The New House

Today we had our New Home Owner Walk through for our new home. We got to see the inside of the house for the first time since the rough in stage and we got to check over everything to be sure everything was done properly. We don't take possession until next week, but it was so great to be able to see everything in a pretty much completed state. (Also great so see that the graffiti and vandalism have finally been fixed.) This is what the house looks like from the outside. We will hopefully have a real cement walkway and final grade landscaping by the time we move in.. but I'm not keeping my hopes up.

The front entryway in the house. One of the things that I first noticed about this house, when we were still looking at show homes was the little ledge behind the door. I thought, "That would be a great spot to put my keys when I come home from work."

The view from the front entry into the living room and kitchen. The fireplace will be a great addition to the house. As well, there is backing behind the drywall that I can use to support a flat screen TV mounted on the wall. Too bad there's no electrical plug above the fireplace for me to plug my TV into.


Amanda's favorite room of the house, the Kitchen. I am really happy with the way the kitchen turned out. The cabinets and the appliances are spectacular. And Jaxon will have a fun time with the bottom freezer on the refrigerator. The best part of the kitchen is probably the dishwasher. It will be so convenient to have one that isn't me.

The view from the kitchen nook towards the front of the house.

A closer look at the kitchen tile and the nook. I really like the tilework in the kitchen too. And I'm excited for the huge kitchen table we're going to be getting from Amanda's parents too.


This is a shot of one of the kid's rooms. I can't tell which one. They're both pretty much the same. I think Jaxon's room will be slightly bigger than the new baby's room, but not by much.

Our walk-in closet that will mostly be overtaken with Amanda's clothes.

As a former electrician, I had to post this picture of the electrical panel. I'm sure I'll get to know this panel really well as I add some new plugs to the basement and rewire the basement lights.

Only one more week until we take possession and can start moving in. We will update with the final pictures once we're moved in and settled.

Art Class

Amanda has started taking Jaxon to an art Class. He is loving it. Despite the Growl on his face... thats just how he grins.. he really does enjoy himself. He loves painting and will ever get his hands dirty as long has he can go to the wash station right away.

One day Auntie Rachel come to art class too. She is helping Jaxon make his Sand Castle here. (In case anyone of you noticed how nice the nails are in the picture... that's not my hand... its hers.. my nails are never that nice)

Day out with Thomas

Thomas the Tank Engine came to Heritage Park and we got to go visit him there. Jaxon was so excited. He really loved riding on Thomas and wanted to do that over and over again... too bad you only get one ride!

Posing with Thomas

There were lots of other things to do there too. Jaxon didnt want to do many of the activities but he did get a really cool Tatoo.

Jaxon loves these boat swings at Heritage Park. He was on them forever! We had to pribe him with cookies from the Bakery in order to get him off!

Our New Home Floorplan

Here is the floorplan for our new home as it will look when built. The original floorplan design that we received from the builder was a mirror image of this. But through the magic of Photoshop, I was able to flip the image and the words to show how the house will look when we move in. (Mostly I needed to flip the image so I could design things in my head how they would look when complete. All the showhomes we have been in and have pictures of are of the original design plan… our design is the mirror design). The only difference between this plan, and our house is that we will have a flat eating bar in the kitchen, not a raised one.

We had our homeowner’s meeting with the builder last week and they gave us an estimated move in date of May 26, with the latest move in date being June 9. That is, of course, before the vandalism occurred. We drove by the house last Monday to see the siding on the outside of the house, and found some spray painted profanities and some broken windows. The builder said it won’t delay the move in date at all, but it sucks that it happened to our house. We never ended up taking any pictures of the inside when we were there either, so we have nothing to post. But we’ll have more updates as we find out stuff.

Jaxon's 2nd Birthday

To celebrate Jaxon's 2nd birthday this year, we had a themed "Teddy Bear's Picnic" party for him. Amanda was in charge of all the preparations for the party and, as his her family tradition, she went all out for the party. Tim's job was to make sure all the leftover food found a good home. Speaking of food, here is just a little bit of the picnic lunch that we had for the party.

Since it was a Teddy bear picnic party, we invited a bunch of our friends, and Jaxon's friends to the church where we had blankets set up for people to picnic on. Everyone was invited to bring their favorite stuffed animal. To start off the picnic, everyone was supposed to first decorate their brown lunch bag, then go to the food table to make their own sandwich and get other goodies to put in their bag lunch. Then everyone sat down on a blanket and enjoyed the picnic, without having to worry about bugs or other picnic pests. There were also a couple party games set up for the kids to play, but mostly they entertained themselves by running through the halls and chasing after each other. Below is a picture of Jaxon enjoying his lunch with the Stubbs girls and the Gehmlich girls.

When it was time for Jaxon to open his presents, there was no lack of people who wanted to help him unwrap the goodies and play with the toys. Below Jaxon is looking at some of his gifts that he got for his birthday.

