Since then we have had mostly been concentrating on house stuff (surprisingly), but have had a few no house experiences along the way to keep us sane. At easter we went over to Alberta (again, it seems to be our only destination other than work!). We stopped off to see Simon, Arin and James and Neve (who we were meeting for the first time). She not very interactive yet, but Lea seemed to get a bit broodier as soon as we arrived. James continues to be thoroughly entertaining, although his early morning alarm calls need to be delayed by an hour or so.
After a couple of days in Nordegg we headed down to Banff for a couple of days to meet Tiger who was over for a week of skiing. The worst part of this wasn't actually spending a couple of days with Tiger, it was not being able to ski as a result of my brain malfunction. Lea decided not to ski so we spent a couple of days doing touristy stuff round Banff and had a couple of nights out once Tiger came off the slopes. It seems Tiger was the first of many visitors this year, and we look forward to entertaining some more of you over here soon.
Back at work Lea had an eventful day when one of her (mental) colleagues decided to start an argument in front of the rest of the office. The argument ended with Lea being told to never come near said mentalists desk, and never to speak to her again. Not surprisingly both Lea and the mentalist were summoned to the boss's office, where Lea was told to go for a walk and relax for a while, and the mentalist was told to clear her desk up and leave for good. Lea is now wondering who she is going to get fired next.......
We also seem to be nearing our permanent residence. This week we received our requests for medicals, which is the final step before having our visas granted. I am hoping that my recent experiences are not going to cause me too much bother, but I am trying to prepare myslef for the fact that I may not be allowed to stay permanently. There will be more news on this next time, as I will hopefully have some information from the doctor regarding my chances.
So now I can get to the house issues. With the sale of the land finally going through we were able to get out on to the land and stake out the footprint of the house. It was a great feeling to be wandering around on our own land, although it was still very cold and the ground was somewhat frozen.
The sale of the land also allowed us to get lots of other work started. We have now had the well drilled, and seem to have more water than we will ever need. We have also broken ground and had the basement dug. This was a pretty stressful saga, as our contractor agreed to do the job for us, then pulled out, and only agreed to do the job once I had threatened to do it myself. It turned out that it was very lucky that I didn't attempt it myself. It took two men 13 hours to dig the hole for us over the weekend. We are now in the process of building the forms for the concrete footing, and hope to pour the concrete early next week. It's a bit frustrating to have to wait so long, but I am being sent away on fieldwork for the rest of this week, so we will have to make do.
The photos show some of the work that went on over the weekend. Saturday finished with a cracking sunset, which we will hopefully be enjoying a lot more over the coming months. The final picture shows the start of the formwork in the hole which we managed to get done before we were driven home by the rain on Sunday.
