Wow, it's been awhile

Blogging seems to be back in style, or maybe I'm just that bored while on my March Break!

Since I last blogged there has been A LOT of things happening in our lives. Firstly, we no longer live in England. We are located back in my hometown. Mostly I like it, sometimes I'm ready to move on. Right now it's a "move on" feeling.

Secondly, we have a beautiful baby boy. Ethan John Denis was born Nov 6, 2007. He is currently 16 months old and not so much a baby anymore. Good thing...

Thirdly, we are expecting our second child. EDD sometime in August. I hate having to pin it down to a specific day. Baby will come when baby is good and ready. Likely long after I'm ready!

Ryan and I are both working, teaching. I am on an LTO, he is supplying. I only work half days teaching music. I absolutely LOVE it.

I'm sure there is more but my pregnancy brain refuses to let it all out! hehe...

Our European Adventure has begun!

Hello all!
We officially started our European adventure on Saturday! We went with a tour company as well as Julie Verkley and Laura Trigg (for those of you who know who they are!) I am going to apologize in advace for any spelling mistakes. This is my first time typing on an Austrian keyboard! Yikes!
We left London on Sunday morning EARLY and headed through Belgium and into Holland. We spent our first night in Amsterdam, which is a really beautiful city. Our first night was filled with a cruise on the canals. The houses are so beautiful. Definitely somewhere I could see myself living in another life! I was expecting something a bit different from the cruise I guess, it was nothing like our cruise in Egypt! It was a dinner cruise, and last almost 2 hours. Way past my bedtime, but what can you do? The next day we got to see how cheese and wooden shoes were made! I couldn#t taste any of the cheese, but Ryan assured me it was delicious!
The next day we headed to the Rhine Valley in Germany and saw a cool coo-coo clock demonstration. I got a new pair of Berkenstocks (yeah!) and we continued on our way. We made our way to Munich where we ate dinner at a traditional beer house and enjoyed some traditional German sausage. Yummy!
Today we headed to Austria and spent the morning mountain biking and just now finished going down a luge run in the Alps! So cool. We have a ton of pictures which we will share when we get back home. I don't know if I'll get on the computer again before the end of the trip, but just incase, we wanted everyone to know we are alive, and having such a good time!!
Tomorrow we are heading to Italy for 4 days. I heard there was a heat wave there. Lots of sunscreen and water for me!!
Love you all!!

Happy Anniversary to US!!

Ok, so I'm starting to get the hint that people out there want another blog...to be quite honest, I don't understand why...we are such boring people!!!

Where to begin? Well, how about, today is our two year anniversary! Happy Anniversary to us! It's hard to imagine though, not only because it doesn't feel like it's been two years already but also because aren't we supposed to be on summer vacation when we celebrate our anniversary?? 20 more days til school is done! But I'm not talking about school yet...
We went out yesterday to celebrate. We went into London for dinner and to catch a show. We went to one of those half price ticket booths and got tickets for the show "Wicked: The untold story of the Witches of OZ". All I have to say is, BRILLIANT!!! If anyone gets a chance to see it (TO, NY wherever) PLEASE go and see it. It was absolutely amazing. The plot was fantastic, the music was incredible, the special effects were excellent. I don't have enough words to describe how good it was! It was well worth the money spent (and we spent a little chunk of change...) Before we got to the show though we went shopping (picked up a couple of maternity tanks on sale at Gap) and went out for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. The food was not as good as in TO though and was a bit of a disappointment. We did have a free dinner though, so it was all good.

