So time for another update.

Praise God! Dan was finally offered a full-time PERMANENT teaching position yesterday. He'll be teaching mostly math (his field) and a few other courses that may stretch him (history and english). His interview was yesterday at 1:30 and he was offered the job by 2:30. We are pretty excited. However, quite stressed all at the same time. The job is in Kapuskasing which is about 8 hours north of here. Dan will leave on Monday to be ready for the first day of school on Tuesday. I will move in with my parents for the month of september (until we can secure a house and I can move up). Also, having just had a c-section, I shouldn't go on a major trip (or move) for another 4.5 weeks. I'm dreading the time of seperation. My heart breaks when I think of Dan missing the first month of Violet's life and the effects of not having her dad around will have on Emma-Rose. It will be a difficult time, but the end result will be worth it in the end.

Violet-Grace is doing pretty well. She's finally started to gain weight. Hooray! She hasn't been able to latch on (the nurse thinks it's because she was too early) so I've been expressing milk and Dan and I take turns feeding her with a syringe. Her jaundice is clearing up (another hooray!), so soon it will be time to make the transition to her solely breastfeeding (again Hooray!). Emma-Rose loves her little sister and is really adjusting well to the change.

Violet-Grace, about 24 hours old.

All ready to go home.

Big Sister and Little Sister. V-G is only 2 hours old here.

Violet-Grace Ellen

She's here! We welcomed her into our family Thursday August 17 at 6:15 p.m. She was three weeks early. But even at that she weighed 7lbs 10 oz and was 21 inches long. Surgery went well. My anesthesiologist was hilarious, a regular stand up comic. Emma-Rose absolutely loves her sister (so much so that right she's supposed to be napping, but is standing in her doorway bawling her head off cause she wants to be with her sister). My parents brought Emmy to the hospital on Thursday night, as soon as Violet-Grace heard Emmy's voice she tried to open her eyes and was moving her head around to find the voice. It was sweet. My thoughts are all over the place and I don't think I'm making much sense...(thank you tylenol 3 and lack of sleep)...
Pics will follow...blogspot isn't letting me upload them right now....

Family of 3 becomes family of 4 .... more news after Thursday....


Ok, so I'm not due until labour day, however, I had contractions for about 10 hours yesterday, was kept in overnight to be monitored. Things seem to be under control for now. A c-section has been scheduled for Thursday, so if all goes well baby #2 should be here sometime in the evening. I will try to post more details next week when I'm home from the hospital...now I have to follow doctor's orders and relax for the next couple of days. I had an ultrasound at the hospital, found out what we are having...but that's going to be kept secret until it happens...

Life on the Crazy Side

It's been pretty busy around the Brander household. Dan's sister and family were around for the weekend so all siblings gathered at his parents house. It was a fun time, but 4 kids can get pretty noisy.

On Wednesday, Emmy and I went with Dan to Peterborough for a teaching interview. We would love to hear some good news from them. We are both pretty excited about the posibility of moving there and the dissapointment will be huge if the job goes to someone else.

I'm trying to get Emmy's scrapbook caught up before the new baby gets here...I'm almost done her first year (which was pretty thorough) and year two will hopefully get done too.

In the midst of everything else, I found out that a c-section will be in order for me. I was dissapointed, since I wanted a natural delivery but my new doctor went over the details of Emmy's birth with me--details I had no clue about and decided a c-section was the safest option. Besides, at this point, with just over two until baby's arrival, he or she is breeched. With finding that out, and knowing the we will likely be moving at the end of september, I've been on a mad craze to get the house packed up, leaving out only the absolute essentials.

Anyhow, both Dan and Emmy are having a nap so I'm going to sit back, have some ice cream and enjoy the few moments of peace and quiet, before going back to reality.

