Day 39: New Home, Part 1 of...Several

So on Monday, the move finally went ahead. My Mom and Dad arrived with their truck and we started to put the boxes that we had stuffed our lives into on their truck. We left our 2 bedroom apartment behind forever and made our way to our three bedroom, two bathroom house.

My new house!!!!

So far we love everything about this house. The trees in the front yard are just like the ones I had in my yard when I was a little girl. I plan to plant pansies in the "wishing well" in the front yard in the spring. I have two rhubarb patches and two plum trees in the backyard.

What do the boys like best? Well, they love the playroom and their new bedroom but I think that perhaps their favorite part is...

Silly Hayden

...being able to look out the window! Since our old apartment was a downstairs one, all the windows were too high for the kids to be able to look out of without help. Now they can stand in the living room and see everything that goes on outside. Watching the mail be delivered is a particular fascination to them.

I don't have pictures of everything yet because I haven't really had a chance with all the unpacking, but here are a few since I know some of you are curious.

Silas, James and Hayden watching television in the new living room

Can't see much of the living room in this picture but you can see that it has hardwood floors, the walls are a gold color except the one directly behind the sofa, which is an off-white.

The Mom is unimpressed

This is the armchair and bamboo divider between my living room and dining room. Mom is not greatly excited about having her picture taken and I don't blame her. We'd been waiting for Dad and Johnny to return from the apartment for ages and were starving.

Ignore the mess...

This is my dining room. What you can't see in this picture are the glass cupboards on the wall to the right. They house my Willow Tree Angels, my Cherished Teddies and my pretty teacups.

Some things never change.

Despite having a new bedroom with a new layout...Silas still manages to somehow get out of bed and end up in the strangest places.

Breakfast at the new place.

This is me, early in the morning the day after our move. Showing my face was not an option.

Just like last year...Silas has eyes only for the cake.

This was my first big dinner in the new place. My mom's birthday was Wednesday and since she couldn't be in town that day, I did her birthday dinner a day late. It was a fantastic dinner if I do say so myself. We had baked pork chops, mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts and peas...and of course birthday cake for dessert!

More pictures coming in the next couple days. Keep your eyes peeled and the comments coming. Please don't make me beg.

Day 33 - Endings and Beginnings

Barring unforseen circumstances, tomorrow is the day we move into our new home. There have been some happy memories of this place, however.

Moving is HARD work.

August 1, 2006 was the day we moved into this apartment as a family. We'd lived here for a couple of months the previous year with my sister, but this time it was going to be home to us. Our idea of "unpacking" was to dump boxes of stuff on our bed and sort through them a few at a time. This strategy proved unsound and we will not attempt it again. At around 9 pm when we were still trying to find Hayden's pyjama bottoms, the poor little guy fell asleep on top of the pile of clothes. Not optimal.

Since moving here we've added another baby to the family. Silas joined us on December 5th the year we moved in, and it was this apartment that we brought him home to. This apartment is soaked in the cries of babies, the shrieks of toddlers, and the giggles of preschoolers.

Tomorrow we will start fresh in a new home. A home to be filled with more laughter and joy. More memories.

And we can't wait.

Day 29 - Only a Week Til Moving Day!

So here I am, surrounded by boxes, with only a week til moving day and I think I've decided something.

This is the longest week of my life.

I swear to you, it's only Tuesday and I feel like a month has passed since Sunday night. I'm so anxious and eager for the move now that I just want it to happen. I'm dying to get my dishes in the cupboards and my pictures on the walls. I want to cook dinner in my new kitchen and watch TV in my new family room and sleep in my new bedroom. I want to hang out in my backyard. I want to take pictures of the new place to post here on this blog.

I guess I just have to wait some more.

I hate waiting.

Day 23 - Much Needed Update

Well I've been quite lax in updating because things have been more than a little crazy here. Packing, appointments for Hayden's kindergarten checkup, family visiting from out of town, etc. So here is the update that I should have posted before.

Johnny and I are getting ready to move into the house of our dreams. Now before you start envisioning a pink palace in the clouds, let me tell you what the house we've dreamed of really has. I've never been one for marble halls and diamond sunbursts. What we wanted in a home was simple:

• Enough bedrooms to have a room for family that comes to visit.
• A kitchen that I could actually TURN AROUND in.
• More kitchen cupboards than I have things to put in them.
• A dishwasher.
• A backyard big enough for the kids to play in.
• More than one bathroom.
• A playroom for the kids.
• An office for the computers.
• A fireplace.

The only thing our new place is missing is the last, and that can be added later. We are beyond happy. I will post pictures the day we move in. It's a beautiful home and it's just around the corner from Hayden's school. It's truly a home that was made for us.

