Last Day!

Today is my last day of work!!!! I am very very excited to be done work - well, to be done having to go to my job, there is still lots and lots of work to be done in the house, in the yard and in the shed. But that kind of stuff is not super urgent and sometimes it's 'easier' to do.

Aidan was also very excited this morning that it was his last day at Darlene's house. I was going to make him chocolate chip cookies to share with his friends, but I didn't have enough chocolate chips, so we had to stop at Safeway and pick up some mini-cupcakes. I think he was more excited about the mini-cupcakes in the end. We talked about the fun stuff we could do together while we stayed home like watching special shows, going to the park and doing crafts.

I wanted to do something special to celebrate it being my last day at work, but we're too broke to afford anything - but then yesterday something came in the mail. Our realtor had sent us a letter with a gift certificate to the Golden Star chinese restaurant! He had already given us some gift certificates to Gulliver's so we really weren't expecting anything else from him, but it was a very welcome and timely gift. Now I just have to wait and make sure Michael's not out on a job tonight. His work is picking up again which is very very good. He took a test yesterday and is now officially an Intermediate Operator. That means he has more responsibility as well as a higher base salary and gets paid a higher percentage of the job.

Well that's about it for now. There are a few things I need to make sure are finished before I leave so I should start them now to make sure that they are all taken care of. This weekend I am tackling Hagatha's room so watch out for pictures!

eBay

We're selling a whole bunch of our movies on eBay, starting the auctions at $0.01 and then charging a little extra on the shipping and making our profit there. If the movie sells for more than $0.01 it's a bonus, but usually they don't.

Michael got a message from someone interested in buying one of the movies up for auction recently and it was so funny I thought I would post it:

"hi. I will be willing to pay 25 cents for this movie, but can you pay the shipping please? I live in Vancouver, and what condition is it in? thanks :)"

Michael responded by saying that he (Michael) would pay the guy $0.25 to take the movie off his hands and furthermore would personally drive down to Vancouver and deliver the movie.

Some people!

Air Hockey

Have I mentioned that I love freecycle? This past weekend we went to go pick up an air hockey table that someone was getting rid of. It worked out quite well because we had to borrow a truck and then we used that truck to haul the rest of the garbage off our old porch and all the garbage bags of pop cans to the new house. I keep meaning to go to the recycling depot, but it's one of those things that just never happens.

We set it up downstairs in the same room with the tv and projector, and you can see Michael's big Superman Returns banner on the wall as well.

Here they are battling it out

Aidan was super excited when we went to pick up the table.

He was very concerned we wouldn't be able to set it up and play a game IMMEDIATELY, but Michael managed to get it downstairs and set up and Aidan was very pleased.

Now every night after he gets home he asks Michael if they can play air hockey.

He's pretty competitive - here you can see him gloating after he's scored on Michael

Usually Aidan always wins and he's not shy about cheering for himself. He says 'I the best, Mommy!'

Roots of Empathy

This coming October, Hagatha and I will be part of a program called Roots of Empathy. Once a month I will take Hagatha and visit a classroom for half an hour (or 1 hour, I can't remember) and let the kids interact with the baby. The goal of Roots of Empathy is to reduce aggression and bullying in school-age children through these visits to the classroom. Grande Prairie has 3 schools with various classrooms participating in the program and it sounds like a really good idea. This is from their website, www.rootsofempathy.org:

"Roots of Empathy (ROE) is an award winning, evidence-based classroom program that has shown dramatic effect in reducing levels of aggression and violence among school children while raising social/emotional competence and increasing empathy. The program reaches children from Kindergarten to Grade 8 across Canada, in English and French, in rural, urban, remote and Aboriginal communities both on and off reserve and is being piloted internationally in Australia and New Zealand."

Babies need to be 2-4 months by October, so Michael and I are both excited that Hagatha will be the right age to participate. The lady who co-ordinates things here in Grande Prairie said that the instructors were very flexible as to what day of the week and what time (within school hours) the school visit would happen, as well as rescheduling if the baby is sick or teething or something. The only things they aren't flexible about are what is taught during the visit and who visits. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to bring Aidan, but the lady said that she was working on getting some money to reimburse me for the cost of a babysitter which sounded great to me. And with Michael's shift work I would probably be able to pick a time during his week off where he could look after Aidan.

I think it's great that there is something pro-active, rather than just re-active, being done about this problem with bullying. There are constantly stories in the news about bullying in schools and it's good that someone has come up with something that can address the problem. I guess it's been in various communities for long enough for studies to be done regarding levels of bullying and aggression and where the program was in place, those levels had all dropped.

