Ready for some nice weather!

And just like that, April is almost over! It's supposed to warm up to the mid-twenties this week! We have been here for just over 8 months. Some days that definitely doesn't feel real, and other days, it feels totally normal to be here. Lynsey and I have a really fun weekend coming up! We are flying out to Edmonton Friday night so I can run in the Kidney Foundation's Gift of Life Run/Walk on Sunday! There are something like 30 members of my family participating, and every one of my siblings (except for Joyce who is 9 months preggo) and both of my parents are signed up to participate! There was much enthusiasm at first and many people signed up for the 10K portion of the race, but it looks like now there might only be a few of us 10Kers left:). I have been training hard and I am ready! I was running intervals on Saturday (2 minute sprint (and I am aware that my sprint is some people's normal pace!) then one minute walk) and I ran 8.8 km in 53 minutes. At a steady pace, I should be able to do 10K in under an hour - might even shoot for 59 minutes, we'll see how I'm feeling about the course! I am so looking forward to the family time, too - this is the first time we've ever gotten together to do something like this, and it's for such a great cause so close to my family. I can definitely see this becoming something we do again! Brian has already planned to take the boys to Snoqualmie Falls, so hopefully they can have some fun this weekend, too:).

We did a VERY small Easter egg hunt for the kids. They are used to a big time hunt that Brian's mom puts on every year, so searching for 4 or 5 bunnies/eggs is quite a step down! It was still fun:). I wasn't on the ball enough to catch a pic of Adam finding his one egg before he lost interest unfortunately, but Nathan was pretty into it this year! We didn't do a whole lot on Easter weekend, it's just so much easier to hang out at home.

Nathan is using some pretty grown up phrases these days! After his swimming lessons on Thursday, I met with my friend Wendy at a McDonald's playplace. He was having some trouble and sitting on the floor pouting. I told Wendy he was just a bit grumpy right now, and he says, "I not gwumpy". He also informed Lynsey this morning that no, he was NOT cute when she told him he was! I'm definitely hearing more spontaneous language out of him all the time which is really fun! Him and Lynsey are the best of friends most of the time and play together a lot. She has been dressing him in her clothes a lot lately, which he is tolerating for now. I've also noticed that he is more content playing by himself in the basement in the mornings, which I am hoping keeps up!

Brian and I got to go to Seattle Sounders soccer game on Saturday! It was actually really fun! We had bought tickets at the school auction and originally, Brian thought he might take Lynsey. We decided in the end that she would never sit through a game and I'm really glad I got to go, it was a lot of fun:). There is something really neat about going to a live sporting event, even if you're not totally into the sport. Definitely will have to hit up a Mariners game sometime this summer!

It's almost time for us to put our house in Calgary on the market. I am ready to tie up this loose end, but it's such a major thing and we're not there to oversee everything, it's causing us some stress right now. As it turns out, the guy that is living in there right now actually wanted to rent it from us for another year (we were very upfront with him at the beginning that we were selling the house, so he knew our intentions) so he is now talking about buying it from us. He is some big construction guy that has some other rental properties so he would just turn this into a rental property when he was done with it. I'm not sure it will work out because I'm not sure he will be willing to give us a fair market price for it, but it could potentially be a great thing for both of us if we can agree on a fair price. I am praying right now that this will all work out, it's a bit of a load on our minds right now as we consider our housing options here. Our landlords (thankfully) agreed to let us go month to month at the end of our lease in August, but they weren't enthused about it and really want to rent it to new tenants before winter (they have this idea that nobody moves in the winter, which might be partially true, but the rental market is so tight here I think they would probably find someone). So the pressure is on for us to get the money out of our house so we can buy something, or basically give up on buying (at least in the near future) and find a nicer (and pricier) place to rent. It's all a bit complicated, but I continue to feel no regrets about the move, even though it has added some complications to our lives! Finding a house to buy here will be tricky because we would like for Lynsey to be able to stay at her school, but buying something in this area just doesn't look likely. There aren't many houses for sale, and the ones that are are either dumpy or new construction and way out of our price range. I'm sure we will find something that will work for us, we will just have to make some sacrifices, just like every other person that doesn't have a million dollars to spend:).

Celebrating 10 years of wedded bliss!

Yikes I'm about a week behind my goal of catching up every ten days! Hopefully I can remember it all!

April has been a great month so far! We've had some great weather (sorry to any Alberta folk that might be reading this, I have made a point not to brag about the weather on Facebook, but since this is my personal blog I feel I have the right haha!) and my kids are just loving the freedom to go outside again, Adam in particular. My bathtub is once again grainy with sand all the time, but the kids are happy and that's what matters:).

