The "Real" party

Check out the pictures AND video of Aaron's "Real" birthday party on Wednesday night here.

AND....bonus for this blog...here's a video of all of us girls doing the Macarena. It might be cheesy and corny, but it gets people moving!

Aaron's 30!

There was a "pre-Birthday" party here tonight, and the last guest left 6 minutes before midnight. Here are the pictures: (Is there any way to upload more than one picture at a time?)




Aaron's gift TO us was his stupendous rendition of "Business Time" by Flight of the Conchords...I'm thinking maybe it was a hint...for me...


Aaron in his last moments of his 20's


Aaron in his first moments of his 30's


Oops...how did that get in here??

Renovation Update (Bee-beep)

Aaron has been working hard (with the help of several amazing friends) to jackhammer and remove the concrete from the basement floor. He got a crew together on one of the days I was in Olds, and they got a LOT done. When he started jackhammering again today, I noticed that Suki was really restless, trying to find a place that was a bit quieter, and not vibrating, I imagine. I'm sure she was left to endure it last week, so I thought I would take her outside, where it was a bit quieter, today. It soon started to rain, and she started to howl, so I moved the round patio table onto the lawn to make an umbrella for her, put "her" towel underneath, and there she stayed.

After the all the hard work today (thank-you Ryan, Glen, Philip and Udo!),the end is in sight! Here's where we're at:

South-West side of the basement:

I got a large chunk of it all raked and cleared...Aaron still has a little jackhammering to do along the footings.



South-East side of the basement:

Lots of raking left to do in the middle, and the whole far end of the room is still the big pieces of broken up concrete...plus a couple feet of un-jackhammered concrete on the far wall.




North-West side of the basement:

Just a little raking left in here, level things out a bit.



North-West side of the basement:

Not much left to do here! Ryan cleared most of it for us today!




Here's the pile of concrete in the front lawn BEFORE we went on holidays (July 27):





Here's the pile of concrete as of 9:30 this evening:


And we ain't even finished yet! Having this part done will be one HUGE check mark on the giant list of things to do.

My favourite thing of the day

When Aaron's flip flops broke on our bike trip in BC (more on that story to come), he had to go get new ones. Sadly enough (ha), there was a "Buy One Get One Half Off" sale at the store where he found the ones he liked. I was poking around, waiting for him to make up his mind, and I found the BEST shoes EVER!!

SHOES WITH FROGS!!!



Our new shoes:

Living my life 5 things at a time...

I have been avoiding posting the last week or so mostly because I just feel too mentally exhausted and overwhelmed to muster up the energy it takes to think of something to write, or even just to write.

Tonight, I was browsing through my usual blogs, and came across Zaak's new idea (which came from Petra, which came from Adam)...So, I started a NEW blog here, where you can see my list of the Next 5 Things, and read about my courageous feats of goal completion (or just kick my butt if I'm not doing anything...).

Here I go!

Maybe....

...what bothers me the most about the prospect of not teaching is that I feel like it wouldn't really be my decision, in that the retardedness of other people is going to keep me from doing what I am passionate about. Yet another thing that I feel completely out of control over. My own career. Ridiculous.

I know I have control issues, but not in a "bad" way...in that I feel like I'm either a doormat or a ()itch. I'm a doormat until I finally have had enough, or the odd, strange time when I actually stick up for myself right away, and then it's ALWAYS (yes, a big word, but really, it's quite true) perceived that I'm being ()itchy, self-serving, controlling, etc., etc., etc....I feel like giving up.

Workin' 9-5.....

If you've known me for any time at all, you know all about my employment woes. A teacher by profession, I love kids. I love teaching them, I love playing with them, I love telling them stories, I love listening to their stories. What I DON'T like about teaching is the HUGE lack of support I have found from most of the administration and a very painful minority of parents. Strangely enough, for me, however, I am not going to spend this blog entry complaining about it, though. Really, what I'm trying to figure out is "Where do I go from here?"

