Moving is AWESOME (That's irony people)

I read a quote about moving recently that equated it to childbirth: something along the lines of you forget how bad it is until you go through it again, and then you wonder why you did this to yourself again? Yeah. It sucked just about as bad as labour, only the process went on much longer than labour.
As if I didn't have enough to do with a very short timeline: a husband on a business trip, kids' end-of-year activities and a newly redefined job with extra hours required, Mike blew out his knee 10 days before our move. Brilliant. And totally sucky.

Thankfully we have amazing friends who took care of our kids and helped me move everything because oh Lord I am just one bitty person trying to do it all. But I ended up very proud of what I accomplished. Damn I'm good.

We are now comfortably ensconsed in our summer home, mere steps from the beach in a two bedroom suite underneath a friend's house. We will be here until the end of August when - oh JOY - we move AGAIN, this time into the place we've bought and where I fully intend on staying until they wheel me out of there into my retirement home.

Just as an aside, do you know what Jack calls the bathroom? The "Butts and Nuts" room. I just had to share.

The boys have finished school for the summer and this morning I felt very happy not to have to rush everyone out the door. Then by this afternoon I realized that summer is going to be a lot of work because holy cow, school was a great occupier of my kids' time! Now the entertainment is ALL ME! I'm a little scared, quite frankly. But based on previous summers, I know we will have a blast. And a beach field trip is only 2 minutes from our door, so it's all good.

Now I will finish watching this King of Pop retrospective and moonwalk down the hall to bed.

I Heart Packing

I pulled the life jackets out of the closet to pack them in the camping stuff. I KNOW I did. Let me look for them again here, or here, or how about here. What the hell is going on? I know I got them out; why is packing so hard?

Oh. Here's why.



This Mario Kart race apparently required the use of personal flotation devices.

Because I Had Nothing Better to do with My Time

So back in March or April I agreed to help Canadian Parents for French with the annual monetary awards they provide to graduating french immersion students. We sent letters to the school, read the applications, and judged the winners. The last task was to present the CPF award at the commencement ceremonies. The school I got had the grand ol' ceremony at the Bell Center for Performing Arts on Friday night. I was asked to arrive at 6:30 (no problem, said the other CPF gal, I was home by 8:30) for the presenters' reception.

So I did.

What it was, was a fruit plate in a shockingly hot library. I received my instructions and sat down on a chair with a nice old gentleman from the Legion (shout out to Doug the Legion man!) to watch the second period of the Stanley Cup final. Right around 7 pm they said they were ready for us. We were marched into the auditorium (seats 1052 and packed to the rafters) in a single file and this hush descended over the audience. The bagpiper started (Nails on a chalkboard) and the grads filed in. And in. And in. OK, nobody told me there were 295 grads. And that my girl = 246th.

Once everyone was seated (Freakin' HOURS later) there were four speeches totalling 45 minutes in length. One was funny... the rest: meh. Finally the first row of grads left the stage and when they came back, each one went through this process: MC announced name, Student crossed stage, MC said what student's favourite moment of the year was, Principal changed tassel and gave diploma, posed for picture, MC said what grad will be doing next year, special awards given (if any), two more handshakes and picture poses, student left stage.

Did I mention, 295 grads? And my girl, 246th? All I could think was, I shaved my legs for this?

10 o'clock. 10 O'CLOCK and I was finally up. I walked on stage, thought oh no what if I trip in front of all these people and then: oh my God can they see up my skirt? Because I was wearing those hideous flesh coloured Spanx underneath and that would be worse than death if 1000 people could see them. And then I thought: thank God I shaved my legs for this.

I shook my girl's hand, said Felicitations, smiled for the camera, gave my envelope, and walked off stage, out the door and straight into my car. I apologize to grads 247 - 295. I'm sure you had many good memories I should have listened to, and an exciting future I should have paid attention to, but.

Did I mention we move on Saturday? Holy waste of time Batman. And you know how much CPF gave this very deserving girl? $400. Yippee Skippee. Next year I'm picking a kid whose name starts with A.

Can you stop this Roller Coaster? Because I'd like to get off now. Thank you.

All right. Here goes. Some of you know some or all of this already, but here is what has been consuming all of our time, money - oh God the money - and energy.

We sold our place. It was crazy crazy. The listing went up on MLS on a Friday (May 22), no pictures even up there, and we had a showing before it was even listed! We had more showings that Saturday and Sunday, and by Sunday night we had an offer. It was a decent one, and by Monday night we had accepted it and completed all the paperwork.

So now we had to find a house because we need to be out by June 25. Yes, that is JUNE. 25TH. OF THIS YEAR.

I went out with our realtor, who happens to be Mike's mom's best friend, and we had a fun few days traipsing through houses. On Friday the 29th, I saw one that was too expensive for us, but JUST RIGHT. I brought Mike, the kids, and his mom back for a second look that same night. We looked a little more at others that weekend, mainly I think to eliminate what we didn't want, and by Sunday night we really wanted this house. However, we didn't think they were open to offers. But Monday we made an offer. Long story short - They accepted...!!! Now we had a week to frantically scramble, or it may have been scramblically frantic, to do all that we needed to do to remove the subjects. This is where the roller coaster comes in. After the inspection came back looking pretty good, my mom asked me why I didn't sound excited. Because I really really didn't want to get my hopes up until subjects were off.

We almost lost the house for reasons I don't want to elaborate here. But - wait for it - everything fell into place and guess what? We are fabulously incredibly proud new home owners of a beautiful house a block and a half from the beach and four blocks from the kids' school. I am in heaven.

Snag - you knew there had to be one - we will be homeless for about 2 months. The boys are super excited because they don't appear to be smart enough to realize how this is making their mummy feel all puky inside just thinking about it. We will have most stuff locked away in a container somewhere, a small amount of things in a storage locker we can get to easily, and the rest in the car with us.

So wherever we may roam this summer, we hope to see or talk to all of you regularly. We'll head up to Whistler for a bit, Vancouver for some, and who the hell knows where else. But it's all good by the end of August, and we will for sure be settled by the time school starts again in September!

Now I have 11 days to pack. So see ya on the flip side!

It's a Man Thing

I firmly believe that as the sole female in this household, I should be the one who is exempt from certain tasks.

For instance. Anything to do with jock straps and corresponding cups, I am really not interested.

That is all.