New Secret Pals from Canada...

Hello everyone,
We are Shawn and Kristine from Victoria BC, LID 03/01/06. Our family consists of the two of us and our 18 year old cat Camie. We have requested a girl as young as possible as this is our first and probably only child. Our daughter's first name will be Isabel after my great-grandmother. Our nursery will be a light lavender colour with white furniture I will be painting either wisteria or lilac's in vines as decoration. So I guess, white, purple, yellow and pink are our colours. I love butterfly's and am making a 100 wishes butterfly quilt for Isabel. When I think about it, a Garden theme is our thing as I love to grow heritage roses.
Shawn likes to play guitar, airplanes and aviation, computers, airplane magazines, guitar magazines and playstation 2. As for music we both like Hendrix, Kiss, Beatles, Buddy Holly, the Who - Classic 70's rock guitar music. Kristine also likes Depeche Mode, Sarah Mclaughlin, Lerena Mckinnet, XTC, Green Day and music the 90's grunge scene (STP, Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc). She also really likes Jazz (old and new), Classical (Vivaldi, Mozart, Haydn etc) and the 50's rat pack music. Eclectic. Our house is full of music!! Kristine loves to read mystery novels (especially British ones) and Canadian writers. She also loves to cook with neat gadgets and watching Cooking programs then preparing the food. Redecorating is a favorite pastime for both Kristine and Shawn as well as going for bike rides, shopping in Chinatown (the first in Canada!!) and Kristine is a "fairweather" sewer. We both do Yoga weekly to try and relax from our hectic and busy lives. Kristine loves her monthly massage session as well. We both like to go for walks, spending time at the Ocean any time of the year and watching the moon rise. A few months ago Kristine and her girlfriends decided that living the "romantic" life everyday was worth doing so she uses the good linens, serves a good wine with dinner and we try to spend time enjoying each others company.
We haven't registered at any stores but children's books would be very welcome for Isabel's library and anything that a one year old girl would enjoy. We are looking forward to being a part of the next exchange!!!

Thankyou so very much to the O'Brien secret Pal!

The doorbell rings! All 3 boys come running down the stairs with this big box yelling mom whats in this box? Can we open it? They are all so excited as am I? What's in this big box?















Here are from left Tyler, Mike, and Chris who are waiting so anxiously to open the big box!
They start to open the box and look at the beautiful items in the box just blew me away!



My husband and I got this beautiful basket full of soothe products. Geranium and Sandalwood scents they are lovely smelling! Body wash, lotion, bath salts, bath bombs, body bar with massage nubbs, back scrubber, luffa/brush, a really cute magnet for the fridge saying Acts of kindness warm the geart soothe the soul and make the world turn more gently. On the front of the basket a cute cuddly little pink fuzzy bunny book neat idea and some really beautiful pink material with hearts on it which I am going to use for Anisha's 100 good wishes quilt and the most precious little footprint package with a wonderfully written personal note from my dear secret pal. She even remembered my anniversary which meant so much too me! I dont know how to express my gratitude secret pal you really went overboard and it is sooo greatly appreciated!

The mailman secret pal wanted to know what was in the parcel too. He made a special trip back to our house to see what was in the box. He looks forward to your gifts each month just as much as I do he told me that. He saw what your gift to us this month was and his eyes just buldged and told me that you have wonderful taste secret pal and asked if I would share the goods and of course my answer is noooo way they are mine! I just love everything secret pal and my husband does too he asked me to leave him one of the bath bombs for him to use.
Thankyou again secret pal!
Trisha

