Family Facts & Foibles 2011

The Ziemer Family Facts & Foibles 2011 - as spammed to everyone on my contact list.

Ahh! December. That time of year to spend enormous amounts of time and money lavishing your family with completely unnecessary gifts and gluttonous amounts of food. This extravagant behaviour can’t help but cause one to reflect on the abundant blessings and love our Heavenly Father lavishes on his children – beginning with His plan to provide a Saviour. Thank you Jesus for being willing to participate.

As is my annual custom at this time of year, I like to take stock of some of the blessings, make sense of the comings-and-goings, and just generally revel in the amazingness that is my family. And if I’m gonna take two hours to put pen to paper, so to speak, I see no reason not to assault your email with my ramblings.

Thank you Jesus



[What we’ve been up to...]



While it seems on a daily level, there is never a dull moment in the Ziemer house, 2011 as whole was relatively calm and smooth sailing. You could interpret that as boring, but I’ll take it.

Albert, as usual, keeps busy with reno projects – whether for us, or someone else. This year he built a roof covering half of our very large back deck. With our rainy summer this year, it was a fantastic way to allow for some outdoor dry living. We hope to host many a backyard party such as our 2011 Lobster Fest in which we celebrated the Vancouver Canucks making it to the Stanley Cup Finals.

While we were disappointed they didn’t hoist the cup this year, we are far more disappointed in the handful of troublemakers who embarrassed our province and country with their destructive behaviour after the final round.

We managed to get a week of great weather for a bike trip out to Prince Rupert in August. What a beautiful ride and great refreshing little break.

This year, my talented husband has added to his skills by taking drum lessons. This means we have a full set of drums set up in our small living room. I think he was hoping the looming drum set would encourage me to find the money to get a small electric set. I’ll live crowded.

Amongst the reno projects, I got my longed-for art studio set up in a corner of the basement. While I still manage to spread my crap throughout the house, it does help to contain it a bit.

I’m still dabbling in watercolour and painted over 200 greeting cards as a fund raiser for Relay For Life. I took a short art class at the art gallery this fall and was quite intrigued with the mixed media projects. I’m taking another watercolour/mixed media online course in January which I am quite excited about.

All this focus on art has meant that my blog has been completely abandoned. Life goes on, as they say.

October marked three years cancer free for me. Woot woot!

Jed had his lung check-up in August and, while the lower lobe of his lung is still “dead,” he has managed to ward off any pneumonia or complications so the doctors have decided to delay removing it. He will have further testing in February.

Lobster Fest in May

Rockin’ the maracas at church

Granny’s Art Cards

Techno Cowboy playing iPhone

X helps PaPa build a playroom

[The Kids....]

Thailand Adventures

Brandi and Kore spent most of February exploring the country of Thailand and came home with lots of great stories of adventure.

In August they took over the Trestain Pryce Denture Clinic in Kamloops, both the business and the building, so travel will probably be limited for a while now. While this increases their responsibilities and work load, they are up for the challenge and we are very proud of their achievements and success.

Xander takes a family photo

In July, we got news from Ken and Jade that they will be parents again next March – just two weeks after Xander’s third birthday. This is so exciting. The ultrasound technician suspects it is a girl and we are thrilled. However, Xander has brought us such joy and love that we will be equally thrilled if the wee one turns out to be a little brother.

Brilliant and creative little brain developing inside a very beautiful face that we anxiously await meeting

Xander really does bring joy into the lives of everyone around him. I’m marginally biased, but he is the cutest, smartest and most well behaved two-year-old you can imagine. He is potty trained, loves all things music, loves books and puzzles, knows all his letters and numbers and even does simple math. He can find his way around an iPhone as good as anyone and can successfully find “Cars2” videos on You Tube. We are proud of the fantastic job of parenting that Ken and Jade are doing.







Jed is still working with the SPCA on Saturdays and he is the locker room attendant for the PG Cougars during their practice sessions. He loves the hockey players and management and is proud of his role with the team. We are thankful for their acceptance of him and the community inclusion he feels.

