October is flyin' by.

Last weekend I was at a course Friday to Saturday, so Jeff took Callum with Scott, Sam and some cousins to the Pumpkin Patch. Looks like it was fun.

Otherwise, besides getting plumbers, window manufacturers, electricians, structural engineers, and framers into the house for quotes and work, there has been a lot of passing the kids off to other family members while we do more demolition. Callum and Max already know their cousins quite well, but their relationships will be even stronger by the time our renovations are done!

We've hired a framer who is raring to go, so his guys came and removed all our stucco and siding. There is still plenty of demolition to be done (will it ever end?), but here are some pics from this past Saturday (Thanks Scott for all your help! And Sam for watching the boys!):




I managed to step on a screw that penetrated my foot pretty deep and I have no idea when my last tetanus shot was, so if I don't update my blog ever again, I guess it means I have fallen victim to my own stupidity of wearing RocketDog shoes on a construction site!

Bye Bye Love! Demolition Begins!

I guess it's been over a week now since we packed up our downtown home and said goodbye to Vancouver! As I drove the moving truck full of our stuff along the highway away from the city, I have to admit to shedding a tear or two (or maybe actually bawling my eyes out, but I have been a bit emotionally unsteady lately). Suburbs, here we come!

We moved into our basement suite (which is probably more square footage than our downtown condo, but only 1 bedroom and no bathtub), and settled in rather quickly, with the help of my sisters and Mom to unpack.

After a week of organizing, we enlisted the help of family and friends to begin demolition on our dump! We spent Saturday clearing out the excessive amounts of crap that was left behind from the previous owners.

My nephew Sam organizing the chemicals, electronics and recyclables:
My sister Kami getting acrobatic in the basement:
My Dad taking care of the job no one else wanted to do, the bathroom:
My friend Emily's husband Mike removing the animal-pee soaked hardwood flooring:
My brother Scott removing various type-writers, 8-track players, Mcdonald's toy collections, and other ancient technologies from under the stairs:
This is the bin at only 11:30am, so you can imagine how full it was by the end of the day:
It's Thanksgiving Monday today and Mom's making Turkey dinner at 5:30 tonight, so we better get going at removing more flooring and tackling interior walls!

Messy, moving, monster Max

It seems an impossible task to get a picture of Max since he is constantly on the move, as the shot above shows.

Jeff and I are exhibiting minor stress in our own ways during this turbulent month and I feel particularly neglectful of the boys - too much TV. Hopefully we will be able to focus on them more after the move in less than 2 weeks. We managed to find a place to stay in White Rock - a 1-bedroom basement suite with no bathtub, so it should be an interesting few months. We also managed to rent out our apartment (which turned out to be more difficult than we had anticipated, so we are much relieved that's taken care of).

Yup, less than 2 weeks before I say Goodbye to my urban life and say Hello to, to, um, well, I'm not really sure what life will be like out there. Sigh. Well, I borrowed my sisters minivan the other day and managed to parallel park it on the first go, so somehow I feel like I can handle any suburban task ahead of me! Soccer Mom, here I come!

First Day of School!

Since we are still living in Vancouver and Callum's Preschool is in White Rock, Callum, Max and I get to to commute to White Rock twice a week for September to Callum's school! And since we still have only one vehicle and Jeff needs it for work, this involves taking the Skytrain, which the boys don't really mind that much.

My Mom picked us up from the end of the line and then we borrowed her car to get to White Rock. All-in-all, about a 2-hour commute! I'm still glad we are doing it, though, since I didn't want Callum to miss his first day at Preschool.

I have to say, I have been feeling rather bursting with pride of my boys lately - Callum really is a great big brother and Max seems to be 1.5 years going on 3.5 years old. Let's see...

Callum participated in 3 separate weeks of Day Camp over the summer, so I think this really helped him gain alot of independence - carrying his own backpack, going to the bathroom without help (except with his button), inviting new friends to play with him and not being shy. He does tend to have his stubborn moments, when he has his heart set on something that he can't have (for example, after Daycamp one day he wanted to go to the park with his friend Noah, but we already made plans to go to Grandma and Grandpa's, so he was grumpy the entire drive there and for about half an hour after we got there he hid beside the house!). He is beginning to understand, though, that he has control over his emotions, so he comes to me and says "I'm trying real hard to be happy, Mom, but it's too hard!" The other day I was surprised at what a big boy he was when he was in his room for a while and came out changed out of his pajamas and into his clothes without me even asking him, then we were at the park and he was pumping on the swing all by himself, he shared his snack with Max without me saying anything, he went up and introduced himself and Max to another kid , then when I had to run to catch Max, Callum noticed I had to leave the stroller behind so he grabbed it and brought it to me. There are a few things we seems to avoid doing himself, however - if I want him to eat a meal before 2 hours has gone by, I better spoon it into his mouth or it will take forever. He has a mild obsession with Star Wars and I'm afraid computer and video games are already a favorite pastime that I need to decide how to deal with. Hmmm.

