Distracted

I should be cleaning the house. I am trying. I have the laundry going and am straightening up here and there. But I am distracted.

It is an incredibly stressful time right now. I hope that I am handling it okay but really all you can do is muddle through and hope you get to the end of it.

We are still trying to decide what to do with the house in Yellowknife. It is becoming more and more a feeling that we should try and sell it again. It was never something we wanted to hold onto for long and after only a few short months I think we are feeling like we definitely do not want to be landlords longterm. It is hard to feel like we do not have much control in that situation but we would be the ones who feel the most impact. We are trying to leave that with God and He will open the door and gives us the direction we should follow.

But all that stress aside my real concern today is with my brother. This is going to be a difficult day for him. And just to kick him when he is down, his soon to be ex-wife is now trying another legal maneuver to get yet more money that he doesn’t have. That will be addressed tomorrow. Because of my involvement with him it adds more work for me as well. I know that it all can be dealt with but it will be emotionally hard work because at the same time I am always worried about his well being. The road ahead of him continues to be long and hard and still alot of unknowns. I know I am being very vague but really it is highly sensitive and I must do what I can to keep it confidential. But I ask for your prayers for him. Myk brought home some homework last night from religion and many of the questions had to deal with God’s peace in conflict. I guess that is my hope for my brother and my family and for me. I hope that we can feel God’s peace now and in the days and months ahead.

So today when I should be excited for the hubster is on his way home and the kids had excellent report cards yesterday, I am just a little distracted.

The Ghost That Haunts Us

Just when we think we are living a normal life, we get a call from Yellowknife today. There seems to be some uncertainty with the house up there and the renters. It has been an ongoing issue for a few months now. It hard to say what is really going without being there but it seems we still have one foot in that grave and it leaves us both our stomachs in knots.

There are alot of other things going on with my brother coming up this week and sometimes I just fell like it is all happening at once. Way too much and way too fast but never ending at the same time.

I guess we will know more later today. Right now we are just trying to lean on the promises God gave us. I know his mercy and grace is everlasting and never ending. We really need to feel that now.

Now You See It

I kid you not… this was our ugly toy room until yesterday.

Black walls…
Zebra Print stencilling…

Faux Fur light switch cover…

Textured wallpaper…

All Black….

Even matching zebra print sheer curtains….

Now You Don’t

This is step one…

Primer….

More pictures to follow…

As Promised

So here they are! The pics of my hard work over three or four days. This is Noah’s room. Complete with the new Cars Bedding and a sticky poster of Lightning McQueen. The colours are so much better than before and while I don’t really recomend the self stick border as it just does not stick well. It is inexpenisve and at least you can change it fairly easily.

This is Myk’s room. The duvet and curtains were made by Trevor’s mom but started by our good friend Karen who now lives in Indonesia. Tinkerbell came courtesy of Canadian Tire. There is still more to come in her room and I will post those pictures later.

Renos, Stupid Moves and Insomnia

The past few days have been busy but a lot of fun too. My husband is a very focussed individual. This is likely a good thing and after 12 years he has begun to respect that my agenda is not necessarily always matched to his.

Needless to say we have been working on the upstairs rooms as much as we can. He has painted the ceilings in the ugly purple bathroom and the horrid black toy room with beige zebra stripes. He has also got the primer on to cover the horrid black paint.

I, meanwhile, have kept myself busy in Taylor’s room. In some places the wallpaper is so bad that the wall has been eaten to bits. I am sure they just put primer or very cheap paint with no sizing underneath. For those of you not in the wallpaper know, sizing is transparent blue liquid that you paint on you wall prior to hanging your wallpaper. It allows for good adhesion with your paper but it also allows the wall to be slightly protected against the paper sticking too much to the paint. Three years in a paint and wallpaper store and that is what you get. That experinece has also come in handy when we need to shop for paint as well.