What else is new? Hmm...we had our 22 week appointment and scan for baby Steve. Steve is doing very well, growing like a weed and is now about 1lb big. Huge, eh? You would hardly notice, given that my belly hasn't grown much. I'll post pictures on my live space. I'm still wearing all my regular clothes (well, pants anyway) plus a few added maternity shirts, mostly because I bought them, they were new, and who wouldn't want to wear new clothes?!? I bought a pair of maternity jeans on sale that I have yet to wear!! I'm not complaining...but at almost 6 months pregnant, I would have thought I'd be able to participate in the fun-ness that is maternity shopping!!! Haha!
Steve is also kicking up a storm these days. For awhile I got nervous that there might have been two babies in there because I would feel kicks in three places at once!! The u/s confirmed though, only one baby in there! I've also noticed that some things can make Steve move more. One is orange juice (which I am drinking now and having a blast watching Steve jump and wiggle!!) I can't wait to get home and let you all see and feel for yourselves! The u/s tech was super nice too, she gave us three FREE photos of Steve and we only had to pay for one!! They are pretty cute shots too, at least one of our little thumbsucker!! I should have known that I would be blessed (cursed?) with a thumbsucking baby!!

We are also busy packing up our house and getting ready to move back home. We got some boxes from an international shipping company and are busy filling them and getting them ready to head home. It seems that we have so much stuff, but I have to remember that we aren't taking a lot of it back with us! We've sold our extra furniture and are giving away what we can. It's still a lot of work!!

School is getting ready to come to an end. Only 20 days left (or technically 13.5 working days). The kids are feeling the shift in season though and are getting antsy. Plus, at the end of the year there are so many other things happening that our routine gets thrown by the wayside. I'm trying to keep as much routine as I can in class for the sake of my one autistic boy. Otherwise he will be off the wall!! I've finished all my reports (they are being handed out monday) then all there is left is one parents evening, a summer fete (festival type thing) and the end of school production. Time will fly!! It doesn't even seem real yet that we are going on vacation again in three weeks. I've hardly had time to think about our trip to Europe.

Julie and Laura are coming over to travel with us for two weeks (plus they have some other travels planned) which should be so much fun!!! We are doing a 12 day tour around Europe. We will hit 8(?) countries and almost all of the major cities that we wanted to see. I'm too busy and tired to be excited yet, but I'm sure in the next week or so it will start to hit home that we are actually going to see a bit more of the world! Immediately following our tour we are flying home so we'll post and put up pictures once we are settled. So much happening in the next few weeks!! AHH!!

Ok, that's about it for the comings and goings of our life for the moment. I'm going right now to post those pictures, so keep your eyes peeled!!

Love you all!!

Mommy, where do babies come from?

I went to our school's "sex education" meeting on thursday night. Not because I needed to be education (come on now people, I'm already pregnant!) but because as a year three teacher I felt that I should be there to answer any questions from concerned parents. The meeting was a preview for parents of the sex ed videos that would be shown this coming year to the year threes and also to the year fours, fives, and sixes. To be honest, the videos are quite graphic, but not anything that a child doesn't need to know and should find out from an education standpoint before they hear about it from the creepy kid on the playground. The parents were outraged, but they mostly conceded that yes, this was in fact a good idea. Not to mention that these kids had actually seen these videos last year.

When the question was posed "why do these young children need to know about this anyway?" I silently sat at the back of the room and thought to myself, because all of the year three teachers are getting pregnant, and the questions are going to start flying soon enough!! I've already had two of the worst questions you can have: 1. How does the baby get in there? and 2. How does the baby get out?
If parents aren't willing or able to talk to their kids about this sort of thing then I'm glad that there are vidoes out there to help us teachers along with the process. Of course I answered those questions the way any shocked teacher would..."go home and ask mom or dad!"

The kids in my class are so so so excited about the baby. They ask how it's doing, and how big it is, and if it can hear them when they are too loud. I tell them that it is mostly hanging out, but while we are doing PE it is busy practicing it's backstroke!! They think the baby is hilarious! One boy asked me the other day why I was drinking water. I told him that the baby was thirsty. Ok, perhaps a bit of a stretch of the truth, but he believed me and was completely satisfied with my answer!! In fact, I could justify just about anything I do with "the baby wants" or "the baby likes". The kids love it!

