Our adventure!

Today we went to Floor Covering Direct (where we need to pick our flooring for our house) and thought we might have a look around to get some ideas of what we might like for flooring. We decided to ask and see if Dan was in (the guy we were supposed to see), and he was. We met with him and showed him our plans and discussed our ideas of what we thought we might like. Well before we knew it, we had all of our flooring picked out for our house. I can't believe it. It was so fun, and at first it felt a little overwhelming, but Dan was SO helpful. We have decided that we are going to try to keep the details secret for the most part, but I will tell you that we picked out some hardwood, lino, carpet and laminate. After we left there with samples in hand we decided to head over to the paint store and pick out some colours. So now we have all of our flooring and paint colours decided. On Monday we are going to go to J and H to pick out doors, towel bars and shingle colour just to name a few. And on Tuesday we may go to pick out kitchen cabinets and counter tops. This is so exciting :) I am so thankful that Jay and I have such similar tastes. There were a few times today that I asked him what he was thinking and he asked what I was thinking and we were thinking the same colour or same flooring. It will be very interesting to see all of these colours and floorings come together. It's one thing to see a little square of lino next to a little square of hardwood, but it will be interesting to see it all put together.

Pictures of my Nephews and Great Grandpa

William with great grandpa

William looking quite thoughtful.

James looking quite cute. Hard to believe that he will be three years old on Friday March 30th.

My 400th post

This is indeed my 400th post. I thought I would use it to share a fun new game with you. It is very soothing. Nice calming music, as well as pretty colours. It is quite addictive, so be warned!

Boomshine

Can you believe this house is worth over a million dollars?????

This is one of the two skinny houses (20 feet wide!) going up on the lot behind my grandpa's house in Calgary. Last fall they moved out the old house and now they are building two of these skinny three story houses. Grandpa said it was bought for $1.3 million! Can you believe it!?

This Weekend

I am off to Calgary this weekend! I am leaving tomorrow morning and returning Monday evening. It feels like it has been quite a while since I had a little holiday from work (other than a stat holiday long weekend), so I am looking forward to it. I have to say that I am going to miss my hubby, but I hope to keep fairly busy (how can you not keep busy when my sister and nephews are involved?!?) so I don't think about him ALL the time I am gone.

I am going with my mom, sister and my two nephews. I am pretty sure that James will make the trip alright, but I am hoping that William (almost 9 months old) will spend a good part of the trip sleeping, and if not sleeping at least not fussing. It will be longest road trip of his young life. Some of my friends mentioned the other day that their parents used to give them Gravol to ward of motion sickness in the car. But anyone who has taken Gravol before knows that it makes you incredibly sleepy, and makes you wonder if those kids even had troubles with motion sickness...hmmm. Maybe we should give James and Will some kids Gravol...could make the trip much more enjoyable for the adults involved. Or maybe I could do some driving so I am not stuck in the back of the van with the kids the whole time!

I am pretty excited to be able to visit with my grandpa. I haven't seen him since my grandma's funeral (1 1/2 years ago) and I think it's a little overdue. He is now 89 years old and is doing alright, but I have heard that he is definitely looking older and more frail. Last time I made a trip out to Calgary just for a visit was August of 2005 and grandma passed away in September of 2005. I guess at this point you need to really cherish the times you get to spend with these family members.

I opened up one of my Kinder eggs tonight that I got from my mother-in-law for Valentine's day and the toy was a little dinosaur that changes colour when it gets warm. It reminded me of Hypercolor T-shirts. Remember those? I had one! It was purple and turned pink when it warmed up. Just thought I would share that little tid bit of nostalgia with you.

Smarty Pants

Last night on CBC they had a program on called 'Test the Nation'. For those who aren't familiar with it, it was an interactive IQ test. They had a number of people on the show all taking the test, and you could take it at home with the show, or you could go to their website at cbc.ca/testthenation and take the test. I watched a little bit on TV then opted to go to the website and do it myself. It has 60 questions based on different things like math, perception and memory. I managed to get 51/60 which for my age bracket put me at an IQ of 128!

Homework

It's done! We went yesterday and signed our contract and finalized a few small details with three guys from Fraser Homes. I had no idea how the process would necessarily go, but they said that likely within three weeks that they would get a start on digging our basement :) They also gave us a little envelope full of business cards of different places we need to go to pick out various things. I realize that they need to order some things in, but I had no idea that we would be choosing these things so soon. I think that it's nice, because this way we can choose, then sit back and watch it all come together. I am thankful at this point that Jay and I have similar tastes in things, and that neither of us are very stubborn and are both willing to give a little when necessary.