Here Lola shows Jaxon his card with Thomas the Tank Engine on it.

When it came time for dessert and time to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jaxon, he wasn't quite sure what to do. We had him sit in a chair and we all sang to him, but all he wanted to do was just grin at everyone like he was getting his picture taken. Amanda decided that little cupcakes for everyone would be better than one giant cake... more bite-sized for the little kids.

All in all, it was a very fun party, and Jaxon really seemed to enjoy it. I think he was feeling a lot better than he was at last year's party, and had a fun time with his friends and family and playing with his new toys. Thanks to everyone who came out and also all those who have sent their well wishes to Jaxon and to us.

Update from the Pisko Family

It’s been quite a while since I last updated things on the blog here. So I thought I’d take a few minutes to update everyone on what’s been going on. If you’ve been following us on Facebook, you’re probably already aware of most of the new stuff.  But if not, then this will all be great news for you.

On the last post I was updating pictures of our Christmas vacation up to Edmonton to visit Amanda’s parents. Since then we have confirmed with a doctor’s appointment and ultrasound that Amanda is pregnant expecting our second child in August. We are both excited to have another baby, and Jaxon appears to be excited to be a big brother. When we ask Jax where the baby is, he runs over and pats Amanda’s belly and gives it a hug.

Since we found out we were going to have another baby, we decided that our current living conditions were too small to accommodate our growing family. And thanks to our neighbor Duncan, who decided to form a house-buying coalition, we have decided to build a house in south Calgary.

Here’s how the story goes. We really like the apartment complex that we live in, mostly because of the neighbors we have. So Amanda had an idea last year that it would be great if we could take all the “cool people” from the complex and all move into houses on the same street or neighborhood so we would all be close together on our very own “Wisteria Lane” (a little Desperate Housewives reference for anyone not in the know). But it was just a thought that we never gave a second glance at, until Duncan came up with the same idea and ran with it. So in February, four of the families from the complex went out and got pre-approved for mortgages and Duncan called up some builders to find out what sort of volume discounts we could get if we had a group of people all ready to buy. Through some negotiating, lots of talk, a few scary situations, and quite a bit of worrying, Amanda and I found a really sweet deal on a Spec home in a new community in south Calgary. We signed the paperwork on the home without any of the other members of our coalition committed to moving to the same neighborhood. Since that time, Duncan and his family have bought in our community, and another of the coalition member bought in the south west. We’re still working on the last coalition member to get them to move south with us.  We’ll have to wait and see.

The latest progress on the home as of last Saturday was that the house was framed and the roof trusses were being assembled on site. Windows and doors were on site, ready to be installed. The anticipated move in date for us is late June / early July. So we will be nice and settled into the new place for when Amanda has the baby. And she will be nice and huge when we have to move, so she won’t have to do a lot of work.

I’ll update with pictures and such from the construction once we have our first meeting with the site supervisor. Since it is a Spec home, we don’t get to make any decisions about the colors of the walls, cabinets, carpet, etc, and we can’t change anything in the floorplan. But at the same time, we save a ton of money because that process is streamlined for us. Everything is decided already.

In other news, February 21st was my 30th birthday. We decided that since we had just signed the paperwork for our $300,000 home the Monday before, that I didn’t need any presents from Amanda and Jaxon. Instead we had some family and some friends over and expensed the pizza and cheesecake to my work as a reward bonus and we played some Rock Band and Mario Kart for the Wii.

Speaking of Birthday news, this Saturday is Jaxon’s 2nd birthday party, with Sunday being his actual birthday. Amanda has been going crazy planning the party to try and make it as fun as last year’s party. Jaxon appears to be feeling better this year than he was last year. He had a cold last year and was tired and cranky most of the party. This year’s theme is a Teddy Bear’s picnic and I will try to post pictures once we get some from the party.

I think that pretty much fills you in on everything that’s been going on for the last 3 months. Hopefully the next update won’t take 3 more months.

Christmas Morning Stockings

For most people, the Christmas stockings are a nice appetizing "tide-me-over" until the big presents under the tree are opened. Well, when Christmas is done "overboard" style at the Nelsons, one person's stocking contains enough presents for an entire family. Each person averaged around 26-30 presents in their stocking. Here is a picture of Jaxon's stocking waiting for him to open.

Here Jaxon opens up a few of his stocking stuffers, that don't really get stuffed into the stocking, because there aren't stockings big enough to fit all those presents.

Amanda shows off one of her many stocking stuffers.

And even with all the new toys and games and treats that he got in his stocking, Jaxon still preferred to play with the tupperware from the kitchen.

The aftermath of the stocking opening

Christmas Eve Presents

The tradition with the Nelson family is that everyone gets to open one present on Christmas Eve. And the tradition is that the Christmas Eve present is usually a pair of new pajamas or slippers or some sort of sleeping wear. This year for Christmas Eve was no different. After dinner, and before the evening board game events began, the stockings were placed near the fireplace and everyone got their Christmas Eve present to open. Here Jaxon makes sure the stocking are all lined up perfectly.