I have to tell you about the cutest thing that happened Friday afternoon. Now, I realize that not everyone who reads this blog will think that this is cute, but if you are a mother or especially a mother who is also a teacher, you might appreciate this.
Shaun (a boy in my class who happens to be autistic) ran out the door Friday without so much as a goodbye. Usually he walks out with me and gives me a hug and tells me that he'll see me whenever we are meant to see each other next. Now, I noticed that he had left his lunch box on the trolley, and was looking to see if he had in fact left the school yard with his mom or if they were still around and could catch them. Suddenly Shaun appeared again to get his lunch box and I said "oh, Shaun, I thought you were gone already!" He came over quickly and gave me one of his little "side hugs" and without even saying a word to me patted my belly (which is not even really honestly showing yet) and whispered "bye baby!" With that he was off like a flash and back to his mom. It was by far the cutest thing that has happened to my baby since the kids found out. Part of me can't wait til the baby is bigger and they can feel it kick and stuff!! (the other part of me doesn't want 26 hands on my stomach, but such is life!) I'm still enjoying sharing this experience with these kids!

Baby Stevie

As long as I am in a blogging mood...

We had our first ultrasound on monday. It was the most amazing feeling EVER! Although I knew that I was in fact pregnant, when the technician put the jelly on and started prodding around, the first question out of my mouth was, "please! tell me there is a baby in there!" Lucky for everyone there IS a baby in there. A beautiful baby. Maybe a bit alien like right now, but just you wait until it comes out!! Ryan got to watch the whole thing, while I had to lie still like a patient little mommy while the girl took all her measurements and whatnot. The baby is very healthy, with both arms and legs. There is more stuff in the report, but I won't bore you with the details! We also got to see the little heart beating (although we couldn't hear it). The heartbeat was at 167. She looked at it from different angles, and at one point had to poke my belly rather hard because it simply would not turn itself over to face the camera!! We did get a couple of nice shots though.

We can't wait until the next scan. Only 8 more weeks until we see our little miracle again!! Hopefully by then I will LOOK pregnant. I'm still not showing (not enough that anyone would say "when's the baby due?" - not that you would ask that question ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever...I can't memorize enough ever's. Oh Brian Regan!)

I told the kids in my class too. I've gotten some really funny questions, like "do you think the baby can hear us?" or "is the baby allowed to eat sweets?" or "does the baby get to do PE too?" Oh, the innocence of a 7 year old mind! I've gotten some sketchy questions too, like "how does the baby get in there?" and "how will the baby get out?" Definitely questions to send home for mommy and daddy!!

Canada Dry, Never Die!

I've been putting off this post and for that I apologize. Once we came back from Egypt things got very busy very fast!! For anyone who hasn't yet seen, our pictures are up on the web: http://mrshuisjes.spaces.live.com

I will try to re-live our most amazing Egypt trip for you as best I can. Luckily I kept a journal for the first half of our trip, so most of the memories are recorded!

Our adventure started out on Monday evening (April 2) when we left our warm cozy home for the dark streets of London. Actually, more acurately we left our home for the dark and crazy London underground! We opted to take the tube to the airport since it would be our least expensive option (3 pounds as opposed to 30 or more if we took a taxi!). We finally arrived at Heathrow Terminal 2 and headed in for a long night. Even though we arrived just after midnight I was amazed at how many people were already camped out on the chairs. We had a bit of trouble finding a corner, but finally we found a (semi) comfortable spot and tried to catch a few hours of zzz's. We knew that our flight would begin to check in at 4:15 a.m. so we set our alarm for 3:30, thinking that we would get a jump on the crowd. We didn't sleep much, so the alarm was a bit of overkill. When we did finally get moving at about 3:15 there was already a huge line!! We ate a quick breakfast (leftover pizza and oranges) then hopped in line to wait. Our flight was about 40 minutes late leaving London and we had a stop over in Milan. I was worried about changing planes, but it worked out alright. The food on the plane was horrendous!! Meat that couldn't be identified and some fruit that didn't taste like the fruit we thought it was... We arrived in Cairo without a hitch and were met promply by our tour company. A rep helped us through the crazy Cairo airport and whisked us away to our hotel. Once we arrived we got our room, got cleaned up and went out for a dinner cruise. The cruise was fun. The food was good, the entertainment was funny (see Ryan dancing with the belly dancer!) but we couldn't actually SEE much of the Nile since it was dark. We returned to our hotel and went straight to sleep. We both slept really well, but we were awonken by the Muslim call to prayer at 5:30a.m!!

