...look what I found!

Guess who's married and living in France ...
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=9635412

...colours

I've been thinking about how to brighten up the exterior of our new house and make it look more cottagesque. Here's one possibe option.
before ............................... after

...

I don't have much to say today. This is my post about nothing (there will not be a part 2 or 3). I've added some links to my link list that I suggest you check out - I suggest you check out all of them.

I found this today: http://www.bushforpeace.us/bushforpeace.mov. At first I smiled because I like it but after watching it I felt more like crying. It's only funny when it's funny because it's true.

...for Tyler

www.marriedtothesea.com

How's that for art immitating life? You are not alone:
List of fired bloggers
News story about fired bloggers
How not to get fired because of your blog
If you do get fired, write a novel!

...finally!

It's done. No more viewings! This is the offer we accepted on the fifth day after listing and it took this long for all the conditions to come off. Now we just look forward to packing and moving into our new place. What a relief! Closing day is June 27th.

...think pink!

Just got back from buying Frannie her first pair of walking shoes!

...today's highs and lows

Jesus. Is everybody's home-selling experience as ANNOYING as ours? The Beast from Alberta who is buying our house came out today to meet with a home inspector. They were supposed to be done at 4pm but didn't end up leaving until after 5pm which was a great inconvenience to us since Darren has a lot of work to do today. They stood in the doorway chatting and waving at us waiting up on the street. FO!

They finally let us back in what is still OUR house and what do we find? The upstairs toilet is clogged and won't flush and there is pee in the downstairs toilet. I'll tell you what, I marched right back outside where the Fugly Beast was standing with her idiot realtor and the home inspector at the top of our driveway and I said, "Excuse me??? Was there a problem with the upstairs toilet??? Because the seat was left up, there was toilet paper in it and now it won't FLUSH???" And they all just stood there and said, "Well... I don't know, I didn't use it...."

UGH.

Fucking pigs.

And our own realtor, who we really do love, is driving us crazy. This deal closes in three more days but as far as he's concerned we still need to show the place. So we are STILL having to clean up every morning and shuffle the kids out of here. Today a big group of realtors came through to preview it and I can't tell you the name of the hideous perfume one of them was wearing but I could make some suggestions. Eau de Fetid Bloat maybe.

On a more pleasant note, we took the kids to Jackson's SMUS tea party for the new Kindergarten class starting in September. It was a chance to meet the other families and for the new kids to make some friends. Each child was paired up with a current Kindergarten student who was their buddy for the afternoon.

Jackson was paired with a boy named Aiden who was so genuinely kind, I was amazed. He really took him under his wing and showed him all his favorite things about the classroom and later, the playground. At one point Jackson was trying to climb a wall using a rope but he slipped and hit his chin. He cried for a little while, mostly because he was frustrated at not being able to do it. Aiden heard him crying and called to him. When Jackson didn't answer he came over to us and asked Jackson what had happened. Jackson explained it and Aiden touched him on the shoulder and then told him a story of something similar that had happened to him, adding that he hadn't cried...

They played outside together with the other Kindergarteners and close to the time we had to leave Aiden called his sister over, who is in grade one, and introduced her to Jackson. Aiden is five years old! It was like nothing we've experienced yet with Jackson's preschool peers, but was everything I've been anticipating for the SMUS environment and what I've wanted for Jackson period. This is the kind of kid he is, and these are the kind of kids he'll do best around.

He really notices the difference too. Afterwards, in the car, he said, "Aiden is so much nicer than the kids at preschool. The other kids are always taking things without asking, and aren't fun to play with like he was!" It made me a little teary and I'm starting to sense the sorts of "moments" I'll be having over the coming year. I kid with Darren about the over-use of the word "thrive" with respect to describing how the kids do at SMUS, but I'm realizing there might not be a more appropriate term.

...more details

Here are some more pictures of the new house.

Ours is the one on the left and this picture shows where the curb dips down so we could create a driveway, or even just throw some gravel down, and park off the street.

Here's the front. I hate, hate, hate the door and the matching little window to the side which serves no practical purpose and is, I believe, just stuck on the siding. So that's a little project for down the road.

Interior front entry.

Livingroom.

Fireplace in livingroom. (This is NOT our furniture)

Built-in bookcase in the hallway.

Looking the other way down the same hallway. That's the laundry closet.

There is a door to the back deck at the end of the hallway.

The kids' bathroom is also at the end of the hall (behind Frances and to the left in the above picture.)

And around the corner is the master bedroom. This is the only window in there but that's the way I like it! Nice and dark for sleeping, but still some fresh air.

Master bath.

Master closet.

Olde Timey Doore Knobbies on every door.

Long eat-in kitchen. Deck is right out that window.

Back yard garden area.

Garden shed/storage/playhouse with attached potting room.

Back fence that the neighbors just erected. We'll continue this along the rest of our back yard to enclose it. 4' x 8' panels at Home Depot are $30 each.

...the reunion

We had such a great weekend! It was Darren's 20th high school reunion and also the 100th anniversary of St. Michael's University School. This is where Darren went to school and where Jackson will be starting Kindergarten this year. There were all kinds of fun activities during the day and fireworks on Saturday night.

One of Darren's former classmates, Mauricio, came up from Guadalajara with his lovely wife, Veronica, and their two children, Saul and Ines. Jackson and Saul spent a lot of time running around with Saul and Frances and Ines played peek-a-boo and toddled around near each other.