Anyway the wallpaper is coming off slowly but surely, my right hand and shoulder are extremely sore after two days of scraping a 12 by 8 foot wall and 2 walls that are about 8 or 9 feet by 8 feet high. I still have one wall that is about another 14 feet and two very sort walls about 3 feet wide.

Tonight thought after finishing what I could on the walls I changed into my robe completely exhausted. I was going down the stairs eagerly anticipating the Diet Coke waiting in the bar fridge. I was thinking of how I would grab a can for me and a regular Coke for Trev. I would spend some time visiting with him while he cleaned his paint roller. Then we would head to bed to relax before going to sleep. As I was completely distracted with all these things, I thought I had hit the bottom step. I was already turning the corner when I realized I had misstepped and completely missed the last step. I came down hard on the floor, twisted my ankle and as I was falling my wrist banged the wall or the door jam some where. As I sat there on the floor trying to decide if I was really hurt or not I began to feel dizzy. I have been known to faint before when I have cut myself so I laid down flat on my back on the linoleum, still trying to decide how hurt I was.

I eventually got up, got my can of diet coke and went upstairs. I was exhausted. I was sore. Now my right hand hurts, my right shoulder hurts from wallpaper scraping and my right wrist and my right foot hurt from stupidly falling down my stairs.

You would think that I would be sound asleep after all that excitement.

Yet here I sit at 3:49 am and I can’t turn my brain off enough to just sleep.

I have to be up in 2 hours to go to Saskatoon with the family for the day.

What the heck is wrong with me?

Whew!!

Well this week has been hectic but incredibly productive….not to mention expensive.

Trevor is in Germany this week. He won’t be home until Saturday night at around 12AM. He left last Saturday morning. Since he went in three days early his last rotation that means he will be gone 3 weeks this rotation instead of two. Thankfully the benefit to him being so close to town is that he was able to come in and spend the night on Halloween night and then again Friday night before he flew out. Short but sweet visits and makes the time go a little bit faster.

Since he has been gone both boys have finally started their regular season of hockey. It is hard to believe that it is the middle of November and they have just now played their first games. Noah played Sunday morning and his coach put him on Center. Not sure how well that went but he did get a breakaway and almost scored and in the end the team did win their first game. Taylor played Monday night and Tuesday night. Monday was against Shellbrook and they had a terrific game and won 5-1 but it was really 8 or 10 to 1 but they only allow a 4 point spread. Tuesday they played the West Hill Sharks and the goalie for that team is one of Taylor’s good friends from school. Lots of friendly rivalry there. He had another awesome game. He had 24 shots against him and his friend Logan took 17. Again they won 7-4 with the last goal being an empty net goal against the other team. He had some great saves and one in particular was an incredible glove save. His reflexes are definitely getting better.

As far as friendships go it has been great to be at the school we are at. The parents there really help each other out with extra curricular stuff. Myk was invited out with two friends in her class to go trick or treating and Taylor was able to go with his friend, Noah from school who also happens to be on his hockey team and his dad is the coach. They met up with about 6 other friends and toured the neighbourhood with Noah’s dad and brother going along as well. Taylor also has a great hockey team this year and I think the kids will do great. The parents all seem to want to work together and a bonus for us is that my cousins son is on Taylor’s team. He is thrilled to know that he has such a special connection with someone and they both get along so well. It has been great for me as well to get to know my cousins wife who is a sweetheart and to reconnect with my cousin after all these years. There is also a boy on Taylor’s team who has a younger sister who skates with Mykayla. They have just moved from Toronto and their mom also grew up here like me. They lost their dad last year to cancer and so it has been a great sense of relief for both of us moms to find each other to rely on. The boys play together when the girls skate and the girls have become the unofficial cheerleaders (pom poms and all) at the boy’s hockey games. On Noah’s team there is a little girl from Mykayla’s class (she is also the younger sister to Taylor’s friend Logan) her parents have been great at offering to help get Noah to and from if needed. Of course there are several more but I won’t tell you about them all.