Our first official day began with the "highlight of highlights". The Great Pyramids at Giza. They truly are a sight to behold. When we flew into Cairo we banked over the pyramids and got an awesome view of them (no camera though). Seeing them in the distance was quite intimidating. Made you ask yourslef the question "could you (would you) ever get used to seeing that everyday?" Of course we think the answer would be no, but like anything else it would become something you would begin to take for granted. Needless to say, the pyramids are HUGE!! They tower above everything and are amazing to see. It was especially amazing to be standing up lcose and be able to see the others off in the distance. While we were there, the tour guide warned us to be cautious of the "camel boys" who try to scam you. Now, I understand this is their way of life, but they can be quite intimidating! They start a conversation, talk to you about their camel and about why you are in Egypt, then ask for money. I told myself that I wouldn't get scammed. Boy was I wrong!! Now, understand that this was my first experience with a "real" Egyptian. I thought he was being genuinely friendly and interested. Not the case. I wsa walking up to the pyramid without Ryan (he was hanging back to take the picture) when a guy came over on a camel. Long story short, I ended up sitting on this guys camel and he was asking for LE150 for his "services"!! Good thing we didn't pay because we found out later that we could get an actual camel ride (45 minutes) for only LE30! The guy wasn't too happy with us, but I tried to explain that if he had been honest about what he wanted from the start that I wouldn't have allowed it to go as far as it did. Eventually we gave him LE10 and just walked away. I felt bad though.

Another cool thing we did was go into the second pyramid (named the second pyramid because it is the second largest? I'm not sure...) We climbed down into the tomb. This was not recommended for people with chlostraphobia, or for those with a bad back, and for good reason!! The shaft was more like a crawl space on a pretty steep incline! The first part went down for about 25 m, after which you came to a spot where you could actually stand up straight. But you had to continue on another 11 m or so to the actual tomb. Of course the Egyptians didn't have any form of air circulation back then, so it was super hot and really hard to breathe! We didn't stay in long and I think we may have killed a few braincells from lack of oxygen!!

We then went to an amazing lookout spot. It was a real "Kodak moment" - if you could get a spot without the crowd in your picture!! If there was one thing about Egypt that I wasn't expecting, it was the people. There were SO MANY PEOPLE! And not just Egyptians (although there were plenty of them too) but there were hundreds and hundreds of tourists at every single place we went! After we got our pictures we headed down the road a bit to the Sphynx. I didn't realize we were so close because it is hidden behind the pyramids and in a little valley type area. Once we got those pictures done we were tired, hungry, and REALLY HOT!! We headed back to the comfort of the air conditioned bus!

Next we stopped at a papyrus gallery where they showed us how to make papyrus and we had a chance to buy some. We got an awesome scenery painting and another smaller one of the great pyrammids. We probably spent too much, but those Egyptians have a way of convincing (hence how I ended up on a camel!!) We love the painingts though. We can't wait to get home and find somewhere to hang them! We also stopped at the step pyramid on the first day. There was so much to see!! It was a lot of sights in a short time, but like Ryan said, if we went home today and that was all that we saw, we'd be happy. Lucky for us, we only just started!