SUPERCELL

O.K. so that's what the weather guys were calling it. Around 8 last night, I decided to go to Michael's to pick up a few scrapbooking items. I didn't want to go alone so I got my mom and Emma-Rose to come with. We had been expecting thunderstorms all day because of the extreme heat from the past few days. Anyhow, we went things were fine. We came out of the store and things weren't so fine. Imagine with me, if you please, you walk out of a store at dusk. Part of the sky looks like dusk (to the south--in back of us) and to the north is a thick jet black sky, as well as sheet of flying dust, dirt and garbage flying coming at you. That's what we came out of the store to. We get to van, low and behold we broke the door, can't get it to close. The wind is intensifying around us. I finally get the door fixed and start thinking, if this is a tornodo (or anything like it) we shouldn't be driving. We drive across the parking lot to McDonald's. My mom calls my dad to get him to check the weather and determine if we should drive home. He says the worse has yet to hit, so come home. We leave the McDonald's with an upset girl (who didn't get any french fries). We were almost home when the worst started to hit. Anyhow, praying for safety the whole way home, we did make it safely. Watching the weather network, we realized how bad it really was. Here's an article from Citytv.com it sums up what was going on in southern ontario last night:

Series Of Storms And Possible Twisters Tear Through Ontario
Wednesday August 2, 2006
Ontario's heat wave finally broke with a frightening display of nature's fury on Wednesday night.
A wall of thunderstorms raced across southern Ontario producing lightning, hail, damaging winds and potentially a series of tornadoes.
In the end, 150,000 people in the province were without electricity.
The line of violent weather stretched from Goderich to Ottawa with nearly continuous lightning and wind gusts of up to 120 kilometres an hour. Toronto escaped the worst, but there were reports of scattered outages after trees took out power lines in various parts of the town. Hydro crews were working on problems at Kipling and Finch and Jane and Lawrence, along with Harboroufront. All were left in darkness by the disturbance.
In Barrie, an uprooted tree fell onto a house.
"It was like a tornado or hurricane," said Barrie resident Gordon Stanich. "It was just unbelievable. I was down by the water because I'd run down for the boat and the boat was going all over the place."
At one point there were distress calls from ten sailboats in Georgian Bay, and in Eastern Ontario there were widespread tornado warnings with possible touchdowns near Bancroft and Smith Falls.
A potential microburst, if not a tornado, may have touched down in the Newmarket area, and in Renfrew near Ottawa, a Home Depot reportedly had its roof collapse.
What's believed to be a twister was seen by a weather spotter near Morriston, Ont. at the intersection of Highway 6 and the 401 during the afternoon. It was accompanied by heavy rain but didn't do much damage before it moved out over Lake Ontario.
Environment Canada called it a "very high impact severe weather situation" and advised anyone caught outside during the height of the storm to take cover.
The warning covered all areas of the G.T.A., including Toronto, Peel, Durham, York and beyond.

A few spots were also flooded by the heavy downpours, which dropped walls of water in just a few minutes.

The disturbance was caused by a cold front that swept in, replacing the hot, sticky and smoggy air that has been baking much of the province all week.

Forecasters say Thursday's weather will be more comfortable with a lot less humidity and highs in the mid 20s.

Emma-Rose and her cousin on the back of a camel.

Emma-Rose playing Egyptian princess.

Ontario, Yours to Discover!

Last week we went on a little road trip. Emma-Rose has been begging to go to her cousin's house. She always gets to see them at Grandma's house and they've been to her house, but she hadn't been to their house (atleast not in her recollection). After putting her off with another day we'll go visit Mattea, we decided to surprise her and go. There's no direct highway from Orangeville to Renfrew, so we decided to take some back roads. There are a lot of cute little towns and villages through central Ontario.

Emma-Rose had a blast playing with cousins. We went to Ottawa one day and took the kids to the Byward market (ok so they put up with that cause there was a major candy store involved...Emma-Rose has never been in a candy store--other than the corner store...it was so fun to see her reaction...we now have a few pounds of jelly bellys in almost every flavour imaginable). Then we took the kids to the museum of Civilization, where inside there's a Children's Museum. They had a blast! Emma-Rose was a little overwhelmed at first but got the hang of things half way through (see pics below).

On our way home we took more back roads to end up at the Hershey Chocolate factory, where once again we let Emma-Rose go nuts. It was fun. The self-guided tour was boring since there was nothing on the line and the prices in the Chocolate store weren't a good buy (could've gone to Walmart and paid the same price or less), but she just loved it. We turned a five hour trip home into a 10 hour trip, with back roads, many stops and potty breaks (for the maman, not the kid she's still in diapers).

It was kind of our last hooray as a family of three before the new baby makes his or her entrance. The whole in the van Emma-Rose was a super awesome traveler! Didn't cry, didn't complain and we didn't even have a DVD player. Anyhow, as promised a few pics from the trip.