TESOL certificate

I officially finished my TESOL practicum on May 1! So now my April 18 graduation from Prov is valid. :) I did my 15 credits there and had the rest of the credits transferred from Prairie, so I have a one-year TESOL certificate now. Yay. I'm so glad to be done it!!

Now I'm packing lots to be ready for Brazil (2 weeks!!) and moving after that. Yikes, it's a lot of work. I should get on that... :)

you are what you eat!!

I saw this on a friend's blog & thought I'd steal it. :) It's so true & I can't stand it!! I want healthy food! Maybe I need to start a garden or farming or something....

woohoo

I would like to announce that I have officially lost about 15 of the 20 pounds I gained when I first came to college in 2002. I can even wear the jeans I bought that August & then grew out of in about 2 months! :/ Oh cafeteria food and sedentary lifestyles. But yay! :) I wasn't even doing anything specific to try to lose the weight!

creative weekend

This Saturday I became addicted to my sewing machine! I had started the apron a bit the day before, but worked on it for several hours on Saturday without stopping. Then I was getting annoyed that I didn't have a pin cushion to put my pins in, which was rather inconvenient, so I found a pattern that I liked (see this blog) and made that too! It was quick. :) I even started working on the next apron!

Here's some pictures of the final products:

Then on Sunday I decided to make some Brazilian food, since I hadn't had it in a while. That was fun. :) Good thing I did up all my dishes right away since I ended up having a bunch of people over in the evening!

a month's recap

February was a really busy month. After that PRBI trip, there was Valentine's Day, Family Day weekend, and a work trip Feb. 25-29. I've been teaching an ESL class every week too, so prep for that keeps me busy!

For Family Day long weekend I went up to Edmonton to visit Mike & Julie. We had fun & they enjoyed having my car to get around. :) I also saw Ralph's family for a bit.

The next week Mike was on his reading break & went on a trip to Calgary, then came to stay with me for a couple nights. So he was here Feb. 20-23. Ralph came the night of the 22nd because it was his reading break that next week. (He brought me carnations! I think they were a late Valentine's gift. :)) We went to RD with Mike & had fun shopping & watching a movie. On Sunday, my sewer backed up, which was soooo disgusting! Thankfully it was just on lino floors, not carpet, but it REEKED and we had to do lots of moving & cleaning! I was so glad Ralph was here to help clean up & stuff! He took videos of it but I don't have them yet.

Then the whole week of Ralph's reading break, I had to be gone to Kananaskis for a trip for work! :( Bad timing. It was a tiring week, mostly since I was in charge of a really annoying lady. I was so ready to come back Friday afternoon to Ralph!

Here's pictures from our day in Banff (work trip):
snowball fights, a trip on the Gondola (yay, I was happy my client wanted to go on that since I haven't been since I was like 5!), eating out. The girl pictured twice is my coworker Christy. That day we also shopped & went to a native museum.



Ralph spent the week with his family & friends, and then we hung out again that weekend till he had to leave Sunday. Things ended up working out great, even though he couldn't work here like he'd wanted to. We ended up having supper at the fanciest restaurant in town & going to a play! :) Twas fun. I'm wearing a new leather jacket Ralph gave me... (actually it was his sister's but she never wears it so he kept wanting to give it to me, and it was like an early 8-month celebration :)).



(That Caesar salad was so good! Definitely creative. :))

And to conclude, Happy Easter everyone!! May we remember to focus on the cross instead of the world's materialistic hype. I'm leaving tomorrow (Good Friday) to see my family & Ralph & his family. I'm excited for the long weekend & chance to spend time with Ralph, obviously. :)

A prayer request: Ralph & I are trying to figure out summer plans for work & places to live. Please pray for things to fall into place soon! :) I'm also getting more & more excited for the Brazil trip - 2 more months!!

gettin' crafty

A couple of weeks ago, I found a cute pattern for oven mitts online, and that got me thinking that it'd be fun to sew myself some (since I don't have any matching pairs). Unfortunately, my sister has the sewing machine right now... :(

Then this week there was a 50% off sale on fabric, so I thought I really should go for it! The same people had designed this apron, which I thought was adorable (see right). So I bought the pattern and yesterday I went and got 3 kinds of fabric for it (1 is lining). It took a while to pick fabric, especially because they didn't have anything as loud as Sew Bettie's, but I like what I came up with. I cut out all the pieces (that took forever!! remember - what you see plus all of them again in the lining!) and laid them out on the ground. This is kind of what it'll look like. :)
The red is actually a deep red with small black polka dots. I like the combination. The lining is muslin, which even goes with tan stripes in the main fabric.

Yay. Now I just need to get to a sewing machine. I might use the rest of the cloth to make another apron in the reverse patterns. I wanted to make matching oven mitts too, but maybe I'll have to go get more (full-price! :/) stripey fabric for that.

Brazil-bound!

Wooohooooo!

