It's been 7 months

Apologies for the long absence. But I am happy to announce that on this beautiful sunny morning I am going to resist the urge to go out and do one of the 1000 things on my to-do list and instead spend a little time in reflection. Though to be honest, I must confess that the -23 degree weather was also a factor in that decision.

So...where have we been? Here is the whirlwind tour of the last 7 months. Wow...hard to believe it's been 7 months.

1. I got a new job.

As most of you know I was on a two year leave of absence from Edmonton Public Schools, so I knew I had a job coming back to Edmonton, but wanted a change in schools. Despite knowing my odds were pretty ridiculous I went ahead and tried to convince a principal to interview me over the phone from China - which seems very normal to those working internationally, but is not exactly everyday practice around here. Anyway, to make a long story short, I beat the odds and got the job I wanted in the building you see above. I now work as part of this partnership, who despite having a terrible website is a team I am excited to be working with. And what makes us different from any other school you may ask? The answer is in the word "partnership" and the idea is that if we are to truly meet the needs of the city's neediest students we are going to have to rally together "the village" we so often talk about but that so often seems to be missing when it comes to raising a child. We work together with agencies that have the same interest in mind, making our school one of the very few where teachers, administrators, parents, family therapists, social workers, reading specialists, police officers, consultants, nurses, mentors, occupational therapists and many others are part of the fabric that makes up a normal day. In practice, it doesn't always work as it should, but it's a philosophy I support and am quite happy to work at making it work. Besides, I get to teach grade two (my favourite age) to 11 kids (yes 11!!!) and occasionally dress up as story book characters.

Scott is working as a substitute teacher and loves the flexibility given that he wears quite a few hats, and always has a lot on his plate to juggle. He is self described as a "stay at home dad without any kids." Rest assured, this doesn't mean he spends all day on the couch watching TV...because a) we don't have a couch, b) we don't have a tv, and c) he really has been very busy and if you read further you will see why.

2. We bought a house!
I was visiting a friend this summer when the topic of house hunting came up. At this point the house across the street was pointed out and we had a little discussion about how it might come up for sale sometime in the future. So I took this sneaky picture from the front window of the house we were in and emailed it to Scott (who was in Saskatchewan at the time). A couple days later, I left Edmonton and drove seven hours to Saskatchewan, feeling rather disgruntled with the housing market and quite ready to hop on a plane and flee the continent. When I arrived, there was a message waiting for me somewhere along the lines of "the house we talked about is going to go on the market in 2 days. If you want to buy it, you need to do it now." Not relishing the idea of turning around and driving seven hours back to Edmonton, we frantically started calling family and soon had a line up of people to go inspect the house on our behalf. 1 day later, after about a thousand phone calls/emails, and the savy negotiation skills of our dear friend Seble, we had bought ourselves a house - a house that neither of us had seen.

3. We emptied a house.

Our house came with stuff. The prior owner packed a suitcase and left, so we had a little more than you might typically have to deal with when moving into a "new" house.
Unfortunately the house also came with lots and lots of cat hair, so the cleaning out process wasn't too fun. I couldn't even go into the house without wearing a mask because of my allergies so Scott did the brunt of the work.

Pulling out the carpet
(The ENTIRE house was covered in carpet, including the bathroom, kitchen and garage!)

We gave away what was usable, recycled what we could, and got a dumpster for the rest.

An interesting find. We plugged it in and it still works!

4. We torn the house apart.

Opening up the kitchen and dining room.

Re- doing all the plumbing, and re-thinking the carpeted floor and pink wall tile.

Letting in the light- yes we did have to cut down some beautiful big bushes, but when the sun light flooded into the rooms, it made it all worth it!

5. We are now putting the house back together.

This is a slow, slow process, and we have given up all hope of finishing any time soon. Our main goal in renovations is to make the house as efficient as possible which means lots of time consuming projects without an immediate visible reward. At the moment we are working on re-insulating all of the exterior walls.

Adding insulation to the front entrance

The beginning stages of our kitchen.

At this point we have our bathroom, kitchen and one bedroom pretty much done. Unfortunately, due to some hard drive malfunctioning, I don't have any official "after" pictures to post right now. You will have to wait for those, or come on over and see for yourself. I will try to put these up soon. There is much to say on the topic of renovations, but truth be told I'm really really tired of talking about it, so that too shall have to wait for another post.

6. We had our first house concert!
It was fantastic. Good music, good people, good food. The concert featured our good friend Alice Worthington backed up by Scott on violin and Gary on vocals. A big thanks to those of you who came out to support Alice and join in the fun. And if you didn't make it out, don't worry, we expect to have more concerts in the months to come. We'll keep you posted.

So as you can see we have been busy...but that's no excuse for dropping the ball on our blogging. We'd like to think we still have a few readers out there and will do our best to keep you better posted. It's nice to be back.