The Marsdens - December 14th, 2005

Ho Ho Ho and Merry Christmas from the Marsden clan.

Well, as you can see, I am taking the advice of a good friend and am starting a blog of the Marsden family. Here's a recent photo of us taken in Kyra's Kindergarten class last week. We were there in preparation of her Christmas Concert.

I just can't believe how fast this past year has gone by. It seems it was spring, don't know what happened to summer and now it's Christmas again. We've moved from the sunny Okanagan to the beautiful Kootenay's and are really enjoying it here. The scenery is absolutely beautiful and the people here are really friendly.

The kids have settled in really well and both have some terrific little friends. Kyra is thoroughly enjoying Kindergarten and spending time with her little buddies. She's in ballet and tap dance and just loves to twirl around and dance her heart out. She made it to big kids level 2 swimming during the summer. She just blossomed and seemed to mature so much within a few weeks of arriving here. Here's a picture of her getting onto the stage with her classmates. She has 20 students in her class and her teacher is totally fabulous.



Kurtis has been involved with Mother Goose, Parent/Tot, Gym time and Story time. Our weekdays have been filled with fun times and good memories. We had a wonderful fall session and had a visit from Santa last week. As you can see by the following photo, Kurt wouldn't let go of my neck and sit on Santa's knee.



I've been busy with helping out with Kindergarten and also very busy being involved in the Parent/Tot group. I was asked to take over producing the quarterly news letter for Parent/Tot and have been asked to organize crafts for each week. I'm thrilled to be involved. Some of the crafts that the children have made are absolutely fantastic. I'll try to post some pictures of our little ones creations.

I've also been busy dismantling our basement walls and ceiling as well as ripping out the carpeting. Sure seemed like a straight forward project in the beginning but now seems I'm up to my eyeballs with wall studs, concrete, and ceiling joists. Reminds me of the Solly house. Sure will look great when we get it completed. We're adding another bedroom downstairs and enclosing the laundry room, framing in around the furnace and fixing up the existing lower bedroom and playroom. Good thing I live with a carpenter. Poor Gary, I've got a list 10 miles long. Good thing there's beer in the fridge too!!

Speaking of carpenter, Gary's been really busy around the house. He's fixing up the back yard and stabilizing the rock wall that leads down to the creek at the back of the property. We erected the kids swingset and slide in the back yard and are doing some major landscaping. Gary will be busy over the cold months in the basement until spring thaw happens. He's already installed a wall down there for me as we discovered when I removed the ceiling tiles that somebody years ago removed one of the main supports in the basement. We were wondering why our upstairs living room seemed a little sloped. Anyways, the floor looks better and we feel much better now that we have some wood below our feet. We installed a new woodstove in the basement about a month ago so Gary's spending some evenings splitting firewood and cleaning up the double carport. Sure is nice and toasty in the house. Gary's future plan for the house is to also frame in the carport properly and to install two garage doors. Also to straighten out the back sundeck as whoever built it didn't square it up right so the outside walls look more like a ski hill than totally vertical. Oh well, projects, projects, projects. The list never ends.

Well, I'm going to sign off for today and will add more as I have time.

Merry Christmas and love to you all.

Retha and family.