We had planned months ago to have Easter dinner at our house, with my family. It is usually just easiest for us to host family dinners. Then Jason has access to a good bathroom, and doesn't have to worry about being hauled up and down stairs. We also thought it might be nice to have Jason's parents up for the weekend, as we hadn't seen them since we shared our big news at Christmas time. We did have a nice visit, but the weekend was full of work projects and cooking/tidying and hosting 18 people for Easter dinner on Saturday. But we did get to enjoy a nice Easter brunch at the German Cultural Centre on Sunday morning before they headed for home.
The biggest project of the weekend was getting the baby's room set up. Dale and I spent probably 4-5 hours on Saturday assembling a dresser and crib from Ikea. I am really pleased with how they look, and I am sure the dresser will be used for many years to come. Because of the setup in our house, the baby's room will be in our spare bedroom, so we had to move the guest bed out of there and into the rumpus room area of our basement. Then I had the great idea of moving our old leather reclining couch into the baby's room, as place to lay/sit/feed the baby. I don't know if I had done any measuring, but for some reason, I assumed that we would be able to get this behmoth of a couch around a 90 degree corner in a hallway. I was starting to doubt that it would be able to be moved into there. But my ingenious father-in-law and father made it work, and the couch is now in that room. We did figure that by the time we are ready to move the couch out of that room, that it may need to come out in pieces. We will see, haha.
Also, months ago, we decided, that since we will be sticking close to home this summer, that we would like to get away for a weekend to Calgary while I am still feeling good enough to go. We chose the weekend after Easter, expecting that we would have some nicer weather, considering it was the end of April (haha, right!). We did have fine weather for traveling, but the Saturday that we were in Calgary it rained/snowed for the better part of the day, and just was cool and not all that nice. Thankfully on Sunday the sun came out and we were able to get outside a bit and enjoy some fresh air. We did a lot of shopping on Saturday, which is always hectic and tiring, so I was glad on Sunday that we had a much more relaxed day. We went and hung out at a small farmer's market just north of Calgary, that I stumbled upon after Jason Chadney recommended a coffee shop to us. The coffee shop's first location was at this little market, and now they have 3 or 4 other locations in the city. It was nice to browse and talk to the vendors and try a lot of generous samples.
In the afternoon we ventured in to downtown Calgary. We had always avoided downtown, as it seemed kind of intimidating, but after our trip to Vancouver and Seattle last summer, we felt pretty invincible, and Jason did a great job getting us around the city. We spent the afternoon checking out the Core Shopping Centre and walking down Stephen Avenue to the Olympic Plaza. It was a much more relaxed day. (Except for the fact that the only bathrooms in that mall are on the 4th floor (in the food court area) and there was only ONE freakin' elevator that EVERYONE wanted to take. So usually it was at least a 5-10 minute wait to get on the elevator and it was always packed like sardines in there. Seems like a pretty big design flaw :P
I also decided a couple of months ago that I should tackle some of the continuing education credits that I need to get before the end of next year. Since I will likely be tied pretty closely to home until at least next spring, I started looking closely at any of the course offerings that were coming up. There was one, that was kind of expensive, but was three days long, and would give me just over half of my required credits. So, I believe I will now only need about 10 more credits in the next year and a half, which seems much less daunting. There are even online courses that I can take for free to get one or two credits, so that is probably what I will do next year to fill the rest of the requirement.
My course was this weekend, and was really good. It sounded somewhat interesting, so that is why I was willing to jump in and pay the money for it. It was called Ligamentous Articular Strain Technique for the upper body and extremities. I am not sure that I will incorporate every technique I learned into practice, but will definitely be using my clients as guinea pigs in the next little while to try out some of the things I learned. The guy who taught the course was really engaging and down to earth, and I think I would be willing to take more courses from him in the future.
So, now that those three very busy weekends are behind me, I feel like I have some time to breathe, and relax and prepare for baby. There is not THAT much that we need to do or prepare. I need to pick up a few things in the next couple of months, but I feel better now that baby's room is painted and furniture is set up. We are taking prenatal classes through the health region starting at the beginning of June. They run for one evening/week for three weeks. I hope that they are interesting and informative. Time is really flying by....and I think this baby is going to be here before we know it! And life will change....but that's okay :)