Things that we need to go pick out in the next few weeks are:
towel bars, door hardware, soffit colour, interior doors and moldings and shingle colors from J and H Builders Warehouse, kitchen cabinets (and I assume counter tops) from Top Line Cabinetry, flooring at Floor Covering Direct, light fixtures at Fandango, Railings at BP Banister, stuff for Jay's roll-in shower at Beauty Craft or possibly the Plumb Shoppe, paint colours from General Paint, colour of stucco for the outside of the house, brick for the outside of the house from IXL, and I think that's it. Crazy! That's a lot of stuff to choose, but I think we have a pretty good idea of what we like and what we don't.

This is definitely getting exciting!

My Purchases

Last night after work I ventured over to the new Walmart to make a couple of purchases. First and most importantly a toilet plunger. After having an overflow (thankfully just clean water) earlier in the day, we decided that it was indeed time to invest in one. Funny how you don't think to buy those things until it's too late. I was thankful that we have a second toilet.

My second purchase was something that I had wanted for some time. I had asked for it for Christmas for the last two years and it had been overlooked for other equally good items. I finally bought a dust buster. Ever since I started cutting Jason's hair for him I have really wanted one. It is very hard to sweep up all the tiny hairs off of our kitchen floor. The first few times I cut his hair we did it out on our balcony and let the wind take care of it (I imagine some bird made a fine nest out of it). But this Sunday is haircut Sunday for Jason, so we will test out the new dust buster and see how it stands up against the broom. I have already been trying to figure out where to mount it in our new house. I thought it might work well in the broom closet, but usually broom closets don't have plug ins (for the charger), but then I remembered that we can put plug ins wherever we want, because we are designing it. Yay!

On Friday at one o'clock we are going to meet with a few people from Fraser homes to sign our contract. This will be the real starting point for construction on our house. We will be giving them a significant chunk of money, and they will start digging our basement. Rob called us tonight because our blueprints and contract were going to be ready to pick up this evening, but because of the poor weather we decided we will just wait until tomorrow. However Rob was able to give us our possession date. *drum roll*....... Looks like we will be moving September 7th. Well probably more likely September 8th because the 7th is a Friday. It is nice to have that little piece of information. Now when people ask, we will have a concrete answer to give. This is becoming more and more real and exciting :)

A happy ending to my frustrating day

I just found out that a condo in our building sold for $210,000. I find that encouraging, and brings a smile to my face after a somewhat frustrating day at work :)

Aren't they pretty?

Losing my marbles?

A few weeks ago we ran out of ketchup, or so I thought. We went to the grocery store and bought a double pack of ketchup and brought them home, only to realize that there was still a bottle in the pantry from our previous double pack. Then today, I looked in the fridge and saw our new big jar of Miracle Whip. I was putting away groceries and looked in the pantry and saw another small jar of Miracle Whip. The first thing I did was ask Jason if his mom had brought us a new jar (she used to bring us peanut butter and cheez whiz quite often), but he wasn't sure. Then I thought I remembered buying that one and putting it in the pantry until we used up the jar in the fridge. I feel like I am losing my marbles! It reminds me of a story an elementary school teacher told our class about her father who had Alzheimer's disease and the way they figured it out was they looked all over his house and found cantaloupes (or was it coconuts...something like that anyway) everywhere. In every closet, drawer and even under his bed. He just kept buying them....Kind of like me and the ketchup and Miracle Whip.

A Blast from the Past

Do you remember this guy? If you aren't from my generation, you may not, but according to his website he is still making videos and has been since 1975. He has cut the afro off since I saw him last, but I was happy to find an 'old school' picture. For those who don't know him, he is Slim Goodbody and he makes educational videos for kids. I always thought his body suit was a little too tight.... I am not sure what made me think of this today, but I got Jay to look him up for me and I totally did not expect to find an up to date website. A little bit of nostalgia!

My Weird Dream

I had a dream last night. I quite often dream, but they are not usually as vivid or long as this dream seemed. It seems that usually my dreams are not very coherent, little pieces that don't really fit together and are rather bizarre. Last night I think my dream started with me at the hospital giving birth. It was quite realistic too. I felt a lot of pain even though I have obviously never experienced child birth. Then finally my child was born, and in the dream I just felt so exhausted all I could do was hold my baby and cry. It was a boy, by the way, and in the dream Jason and I couldn't figure out what to name him. And he had a very full head of dark brown hair, and he was very cute. I just remember how exhausted I felt, even though in my dream the baby didn't cry once! I even took him to church with me, and everyone wanted to hold him, and I was glad to pass him around because I was so tired and just wanted a nap. Then the strange thing was, when I woke up from this super realistic dream I felt SO tired. I feel like I barely slept last night, though I have no recollection of being awake during the night. Not sure what the deal is. I can tell you this though, I am looking forward to going to bed tonight and I have barely even started my day.

A couple more funny videos for your enjoyment!

Since I haven't been very inspired to write anything too profound lately, I thought I would share a couple of my favorite scenes from the Simpsons. Enjoy!