Max, my little troublemaker, is still quite a handful. I really took for granted how clean Callum has always been when he eats since Max is a disaster. He really doesn't understand why he can't do everything that Callum can do, so he gets frustrated when he can't climb up the side of the couch or when his food rolls off his spoon, or when I drop Callum off at Day Camp he really doesn't understand why he can't stay too. He is SO anxious to join Callum in Nursery at church, so I am counting down the Sundays before he turns 18 months. He still only has his front teeth, 4 on top and 4 on bottom, so I think he is teething now, actually, which would hopefully explain some of his moody behaviour lately. He talks pretty much non-stop - we think it is some obscure Asian dialect that someone somewhere would understand, but certainly not us. If you count "rrroooaaarrrrr" as a word, then I guess that would be his first word since he uses it every time he plays with a dinosaur toy. If Max hears the faintest sound of music with a beat, you will see him show off his moves - this kid sure can dance which makes me laugh and laugh!!

Speaking of Max, actually, he really needs to go down for a nap, so I better help him out (and if there's anything Max is good at, it is going to sleep, if not staying asleep).

Big news X 2 !!!

Our family has had some exciting things happen, well, 2 major things anyway.

First of all, I had mentioned a couple weeks ago that we put a bid on a house and it turns out that we got it! We own a house in White Rock! Well, it's more of a dump of a house than anything, so we have been getting very little sleep the last 2 weeks as we try to design the renovation plans, get quotes for the work from subcontractors and secure financing that would cover the renovations. Anyway, we have a significant project ahead of us and September is going to be really crazy as we prepare for it: we have to finish/fix several things in our condo, hold an open house for our condo to rent it out, find temporary housing in White Rock while we gut our house, buy a second vehicle (since living in White Rock won't be quite as pedestrian as my life downtown), commute to White Rock twice a week for Callum's Preschool, pack up the condo and then move! Fun and exciting, eh?

To give you an idea of how serious our renovation project will be, here are a few pics of the current state of our "beautiful new home":


Now, the second (and far more exciting) thing that happened just this weekend involves Callum, my not-so little baby! After a total of about 20 minutes of practicing, over 2 days, Callum can ride a pedal bike!! He tried a few times on Saturday and got pretty frustrated, but then I tried again yesterday and he is a Superstar!! No kidding, he is riding alone, starting up himself and mastering the pedal brakes - I am so proud of him (and he is so proud of himself too)!!



And of course, now that Callum just wants to ride his Lightning Mcqueen pedal bike, Max has free access to the run bike, which he is very, very happy about. I think his little legs need to get just a little bit longer before he"ll be keeping up with Callum, no problem.

And last week we were able to go down the street to watch the PNE parade, which was actually quite impressive, though Max wasn't sure he liked the giant balloons.

Skinners in Alberta (Part 2)

(If you didn't catch "Part 1", see previous post).

As I said, after Waterton, we headed to my brother Todd's in Calgary, where Callum played with his cousins, (who happened to have a way better selection of toys than he ever will, including some seriously awesome costumes!).
We were able to visit friends from our time in Halifax, Evan and his wife Arundel, who now live in Calgary with their 2 daughters.


We planned on doing a day trip to Drumheller, but another day of driving seemed far less appealing than originally thought, so we opted for the dinosaurs at the Calgary Zoo instead. Callum seemed satisfied.



We booked a shmancy condo in Canmore to share with Jeff's parents for the following week, so we could hang out and be lazy or venture to the surrounding mountains for more rock throwing. There was also a pool that Callum asked to make use of on a daily basis.

One of the days, I was able meet up with some friends that I went to school with in Victoria, Stephanie and Emma, and later in the week my friend Mike, (that I knew from Edmonton since I was 12), came for a hike too, so I was so happy to be able to reconnect with people throughout our trip, even if it was only briefly.


So, that was our trip. Phewph. It takes a long time to make these blog posts.

I said I would mention the house hunt, so I will say that we put a bid on a house and we are in the middle of negotiations. I'm not feeling too optimistic, though, so we shall see...