I thought I would post this on my blog in case you hadn't heard of the program - tell all the new moms and close to delivering pregnant women you know! If they're doing it in Grande Prairie chances are they're doing it in your community as well :)

Prenatal Class

Last night Michael and I attended our first of 2 refresher prenatal classes. I honestly don't remember much about my first pregnancy or the class that we attended or the labour and delivery, so when we heard about this refresher course we thought it would be a good idea.
We talked about our first experience with labour and delivery and then what to expect - pretty standard stuff - and then we watched a video called Stages of Labour. I think we watched the same video the first time we took the class, but this time I actually watched the whole thing. It was pretty graphic and pretty much showed everything that's going to happen which was just not exciting to see at all. Just because I've been through this once doesn't mean I'm any more prepared for it! Actually Rae said that our bodies will remember and have an easier quicker time with the labour because the muscles will remember, so that's kind of cool. Now all I can think of is that stupid video...

Next week we get a tour of the hospital and apparently a lot of things have changed for the better which is great to hear. They're going to have a mini-wing for early labour (so they don't tie up labour rooms), and currently have birthing balls in each room and a lactation consultant available full time, plus the epidural rate has gone from 2-4% when I had Aidan up to 30%. We spent a lot of time talking about epidurals. Of the 3 couples in the class 1 had had an epidural the first time around but her husband didn't want her to have it again because of the risks and because it took the guy 3 tries to get the needle in properly. I'm really not sure how I feel about an epidural. On one hand I think it would be really great because it would greatly diminish the pain and I could maybe handle the whole thing a bit better. On the other hand there's a needle and tube going into your back which can cause problems and headaches and a 15% chance that it might not be effective. I don't know if part of my problem comes from the fact that it's not natural, but I'm just not completely sure about it. I know it's easy to weigh the pros and cons now when I'm not in labour - I definitely know what I would say if I was in labour, if I get to be one of the 30% :) What do you think - would you get one if you could?

My next doctor's appointment is on July 12th and if I understood her properly, she's going to book my induction too. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll book it for earlier than the 25th or 26th!
Thinking about the 25th or 26th of July seems a ways away, but I only have 5 more days of work left and that is very exciting! Lately when I pick up Aidan he tells me that I stayed away for too long and that he missed me - talk about a guilt trip! At least his behaviour has improved at Darlene's house.

Well, that's about it happening around here. Tonight Aidan and I are off to the old house and I am going to clean out the oven and cupboards while he has a bath. Hopefully I can get that all done! We have our carpets being cleaned tomorrow, Pat should be painting tomorrow or Saturday and then our walk-through with the guy from the church is on Monday. I'm excited for it to all be over, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Maybe it will seem like less once the carpets are cleaned and walls look better. All I can say is we better get that whole damage deposit back....

Things I love about my new house

Laminate Flooring!!

I love the laminate flooring because it's easy to clean (although needs sweeping more frequently) and also because it's hilarious to watch Aidan slipping and sliding around while he tries to chase/get away from Michael.

This is a view of our hallway. The doorknob on the lefthand side is the hall closet, then Hagatha's room and then Aidan's room. Right across from Aidan's room is our room and then the bathroom. It's kind of hard to see, but at the back of the hall there are 3 wavy mirrors and I think they look really cool.

Our very own mailbox, right outside our front door.

Last night while I was making dinner I was wondering if there was any mail and then I realized I didn't have to trek across the whole parking lot, I could just open my front door! Sure enough, there was 1 letter - but it was for a previous resident. Maybe we'll get lucky today :)

That's right - 2 sinks!

Our apartment had 2 sinks, but our little house only had one, so I figured out how to do dishes in one sink. So well that when I did dishes the other day, I wasn't sure what to do with the extra sink...

If those 2 sinks become too confusing, I can always use my...Dishwasher!!

This is our very first dishwasher and I am very excited to use it. I have to buy some dishwasher detergent first, and of course I forgot on the weekend...

On either side of the dishwasher you can see one of the things I do not love about this new house - the atrocious cupboards! Especially where the dishwasher goes, I think they just sawed a hole in the cupboards big enough for a dishwasher. I really want to replace them because they're so gross but I think it will have to wait until we can save up enough.

Yes, this is a closeup of my stove, but see that button on the lefthand side in the middle, the one that says Clean? I'm going to try that one of these days. And I know I will appreciate it so much more after I have cleaned the old gross disgusting stove in the other house!

Once again, this is a bad picture, but it's our screen door going out to the backyard.

At our other house we had a front and back door, but only 1 screen door. So we were either really hot or had lots of bugs in the house. Here, we have 2 screen doors so we can get a nice breeze going through the house!