We are new on here and to blogs: Susan Appleton

Hi everyone! We are Doug and Susan Appleton from Danville, Virginia and we are so excited about being part of this group and getting to participate in the Secret Pals!How exciting!!!!! We have an LID of 04/05/06 and this will be our first child! We can't wait to be parents!!!!
Doug works at Averett University here in Danville in the IT Department and Susan teaches 5th Grade for Danville City Schools. We have been married for five years. Doug is originally from Brampton, Ontario, Canada (right outside of Toronto). We are requesting a baby girl as young as possible since we'd like to experience all of the joys of having a young baby and watching her grow. We don't want to miss a single event in her development! We will name our baby Rebekah but we haven't decided on a middle name yet. (That is still be debated but I think we've narrowed down to either MacKenzie or Delaney). We haven't decorated the nursery yet but it has pink carpet and will be painted lilac. We have bought a crib and crib bedding with a Teddy Bear theme so that is what we are going with.....the theme is Teddies but we want to concentrate on the girly, pink/lilac colors.
We both love cats and our two feline babies are named Tabitha and Savannah. They are spoiled ROTTON. Doug enjoys computers, aviation, gardening, playing PlayStation 2, watching movies, and traveling. Anything Canadian is big with him too since he hasn't been home since he moved down here four years ago. Susan love cross-stitching, reading, scrapbooking, singing, country music, collecting children's books, funny movies with a bit of romance, shopping, and playing the piano (she is learning the guitar).
Doug collects James Bond DVDs, aviation/airplane stuff, books related to technology/computers. He also is starting to collect PlayStation 2 games since we just got one of those....hahahaha. Susan collects cookbooks, children's books, "country-looking" stuff to decorate their home, and picture frames.
Susan LOVES scents and lotions from Bath and Body Works especially Sweet Pea and Cotton Blossom! She doesn't wear a lot of perfumes but loves the mild scents from Bath and Body works. Doug doesn't wear cologne much and really couldn't name any fragrance he likes when Susan asked him for this blog.....hahahahaha.
Doug's favorite books are Harry Potter and Clive Cussler books. Susan loves the Chicken Soup For the Soul books and has most all of them already. She also LOVES children's books and cookbooks. Her favorite author is Nicholas Sparks!
Doug's favorite movies are James Bond, Harry Potter, and Walk The Line. Susan's favorite movies are Walk The Line, Gone With The Wind, Sweet Home Alabama, How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days, Phantom of the Opera.
As far as music, that is an eclectic bunch of styles. We have over 500 CDs that range from Country to Rock to Bluegrass to Classical to Elvis.......it's hard to say what our favorite is. Susan tends to like the OLD country music like Marty Robbins, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, etc. Of course being a true southern girl, she LOVES Elvis music (and the corny movies....hahahaha). Doug listens to everything too! We both LOVED the Johnny Cash movie, Walk the Line tremendously!
We are registered at Toys-R-Us and Walmart right now and plan to register soon at Target.
Anything else we'd like our secret pal to know???? Well, as first time parents we are in LOVE with anything pink and girly and you can rest assured that anything you send will be oooohhheed and ahhhhed over and I'm sure Susan will cry her eyes out because everything we get for the baby she does that! She has the most emotional heart when it comes to becoming a mommy and is cherishing every part of this "pregnancy"! Our families are not being as excited about our adoption as we are so having friends online to share in the excitement and joy is a dream come true! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Thank you from the BeDells!

Thank you again Secret Pal! You are so sweet! I'm sorry it has taken me a few days to get this post up! The day I received the packages I was so thrilled that I immediately started enjoying everything in it and forgot to take a picture first! Now that I finally took the picture, I realized that the bag of Hershey Kisses had just magically disappeared - It was the weirdest thing. Woops! Guess that's what happens when you send a chocoholic some chocolate! I literally had to search the house for everything because I loved it all so much I wanted to enjoy everything right away! We love the banana candle and the citrus lotion! The poem in the frame made me cry, I love it! The bracelet has been on my hand every day - I always wanted a red thread bracelet! And it's been a challenge not spending the Blockbuster gift certificate until I photographed it! The boys are excited about renting some new X-box games! And when I say boys, I mean all 3 of them (My husband and my two sons!) Thank you so much! You are spoiling me rotten. :)

Love,
Rachel and Rick, Nate and Colby BeDell

Thanks Secret Pal!

Thank you so much for this month's present. I had read about Bath and Body Works in other people's messages but they don't exist in the UK so it is lovely to have a chance to try them. Yummy citrus scent too which is perfect for the freakishly warm summer we are having here at them moment! The kids were thrilled to see the Hershey chocolates (another US thing we hear about but had not tried before) and consumed a fair few before I had chance to take the photo! A special thanks for the dragonfly picture. I only added a mention about dragonflies to the nursery info on my introductory blog message recently and that was really thoughtful of you to pick up on that. Thank you Secret Pal!

Ladybug Heaven

Thank you so much for all the thoughtful gifts this month. We appreciate all of your time and effort. With that said here is the list of cute things.
We received Ladybug Hairclips and an adorable hibiscus shirt for Grace. There were Ladybug Paddle Ball, Kite, Flying Disk, and Tambourine to play with outside in the future. A lovely photo album to put pictures in from China. To relax me, I received a reflexology set, candle & holder, and shower gel/lotion/spray set. Each furry child also received a present-the dogs each got a squeaky toy and the cat got a fishing pole. Thank you so much we are enjoying all these presents.

Lenora

To the Wohlford's Secret Pal

Thank you so much for the thoughtful pampering gifts. Even the ribbon on the wrapping was perfect. I'll find good use for it in my scrapbooks. And everything smells wonderful! And as you can see, my husband enjoyed getting in on the present opening action. I was just in need of a new shower poof. I can't wait to use the bath pillow! And my personal favorite was the ladybug earrings. I've been looking for some and those are so cute! Thanks again for your thoughtfulness!