Time for a big trip back home!

Wow it's time for an update! Busy last several weeks! To pick up where I left off, we did not get the house we were trying to buy:(. Apparently someone came along and offered more money and no conditions on the sale, so we were pushed out. I was pretty disappointed, even though I had tried to prepare myself for that possibility. We kept our eyes open for any new listings popping up, but there is just so little for sale that we want in the area we want! We looked at some rentals as well, and in the end, found a rental that we liked and have signed the lease for move-in August 1st! It's not perfect (I don't even know why I say that anymore, you can assume that anything in our price range is NOT perfect!) but it's in a fantastic location in a beautiful neighborhood, and I like the feeling I get from the landlord. She takes care of the house (even includes all yardwork in the rent so we don't have to do any!) and seems to be a genuinely nice person. She's been renting out this house a long time so she has a lot of experience, which I think is a good thing (although it did make her a bit paranoid about some things we wanted to do because of past experiences with not-so-great renters!). I am excited to move and get settled in to a much nicer house!

 What else happened before we left on our trip . . . not a whole lot! Pretty uneventful Father's Day, Lynsey brought Brian breakfast in bed (it's what people do on Mother's Day, why not Father's Day, right?:)). We left on our trip Wednesday the 24th and drove to Cranbrook. We stayed in a small Super 8 that had a really nice pool and waterslide - even got Adam going down the slide all by himself! It took some convincing and a lot of time after we got there, but he did it! We went swimming again in the morning before leaving for Calgary, since the drive was only going to be about 4 hours. We had a great night in Calgary visiting with our Kroeker family there, and I snuck away to see my friend Larissa for a bit as well. The next morning I met up with some of my mom friends and then off we went to Three Hills for the afternoon to hang out with Mary! Yes, it was go-go-go!

We got to Edmonton Friday night and got to just hang out there for the weekend. Mike and Annie came up as well, Brian's parents had bought a bigger kiddie pool and the kids had a lot of fun! Monday morning we began our trek to La Crete! Luckily we were able to take the 88 because unbeknownst to us, there were a lot of forest fires in the area. It was a smoky welcome to La Crete:-/. We had such a great time there! I got to hang out with my childhood friends Melanie, Pam and Patti which was such a treat! We took in the Canada Day parade (Adam wasn't as thrilled about it unfortunately) and got to go on Tina and Danny's boat to their little sandbar on the river! Our kids really loved the mud as you can see in the pictures:). Thursday we visited Becky and Gordie and hung out in their new pool, so fun! The kids got a ride in an ATV at George and Karen's in the evening which was a real treat, especially for Nathan (who kept talking afterwards about the grasshopper jumping into the cab!). Friday we were back on the road to Edmonton, and had to take the long way because the 88 was closed (couldn't the fires have held off for one more day?? Really!!). Went to Tara and Wayne's Saturday morning for more family visiting and on Sunday morning, we set off for Kamloops. By this time, everyone was pretty sick of traveling and there were some rough spots. We had a nice room in Kamloops and the kids enjoyed more swimming time. Monday we finally made it home! Wow, 12 days is a long time to be gone! And 4400 km is a long way to travel with 3 kids. All worth it though! Everyone had a great time:).

 Now it's back to real life! Adam went back to preschool yesterday and Brian went back to work and I went back to the gym (that was pretty painful I must say!). Now I am focusing on our camping trip to Ocean Shores this weekend, and then after that, I will be focusing on moving. Yes, this is a busy summer for the Kroekers! I am just hoping we can manage everything, some days I feel like we are just scraping by with our sanity. We're hiring movers so moving day should be reasonably painless, but it's all the organizing and sifting through of our stuff while packing that will require the most energy. Our packers packed everything last time so we didn't go through it all, and it's now time to do some purging. I'm hoping Lynsey will be agreeable to letting some things go because we have toys that haven't been played with in a very long time that need a new home. We'll see how it goes!