Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Ho! Ho! Ho!



Merry Christmas!!!

Elijah and Toviel got to visit with Santa this Christmas season.

(Toviel was unimpressed. And a little freaked out.)

If you look closely at Santa and his round rosy red cheeks you can probably tell who it is. :)

We wish you a very merry Christmas!!

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Kitchen Splash!

Pictures of the boys in the kitchen sink, as promised.
(Our lives seem so ridiculous to me right now.)
Talk about making memories!

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Return of the blogger

I know, I know. It's been over 3 months since I've written. I'm sure people have stopped coming to my blog, tired of being faced with the same ol' last entry from way back when.

Regardless, I have decided to return to my blogging. I wanted to wait until I had a sense of permanancy in my life, but it is apparent that that may take a thousand years, so I am abandoning my hope of stability and attempting to return to my blogging while my life is in complete chaos. Not that I have any great bloggable material, so don't get your hopes up.
Great hope brings great disappointment.

I am currently homeless, and have been for the past 3 and a bit months, in Edmonton. It's not that we don't have a house. Au contraire. We do. We have this huge house that we are trying to ditch just outside of Calgary, but no one wants to buy it. Part of it is because the market is so soft and prices are dropping like flies (including our home that has come down $80,000 in the past 5 months) and part of it is because the universe hates me.
So back to Edmonton....we aren't homeless as in living on the street, but we don't have a permanent home and we are living out of 4 suitcases, jumping from one person's basement to the other trying to stay together as a family. The generosity of people we have met in Edmonton is staggering and I don't feel bad in saying that people in Edmonton are a thousand times nicer than people in Calgary, even though Edmonton has the second highest crime rate in all of Canada. I am struggling with this lack of "home" and despair over our house not selling. I am now settling into a discouraged mode of being convinced our house will never, ever, ever sell. Or at least that's what I tell myself. The truth is that every time Cris' cell phone rings (which is a lot) I instantly think, "Maybe it's Malcolm telling us we have an offer!!" but I don't say it because for the past 5 months I've had immense hope and it has gotten me no where and I don't want Cris to think I'm as flighty as I am (don't read that last sentence, Cris).

We are settling into our new church family and enjoying that whole process. We are still in the honeymoon stage though.
It's funny how one can be so jilted and promise oneself to never trust another churchy human being to be genuine and truthful with them and then be thrust into a new life with new people and run at them with open arms saying, "I love you! I love you!" I guess I'm so naive. It's probably my parents fault for showing me unconditional love that makes me think that people are innately good.

That is, in a nutshell, where we are now.


Things I like about Edmonton and our situation now are...

1. The whole family has to sleep together in the same room in the same bed. I'm a huge advocate of shared sleeping with your children. Cris has warmed up to the idea, but still likes his bed to be kid-free at night. Here he has no choice so we never argue about it.

2. We are making some mighty strong relationships mighty fast as we are living with people we may not otherwise ever connect with.

3. The space I am in charge of to keep clean is 300 times smaller than our house in Redwood.

4. We have cable tv for the first time in our married lives.

5. I don't have to drive half an hour to get to the grocery store and then another half hour to get home.

6. We qualify for the Leisure Access Pass which gives us free admission to all the City of Edmonton run recreational things, like the zoo and some of the swimming pools. Let's hear a woot-woot for being low-income! Now if we could just get a permanent Edmonton address so we could actually get these passes!

7. People here rock. And people close to here rock as well, like people in Camrose.


Things I don't like about Edmonton and our situation...

1. Obviously I'd like to be living with our stuff in our own place not worrying about where we will go next and what we will do if there is no next place to go to. I hate that Elijah misses his house and his toys and his space and cries about it a few times a week.

2. Edmonton has ugly powerlines and powerstations all over the place and the city planners should all be fired and all the retired city planners should be required to pay back 100% of their salaries.

3. Every Wednesday the city smells like poop. No joke. And occassionally other days as well.

4. The Parent Link Centers here absolutely suck.

5. The roads are in pretty bad condition. And I want to know what is up with all the construction horses. The City has some facination with putting these horses up in abundance in places where only one or sometimes none are needed. And a lot of the time it looks like a plane just flew overhead and dumped them on the ground. Come on people! At least put them up in an orderly fashion, neatly. It stresses me out to see fifteen contruction horses placed willy-nilly all over the road because it looks like something major is happening up ahead, but when you drive past you see that the only problem is that there is a chip out of the sidewalk.

6. I hate paying $1400 a month (sometimes more on those three-mortgage-payment-months) for a house that we aren't even living in and subsequently being unable to afford a place to rent, thus becoming a total mooch and relying on people to house us for free.

7. I have to bathe the kids in the kitchen sink. They like it, though, so it's not all that bad. (I'll try to post pictures)


I'm sure there's more to add to both, but I try not to dwell on the negatives too much because, well, that's just negative. And I try not to dwell on the positives too much because in a year from now when our house is still on the market, we may decide that we just can't do this anymore and move back to our house. Or I might end up in a looney bin crushed from stress and heavily medicated (been-there-done-that) and although that wouldn't be too too bad in itself, it would be horrible simply because I couldn't stand to be apart from my kids and my husband.

Ramble. Ramble. Ramble.

Oh well, it's not like I'm forcing you to read this you know.....

;P