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and really, I have come to no conclusions. Here are some things I DO know, however.

1)I NEED to bring in an income.
2)I love teaching kids.
3)There are few to no teaching jobs available for me right now.
4)When I get into teaching jobs where I don't have supportive admin, it becomes VERY stressful, to the point of being mentally unhealthy for me.
5)I have my permanent teaching certificate
6)There are people all over the place making money doing random things.
7)I could make money doing something different.
8)I don't want to do anything that would be intricate and complicated, or involve a lot of investment or inventory
9)It's scary...not knowing if I'll get a teaching job, or even if I WILL teach. Either way.


Here are the questions:
1)Do I WANT to pursue something outside of teaching?
2)If I do pursue something outside of teaching, will I be stuck with it?
3)What would I do?
4)Is doing something I like even slightly less than teaching, but brings in a good income going to be satisfying for me?

So. Anyone have any suggestions for me? Answers to my questions? Simple business ideas?

Sleepy, sleepy, sleepy....

Well, we've been out and about for 10 days now...and we're headed in the direction of home. We parted ways with my parents at Halcyon Hot Springs (I had my deck chair firmly planted poolside, right underneath the "s" at the end of "Springs"...overlooking the lake and the mountains....gorgeous...) last night at about 6...and didn't make it very far towards home...we decided to find a campsite in Revelstoke so that we wouldn't have to set up our tent in the dark, and so that we could enjoy a bit of the evening...We stayed up quite late doing some reading and emailing (it's a "town" campsite...and they have WiFi!!!), but I was rudely awakened at 6am by very loud noises of machinery right next door. It's 8:45 now, and the noises seem to have stopped....it sounded like a rock quarry or something, and there were voices over loudspeakers, etc., etc., etc.....I was sure it was what Hell must be like. Aaron didn't seem to have a problem sleeping through it, but at 7:45, with a sore back and a splitting headache from all the noise, I finally got up and came to sit in the Jeep, which drowned out the sounds much more than the tent. An hour ago, I was ready to throw the tent into the back of the Jeep and head for home, but now that the noise has stopped, I might be tempted to crawl back into the tent and sleep for a while longer...

Tales of our adventures will be on their way soon...

Taking a break...

Well, we were back and forth on this, first we weren't, then we were, then we weren't again...then the day came, so we did.

We're taking a much needed renovation break to head to the Rockies for some camping, and possible to Kelowna to visit my grandparents! It will be good to get away. Unfortunately, it will all still be there when we get back, but we can pretend it's not there for a while...

Can my blog be googled?

Pandora's Box

In one of my first entries about our renovations, I mentioned hoping that I hadn't opened Pandora's Box. Consider it opened.

My parents were here all of last week, and Aaron's dad was up for a couple of days. It was decided that the front yard would have to be pulled back to fix the cracks in the foundation...which meant the front step would have to go.
Before:

After:


This was good news for Aaron, who has hated those steps since we first bought the house. The bad news is that, after jackhammering and hauling all that concrete to the dump, we found a different, and likely equally effective, way of dealing with the cracks from the INSIDE. So, now the front yard needs a little landscaping (remove those thirsty flower beds from the edge of the house, and we will be replacing the steps with a narrow veranda that will run nearly the entire length of the house...CUTE!!)

Back to the inside...ok, so the walls will get the special crack-fill procedure, and will get inside weeping tile, including a drainage trench around the outside edge of the floor...ah, yes, the floor...

We called in a concrete guy to look at things, and he gave us two options (which we had already figured out ourselves, since we're so smart).

Option 1: Pour a new layer of concrete over the existing floor to even everything out. Now the pros of this would be that there would be little to no prep work required. The cons would be that any structural problems under the existing floor would probably continue, and eventually, even quickly compromise the quality of the new pour. Also, we would lose even more head room in the basement, which is not really an option, considering Aaron's height.