Jed gets pumped up for the Royal Wedding of Will & Kate

[And next year....]

July 2012, my parents Ed & Jean celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. While this is an enormous accomplishment in today’s world, in keeping with Dad and Mom’s not-so-enormous lifestyle we will celebrate in a low-key family fun sort of way.

We, their offspring, have booked campsites for the weekend of July 27-30 at Sheridan Lake Resort near Lone Butte. We welcome anyone to check it out and join us. Make your own reservations. They have serviced campsites as well as cabins, boat rentals and apparently the biggest fresh water fish. I’ll be there with a lawn chair and wine glass and perhaps a handful of Minute-to-win-it games.

Milestone Celebration

[Blah, blah, blah…]

If you’ve managed to skip-read long enough to make it this far in the 2011 facts and foibles, you are dedicated indeed. Either that or you need a little more excitement in your life.

Either way, I just want to say that we are blessed by and thankful for so many good friends and family members. We hope to share some “deck time” with each and every one of you in 2012.



Love Albert & Liana

Party Central

Merry Christmas! Blessings and love from the A&L Ziemer family

This sux

Ty Danny Ty

"Ty Danny, Ty." That's Xander-speak for "Try Granny Try."

And try I will.

For a week or so I've been feeling like I want to write a final blog. Yes final.

Now, I'm not so brazen as some (JesseMac, you know who you are) who will just delete the blog and cut you off cold turkey. No, I will say goodbye. And possibly I may come back on occasion and ramble on for old time's sake. But for now I am really feeling like I need to release myself from it.

I know that I've been sporadic in the past year or so. But that doesn't mean I don't think about the blog often. And feel guilty. It would be fine if no one was still hanging around, but I know that I can go more than 30 days without writing and I'm still getting an average of 20-30 viewers a day. (And yes, for the most part I know who the viewers are and I appreciate your dedication and commitment)

I made a comment to someone the other day that I was "currently cocooning." And the more I think about it, the more I love the term. Creatively and expressively I am still learning and evolving but I feel like I'm going through a quiet time - not that nothing is happening. Au contraire. I feel great changes are occurring within. And one day I will fly.

In the meantime, it is my intention to keep a digital developmental record of my most amazing and lovable grandson X and his unborn sibling Baby Y. While I wish I had started it back when X was born, I didn't. So I will just have to live with what I have.

If you wish to take a peek at my Baby X & Y site, feel free. I call it Try Granny Try.

Thank you for your past bloggerdom support - I truly do appreciate it.

Hey, we've met you before!

A few weeks ago I was digging through some stuff in the basement and came across three swords left over from centre pieces from Ken and Jade's wedding.

They looked pretty spectacular as a centre piece. (If you forget how fabulous this wedding was CLICK HERE)

While they looked great as centre pieces, thank God no one at the wedding discovered that they had flashing LED lights and made horrendously annoying sounds.

I put them in the outside toybox. Jade wasn't too excited about Xander having weapons as toys so I figured it was only a matter of time before they made their way into the trash bin.

As I was walking home from a little visit down the street with X and his parents tonight, I caught sight of three relatively-new-to-the-neighbourhood kids running out of my driveway and across the road to the park with the said LED lights and annoying noises waving wildly as they swung at each other in mock battle.

"Little buggers!" I thought while similtaneously thinking, "Yes! I hope their parents enjoy them."

I picked up the scattered toys on the back deck and mentally took casual inventory, noting that nothing else seemed to be missing. I swept off the deck and left the door open as I was returning the broom to the kitchen.

I could hear the children returning.

Rather than greet them at the top of the stairs to the deck, as a good neighbour would, I decided to stand behind a doorway in the back hall to eavesdrop.

Apparently they were returning the swords. Damn.

"Don't go in the house." I hear one of three warn the others.

"But the door is open."

"No one is here.... Helloooo?" They stepped foot inside.

I could contain myself no longer. I stepped into the back hallway, "Hi!" I said slightly loud and forceful, secretly hoping to scare the bejezus out of them.