Jaxon gets a little bit of help from Amanda to open his Christmas Eve present.


Here Jaxon gets a good look at his present. It is a new pair of pajamas for him to wear.


Jaxon liked his new pajama's, but first wanted to wear Amanda's new slippers before he got ready for bed.


Here Jaxon models his new pajama's. They have a monkey Santa Claus on them that says, "Gimmie Gifts." Jaxon is also showing off his "tough guy" face. "Don't mess with my presents" he says. Actually this is the face that Jaxon makes when you tell him to grin for the camera... It's really quite hilarious.

The Christmas Trees

As part of the "going overboard" for Christmas, the Nelson's picked up two Christmas trees to decorate for the holiday. A smaller artificial tree was placed in the downstairs living room area next to the fireplace...


And a large 8 foot natural tree was placed upstairs in the bonus room. This is the tree that all the presents were placed under and where everyone gathered around for presents on Christmas morning.

Amanda's New Haircut

Amanda went out with her mom today and got her haircut and colored. She chopped it off pretty short this time, and had it styled to look like some girl named Alice from the Twilight movie.

I haven't seen the movie, only the picture below of the girl. But I think Amanda's hair looks good short, and she really likes it too.

Christmas at the Pisko's

Since we are going to be out of town in Edmonton at Amanda's parent's place for Christmas and probably New Years, we went to my parent's place tonight for a Christmas dinner and to open presents with my family. All my family, with the exception of my little sister were there. Jaxon had fun playing in the basement with his cousin Hayden waiting for dinner to start. He is just starting to realize his musical potential. Here he is with some Cymbals he found.

Here everyone is gathering around the tree while Jaxon takes the presents to everyone to open. If you look closely, it looks like it is snowing at my parent's place...It's either a Christmas miracle or else it really means that I have to clean my camera lens.

Jaxon finally gets the hang of opening presents. At first he just wanted to give the presents away to everyone else. Then when we told him that they presents were for him to open, he only wanted to play with the first present he opened and couldn't care less about the other ones.

The one present Jaxon got that he just loves is this Optimash Prime Mr. Potato Head Transformer figurine. He carried that thing around the whole night wherever he went. He didn't even care to take it out of the box. He just wanted to carry it around by the handle.

Here's another toy from the past that Jaxon got this year. A Lite Brite! My sister had one of these growing up. They were so much fun to play with.

We had a really good dinner that we prepared and took out to Okotoks. And a good time visiting with the family. We'll be leaving tomorrow to go to Beaumont for the holidays. It should be a fun time... I hear Amanda's mom has gone overboard this year.

Santa Picture

Jaxon wasn't quite as excited to see Santa this year as he was last year. We had to join him on Santa's seat just to keep him calm. Even with Trevor (his monkey) accompanying him, Jax was not a happy camper. He enjoyed the animatronic mice in Santa's workshop way more than he liked Santa. But I have to give "props" to the photographer who managed to take a good picture of Jaxon in between his sobs.

Decorating the tree

On Sunday November 30, Tim took the day off from studying for his CGA exam, and we decided to decorate the Christmas tree. Even though it wasn't December yet, we thought it would be a good family afternoon activity to do (since Tim was going to be gone on Monday night taking his test for Family Home Evening, and since he wanted to be around to decorate.) Here is Tim with the tree set up putting some tinsel around it. Check out the sweet Angel on the top... and check out Tim's sweet Santa hat.
Jaxon was really eager to help decorate too. He loved looking through the ornaments we have and attempting to put them on the tree. It took him a while to figure out how to hook the strings over the branches...
...But he eventually got the hang of it. Here he is putting a Christmas up on the upper portion of the tree. The good thing about where we placed the Christmas tree is that is in the corner and we only had to decorate like half the tree.

Here's Jaxon hangin another ball on the tree.

With the tree lit up, Jaxon takes a look under to see where all the present are. Soon we will have a ton of presents under the tree (but most of them will be for everyone else that we are giving presents to.) All of the presents for us will be up at Grandma and Granpda Nelson's house. Amanda's mom has been told that she has to "go overboard" this Christmas, since last years Christmas wasn't overboard. If that wasn't overboard, then I can't wait to see what is overboard.

Trick or Treating

Of Course we took Jaxon trick or treating in the evening. We only went to a few friends houses since he got a bunch of candy from Trick or treating at the Mall but he still had fun. He would knock on the door and stand there with his hand out... the once he got the candy he would push the door shut... even if they were still trying to talk to him! He had his candy and was ready to move on to the next house!

Tim wore his big foam cowboy hat trick or treating. (He was thrilled bytheway) But now Jaxon loves dressing up so he had to put it on too!