Well a few posts ago I posted the pictures of Taylor’s room. I haven’t gotten any farther on it because when I went to pull off the under layer of wallpaper I realized it would not be as easy as I thought. So I left it for now and moved on. For the last three or four days I have been holed up in Noah’s room. Off came the navy blue paisley border that went around the middle of the room and up around the door and closet door. There was dark navy blue paint in there which at first I thought we might keep. Noah decided on a “Cars: The Movie” theme for his room. So I set about painting. One day I did gray on the bottom, the next day came the beautiful blue for the sky one the top. Today I finished with clean up, putting up the self stick border and the peel and stick decals. Then I cleaned everything and sorted everything and with the final touches of new bedding it looks great. If I do say so myself.

That was before supper. Then I ordered pizza because I didn’t want to have to stop to cook.

I moved onto Myk’s room. We had decided not to paint Myk’s room as the paint in there was new and the colour was one she liked. So tonight I took the curtain rod out of one of the other rooms and hung it in hers (hopefully it holds) and hung her curtains that her granny made to match her duvet covers. Then I rearranged her room and cleaned out every corner of it just like Noah’s. Finally at 9:30PM we hung the peel and stick Tinkerbell decals and said goodnight. Two rooms done.

Pictures will come hopefully in the morning since there isn’t great lighting in those rooms yet. That is what comes next is new light fixtures.

In between all that work and expense, I had volunteered to do some computer work for Noah’s hockey team. As I was trying to print off some of the stuff my printer cartridge screwed up. This has happened before but this time the message said something different and after several tries I gave up. I talked to Trev and we decided to just go ahead and purchase a new printer. He actually trusted me with this so off I went. We decided to get a printer, scanner, copier that was photo ready. After comparing and shopping around I purchased the HP C5180. It perhaps was a bit pricey but it does everything we want and it also networks which is great with Trev’s laptop and mine. Now I just have to finish off all that stuff for the hockey team before Saturday’s game.
Oh yea and I need to clean the rest of the house in preparation of the Grey Cup Get Together we are having here on Sunday.

I really should get to bed.

JUST NOW:
Along with the peel and stick decals I bought a Tinkerbell growth chart for Mykayla’s room. I tried everything to get that thing to come off the backing. Then Mykayla tried. Then Taylor tried and both of them said, “Mom didn’t you have to do this with Noah’s room you should be able to do this.”

Well I couldn’t.

I just went and tried again. This time I grabbed the packaging and read: PRE-PASTED.

Ahh, it all makes sense now. I have to wet it down. It is a wallpaper growth chart. Not peel and stick. OY

All done now!

Honey Look What I Did Today!!!!

Okay I kid you not. This house had the worst decorator known to man. Anyone who has seen this house can attest. The former woman of the house has a craft store and crafty she is. She loves wallpaper and I am sure at one point every room in this house had some sort of wallpaper in it. Big flowery stuff too.

The youngest daughter by all accounts was into Goth and really if I had a mother who liked to scare the company with big flowery prints I might be driven to the Gothic lifestyle myself.

So now that the house is officially ours I have begun what I like to refer to it as “Construction Destruction.”

So here are some before and after pictures that just really don’t do the scheme of this house justice. It is much better to see it in real life.

BEFORE (Taylor’s Room, the wallpaper was burgundy in colour and while a masculine print it was still too much like pink)

AFTER

This is great. This was done throughout the entrance into our basement. The basement is completely unfinished and nothing more than storage but apparently the previous owner used the basement to dislplay her crafts and therefore she must have felt it necessary to completely wallpaper the entrance to the completely unfinished basement. Ceiling and everything was completely done in this print.

BEFORE

AFTER

See Trev I don’t just sit around and watch soap operas all day. I usually do that when I lay down for my afternoon nap.

Well the bottom layer of all that walpaper is calling me so guess I should get backat it. And I was going to actually clean the bathrooms today. Oh well maybe tonight.

