Mission Accomplished. . .?

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(Oh my God, you guys. Do you know how long it took me to figure out how to paste a meme on here???????????? I embarrass myself.)

HUGE NEWS! 

WE GOT OUR VISAS!!!!!! Wha?!?! We totally weren't expecting them to come this soon--we were thinking early to mid December, based on the last communication we got from employer--but on our first day in Philadelphia, Huz got an email saying they were ready! So we drove on down and picked that shiz up in person!! So, The Rules are that you can't move down more than 30 days before the "program start date", which is in early January, so now we can move anytime after early December.

And, even more good news: WE GOT AN AMAZING NEW PLACE!! Thanks to our wonderful realtor, we saw 11 properties in one day--not counting the broken door place the day before--and really liked four of them. But our top choice really stood head and shoulders above the rest, and they quite liked us as well (I guess?). Its a three bedroom, 1.5 bath (man, that extra 0.5 is really going to make a big difference for us. . .) duplex with a small fenced in yard and an unfinished but pristine and thus totally useable as a playroom basement. Its going to seem positively palatial to us! Its in a beautiful part of town, and our lease starts on December 1. 

SO, unless I am mistaken (which has happened before about this kind of stuff), all we need to do in order to move is wait until 30 days before the "program start date" and figure out our health insurance (no small feat) and then we are good to go! We'll probably move sometime around Dec 3-5ish, and when we get to Philadelphia, we have a beautiful little home waiting for us. We are so excited to know that we'll be "home" and settled by Christmas. 

Phew. What a difference a week makes!

Happy birthday, little Mouse xo

This past weekend we celebrated Mouse's 1st birthday! Its already one year ago that the sweetest, happiest little baby arrived at our home and graced our lives with her never-ending joy. It has been a whirlwind of a year, but Mouse has been such a blessing to us all - her constancy of temperament and adoration has been a port in a storm for us and a daily reminder to cherish the everyday joys and small moments of life with a little one. I read a very timely piece last week called Can you Really Love Your Second Child as Much as Your First? by Darcy R. Shapiro, and it just beautifully summed up how we feel about our little Mouse. We love her for all the ways she is uniquely herself, and our family is more complete, more joyful, and more blessed because she has joined us.

We were also blessed to be able to celebrate Mouse's birthday with a huge birthday shindig at my Aunt's house. It was Mouse themed--of course!--and so many members of our amazing extended family  came out to celebrate with us. Honey Bee and I spent Thursday making tray after tray of baked pasta, pasta being Mouse's favourite food to eat--which I promptly served cold on the day of, but we had a fantastic custom cake made by one of our family members, which was incredible (which I won't post here, beautiful as it is, because Mouse's real name is on it - sorry), and some fantastic hors d'oeuvres made by our gourmet host.

Her first taste of cupcake

Honey Bee loves a good party!

"For she's a jolly good fellow!"

Party van on the way home. Even Dog had a ball.

Happy birthday sweet Mouse! You make us all so happy!

Mouse's little dress is The Hopscotch Dress from Peekaboo Pattern Shop. I have purchased patterns from this shop before and/or followed tutorials from her blog, always with great results. The patterns are simple, PDF documents, and the tutorials all have colour photos and are super easy to follow and always make me feel like a pro while I'm sewing! I had started Mouse's bday dress from a different pattern from a different shop, and with a week left to go, Huz informed me that the dress would make Mouse look like she was Amish, which it did. Although I measured her properly, the dress was far too long and far too wide. So thankfully The Hopscotch was great in a pinch, and I was able to finish it in a week without too much ado. I bought a new sewing machine in Ottawa that does buttonholes, which I was super pumped about. Before, I would take my projects to the sewing lounge in Vancouver to do buttonholes on their fancy digital machines. The machine I bought isn't digital, but it has a buttonhole function/foot, but I found it rather difficult to do. Hopefully as I practice a bit more, I'll get the hang of it better, but for some reason the machine mutinied and wouldn't do one of the four buttonholes properly (but did the other three fine?! whu?!), so I had to do it by hand. And I'm a terrible hand sewer. But the button covers it, so who cares!

