We are proud to announce the birth of our son Justin Micah Mitchell, born Friday, August 27th at 9:46 pm. He weighed 8 lbs 4 oz at birth and measured 52 cm long with a head circumference of 36 cm. Both mother and baby are doing great and we are settling in at home now. The girls both love their new baby brother and can’t stop fussing over him. He’s not even 2 days old, and we’ve already taken hundreds of photos. I’ve uploaded a few quickly and I’m sure they’ll be tons more in the near future.

For all of you out there who have kids who love their Disney movies, you will want to know about this (if you don’t already). Disney has a Disney Disc Replacement Program that allows you to get any DVD or Blu-Ray disc replaced if the disc is damaged for only $6.95. It’s not free and you have to pay to ship them your old movie, but it certainly can be cheaper than buying it new again.

Several weeks ago we took 4 days off and visited with my parents in Comox. We had wonderful sunny weather for our visit and enjoyed lots of time outdoors, including two days at the beach at Kye Bay, and a visit to my favourite swimming hole on the river. We also went to the Filberg petting zoo with the girls.

Our basement is nearing completion. The drywall, painting, flooring, baseboards, doors and trim are all done. At this point the majority of the work is complete and the only significant items remaining are the cabinets, sinks and toilets in the bathroom. Assuming everything goes well, it should be done in a week or two. We’re very excited, and are hoping that it finishes before the baby arrives.

Speaking of which, we are 37 weeks today. So far everything is going well. The baby moves a LOT these days and I can often see the movement from across the room. While Christina has been having contractions off and on for a while now, they have started to get more painful as of late which has helped it sink in that a new member of our family will be joining us soon. I guess we better figure out the names!

The last few weeks were busy ones for our family with both Natalie and Jasmine’s birthdays and our 10-year anniversary. We celebrated both of them on Natalie’s birthday by going to the Cultus Lake Waterslides. We all had a great time and the girls both went down lots of slides. Natalie even went down the big ones with me and loved it.

We got Jasmine a run-bike (pedal-less) for her birthday this year. We also got the girls matching baskets and bells for their bikes. Natalie got a Disney Princess video game for the Nintendo DS that she loves to play. I was very impressed with how quickly she picked it up.

Last weekend I painted our bedroom. I had been dreading that one for a while as I had to move a lot of furniture out and we used two different colours, one for the ceiling and the other for the walls. It was a lot of work, but we love how it makes the room feel.

I found out this weekend that the comments weren’t working on the blog anymore after upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. Thankfully it was relatively easy to fix and everything is working again. I was starting to think I was the only one reading it. :)

I don’t normally plug bands I like, but we heard Andrew Allen at the Coquitlam Canada Day celebration and really enjoyed it. His sound reminds me of a mix of Jason Mraz, Maroon 5 and Jack Johnson… all favourites of mine as well.

His website: www.andrewallenlive.com

We picked up our colour package from Benjamin Moore on Wednesday. Amongst other things, it included our 16 colour choices all organized with swatches and location descriptions. With a extra-long-weekend ahead of us we decided to pick up some of the colours as soon as possible and see what we could get done.

Leaving Sunday as our day of rest, we managed to paint 4 different rooms and 5 colours. It left the weekend a bit of a blur, but we’re very happy with the results. We painted the main bathroom on Thursday, the girls rooms on Friday, and the master bathroom on Saturday. Here are some photos of the results.