem to be in much better shape today, so that when I inevitably get sick, Avril can pick up the slack.

Since she's feeling better, Avril decided to do some housecleaning today, and the boys, of course, wanted to help. Here are some pictures. Excuse the photo quality; these were taken with my phone:

Alex Makes a Phone Call

I was sitting on the couch downstairs with Alex yesterday after work. He was having a fun time climbing and jumping around. Eventually, he saw the telephone on the back of the couch and grabbed it. I let him investigate if for a little while. Then he started pushing random buttons. I decided to take it away from him, and he put up a fight. We wrestled for it, and when I finally took it from him, I hung it up. It immediately rang. I answered it and the person on the other end said, "This is 911 emergency. We received a call from this number. Do you have an emergency?" Bad baby! Bad baby!

Long Weekend

I like Family Day for two reasons:

1. It's a holiday without pomp or ceremony. Just a nice day off of work.
2. I always forget that it's coming, so it's like a surprise long weekend.

Those are also the two reasons why I like Victoria Day.

Early last week, in discussing what we were going to do for Valentine's Day, Avril said, "Afton will watch the kids for us if we take them to her house." They were just kidding, but I took them up on the offer. After work on Friday, Avril and I loaded the boys into the Crapvalier and drove down to Lethbridge, snow be damned.

It turned out that Avril's parents watched the kids instead of Afton, but it's all the same to me. We had an early date in an effort to avoid the dinner crowd at restaurants. We had a late lunch (thus also avoiding the lunch crowd) at the Cheesecake Cafe, and then we went to watch the 4:15 showing of the movie Coraline. After that, we dropped in to visit Afton for a few minutes, and then went to Wal-Mart because we weren't ready to go home yet. I bought Avril a new cordless phone for the house (the one we had sucks) as a present while we were there. We don't usually buy each other presents on Valentine's Day, so I didn't feel bad about buying such an unromantic present.

Avril was sick on Sunday, so she stayed at her parents' house with Alex while Kenny and I headed out to Purple Springs to have family dinner with the Olers, Heningers, and Rasmussens. I had a very nice visit with them. It had been a while since I had last seen the Rasmussens. It was a very nostalgic visit. We did a lot of reminiscing.

We relaxed Monday morning. Avril's parents had two of their granddaughters, Jane and Lucy, staying with them, so Kenny had a lot of fun playing with them. In the early afternoon, we went shopping at Costco with Afton, and then we had lunch at Swiss Chalet before heading home.

I'll try to have some pictures up this evening.