Our Family & Our Life

Dear Diary, A few bits of good news: 1. Isla's amended and correct Canadian citizenship card arrived. Hooray!! Now I have to go back to the Passport Office in Hamilton and request a passport for her. When I was there earlier in the month they told the processing time was 2 weeks but others are telling me they got it within a week. Cross your fingers it's a week 'cause we plan (plans are made to be broken as per my husband) to leave for Colorado after Thanksgiving on October 14. That at least is the plan. Colin still has to have his holidays approved for two weeks and he has to book a flight before we make arrangements not to mention we still don't have the van... Maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, eh? and..... 2. We're thankful Colin arrived safely in Denver on Friday night and he has a business visa issued for 6 months. The Border Patrol officer suggested that he have his employer write a letter to Homeland Security and ask them to extend it for a year. It's ...

Dear Diary, I am on my way back from England, however I have to go direct to Denver to help the guys out there until things settle down at Metro Taxis. They have been working 12 hour shifts recently. The system went live last Monday at 3.30am mountain time and since then Metro have done nearly 10,000 jobs on our system. Initally there were a few issues with people not really knowing what they were doing, but the more they use it the smoother it becomes. I hope to be able to fly up to Heather and Isla as soon as I can and then take a few days with them and drive back down to Denver in the Pontiac Montana van with some of our belongings and the 2 cats. That will be interesting getting over the border. Anyway the important thing is that I have my visa and I am on my way back to them. I do dearly miss them and when I call Heather I hear Isla in the background making all sorts of noises now. I guess she'll be saying 'mommy' soon.. Here is the picture that I had taken for the vis...

Dear Diary, Well as I mentioned in my post yesterday, I was hoping to have some good news to report today. I do, sort of. Colin was in Dublin this morning for an interview at the American Embassy to get a 6 month business visa. He got it BUT since he was in the States for 3 months already they wouldn't issue it with a specific expiry date. That will be determined the next time we cross the border. It's not really what we wanted. We wanted the full 6 months and get back to a normal family life, some permanence in one location TOGETHER, just the three of us. We think they'll issue the visa for no more than three months as this visa is good for 6 months and we've used up 3 months but we won't know until then. It will take another 5 business days for Colin to get his passport with the visa back to him, then he'll fly back to Canada for Isla and myself and then we're thinking about driving to Denver. It's a 24 hour trip, without breaks, so it would tak...

Dear Diary, Our little munchkin is 7 months old today! She is a little monkey, rolling all over the place. My dad taught her to "cough" or fakeys as I call it. Dad just walks into the room and she starts "coughing". Silly girl! The introduction of solid food to her diet is improving as well. A couple of weeks ago spoon feeding all of sudden clicked and now she can't enough. Her little mouth opens like a bird, it's so cute. She has mastered cereal (organic brown rice) and vegetables. I would introduce fruit but I don't have any in the house at the moment so the next time I go to the grocery store, I'll buy a few jars. Eating solids is a messy business though. Every night I soak carrot stained bibs and pants sprinkled in peas. Yuck! She is also 50/50 sitting ~ sometimes she can do it and other times not. She's working on her balance and just like eating solids, one day it will click. The picture below shows her ability to crawl - not quite the...

Dear Diary, We're not sure what happened but we no longer have access to our wyncairn.co.uk email addresses. We thought we paid for another year but apparently not, go figure.... Anyways, my new address is as follows (you figure it out and if you can't leave a comment and I'll send it to you).... All in lowercase: our surname the letter of my first name the year I was born which is 1974 at yahoo dot com Hope that wasn't too difficult to figure out. If anyone left an email after Sunday, I didn't get it and I don't know where it is... Sorry... Heather, Colin & Isla

Dear Diary, Our Oma has been blest with 95 years today! Truly something to celebrate.. As family, we got together on Sunday night at the home of my cousin Greta and her husband Ed's house. Apparently on the way home to Mount Nemo, Oma kept saying she had a wonderful time and she'll never forget it - so there you go, isn't that all that matters?! Here are some photos from the party - BTW, good thing those Aussie's couldn't come over because we would've run out of cake... what a disaster that would've been!! (ha,ha, just kidding, it would've been lovely to have all of you with us). The birthday girl with one of her great-granddaughters, the prettiest one by far!!! In my head, I have counted 34 great-grandchildren and more expected... Some of those 34 great-grandchildren.... Marg, Me, Oma and Mom - aren't we stunning!? A few lovely grand-daughters -- 4 out of the 24 grandkids (2 called Home), at least I think there are 24 of us. Oh yes, for those...

Dear Diary, Today I went to visit my friend Karen and her daughter Maiya. Isla already met Maiya back in May but they haven't seen each other since. They've both grown loads! Isla was rolling all over the place and couldn't go any further than the chair but decided not to go back because Maiya was so much fun to watch... If Isla is going to be as active as Maiya is when she starts to crawl, I think I better get myself a new pair of Reeboks just to keep up. She isn't crawling yet but has gotten as far as putting her knees under her body and rocking. Soon she'll figure out how to co-ordinate all the movements together and then she'll be off. Right now I'm happy enough with the rolling on the floor... While Karen and I ate lunch, we put Isla in a excersaucer and Maiya went in a second one, faced them together and they just laughed and played together. It was soooo cute! Isla hasn't spent much time with babies her age and she thoroughly enjoyed her new fr...

Dear Diary, I walked into the laundry room which is where the majority of our stuff is kept in boxes. The cats love to sit on the higher stacked boxes.... I wonder what is in the box? Shocking, it's Pearl!

Dear Diary, I came across this blog ... too cute... Oh come on, admit it, you laughed...

Dear Diary, Our poor dear Dixie has contracted "cat plaque" as I call it due to stress (aka Tasha, my parents dog!!!?). The fancy name for it is eosinophilic granuloma complex but don't worry fellow cat lovers, she is doing well. I was fearing the worst so I really did not want to take her to the vet but after a week of looking at her "wound" that wouldn't go away, I noticed it was raised and thought it best to make an appointment. A look under the microscope and a few tense moments later, the vet told me she would be fine after an anti-inflammatory and a steroid injection. A week on her "wound" has almost disappeared... sighh (of relief)... So tonight I was looking it up again (to prevent future outbreaks) and came across this artists' blog which I thought was interesting. I'm sure my beloved will tell me the day we have too much money, he will entertain the thought. Just an idea, just an idea...

Dear Diary, There was no swearing in ceremony but our little girl is now officially Canadian! She now has the documentation to prove it and it was issued in record time for which we are thankful. The only thing is it was issued to ILSA Jennifer Black and not ISLA Jennifer Black. As the lady at Immigration and Citizenship said to me, "morons"! Oh well, I will still try to get her Canadian passport and OHIP using this card before sending it back to have the correction made. A few photos for those who miss her dearly (you know who you are ;-) ) Hi Daddy, I miss you too! 'til next time, Heather, Colin & Isla