Busy Weekend.. Somewhat Busy Day and Yes Charlie Brown Halloween is Tomorrow

Well the weekend with the cousins was a tremendous success. Friday night we had Brock (15) and Joshy (5) spend the night. Ian (10) was set to as well but things sometimes go awry and my sister made the executive decision to take him back to Grandma’s.

Nevertheless we were all up until 1am with Joshy and Noah waking somewhere around 7:30 and the rest of us rolling out of bed between 8 and 9. We had breakfast here at our house and then Les and Rich took the wee ones (read 2 and 3 year old) to watch Myk skate while I took Joshy and Ian to watch Noah play hockey. L & R then joined me at the arena to watch Noah since Myk was on for 3.5 hours.

After practice more executive decisions were made and R ended up taking Ian and the wee ones to Grandma’s for naps. Joashy and Noah were supposed to come with Les and I back to the other arena to watch Myk skate. We were about 1 block away from the arena when Les turned around to check that both boys were in the vehicle. Missing one child. In our bustle of 3 adults, 5 children and 2 vehicles we seemed to have left Josh behind. We turned around and raced back to the arena and found him playing with the same little boy he had been with all morning, never the wiser that his mother and aunt had left him in a strange place, in a strange city with a bunch of strangers. Crisis averted.

Saturday night I had 6 kids here as Ian was able to spend the night while Grandma and GRandpa took care of the wee ones while L & R were at a surprise 40th bday for their best friend. I was pretty exhausted but the kids were great. They even managed to be asleep by about 11 pm.

Sunday we vegged all morning and finally by about 2 I decided to take the kids to the theater. We haven’t been to the theater here yet and Open Season was still playing so off we went. The kids were thouroughly impressed. For those of you who can remember the old Cinema 4 here in PA, the Capitol in YK is smaller than that theater so the giant screen and the theater was practically empty so that made it all the better. With the busyness of the weekend it made bedtimes pretty early and simple last night. It was great.

For some reason I woke up at 5 am today and surfed the net until 7. We have started making a habit of walking to school and then I/we (when Trev is in town) walk the dog back through the fields behind our house (pictures to come later). I managed to catch up with some friends online today which was great and hung out at home waiting for my phone line to be fixed. After school, as always is the busy time of my day. Drum lessons for Tay (Thank you Dixie ), then a trip to find a costume for Tay ( the procratinator said he wasnt dressing up and then decided to be an army guy after his Dad and I nixed the idea of the Grim Reeper) and then home to carve the pumpkins.

I am wiped but happy that Halloween is tomorrow and then on Wednesday we officially own this house. We signed the papers last week (thank you Marc) but the official close is on Wednesday.

A busy week ahead with three little trick or treaters tomorrow and Trev out at site, Wednesday is small group, Thursday will likely mean a trip to Saskatoon to fit Myk for her new skates, a Goal Tec lesson for Tay and a cruise of this store for a used drum set for Taylor.

So while I am always thinking of deep and thought provoking post most of them lately are turning out to be more updates of the craziness of my life. Soon though I hope to share some points of view of deeply philosophical stuff…. yea right I’ll leave that to the expert.

One more thing though, Rob (I almost used your old nickname) your comments made Trevor and I laugh so hard. Yes we bought the house. We must have beat out the Llama herders and the 80 year old mother of the 50 year old woman got rid of the 1987 pickles. I was actually hoping they would leave them as I would have loved to hear my mom say “Waste not want not” over those babies. The wallpaper is gone on Wednesday ( a little “we finally own it” celebration if anyone wants to join me) and yes we had thoughts of tearing down the walls in the three room over the garage for one large bonus room but for now we will leave it as there are lots of other things we want to do first. Come by for a visit sometime, even Trevor was asking why we hadn’t seen you yet. Now you know where we live… and bring your ladies as well.

That’s all for now

Roomba Bloos

In our new house we have hideously green carpet. It is not the colour that is so bad and it is in pretty good condition but it just doesn’t go well. The worst part is that it is in the eating area in the kitchen and in the family room. These are the two most used rooms in the house. This carpet shows every flake and speck of dust. The wisdom of this choice escapes me and I wonder if the old homeowners made such a decision in their brand new gigantic house out across the river.

