Approximately every minute of every day, someone in Canada needs blood. In fact, according to a recent poll, 52 per cent of Canadians say they, or a family member, have needed blood or blood products for surgery or for medical treatment.

The good news is that one blood donation - in just one hour - can save a life.

So, this past weekend, i went with three of my brothers, three nephews and one cousin to Algonquin Park.
We left early Friday morning and returned late Monday night.  Camping in Ragged Lake and had typical Algonquin September weather.  It started raining Friday night around 10 pm and didn't stop until Sunday morning.  Despite the rain we had an awesome time.  Caught loads of fish, ate lots of them, and spent many hours just chillin' around the fire - which we had to keep feeding firewood (and i mean lots of firewood)
Here are some pics of our weekend trip.

This past weekend, we had our annual family get-together (the Katerberg side...)  We had an awesome time!  Beforehand i put this 'chart' together to show some interesting stats about our family.

If you click on the image it will download a hi-res pdf of it.

Enjoy!

So... the year of SUPER SAVING!
wow... like Dave Ramsey has said... as soon as we decide to make drastic and good financial decisions... guess who comes knocking!  MUR...PHY!!!!!!!!!!!!
And wow was that ever true for us!

This month...
Van Repairs: $1,089.35 and $650.61
Bathroom Tub Repairs: $115.26
Prescriptions: Lisa and Alexis: $241.50
TOTAL: $2,096.72
None of these 3 things were part of our budget...
but we had the money! -

2 major repairs on our family van...

If you were to enter our home after December 31st, you would see lots of fridge magnets that look like this...

well...another year behind a new one ahead...

here are some notes from my daily devotional STREAMS IN THE DESERT (it's old so forgive the old style vocab.)

January 1
- today we stand on the verge of the unknown.  Before us lies a new year and we are going forward to possess it.
   - who can tell what we shall find?
   - new experiences
   - what changes shall come
   - what new needs will arise.

but here is the message from our Heavenly Father!...

So... I like keep tabs on myself!  Who cares! ... I do.
I like to keep myself motivated and most of the time I don't want others to need to be involved.  I guess I'm a bit private that way.  So I came across two websites that I now use to keep on top of it all.  Check them out below.

if you haven't guessed it yet... this was me today!  (i borrowed the pics from other sites)

Yep - tooth #35 - thankfully it was one of my front-side-bottom teeth.  not a back-front-top tooth.
besides having half of my face frozen (even part of my ear was numb) the ordeal wasn't nearly as bad as i thought.  Other than the cost (when everything is finished it will be over $2200.00!!!!)

The root canal part took about an hour, the endodontist (doctor) was really nice - they talked me through everything they did which was cool. 

my mouth had to be WIDE open for it,  they put spacers between the teeth on my one side to help with that.  once i got the swallowing part down it was smooth sailing - try swallowing with your mouth wide open for 45 minutes and see how that feels...

anyways - i'm feeling better as i type this - it's 3 hours after it was done.  the freezing is  90% gone (just my ear is a bit prickly).  i am thinking an advil might be consumed shortly as i am starting to feel my pulse in the area they did the work.  i also need to take an antibiotic.

so, if you ever need to go through this - it ain't so bad! technology is great!