In other good news, as of tomorrow I will be wiping a debt off my record that has been bothering me for years. My first car (which I no longer own, having sold the stupid thing to my father) will be entirely paid for. Hurray for no longer owing money and no longer having to dish out $200 a month for something I haven't had in my possession for 2 years!

So now that you know where I've been hiding (under a pile of boxes) I hope to update you more often, even if the updates are short and sweet. And on September 1st I'm sure there'll be a lot to write about!

Day 13 - Good News and Bad News

So this past week was too crazy to blog. Which kind of sucks when you think about it because in a week that there is no time to blog there are loads of things to blog about. I don't want to subject you to every last detail so I'll give you the condensed version.

We spent the first part of the week looking for houses and apartments since even though we knew that by law we didn't have to move, we wanted to get out of here. Johnny has been aggressive and relentless, pursuing every lead of a new dwelling that he could. We did find the perfect place. Three bedrooms plus an office that could be converted to one, big family room downstairs, one and a half bathrooms, nice backyard, quiet neighbourhood about a 2 minute walk from the primary school that Hayden will be attending, and it is just plain beautiful. We spent an agonizing 2-3 days poring over our budget to be absolutely certain that it was in our range since it's a fair bit more expensive than the dinky little apartment we've been living in and rightly so since it's about 1785697965 times as big. (Not really but work with me on the exaggeration thing.)

We decided we could comfortably afford it and then came the wait to find out if the owner thought we were suitable tenants. We spent 24 hours on pins and needles, but it was worth it when the news came that the house is ours! We move on the first and we're beyond excited. Even the kids can't wait!

That's the good news. Now to the bad news. There's been a setback in the armed forces avenue of our lives.

The day before Johnny had his medical testing done, he went to our family doctor (actually the doofus who was filling in for our family doctor who was on leave...) and got his ears syringed out. He has to have this done regularly because otherwise he gets an extreme buildup of hardened earwax like I have never seen before and loses his hearing. The doofus syringed one ear and wouldn't do the other.

The med tech who did the medical could tell that earwax was the reason that Johnny failed the hearing test in that ear because just two years ago he passed that very hearing test. The other ear was perfect. He even tried to syringe out the ear on his own but didn't have the proper tools to do it and couldn't properly finish the job. He said he was not failing Johnny based on earwax and tried to pass him based on previous test results. Ottawa wants the hearing test redone. So that means more waiting and a later BMQ date. Also the infantry profession will likely be closed for the year at that point so he will either have to pick a different profession or wait longer.

My first reaction to this was disappointment, but it faded quickly. I'm thinking this might be a good thing. First of all, it means he'll have some time in the new house with us before he has to be zipped away to BMQ. Second, I'm a firm believer that God has a hand in everything and perhaps something bad would have happened if he had gone on time. Perhaps there would have been an accident on the way to BMQ or after he got there. Perhaps he would have been deployed and injured or something if he'd gone sooner. It may be protection from God to have to wait. So I'm still hopeful...but accepting of whatever happens.

And I made a decision concerning this blog. If something does go wrong and he doesn't get accepted, I will keep going. It's still our journey. I'm still raising an army. Just that maybe my General won't actually be a soldier after all. And I'm okay with that because I love him no matter what.

(I love you baby.)

Day 10 - Hope?

Yesterday we went to look at a house. Not an apartment, a house. We fell in love with it right away since it had many of the things we've wanted in a place, and it's on one of our favorite streets in town. It's a quiet neighbourhood, 2 minute walk from Hayden's school, and has a nice backyard that the boys could play in.

Today we will find out if we're going to be moving into it in on the first of September. Oh look...I'm back to waiting! This time though, I'm waiting with high hopes because I'm almost positive that it's going to swing in our favor and for the first time since we first got married, I'll have a house with a yard for my boys to play in. A yard with flowers and rhubarb and a fire pit. A house with a dishwasher and a laundry chute!

So I won't write much more right now...I'll save it for later today when I get the final word. Wish us luck!

Day 7 - As if Things Couldn't Get More Stressful...

Our landlord decides to do something so completely unexpected (and might I add ILLEGAL) that I haven't even been able to post in this blog for the past few days. (Not that I had anything interesting to talk about other than whining about the wait and wishing that we just knew something. Anything.)

His girlfriend decides she wants to use the apartment we're living in and convert it to a hair salon. So she gives us 30 days to move. Um, what? According to the laws in our province:

"In a periodic tenancy (for example, a month-to-month tenancy) the landlord may give 3 months notice to terminate the tenancy at any time, and the tenant must give one month notice." Source: CMHC

Either way, we want out. I don't have time for this crap. We could fight it and get our extra 60 days in the apartment but if Johnny gets a date for boot camp, I want to be already settled in before he leaves. I don't want to be moving a month later. That would completely and utterly suck.

So back to apartment hunting and fuming. Still no word on BMQ because the bases are closed today. ARGH!