We ate dinner at the hotel and then boarded the train to Luxor. Just as a quick side note, you should probably know that traffic is absolutely insane in Cairo!! Unlike anything I have ever seen in my life! There are no real rules for drivers, no traffic lights, and nothing but CHAOS!! Everyone honks at everyone else but no one seems to get anywhere. A few of our "traffic hightlights": we saw a man SLEEPING on top of a load of newspapers on a flat bed truck. Another good one - our driver had to get out of the bus to push a car out of the way to make a corner (there was no one in the car at the time...) We accumulated a line up of cars in the meantime waiting to pass by, all of whom felt it was necessary to honk!! Like that was going to make the process go faster?!?

Our train ride to Luxor was nice, save for the horrible group of people we were sitting with. They were loud and drunk and who knows what else! Now, understand that we were not unreasonable. We didn't board the train until after 10pm. The seats were designed so that you could flip two around and have four seats facing each other. The couple behind us wanted to do that. I kindly pointed out that if they did it would mean that neither one of us could lean our chairs back to sleep. They promised it would only be for an hour or so. Many many hours later they finally decided it was bedtime. They had to wake us both up so that we could put our chairs bolt upright and help them move their chairs around. I don't even know what time that was!! I didn't have any sympathy for them when a man came around in the morning asking where everyone was getting off. He must have woken them 4 or 5 times to ask the same question! They were cheesed, but we thought it was pretty funny!

Luxor was beautiful. We saw two temples, and went for a leisurly fellucca ride. When I saw leisurely, believe me, it was slow!! There was no wind, so we didn't sail. The one guy had to jump out and tow us along the bank of the nile! It was a nice time though. We went to Banana island and indulged in some fresh produce.

A few days past and we boarded the bus once again for the Red Sea. 18 hours later we arrived in Dahab. A beautiful resort town largely untouched by many modernizations, it was the perfect place to rest for the last few days of our adventure. We spent some time sleeping, reading, relaxing, and of course, shopping!! As per the name of this blog, nearly every shop keeper we met asked us where we were from. Without fail, when we said Canada they would respond with "Canada Dry, never die!" I don't know where the saying came from, but it made me laugh every time, which made them laugh. It was very friendly!

We also got to snorkel in the Red Sea. Dahab is famous for it's "Blue Hole" which has some incredible reefs and loads of fish. We even saw a couple baracuda!! It was hard to stay in the water though because the hole was so deep it was also incredibley cold!!

Another highlight was the camel ride. Not because camels are perticularly fun to ride, in fact, quite the opposite is true! It was certainly an experience, and not one we will soon forget. Not to mention it rained!! It almost never rains in Egypt, but it rained on us! Not a lot, but enough!

We arrived home safe and sound and have been busy with school ever since. I deeply apologize for the tardiness of this blog. I promise you that it won't always be this crazy!! We love you all, and thanks for taking the time to read all the way to the bottom! Til next blog...

Term two...and...DONE!

"A sandwich just isn't a sandwich without the tangy zip of Miracle Whip!"

I miss Miracle Whip. We ate toasted tomato sandwiches tonight and they just weren't the same. It just reminds me that there are some things about Canada that I just wouldn't be able to live without. Although I guess I can't really say that, since I have lived without it for the last 7 months! We can't wait to get back to Canada and the country that we know and love!

Today was the last day of school before the Easter break. One thing we like about British schools is that they give us two whole weeks off!! We are preparing to head out to Egypt in a few days. We're getting very excited. Egypt has so much history, and there is so much to see and do. I hope we can fit it all in without exhausting ourselves in the process!! Part of the joy of having a vacation is being able to relax and recharge. Lucky for us we will have a few days on the Red Sea to try and do just that. As soon as we have pictures and access to the internet we will get them up. The kids in my class were really cute today. They were very concerned whether or not I was going back to Canada. They wanted to know if I was going to visit my mom and dad. I said no, that I was going to visit my mummy! They got a kick out of it. I know that my jokes aren't funny, but to a bunch of 7 year olds I am HILARIOUS!!

Oh, and Steve is doing really well. Hopefully I will be going for my first ultrasound after we get back from vacation. Right now I just have to sit and wait for the hospital to contact me with a time and date!