Last week I bought tickets for Ralph and me to go to Brazil in May! I'm sooooo excited. Michael is actually going to come with us too. It's just 2 weeks, but hopefully we can show Ralph a lot of things, meet lots of people, help Mom & Dad with packing, etc. The MICEB Conference is right after we leave on June 8, so they'll be busy! I'm just so grateful to have this chance to take him to see AVA & Belém before the property is sold, my parents move to another state, and things are no longer as they were when I was growing up there!

Michael's pretty stoked too. :) AVA's grad will take place while we're there, so he can see some friends again. AVA is actually having a 50-year reunion the first week we're there, so we might get to see all kinds of old faces!

Yay.

PRBI trip

About 1400 kms later, I am back from a quick weekend trip up to see Ralph at PRBI, in northern Alberta. February 1 was his birthday and about halfway through the 7 weeks until his spring reading break. So I took that Friday off work & drove up there (now that I have a car! :)) with a girlfriend. The weather had been horrible earlier in the week, but thankfully by Friday things had warmed & cleared up some.

I had been planning a surprise birthday party for Friday, because I wanted to take up a cake, but then on Thursday Ralph wrote me to say he wanted to do what he had planned that night instead of Saturday! Aaaah! I wrote the girl I was going to be staying with and let her know we had to change the party to Saturday or later on Friday.

In the end it all worked out well. We got to the campus at 4:30 (it was about 7 hours of driving, plus our stops) and found Ralph. After meeting a few people and getting our stuff unloaded, Ralph took me over to some friends' house. There I was greeted by the sight of Brazilian food, candles, chocolate, and a pink rose! I could've cried. :)
The couple whose house we went to are from Brazil! Ralph had wanted them to teach him how to make Brazilian food, but then getting ingredients, kitchen space, etc. would've been difficult in the dorm, so they ended up offering to not only let us use their house, but also to make supper for us! So the couple took their 4 kids out for the night and let us use their dining room for the evening. It was so amazing of them. It was also very sweet of Ralph, since this was the first real thing he'd planned for me! :)It felt a bit weird having a special meal for me on Ralph's birthday, but I did give him his presents! There was some food for the dorm and a calendar I made on iPhoto, with pictures of us and our families, and special dates such as our families' birthdays, our anniversaries, etc. :) He loved it.

Saturday morning we had brunch with several of Ralph's friends (we played Jenga).
Thankfully, the surprise party worked out for Saturday night. Ralph was beginning to think none of his friends wanted to hang out with us! ;) He was a little unsuspecting... even when we got to the classroom and everyone yelled "Surprise!", Ralph's first thought was that he was crashing another person's surprise party that was happening that night. LOL.Ralph tried to leave one candle (for me) but left three, and then blew all those out when he tried the second time. ;)
Rockin' out in party hats...
Karina, a good friend of Ralph's (the one who led him to the Lord, actually!) and the girl I stayed with. (We're playing a game here, but I didn't have a better picture of her! :P)

Here's us with Jen (she went up with me) and Ralph's good friend John.


Instead of posting a bunch of pictures of the PRBI campus, here's a little video! Unfortunately, I forgot to show one building because it was behind the main ones - kind of behind Watt and to the right of the men's dorm - a building called Ruark, which has dorms and classrooms. Ralph gave me the tour.

And last but not least, pictures of the little town of Sexsmith. The main business street is right by the school, and looks like something out of history. :) There are old-fashioned-looking stores on only one side of the wide street.



I got to see a bit of GP too, so that was fun. It's so great now to be able to picture where Ralph is for his classes, church, ministry, etc. and to meet a bunch of the people I've heard about! We went to his home church on Sunday too - lunch and a message.

Sunday afternoon Jen & I left for Edmonton. That was sad. :( We spent the night with my siblings and left (too early!) Monday morning to come back home for work!

Ralph has his break in 2 more weeks. He'll probably work that week, and I unfortunately have to be on a work trip that same Monday-Friday! :(( But we plan to hang out lots on the two weekends around that week! Crazy that February is almost half done already!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! :)

Christmas 2007

At last... some pictures from Christmas with Julie, Michael, and Ralph.


Ralph & I decorated my tree - I had saved it to do only once he got here.





Road tripping - we went to SK in my new car. :)














all the cousins from my mom's side who were present at the evening in SK.








and us, safely back in Edmonton on Christmas Eve.














Mike & Ralph made Christmas morning breakfast for us. :)























Julie's little tree, with tons of presents!!

















Ralph opening his stocking.












Michael's presents were mostly all from Starbucks this year. :)















Julie affectionately hugs her new red toaster,


















and Michael receives a much-needed gift. :P


















This shirt was one of my favorite gifts (from my siblings, not Ralph!).

















Ralph loves pigs.














Julie made this, a photo of us 4 taken on Christmas Day. :)



















Then Ralph & I spent 3 days with his family. One night we went sledding on a small hill nearby (here's Ralph giving Sterling a ride).













Ralph also spent some quality time playing Need for Speed with his dad. ;)














We visited with 2 old friends of Ralph's at West Ed Mall & Ikea.


















and posed with the guy on the right's baby, lol.















Last but not least, can't forget fun with Photo Booth! :) Here's pictures of me, Julie, Ralph, and his youngest sister, Raina.