We had a great Spring break last week! The first half of the week we took it easy, did one outing to the zoo on Monday to meet up with a few friends but it didn't go terribly well. I dropped my phone in the first 10 minutes of being there and it broke, so that was kind of a bummer. It was a high stress, high maintenance trip - Nathan kept wanting to get out of the stroller and it was busy because the weather was fantastic . . . did not go down in the books as the best outing we've ever had, but the kids did have fun so that makes it worth it, right? On Wednesday afternoon, we left for our night at the Hampton in Surrey. We had an awful experience at the border crossing - picked the wrong line and ended up waiting an extra 20-25 minutes. It was an infuriating experience, hard to put into words. If you have ever been waiting in a line, helpless, as the line next to you is moving steadily past you, you will understand how I was feeling. It was dinner time and we wanted to eat dinner and get to the hotel so the kids could get some swimming in before bedtime, and there we were, parked in a line with the world's slowest border agent at the front of it. Sigh, not the best start to our vacation! But we recovered and still had lots of fun at the pool! We even saw ADAM get in the water and have some fun that night! So great to see, haven't seen it since we were in Hawaii and even then, he was pretty hesitant. He did even better the next day - went down the waterslide with Brian! My heart was bursting with pride, he was just like a typical little boy laughing in the water with his dad. Those moments make my heart hurt a little bit, too, just because I realize how few and far between those "typical" moments are for him. I can only pray that they will become more and more as he steps out and tries new things!

We just barely made the ferry to Victoria (note to self: leave yourself more than 7 minutes of buffer when you're not 100% sure where you're going, and also follow the signs and not the GPS because there might, like in our case this time, be a brand new road that the GPS doesn't know about). We missed the road we were supposed to take because we were blindly following the GPS, and ended up having to turn around. We got there and the ferry was 96% full - there were only 6 cars that got on after us. Phew! We dropped the kids at James and Sarah's and off Brian and I went for our anniversary night celebration! What a great time we had! The hotel was beautiful with a great view, and our dinner was just fantastic! We had a nice walk around Victoria's downtown and I really did fall in love with the city. I was asking Brian about software jobs there, but only a little bit seriously . . . how nice to be on the west coast and still be in Canada! That is my new dream:). Maybe someday!

The rest of the weekend was really nice! We hung out with James and Sarah, went to Butchard Gardens on Saturday, which was a great outing! The trip home on Sunday was long but it went well. We left James and Sarah's at 2 and got home at 8:30 - long trip for being geographically so close together! Oh well, it was worth it! Our kids did so well this whole trip, even on the night that we were at the hotel and they were at James and Sarah's (at least, that was the report I got!). I am so proud of Adam especially for being able to adjust to new situations so well. It's so nice that as he gets older, we can explain to him what's going to happen and while it's not always apparent at the time that he understands us, we know that he does because he rolls with things so much better than he used to!

Nathan had his first swimming lesson today and he did so great! By the end he wasn't having any more back floating, but I couldn't have expected more from him than I got, I was so proud of how he did:). Having said that, I have done baby swimming lessons before when Lynsey was a baby, and why is my kid always the only one that is wiggling around like crazy?? Seriously all the other toddlers are just floating there, watching the instructor and doing what they're told, and Nathan (and Lynsey way back when) is just ready to get going, twisting out of the back float with all the strength his little body can possibly muster! By my standards I thought he did really well even with the wiggling, but I have to wonder what everyone else thought lol!

A cute thing that Nathan is doing right now is saying "sorry" and "thank you". The other day, he bumped into me and he says, "Oh sowwy Mom" and moves on. And today, I had grabbed a handful of grapes for myself and was walking out of the room, when I meet Nathan who sees the grapes in my hand and so politely tells me as he is grabbing them out of my hands, "Oh thank you Mom. My grapes." It was just so innocent, he was sure I had been bringing those for him haha! He is just becoming so grown up and while we of course have the typical toddler issues with tantrums and not sharing etc., I do feel like he is generally a pretty easy going kid. The other day in the grocery store, he asked for chocolate milk and I said no, and while he didn't care and moved on, some lady behind me took it upon her self to ask me why I wouldn't give him chocolate milk! I can't imagine having the nerve to question a complete stranger's decision on what her child could have. It wasn't like I was even being upset or mean to Nathan, I just calmly told him no, and he didn't care! Why say something to someone in that situation? So bizarre the things people think they should speak up about.

My trip to Edmonton to run in the 10K for kidney research is coming up in just over 2 weeks! I have been training hard, well, what I consider to be hard anyway! It feels good to see my endurance getting better and better each time I head out for a run or even on my elliptical. I am excited to hang out with my family for the weekend! What a neat opportunity for us to do this thing together!