Freya on site

Middle of August and moving day looms... Stef has nearly finished off the kitchen and bathroom, and then it'll be ready. Freya thinks it looks great.

Floored

Here's a pic of the suite with its flooring, and the kitchen half installed.

Baby's first Canada Day, and a moving day is set

Canada day has marked the end of my work and the start of proper summer. To be fair, May was gorgeous, but June was a washout. Now July is looking set to be sunny. I hear that being heavily pregnant in really hot weather is a b*&^h, so I will count myself lucky.

I'm waking up every day at 3 or 4am these days, when I stumble around in the dark having 'first breakfast' and reading a novel for a few hours before my hips will let me get back to sleep again. Fun! So it's nice not to have to be at my desk at 8am.

Exercise has become fairly ridiculous. I've taken a few aquasize classes, which is laughable as 'exercise' but good for just getting joints moving and taking the weight off for a bit. Also prenatal yoga is a good laugh. I should take a video of me trying to do what the instructions say (touch your toes... ha!) and post to youtube, if I feel like adding some humour to the world. Maybe not today.

The doctors tell me she is 'engaged', which means she's head-down and getting ready to exit. The whole process of 'dropping' comes with a whole new set of twinges and funny feelings, which is highly entertaining.

Meanwhile, the house is coming along slowly but surely. Stef has the floor in, and half of the kitchen. The bathroom is still empty, but should be started any day now. Of course there have been a whack of annoying problems...
1) The spray foam insulation poked right through the walls to the exterior, making the outside too 'lumpy' to install the siding. Stef had to crack the whip to get them to fix that... but eventually they did.
2) The regular batt insulation in the attic was too skinny to properly fit between the wooden framing, so that it tended to slide down the slope overnight. Again, cracking the whip made them swap it for a slightly wider set of batting.
3) The stain Stef has been using to paint the cedar 'belly band' (the wooden strips that run around the outside of the house to visually separate one floor from another) -- Sikkens Cetol SRD oil-based natural stain -- has been discontinued, and we don't have enough to finish the job. Ooops. No biggy. We'll either scrape up another tin from somewhere, or pick something that vaguely matches. I mean, really, who cares that much?
4) The crummy weather in June has held up the painting of the siding, in our lovely 'cushing green'. Now it's sunny that should get back on track - if Stef can find good, cheap people to do the painting.
5) we've run through a heap of temporary workers who didn't work out for one reason or another... one only lasted a day. It's so hard to find good people... especially when you have to tell them they might lose their work any day now for a couple of weeks, while the foreman goes on paternity leave.

Given all that, we've abandoned dreams of moving in before baby and I have the spare room in our current place kitted out as a nursery. We've given our notice for 1 Sept, so that's the drop-dead deadline for moving.

Let there be light

Thanks to a gift coupon from my brother Chris and Rebecca (and Home Depot), we now have lights for the suite! The walls have been painted, the light switches work, the heaters are in... it's starting to look livable. Next up: kitchen and bathroom. It's a real race. The baby is due on 13 July. I reckon if she's late we might actually be in before then :)







Here also are some pics of our builder hard at work in the 'kitchen', and the funky ceiling in the suite's bedroom, where the stairs to upstairs cut into the wall.

Bath and switch

So here's a funny story... We go to the store, pick out a bath, buy the bath, the name of the bath on the box matches the bath we wanted, and we pay the right price for the bath we want. We bring it home. The builder (Stef, I think) puts it in. A week passes. My parents come up. I peel back the cardboard to reveal our.... uh, that's not the right bath.

After much confusion, we have established that the 'kidney shaped' tub is no longer being made, and instead we have been given the next model. Apparently it's worth $200 more than we paid for it, so I guess I won't complain!

Day off for flying

In the midst of all that shopping, we took a day to relax in the sun (me) and go paragliding (Stef). Here we are at the Mackenzie launch. I just took pics and then drove the car down, did the crossword and took a nap. Stef stayed in the air for about 4 hours. Little Freya didn't seem to mind the bumpy road!

Shopping spree

On Saturday 5 May we had an epic shopping spree day. First stop Rona for a shower head for the master bath (a lovely 'rain head' that will make it feel like you're standing in a spring shower). I just hope there's enough pressure to get shampoo out. If not, we can always change the head later. We've picked out matching taps for the Roman tub and sink, but they didn't have them in stock.

Next stop 'King of Floors', the hilarious shop in Surrey advertized by a 'king' in full regalia with a miniature dog (see pic). Cheesy place. Great prices. We picked up an awesome discontinued laminate floor for the suite (which, by my knife-dropping tests, seems indestructable) that looks like Cherry wood, for just 69c per square foot (!!!). We also found a real Brazilian jatoba (cherry) engineered click-fit board for our house, on sale from 6.99 to 4.99 / sq ft. It's in budget, lovely, a great colour with a little bit of 'distressing' done to it to hide scratches and dings, and random lengths to make the room look nice and un-regulated. But I'm a bit worried about the fate of the Amazon, so I'm trying to check to see whether it's Forest Stewardship Council certified. If not, it is a very thin layer of wood on top... but I'm not sure that's really good enough.

Next stop IKEA for our suite's kitchen. We picked out cupboards in Beech, which match the lighter streaks in the new floor, and a 2-compartment sink.

On Monday I went trawling for carpets, tiles, and appliances (whew!). Looks like it'll either be Home Depot or BRICK for appliances. Both are putting together quotes for me for a ridiculous haul of: 2 stacking washer/dryers; 2 fridges; 2 stoves; 2 dishwashers; 2 microwaves. Should come out to something like $8,000!!!

We already picked up bathtubs the weekend before... a 'Romance' tub for the master suite (lovely deep elegant sucker) and a 'peanut' tub for the kids' bathroom - so that, one day, when there are 2 kiddies, they can each have their own end of the tub and fight over who gets the taps :)

That's enough decision-making for now.

Meanwhile our doctor in Squamish, Louise Martin, who'll be delivering little Freya, says all looks well. The baby is lying sideways at the moment (across my belly, rather than with her head down), but there are weeks yet for her to sort herself out. If she doesn't, then apparently they send me to a specialist to try and massage/coax her into place. And if THAT doesn't work then we'll be c-section bound, but the chances of that now are slim (2% or so).