Did I mention that I hate vacuuming and so having this carpet is frustrating to say the least. Trev’s solution was to go out and buy one of these. We looked all over town since we had seen one on clearance at Sears several weeks back. We didn’t find one but when we went to Saskatoon last Friday. It was a wopping 451 dollars after taxes. A price I personally didnt feel worth paying since we do already own two vacuums, very good ones too, it doesn’t make much sense to spend that kind of money. We also plan to remove that carpet and put in laminate and hardwood floors in those rooms.

Trevor still liked the idea of these little guys so we went ahead and purchased one. We got home late Friday night and he quickly went to set up the Roomba and let it charge. When he opened the box we saw that the bruch was full of hair and lint and dust covered the whole thing. I immediately said that for 400 dollars we needed a brand new Roomba and suggested he return it to Sears here in PA the next morning. So that is what he did and they went about ordering a new one for him whic arrived today.

We left Sears and went by my moms. Trev pulled the Roomba out and once again we saw that it was an opened box and the contents inside were dirtier and dustier that the first one. Trev was disgusted and we decided that this was inexcusable not to mention a likely sign from God that this was not an item we should purchase. We returned back to Sears and got our money back.

All is not lost, while we were there we purchased this instead.

Make that appliance number 6 and we are all done.

1 month and a day

Well it sure has been a while since I posted. Forgive me for the blogging break. But it is not like I have been sitting around doing nothing. NOPE. In the last month Trev and I travelled back up to YK spent a week supervising packers and movers, cleaning and signing papers. We had a little court issue to deal with and then we had a lot of goodbyes to say as well. All in all it was an exhausting but good trip.

The day after we arrived in YK we met with a real estate agent who also does property management. He had secured a deal with one of the diamond mines to lease the house for the next three years. This means that we have money coming in to make the payments on the house which also allowed us to purchase a house here in PA. So the following Tuesday Oct. 3 we left YK and once we hit cell phone service we called our agent in PA and placed an offer on a house. The house was vacant and so we made arrangements to rent it as of Fri. Oct. 6 and we will purchase it for real on Nov. 1. Our stuff arrived on Oct. 6 which is why the rush for possesion, so rather than store it we were able to move right in.

The kids and I have spent the last two weeks settling in and this past Tuesday Trevor arrived home from his two week rotation to a mostly unpacked and thoroughly lived in house. Since he has been back we have purchased a fridge, dishwasher, washer and dryer and the stove was ordered today and should arrive on Thursday.

The boys have begun hockey for the year. Taylor is in the Atoms division and had to try out for the city wide draft. There is a Tier 2 and 3 level and out of 14 goalies trying out he ranked very high. We are very proud of his hard work effort and it seems it has paid off. Noah is in Novice and has been put on a team in our neighbourhood with a few kids that he knows from various hockey camps, power skating classes and school. He has a good coach I think and we think he will do well.

We travelled to Saskatoon yesterday for a goalie lesson for Tay and while we were there we took Myk’s skates into be sharpened. We had been told that the sports store here in town does not do figure skates well and has been known to wreck them. Well too late, Myk’s blades were toast so what started out as a blade sharpening turned into a whole skate fitting process and a new pair of Gams being ordered. The guy at the skate shop said that with her current skates she would have a hard time doing spins so since that is what figure skating is it didn’t seem to make much sense to spend all this money on lessons and not have her be able to perform because of her skates.

Well that is the update in a nutshell. We finally have internet and a computer as well as a real telephone. YUP it is starting to feel like we actually live here. It feels good. Taylore was so happy to have his cat back that he actually said he would have a hard time deciding to go back to YK now because he has just as many friends here now but with the snow the other morning also came some tears as he was missing his best friend Eric. Noah also in the last week was missing Luke and just last night Mykayla was crying for Sarah. So while we are settling in here we do have such strong ties to those we have left.