Camping

  Last week we went camping in a tent for the first time in about 6 years. While camping six years ago Maren didn’t go to bed until after dark and woke up before dawn (which is very little sleep in Saskatchewan), she tried to run off to unsafe places while we were putting up the tent and we ended up having to strap her into her car seat, screaming, until one of us could dedicate full attention to her, and we decided that we could not do tent camping with kids. 

Fast forward to now, when our kids are perfectly reasonable tent campers. No fuss, no drama, and the expected amount of sleep (less than usual, but still reasonable). It helps that we were camping with family, and there was plenty going on to entertain the kiddos, but they are also just much better at all of this now. We stayed two nights at the coast and will definitely do it again.

Unfortunately I did not take a single photo, but Jeff took a few, including this lovely picture of Linden, their cousin, and Maren enjoying a sunset on the beach ❤️

Slowly unpacking

 We are slowly unpacking, and working on making this house our home. We have been exploring the neighborhood a bit, and the kids have been enjoying the playground at the school that they will be attending soon.

And this afternoon and evening we had our first guests - my mom, sister, and niece - and the kids enjoyed some sweet cousin time in our new backyard. 

House

 Finally, finally, finally I get to say it: 

We bought a house! We moved into it! 

The house is a mid century 1966 one level in a very nice neighborhood. The kids will walk just over two blocks to school, Jeff and I will have a nice flat bike ride to work, and the neighbourhood is quiet, pretty, and just feels like where we want to be.  

We just moved on Monday, and moving is no fun (especially having done it last only about six weeks ago), but things are starting to come together. Unfortunately our most recent short term rental was a bit of a nightmare and we have had to get rid of some things, most notably our couch, because they smelled like mold. So we are waiting on new things to arrive before we can really see how the house is going to look, but it is still starting to feel like home. 

In the meantime we have been busy. One very pleasant but of busyness was a trip to Seattle, which happened in part because I had a conference to attend but was much better than just conferencing. Since we were close enough to drive, Jeff and the kids tagged along. We visited places we used to go often when we lived here, and spent much time with dear friends who we haven’t seen in far too long. 

It has been a good few weeks and I am also looking forward to things being much calmer soon!

Stinky

This morning Linden was going around her room smelling the floor. 

Her verdict? It stinks.

Why was she doing this? Because our whole house stinks. Like a medley of mold, carpet cleaner, dog pee, body odor, and many other unrecognizable smells that we really don’t want to know the source of. She was telling me that her carpet doesn’t actually smell so bad, but then she changed her mind.

We are expecting this to be a very short term situation, and I will post more about that soon. But for now we are living in the stink, not loving it, but making the best of it. But also trying not to be home much 🤣

Yesterday we went to the Celtic festival that was happening here, and we didn’t take many pictures but we got this one:

Today we went for a little boardwalk hike through a wetland in town:

 Summer is summer and it’s fun even when part of it stinks. 

Action-packed

 Things have been extraordinarily busy. We had to move out of our rental because our lease ended and they gave us notice to leave, so we had to move into another rental. We moved in the middle of a heat wave and it was kind of intense. We have not quite settled in, partly because there are some serious problems with the house including a major mold issue, and we are hoping that we won’t be here long. We have really not had good luck with rentals.

In the meantime, lots of other stuff has happened: Canada Day, Fourth of July, kids going to daycamp, and this weekend we had a trip to the coast where we met up with two of our good friends from grad school and their families. Fun was had by all!