We are actually in Philadelphia right now. Tomorrow we have an apartment bonanza planned with a realtor, which is such a novelty. I am used to apartment hunting in Vancouver, where you need to stalk the Craigslist listings every day and as soon as you see a good one, you pounce on it, and when you go to see it, there are 8 other people/couples who are also interested in the apartment. I was approaching our apartment search here with a similar intensity, and our wonderful, patient realtor basically told me "Try to approach this apartment search with as little stress as possible. I actually think you will find that you will have the opposite problem than the one you are anticipating, and will have to decide between several great properties." In other words: calm the hell down, lady. We are REALLY excited about our day o' listings tomorrow, though, and feel really lucky to have someone from here helping us along in the process. 

We drove down from Ottawa yesterday, which took quite a long time because it was either snowing or raining for most of the drive. Today was busy with various appointments, and we were all absolutely wiped. We decided to squeeze in one quick apartment showing this evening, but on our drive there, both girls fell asleep in the car. When we arrived and had to wake them up, they were unsurprisingly nonplussed. Honey Bee, in particular, was in bits. She pretty much cried the entire time we were in the townhome, and did not make a very good first impression on the would-be landlord. At one point, as he was showing us around, she noticed that the previous tenant had done damage to the front door frame. She pointed to the door, in tears, and said "Why is this broken?" We explained that someone broke it, but it was going to be fixed, but apparently this did little to allay her concern. She started crying out, as if someone had just died, "WHY IS THE DOOR BROKEN?!?!?!?"(To those in the Wednesday Night Potluck group, her reaction was akin to the "DON'T CUT MY CAKE!!!!" incident. For those of you not in the Wednesday Night Potluck group, you really should ask me about this story sometime, because it was hilarious). As we left, I said "So, we'll call you tomorrow once we've made our decision" (again, so weird to say this. In Vancouver, its the landlord who says things like that. . .), and Huz says "But, if we decide to move in, you're really going to have to do something about that door, since apparently it really upsets Honey Bee." We had a good laugh on the drive back to the hotel. 

In an effort to have a better, less tear-filled apartment blitz day tomorrow, we are trying to get the girls to go to bed early tonight. This is very difficult in a hotel room if you yourselves do not want to go to bed early. So Huz and I are currently sitting in the bathroom with the fan on, drinking beer and eating chips, and watching Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia on the iPad. Ahh, parenthood! 

Halloween in Ontario

Oh, what a lovely Halloween we had! It was a chilly, chilly day, but it made me feel nostalgic for the days of my youth, when I spent more than one Halloween with a winter coat/snowpants over/under my costume. In Vancouver, Halloween wasn't exactly warm, and we did on occasion have to tote the umbrella around, but it was definitely much warmer than here. You know it must be cold, when the 3 year old decides to pack it in when her goodie bag is only half full because "I COLD!"

Soon after Honey Bee was born, I decided to take an adult education Beginner Sewing class through the Vancouver School Board, mainly so that I could learn how to sew costumes for Halloween. As a child, I remember having a few costumes that were very memorable (I'm remembering in particular, an incredible Queen of Hearts costume that my mom's friend made that was so epically amazing that I actually FELT like I was the actual Queen of Hearts. And an E.T. costume that I first came upon hanging on a nail in our unfinished basement at a fairly young age and being so terrified of the costume that I don't even remember putting it on - there is certainly no photographic proof of that particular Halloween costume), but others were very meh (like when I dyed my hair black and wore a rosary to be Madonna, or when I bought a soother and wore pajamas to be a baby. . .). And I really wanted to create for the girls that magical feeling that a child has when they dress up in a truly remarkable costume.

I found my canary yellow graduation gown in a closet at my parents house, and Honey Bee LOVES princesses, so I decided to make a Snow White costume. (It was either Snow White or Belle, but difficulty-wise, it was a no brainer for me!) And I thought that with her great big blue eyes and the fact that she doesn't speak, Mouse would be the most adorable Dopey ever. And I was right.

Look at how happy she is to be Snow White! It makes my heart sing. I made this dress by modifying the Allana Ruffled Peasant Dress pattern by Blissful Sewing, which I had used previously to make Honey Bee's 3rd birthday dress. I lengthened the bodice and didn't include the ruffles or sash, and the dressed turned out really well. Its a great, easy-to-follow pattern, and great for early sewists like myself. I also found this amazing tutorial from Craftiness is not Optional on how to do the sleeves. It totally made the dress, although if you scrutinize mine, you'd find lots of boo boos around the neckline and cuffs from where I put the elastic/casings, but like an impressionist painting, the dress looks so much better if you take a few steps back.

And here is sweet little Dopey! Forgive the less-than-awesome picture. Its incredibly difficult to take a fully body shot of a crawling baby, as many of you know. Inspired by Jeni Ro Designs, I used the Bimaa Sweater Pattern by LouBeeClothing, which was just perfect. It was a super easy sew, super cute pattern (which I will certainly use again for non-Halloween purposes), and it was really warm and cozy during our very chilly Halloween outings. The fleece I used was really thick, which was great for warmth, but made the cowl look a bit like a green neck brace, but I still think it looked so cute.

Snow White and Dopey together. (Look at how dirty Honey Bee's socks are!!!!!). We stopped by my grandparents' house for a visit and so they could see the little ones all dressed up.

We also spent part of our day with my cousin and his family at Hugli's Blueberry Ranch in Pembroke. It was awesome! There were some great play areas, lots of (mostly) friendly animals to feed, a corn maze, and a HUGE slide made out of corrugated plastic tubing, among other fun activities.

Huz shooting out the bottom of the slide. Its not just for kids!

Some rather menacing geese. They didn't like the look of Honey Bee and pecked at her (and so begins a lifelong fear of water fowl. . .), so we left their little area. But later, these three goons found us and stalked us down, but we made a narrow escape into the corn maze.

Quintessential Ontario Halloween shot of trick-or-treating with ski jacket over costume. Brr.

Dopey-turned-Sleepy in the car on the drive home. It was a wonderful day!

We received some news on the moving front. Huz finally got his start date! . . .in early JANUARY. Wah wah. A little disappointing to hear (some of us may have spent an entire day wallowing), but perhaps not surprising with all that has to happen when you move to a new country. So we have to trespass on Mom and Dad's hospitality a little longer, and we will likely now be able to make another trip down to Philly later on in November/December to look for an apartment. 

Philadelphia Sneak Peek!

This week we went down to Philadelphia for a couple of days to take care of a wee bit of business and also for me to get a better idea of some of the places where we might live and work. It was about an 8 hour car ride from here, but the girls did amazing--they are such great little travelers--and we enjoyed the fall colours along the way.

It was great to look at neighbourhoods and get a sense of where we might be living, and it was fun to picture ourselves there, living our new lives in Philadelphia. One thing I wasn't expecting was just how verdant these areas--which I guess are technically suburbs, but are relatively close to the city, about a 15-20 min drive out--are, and it was also surprising to realize just how old the city and some of the buildings are. After a long afternoon of driving around parts of the city (while both girls napped in the van = amazing luck!), we stopped at a playground and let the girlies stretch their legs and play.

After our grownup day of driving around, we decided to have a kids day of hanging out at the Please Touch Museum. This is an incredible children's museum, which is in this huge, amazingly beautiful building located in Fairmount Park. Everything is interactive, colourful, and laid out to capture the imaginations of all ages. We overheard one mother refer to it as the "Test Your Immunity Museum," but we just Purelled liberally, and had a wonderful time. 

One of Honey Bee's favourite parts of the day was this stunning carousel, located inside one of the wings of the museum.

Building a robot.

Another highlight was the section dedicated to Alice in Wonderland. Here we are, celebrating our unbirthdays with a tea party with the Mad Hatter and March Hare. Honey Bee is even dressed up as Alice!

Painting the roses red.

We easily spent 45 minutes in this section of the museum while Honey Bee shot little rockets in the air using this "space station."

We were at the museum ALL DAY, and by the time we left, both girls were completely knackered. Five minutes into the car ride back they both fell asleep (the car nap gods were with us on this trip, for sure!), so we decided to plug "Trader Joe's" into the GPS and go and visit this magical place we had heard so much about. I have to say, we were a little disappointed. Perhaps this particular Trader Joe's was a smaller one than those our friends have visited and boasted about, but it was pretty tiny and not a whole lot of stuff there. And I was dismayed not only to find that there was no cheap--but delicious--wine to purchase, but also to learn that in the state of Pennsylvania, you can't buy wine and beer in the same place. Being able to buy wine/beer at the grocery store was a big selling point for me.

The only part of the trip that was not amazing was staying in a hotel with a baby and a toddler. Holy hell. Our girls are usually pretty good sleepers, but it was such a gong show getting one or the other to sleep each night! And I had to try very hard to NOT imagine what manner of things happened on the carpets, under the beds (!), with those decorative pillows, etc, etc, while both girls crawled and wiggled around and touched every single crevice in that room, put things in their mouths, and ate directly off the furniture.

This is a terrible picture, but a funny one. This is our first night in the hotel. Honey Bee didn't sleep a wink on the entire trip down until about five minutes before we reached the hotel. So upon arrival, she woke up in a state of rage- and fatigue-induced delirium. Luckily, this meant that the minute we put her in the bed, she fell back asleep (that is her little brown head on the right). Mouse, on the other hand, slept for a good portion of the drive down, so while we all climbed into our beds exhausted, she crawled and babbled and jumped around her playpen, wide awake (you can see her standing up in the playpen a little bit) for quite awhile.

Hotel room fine dining. We definitely left a tip for the housekeeper.

Having had such a wonderful time on our little minibreak to Philly, it is a little bit harder to sit tight and be patient while we wait for our visas to come through. But it is also reassuring to know that when that time finally comes, we have a beautiful new city awaiting us. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving weekend! It is really special to be here and able to celebrate Thanksgiving with Mom and Dad, and to enjoy the beautiful Ontario fall. We're having a quieter Thanksgiving feast tonight at Mom and Dad's, and then a larger family dinner tomorrow night at my aunt's house. Because we'll have traditional turkey at my aunt's house tomorrow, and because my Dad especially isn't a huge fan of turkey, we're having prime rib and roasted chicken tonight. All in all, its going to be an amazing weekend.

The word on the move is that it looks like we'll probably have awhile to wait on our visas/paperwork (like, definitely into November). Discouraging as that was to hear, we have moved into acceptance, and are making the most of our time in Ontario. There are lots of things to do here that are novelties for our little city slicker, and she is loving running with Dog in the yard, riding her new bike, and jumping in piles of leaves, among other things.

Pony ride at the Carp fair

Riding the lawnmower with Daddy

Lovely fall visit to my aunt and uncle's home in Quebec

Jumping in leaves was a big hit

Rainy day apple picking 

When I say "rainy," I mean "REALLY RAINY"! (But still very fun. We were, literally, the only ones there. We are hardcore apple pickers.)

Mouse checking out our haul. The Empire apples were especially delicious!

We wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving weekend and hope that this holiday finds you happy, with friends and family, and enjoying this beautiful fall season. 

We've Arrived in Ottawa!

We all arrived safely in Ottawa a few days ago. Apparently, it takes more than a couple of days to decompress from what has been a very stressful and busy year but especially this past month. We're all quite tired and a little on edge, but we are grateful to have made it here, and are looking forward to relaxing a bit before taking on our next challenge of moving to Philadelphia.

The girls and I flew first to Calgary to spend a few days with two of my very close girlfriends and their 4 children. The house we all stayed in together was noisy and busy to say the least, but we had a fabulous time catching up, watching our children play together, and supporting one another--as we so often do--through good times and not-so-good times. Looking forward to this mini vacation was so helpful to me in coping with saying goodbyes in Vancouver, and we were all so busy with our little ones while we were together that it helped me to shake off my sadness of the move and be in the moment.

 Mouse and her new friend

Story time with 4 kids is easy!

A very sweet moment, snuggling with the littlest member of our group at the Calgary Zoo.

The Whole Gang! (Some members of said gang are hard to see due to being covered in Ergos.)

Mouse fell asleep during landing on our flight from Calgary to Ottawa after wriggling in my arms for the previous 4 hours. But wriggling is very tiring work.

The boys (and Dog) drove in a U-Haul truck from Vancouver to Ottawa in less than 5 days. Some days they drove as many as 18 hours in a day, all with Dog sitting in the jumpseat of the three person cab. The original plan was to drive in the relative luxury of our van while pulling a trailer behind. But Dad felt that they would meet certain death on the Coquihalla with this plan, so they opted to rent the truck and haul the van behind. Although their journey was long and uncomfortable, it was mercifully uneventful.

Huz and Dog on the TransCanada

So now we're going to wait here awhile while we wait for all of our paperwork to be in order. We're hoping to see some progress this week so that we'll have an idea of when Huz at least can head down to Philadelphia and find us a new (likely temporary) home. 

The Old Apartment (This is Where We Used to Live)

Oh, saying goodbyes in Vancouver has been so very difficult. We said goodbye to dear family, very close friends, and our home.

When I notified our landlord that we'd be moving away, he asked me to take some photos for the ad he would soon be posting on craigslist. I glanced around our apartment, which looked roughly like a bomb had gone off, and said "No problem!" and got to work. I shuffled boxes and crap around to take some loving photographs of our home, and I'm so glad that I did. I am grateful to have these photos now that we have left.

As much as we sometimes complained about our apartment--only having one bathroom is never good for a marriage--I cried like a baby when I finally locked the door one last time. Our daughters were literally born there, in our bedroom. It was our first home as a married couple. It was a location for so many Wednesday night potlucks, book club meetings, and other get togethers with friends. Honey Bee took her first steps there, we had the most incredible neighbours, it was in the most amazing neighbourhood in Vancouver, and it was the backdrop to countless memories of our time there.

I have a newfound understanding for people who find it difficult to move, even from circumstances that are less than optimal living conditions. Being accustomed to moving around a lot, I never really felt particularly attached to the house part of "home". But in this little apartment, Huz and I really made the effort to create the homey part of "home" and make this a cozy dwelling for our family (although we suck at decorating). We lived here for 6 years, and it is unfathomable to me now, how people can move away from places that they've lived in for 10, 20, 30 years, etc. Although you take the memories with you when you go, the attachment to the bricks and mortar is undeniable.

So thank you, cozy little apartment, for housing us within your walls for these 6 years, and for allowing us to begin our life as a family here. We will cherish the memories, and the apartment, always.

The girls room. The best room in the house. We learned to paint from YouTube to paint this room while we were expecting Honey Bee, and also learned that painting is hard and very time-consuming.

This picture is so very deceptive. I removed about 80% of our toys, dog beds, and crap before snapping this picture. If only it was always this tidy! 

Tiny, but very adorable kitchen, which allowed me to watch the girls in the living room while cooking generally unmemorable meals. I did, however, create one very memorable Duck à L'Orange here for a very fancy and never to happen ever again dinner party.