"Hello," they replied as if I had been expecting them to arrive. They handed me the swords. "These are yours."

I resisted saying, "No shit!"

Instead, I calmly instructed them that they shouldn't be going in people's yards when they aren't home. Borrowing toys without permission is the same as stealing. I really wanted to go into a rant about the police coming to arrest them but they cut me off with, "Can we go down the green slide?" while pointing to the very cool slide that goes from the deck to the back yard.

"Sure." I answered.

"How many times?"

"You can use it a few times. But you shouldn't be using it if no one is home." My nagging trailed off while they ran off to play in the neighbour's (who weren't home) yard.

I noticed they left a trigger style garden hose nozzle laying in my back yard.

Forty five minutes later I could hear them playing in my front yard. "Here. Hold these branches back to make a doorway to the secret cave...."

I knew they were playing under my weeping birch. I can't say I blame them. It's a pretty cool place. I've even been known to crawl under there myself on occasion.

I went to the front door, "Come out from under the tree, please!" (I think I said "please". Perhaps I didn't.)

"I think it's time for you kids to go home and play in your own yard."

"But... we've met you before!" the eldest, approximately six-year-old, exclaims.

"Yes. Yes, I know you have." I said, and finished the sentence in my head, "Just because you've previously trespassed doesn't give you the right to take my toys home and destroy my trees."

But off they toddled to the yard of the neighbour two doors down and climbed their small tree and played there for another half hour till one of them got hurt and they scurried across the road towards home.

To their credit they returned a handful of toys to my next door neighbour before leaving.

Word of the day: wrinkly

Finally! Summer arrived along with the month of August. Today is the 4th and it's the first time this year we have been able to fill the kiddie pool so Xander could go swimming.

He swam until his hands got wrinkly then tried to "wash" his hands in the water to get the wrinkly off. I explained that the wrinkly came from the water. So he picked up his pool and dumped it - there will be no more wrinkly!

After sitting wrapped in towel eating a snack for a while X held out his hands to me and said "The wrinkly is all gone!"

I replied, "Thank you Jesus for bringing Xander's hands back to normal."

Xander's little eyes darted to the left. Then to the right. Then he looked inquiringly at me, "Where is him?"

Word of the day: noise bylaw

About 1 o'clock in the morning after sitting in the marvelous apres-hot-tub summer air, while sippin' red  and listening to some good music coming from somewhere off to the left for an hour or so, I turned to my husband and said, "I wonder who's still partying out there. Their music is great but I can't think who, in that direction, would be still rockin' at this time of night."

It was quite dark so I couldn' really see, but I felt his look of disbelief as he responded, "Uhhhh... that's coming out of our bedroom window where I put the TV on the Gold Rock Galaxie station about an hour ago."

Geesh! Good thing I'm not the kind of person who calls the cops on the neighbours when they're noisy - I'da had myself arrested.

Word of the day: Y

Baby Y is now 7 weeks into development and is approximately the size of a Tic Tac and the weight of an eyelash - while this is extremely teeny-tiny it is approximately 10,000 times larger than it was at conception. Heck, even Granny isn't gaining weight at that rate!

Baby Y will remain "it" until early in October when Mommy and Daddy are hoping an ultrasound will determine the sex. Baby X did not have his sex discovered until birth but Mommy wanted a boy so badly, we just assumed Baby X was a "he".

This time Mommy's "sexual preference" is not so emphatic, but she would prefer if Baby Y is a girl. She has voiced this a few times - obviously within earshot of Baby X, because 2-year-old Xander woke in the night with a nightmare. When Mommy went in to comfort him he cried in his semi-comatose state, "No! I don't want to be a girl! I want to be a boy!"
 
 

Baby Y at 7 weeks development.
The brain is growing at a rate of 100 cells per minute and Granny's prayer, as it was for baby X,  is that Jesus will develop the characteristics of this wee one to be healthy, kind and smart. (and cute will be accepted as a bonus)