Option 2: Remove the existing concrete, prep the "dirt" underneath, install new re bar, and re pour the entire floor. Pros: A new, properly installed floor that we wouldn't have to worry about. It wouldn't cost much more than the new layer, as concrete needs to be a certain thickness for the necessary strength, anyways. We would stand to GAIN headroom in the basement, as the floor would now be even. The cons: Jackhammering and hauling out 6-7 cubic yards of concrete. Doing the prep work and re bar installation.

Well, following our "Might as well" mantra, and Mike Holmes' advice to "Make it right," we are going with option 2. After considering many, many, MANY options regarding the jackhammering, the removing of the concrete from the basement up to the yard, and how to get the concrete from the yard to the dump, here's what we came up with:

1. Aaron bought a jackhammer. Yes, he did. It was used and cost about the same as renting one for 6 days. We can sell it to the Home Hardware here in town when we're done with it, and they will use it as a rental.

2. Hauling concrete up a flight of stairs SUCKS. This was the most disheartening part of the whole process. It just seemed to be taking forever, and as of yesterday morning, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to pay some students (which a., costs a lot of money...any labour is not cheap in Alberta right now and b., is not the best option as students tend not to be as motivated as SOME adults to get the job done). BUT help arrived. Yesterday afternoon, our friend Philip came over and after supper, he and Aaron hauled some serious butt, and got the 1/4 of the basement that had been jackhammered CLEARED of concrete in just over 1 1/2 hours. THANK YOU, PHILIP, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!! I honestly don't think words can say how much it helped to have that part of the job done, and to have the renewed confidence that this is DOABLE.

3. Once the concrete is out of the basement, we'll get a landscaping company to bring a Bobcat and a dump truck to load it up and take it to the dump. We thought about buying a truck temporarily, but I think hiring someone is the better option here.

I know you've all been DYING to see pictures...haha...so here are a few.

The concrete at the top of the picture was about 4" thick. The concrete at the bottom of the picture, where there was a BIG hump in the floor, was about 1/2" thick.



Aaron's new toy... :S



A BIG piece of concrete coming out...



...and the hole it left.



Aaron hauling the first 2 pieces of concrete...the first of MANY.



The first section (about 1/4 of the basement) is DONE...except a little work around the edges.


The pile of concrete that came out of that space


I think Suki thinks we've just built her a giant litter box!

Mystery Solved

Well, Annie got most of it...sort of. There was another cat in the house.

At 4:50am, we were awakened by the sound of cats fighting. This is a common occurrence in the neighbourhood, and though I KNOW Suki is in the house, I always get up and check just in case. So, as I heard the sound, I sat up and looked down the hallway to see two black blurs run out of the bedroom at the other end of the hallway, and through the kitchen. There was a big crash, and still a lot of howling and hissing. We heard them thundering downstairs as we tried to get ourselves awake enough to chase them. When we finally made it into the kitchen, the howling had stopped and Suki was just coming up the stairs, wide-eyed, and with a tail about 6" in diameter. We ran downstairs to find that Aaron had left a window open when he was jack hammering the floor last night, a window that had the screen removed from when we were passing demo debris through it last week. The cat must have wandered in, came upstairs, and found Suki looking out the window in the spare room. Suki, obviously, saw it, and took off after it. The other cat must have tried to make a tight turn at the fridge, not realizing there were open shelves on the other side, and gone right through, knocking all of the contents on to the floor. I'm assuming the it must have found super-kitty powers to make the leap from the floor up to the window it had entered through. Suki is a short haired tabby (very distinct hair...I can always tell when it's her fur on me), but we only found long gray and white hair in the house.

Yay for Suki the Attack Cat!!!

A very anticlimactic ending.....she usually wakes us up at 5 to be fed, anyways, so we fed her, had a bran muffin and a glass of milk each, then went back to bed until about 9.

A Midnight Mystery

Ok, we know what happened, we were there....but can YOU figure it out?

The crime scene:


The evidence: