A new year already

Happy new year! Where the does time go?

For the first time in many years, we spent Christmas at home. Carrie and Lily went to BC in mid-December for a funeral, and shortly after they returned, her parents came our way for a while. We're fortunate to have plenty of room to host now; my parents came for a visit in November and we expect more family in a couple of months.

So, Christmas in Ottawa. A green one, no less (very rare). We put up a real tree for the first time. It's almost nicer than the fake one we've dealt with for years... except the part where a million needles fall off every time you bustle past it or look at it funny. Oh, and I threw it to the curb this evening. As I shoved it out the door, there went the other 90 million needles, all over my floor. (Yes, we watered it, but our tree didn't seem to know the rules.)

Our little princess is all about dressing up. You can't be a princess without fancy clothes, and you can't make it through a day with wearing a couple of varieties of princess garb. Methinks she's becoming a tad vain, what with having to be beautiful and not ugly all the time (and "beautifuller than you Dad!"). Well, I'm hurt; regardless, it may be time to take it down a notch.

But it's not all fun and games. We do drills on rhyming, synonyms, our street address, addition, vowels, spelling and reading. Last month, she (of her own volition) grabbed a pencil and drew the numbers 1 through 10 on the back of an envelope, about seven of which were quite legible (albeit mostly backwards). A few weeks ago she sounded out a word I'd assembled with fridge magnet letters. With some coaxing she can spell and read quite a number of three-letter words. She's a little confused about the silent "e" and double letters but takes it all in stride. I want to take advantage and put her in piano lessons and have her learn five languages, but I should probably let her be a kid for a while yet, n'est-ce pas? Ah, the pressures of an only child...

39 Belleview

It was a week before our partially-planned move, and a friend said "Hey, let's move you tomorrow." He spoke of the holiday Monday. To our amazement, things kind of took off from there, and the next day we were moved! Not bad results for a holiday, and for not having to rent a truck, and for not having been prepared packing-wise.

A few days before, we'd taken possession. Time to try the key and take a picture.

That wasn't so bad. Then we stepped inside. BEEP BEEP BEEP!

Uh-oh.

Well, good to know the alarm works. I hustled the girls outside before the blaring began and then set about trying to disable the dumb thing. A code would have been helpful at this point. Instead all it took was a few calls and emails to the realtor, the former owner, the lawyer, the security firm, and anyone else I wanted to make aware that our moment was being ruined by a noisy alarm. In the end, a callback from the security company walked me through disabling the alarm without a code. Hopefully I can rig it so the next thief who breaks in isn't able to use the same simple techniques...

Back to being moved in. Home ownership... what a glorious feeling! We love the space and have no regrets (yet... check back after our first mortgage payment), although we miss our old appliances, which were much nicer.

Our entrance is very spacious. We'll have to get a rug and some furniture to liven it up at some point.

The staircase to upstairs is kind of front and centre, but it's not a bad looking one.

Our sunken living room adjoins a dining room, and both are carpeted. I'm not sure who decides that carpet in an eating area is a good idea, but I imagine we won't be eating there much. And the living room, well, Lily has the place to herself (and her toys). The family room is plenty big for us adults to hang out, and we don't have enough furniture to go around besides.

The family room has two skylights at the end, providing much light. The wood floor is nice but not too forgiving in terms of seeing scratches. Between trying to keep carpets white and hardwood unscratched, I will go grey in no time at all. Stupid home ownership!

There is a weird bar counter between the family room and the eating area. We very much disliked it at first, but it does have its merits: it's easy to reach whilst sitting at the table. And beyond that is a nice roomy kitchen, albeit with appliances we're not thrilled with. Something to save up for, I guess.

The combined length of the family room / eating area / kitchen is 44 feet, and we love how open it feels.

Lily enjoyed her "pool" in the ensuite while we got around to buying a plug for her own tub...

And then there's the garage. We've been quite happy with having a carport for a number of years, but a two-car garage? We certainly spoiled ourselves on that count. May we curb our junk collecting enough to always fit the car in it. I didn't have a tennis ball handy to mark where to stop when we pull in, so currently a roll of masking tape at windshield level is doing the trick. We'll see if it's there in 10 years.

The back yard isn't huge, but it will suffice once we clear it up a bit. With the patio, some trees, a massive rock slab, randomly placed flower gardens, and a swing bench, we'll have to do some figuring on a new layout. The patio is old but big and in decent shape. There's an in-ground sprinkler system I have yet to try out. And the fountain pool (pictured below) got ripped out shortly after Lily fell in; no need for such hazards in my lovable-yet-clumsy-child's yard thankyouverymuch.

I've bought a mower and various other homeowner stuff, but we're going to need so much more. I just finished putting a trailer hitch on the gutless car, so at least we can borrow a trailer when we buy big stuff on Kijiji. Like a bed for Lily. Until now she's slept in her crib; in the new place we purposely didn't set it up, to force us to buy her a new bed.

Birthday

Lily got to celebrate her third birthday at the new house. She had four friends over. She's older than two of them, but I think they're all bigger than she is. Notice the lovely fruit bouquet on the table behind them; her mom is quite the artist!

Cupcakes are easier than cake!

Time to kill the piñata. A couple of girly swings...

A few more, with mom's help...

Skip a few rounds that included the other kids and perhaps a hockey stick... Success! I think. Not sure if this is before or after it rained candy. No pictures were possible during that stampede.

Lily loves puzzles and fairy or princess (or fairy princess) outfits, and she was spoiled with both on this occasion. Happy birthday, honeybunch!

Alex Vanderveen, 2015

After a very difficult couple of weeks, today we laid our tiny son to rest. Alex Vanderveen lived, unborn, to 25 weeks. We wish desperately that things could have been different, but who are we to question the ways of the Lord?

We are so blessed to be surrounded with family and friends who have helped us through it all. We thank everyone for their prayers and support.

And Lily... where would we be without our Lily? She has been our true ray of sunshine during all of this.

Rest in peace, little Alex. We'll see you in due time.

Home sweet house

Well, we took the plunge. Every year for five years we've been saying "we'll probably buy a house next spring". We even said that this spring. And then, suddenly, we own a house! These things just creep on you.

Carrie has always kept an eye out on MLS, keeping up on what's worth what in what neighbourhood. One day, she said "what about this one?" It happened to be a house I'd checked out online the previous day. The house wasn't super, but the 0.3-acre lot was the biggest we'd ever seen available in the suburbs. Three days later we had a realtor and mortgage pre-approval and went to see the place. Prior to this, we'd never even gone for mortgage pre-approval, and we'd never been to see a house.

I was in love with the yard, but Carrie didn't love the 70-minute commute to work. Some offers and counteroffers later, we lost the place to another buyer. I was, of course, heart-broken.

We were in buying mode, so we saw ten other places with our realtor. One was a nice house that was a little too big for our needs, and I decided that if I couldn't have a massive yard, I might as well have a massive house.

Then the sale on the first place fell through, so that was back in play. We decided on a halfhearted attempt, so we re-offered our previous final offer. And promptly lost it again.

Back to the other house. After some offers and counteroffers, we decided to pull the trigger. I'm ashamed to admit that I spent less time buying our single largest purchase ever than I would buying a TV or camera. But, as with buying a car, sometimes one just wants to get it over with.

So after 13 years of glorious worry-free renting, we get our new place at the end of July. We'll have triple the space we have now (the new basement is as big as our entire current place), so methinks it will be very sparsely furnished for some time to come. But that's okay, since we expect to be in it for 50 years, plenty of time to fill it.

Our house:


Okay, that was 30 years ago. Here's a fresh one:


The previous owner had it custom-built. (Kind of a rare thing in these parts, sadly; I hate that so many houses have a make and model... seriously!) He gave us construction and other early photos and even some blueprints!

So, um, come on over. I guarantee we'll have space to accommodate you.