A big green backyard!

Our last house had a backyard as well, but if you went too far there was a pretty steep dropoff to a creek below, so we didn't really encourage Aidan to play back there too much. Here we have a nice big tree, a picnic table, a fire pit, a garden (complete with rhubarb) and plenty of space to run around! The only thing we'll need to do is put a fence along the back because the neighbours already have fences down the sides.

A Shed!

A great place to store all sorts of things!

A live-able, use-able downstairs!

Our last little house had a downstairs, but it was a dirt cellar which is really pretty gross. We had our washer and dryer down there as well as some storage, but I never liked going down there. The downstairs of this house needs a TON of work, but there are 3 bedrooms and 2 common areas plus a little storage room, a bathroom, a fridge and another room that has the furnace, deep freeze and washer and dryer - this is where our renters will live! It's not super nice, but we're not charging an awful lot - just enough to cover our mortgage payment, which is going to help out so much!

And last but not least, the ensuite!
Our bed is literally 1 foot from the doorway, so it makes those midnight bathroom runs a lot easier :) Note the beautiful wallpaper and those awful cupboards again. And the tile. Michael hates the wallpaper so much (it's in the bedroom too) it's pretty funny. I'm not saying I like it, just that I hate the cupboards a whole lot more!

At first whenever we went to look at the new house I would just get so depressed because all I saw was what needed to be done - gross cupboards, ugly wallpaper, old linoleum, everything in the downstairs - but now that we've moved in and I'm unpacking our stuff, it's okay. Thankfully the upstairs really is a lot nicer than the downstairs, and like Michael says, anything we do to improve the house will add a lot of value. We don't plan to be here for very long - maybe as little as 1 year, but who knows - so hopefully we can do enough in the house to increase the value so that we can afford to buy something nicer and newer next time.

Michael and Aidan played boxing on the Wii last night again and this time I was prepared with the camera. None of the pictures really turned out very well and they don't capture the whole bouncing, jumping and dancing performance very well, but I thought I would post them anyways, because it gives a rough idea :)

The Move

Well, we survived the weekend! There were 2 really great things that happened: first, Michael and I decided I should probably take Thursday afternoon off to pack, but instead, Al gave me the whole day off with pay! Secondly, on Thursday evening Bill called Michael and said that their realtor had a moving van that they had been using and that they had asked that we be allowed to use it as well! Both those things were such blessings and helped us out so much.

On Thursday we tried to do as much packing as possible, on Friday Michael and 3 of his buddies from work moved everything over to the new house and on Saturday I went over with a lady from church and did a little cleaning. We stopped by on Sunday and cleaned out most of what was left so now all that's left is more cleaning and unpacking at the new place. Our friend Pat said that he would do some touchups for us, but the closer I look at the walls the more touchups I see that need doing. And by touchups, I don't necessarily mean spots, sometimes it's whole walls, or a large chunk of one. Hopefully it won't be a problem. It's kind of depressing going in there and seeing how dirty everything is because it makes me feel like we were living in a pigsty!

Al told me he thought I was going to stress myself out so much I would go into labour - which would have been fine with me because today I am 37 weeks which is considered full term - but instead I just made myself sick. Saturday night was the worst of it and now I've recovered enough to be at work but I still feel yucky and have a runny/stuffy nose and not much appetite. I'm doing my best not to pass it on to Michael and especially Aidan. When I was pregnant with Aidan I got a really bad cold like this very close to my due date because I remember going to Save-On and buying oranges and chicken noodle soup and anything else non-medicinal that I could think of and hoping it would help!

On the weekend Michael traded in a whole bunch of stuff and got just enough credit to buy a Wii. We had to pay a little extra, but if you had seen Aidan's performance like we did, you would have agreed it was well worth it. I think the interactive concept of the Wii is pretty cool and Michael thought it would be interesting to try and also something that Aidan could do fairly easily as well. Since Aidan likes to play 'bad guys' Michael thought they should try the boxing game first and Aidan agreed. They got their controllers all set up and tightened the band around the wrist so that nothing would go flying (Michael says he's heard nothing but good things about the Wii, but he has heard of tv's and controllers being broken because people get a little too 'into' playing the game and don't tighten the wrist strap properly!), picked their Mii's (they call the character's that you use Mii's) and were all ready. It took Aidan a couple minutes to get the hang of it but pretty soon he was hopping around throwing punches, moving his arms and dancing around like a little goofball. Michael won both games they played, but literally just about lost to Aidan's energy and enthusiasm. We'll have to set up the webcam to see if we can capture Aidan's moves next time they play - it was very entertaining!