The sun has been out for a few days now and there's a light cool breeze. It's perfect weather to be outside - we spent Sunday afternoon at the beach for Mother's Day. I don't think it's usually this warm here in May. I seem to remember being cold and sick this time of year in the past.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Mauricio, Ines, Veronica, Saul, Darren, Jackson, me & Frances.


Jackson working hard to get his kite off the ground.






Enjoying the school grounds and the sunshine.




Frances and Ines hanging out by the food tent, dancing to the music.

...details

The new house is on a smaller lot of 6,600 sq ft. Ours is currently 11,900 and is far too large for me to keep up with. I had entertained fantasies of all sorts of landscaping projects but in reality I don't have the time. The new back yard is a perfect size. There are a couple of small trees, but mostly it is sunny and best of all, it is flat so we won't end up with a big bog in the winter and spring like we do now where the yard dips down in back.

There is also a really sweet little shed in back that is drywalled inside and wired. I'm not sure what we'll do with it. It would make a great playhouse for the kids but we might need it for storage since there isn't a garage. There is also an attached space for gardening equipment and another little space against the back of the house that appears to be used for storage. I didn't actually notice it when we were there viewing the property but I saw it in the pictures online.

The inside is 1,400 sq ft. That's a little bit smaller than what we have now which is perfectly fine becaues there's actually a lot of wasted space here. There are four bedrooms and two full bathrooms! Hooray! The master bedroom has its very own private bathroom that's just for Darren and me. Yay! There will be space for Darren's office and each kid will have their own room when they need it. For now Frances is still in with us at night and Jackson doesn't spend much time in his room anyway since we've always had a seperate play room. I'm not sure what we'll do about that in the new house. I might use one bedroom as a playroom but put in a futon sofa or something that would be comfortable for guests so I don't have to take up a whole room as solely a guest room that won't get used very often.

The kitchen is big, with a seperate pantry, and has space for our dining table at the end of it. I prefer that to a separate dining room because we enjoy being all in the same space for cooking and eating. The livingroom is a good size and there's a wood burning fireplace. The floors are fir and are in perfect condition! There's a long hallway that leads to the kid's bathroom and the master bedroom where the laundry closet is (side by side) and a built in bookcase. You can see that in the pictures but whoever took them was a total moron. They took all the interior shots at night with a flash so the rooms look dark and cold. It's really not like that inside at all.

We'll want to change the colours on the walls but that's the only thing we'll want to do right away. Someday we might choose to update the kitchen and bathrooms but they're perfectly fine as they are. I don't love the front door, or the window they installed next to it, the exterior colour scheme is boring and vertical siding is a weird choice, but all of that is changeable.

Another favorite thing, besides no stairs, is the deck right off the kitchen! It just doesn't make sense to have a backyard that you can't access from the kitchen. We hardly ever use our backyard now even though it's so huge because it just doesn't feel part of the house. Being able to BBQ or easily carry food out to eat outside will be such a treat.

Oh, there is actually something else that I'll want to do right away and that's put a fence around the side and close off the backyard from the neighbors and secure it from the street so I can let the kids run around back there.

Hmm, what else is there. Oh, did I mention the closets? There is a walk-in closet in the master bedroom, a large closet in each of the other bedrooms, three large closets in the central hallway and a very large linen closet in the hallway with the laundry area. Plenty of storage inside!

The house was built in 1940, I think, and though it doesn't have a lot of the character details you'd expect to see in a house from that era, like coved ceilings, it does have the fir floors and all original (or perhaps reproduction) cut glass doorknobs on every door. Darren isn't wild about those but I really love them.

I think that about covers it. Remember what those pictures like because when I post new ones in July after we've moved in you won't believe your eyes!

...hey fat boy

Quit pooping in my yard! That's what I'd tell Mr. Raccoon if I spoke Racoonese. Aren't raccoons only supposed to come out at night? I am sitting here - granted, it is early but it's no longer dark out - sitting here at the kitchen table thinking about what to write and here comes this fatty wobbling along sniffing my lawn in broad daylight.

I would think they'd be more like cats. Don't cats like to find an out-of-the-way place to poop? I know our neighbors' cats prefer our plantings along the front of our house as a litter box over the middle of the lawn where Mr. Raccoon seems determined to lay his load. Honestly, the middle of the lawn? There's no cleverly mowing around that.

And when he finished he walked up towards the garbage and recycling at the top of the driveway. I was about to risk waking the children and go out to yell at him in English when the paper boy came by and scared him off. Oh, did I say paper boy? I meant paper man. It's so hard to find a good job in this town.

But wildlife, and waking up too early with the sun, and paper men will all soon be a distant memory. We got an offer on our house at last and our offer on the little house of our dreams was accepted!! We move at the end of June and I am so looking forward to what this new house will offer. No more stairs for one thing! There are so many wonderful details about the new place and I will enumerate them later. For now, we're still entertaining other offers on our house which means we have to continue to clean and vacate at all hours of the day.

Someone else is coming this morning so I've got to get busy getting ready.

...she walks!

Still no offer on our house, but it's only been 4 1/2 days. We're hopeful. We found another house that we really like - actually, we love it. If we get it then I'll share the details. Nothing's certain yet.

But in other news... Guess who's defying the laws of gravity! That's right, she's entered into the realm of Toddlerhood. Good girl, Frances! We're so proud of you.