Moose Jaw for New Years

We celebrated Christmas here with my Mom, and then headed down to Moose Jaw on the 30th for a gathering at Trevor's Dad and Carol's home. Joel and Jeannette came down on the 31st, and we had a belated Christmas on New Years Eve. It was great to see them all again, and the kids had fun soaking up all the attention. It all went well until...Trevor came down with the stomach flu at 3am on New Years day. You may remember the last time we got the stomach flu while travelling - it was in Moose Jaw as well. Hmmmm.

Anyhow, poor Trev lay about on New Years Day trying to gather his strength, and then about 6pm we put everything in the van and headed home. We left late because it had been a very long drive down due to road conditions, and we reasoned this way if it took longer it wouldn't bug the kids because they were sleeping. It wasn't a fun drive, lots of blowing snow and poor road conditions, but no one complained, and Trev slept better in his own bed once we got home. We were extra glad that we had driven home that night when the next morning, Adara started getting sick. It caught me last night, so I'm huddled on the couch today while Trev has taken the kidlets on an adventure somewhere. Con seems to be fine so far, I guess we'll see if that lasts or not.

I had one very special positive happen while in Moose Jaw: Trev's Dad mentioned casually that he was looking to get rid of all of his and Sharon's old photo albums. He's not much of a sentimentalist, and he kept a few small albums of pictures that were important to him, but he didn't want the rest. So I grabbed them!! We're going to buy a photo scanner, and I'll scan all of the old pictures in and hopefully someday be able to do them up nicely with notes and dates and stuff. I'm very excited to have this piece of Trevor's history to preserve for our kids and their kids.

Back to lying on the couch for me - going from Trev and Adara's recoveries, I should be feeling much better tomorrow.

Back!

We're home safely (the good news) and the house hasn't sold yet (the bad news). Nice little summary, hey? *grin*

The drives were as long as expected, but the kids were troopers as usual. It was great to see the outside of our new home - such a pretty house, and such a lovely neighbourhood - and we had fun visiting the zoo. We bought annual memberships, as we had always planned to if we ever moved to Calgary. The kids and I will be visiting often. The stay at the cabin went well, and it was great to reconnect with our old friends. The only problem we ran into was that whereas Trev and our friends had all had hectic, stressful weeks leading up to our trip, I had spent most of my time waiting (in between waiting for the assessors, the concrete repair guy, the wall repair guy, and the realtor, I was pretty much tied to the house). So while everyone else was quite content to have one trip a day and then relax the rest of the time, I was often bored and restless. I shouldn't really complain - life is rarely perfect, and we all had fun, especially the kids who loved having hours to play in the sand and water.

We came back early so that Trev could catch the Friday afternoon flight back to Calgary; he needed to get some work done before Monday rolled around. It's hard having him gone after being together for a week...thankfully it will only be a matter of weeks before we move and we're all together again.

No Such Luck

Apparently, the family that viewed the house decided that it wasn't suitable as a primary residence for them...although they are considering buying it as a rental property. Too bad.

On the plus side, it appears that we are going to have a real summer vacation after all! We have dear friends that have been given access to a lovely cabin near Lake Okanagan next week, and they invited us quite a while ago to come out and share it with them. Although Trev booked the week off work, it was up in the air as to whether we could make it for the longest time, first because we were sort of hoping to use that time for moving, and then later for other reasons. Since everything seems to have worked out, we'll be heading off this weekend to enjoy some well-earned "R&R", leaving our portion of the house clear for viewings anytime. This will make our realtor's job easier, since he'll only have to clear viewings with Mom, and won't have to worry about our kids making evening showings difficult.

We'll be making the trip in 2 stages, one 8 hour stint to Calgary, and another 8 hour stint to the cabin, with a stay over at Trev's temporary accommodations in between. Our trip out will be made more exciting by our taking a day to look at our new home (at least the outside, probably not the inside), our new neighbourhood, and the Calgary Zoo. We'll be doing what has become our standard travelling pattern of leaving very, very early (somewhere around 4AM), so that the kids sleep for 2 or 3 hours of the 8, plus Connor having his noontime nap while driving as well. Makes for a much more relaxing drive for us parents, as Connor at least requires a lot of entertainment and attention. Adara is getting better at amusing herself for longer, but she is still a very sociable and talkative girl, and a few hours of quiet make for much more patient parents in the louder hours of the drive. *grin*

I'm in a bit of a whirlwind of packing lists, trying to get all of the laundry done, figuring out what I need to buy to take with us, and all of that. Trev will be arriving for supper Thursday, and we hope to leave early the next morning, so I need to have most everything done before then, as well as having the house in show-worthy shape. Lots to keep me busy!

Safe and Sound

We're back home, and busy doing all of those mundane little chores that need to be done after a trip - multiple loads of laundry, downloading pictures off the camera (set a record this time, we had 422), sweeping and tidying and all that stuff. I don't mind, though. We're home safely, in familiar surroundings and sleeping in our own beds once again.

We had a wonderful time. The actual travel was wearing, as there was a lot of it, but all three of our visits went very well indeed. Adara enjoyed it all, but she absolutely loved playing with her cousins, and the feeling was mutual. Brantford will be a regular stop for the Diamond family from now on, that's for certain.

Now it feels like we're descending into a bit of a whirlwind, with Trevor rushing to train his replacement, get our house ship-shape, and fit in at least three farewell dinners before a week this Wednesday. We'll see how it goes. I've started preparing Adara for the idea that Daddy will be away during the week until we can move down to our new house. I've yet to really prepare myself, but at least it's short-term, and only for the weekdays. After visiting Petawawa, I'm reminding myself that if things were different, Trev could be gone to Afghanistan for 9 months. I'm fortunate in many, many ways. I just have to remember that.

Remote Blogging -How Cool is That!

I feel almost sophisticated in a techie sort of way; I'm on Cathy's laptop, logged in remotely to Trevor's home computer. No, I didn't set it up - I wouldn't even know where to start setting it up-but still, it's pretty nifty. I should get out more, I think. *grin*

Our visit with Dave and Cathy is just nearing it's end. We'll be heading over to visit Dad and Jill this afternoon, thankfully only a five minute drive. We've had a lovely time with our old friends...they've become, if possible, even nicer, more interesting people since we last saw them. One of their biggest passions is traveling, so we got to see pictures and curios from their latest trips to Thailand and Peru. We've committed to saving up money to be able to go somewhere warm with them this coming winter, they are so fun to travel with. Their little guy will be over a year by that point, so the kids will entertain each other even more than they're doing now.

How did the actual travel go, you ask? Not bad, actually, not bad at all. No flight delays, everything went smoothly, and Connor was so tired by the time we boarded the second plane that when he sat on my lap for takeoff, he fell asleep and slept for an hour. No wailing at all. We figured out that if we put Adara in the middle and she tucked up her feet, he could putter around on the floor, and he was content for almost the whole flight that way. We stopped at a park and let the kids run for a bit, then drove to Petawawa. Even the drive went well, thanks to naps and Timbits.

More to come later!