Anyway, the major news in this episode, which may have filtered through to some of you already, is that Lea is pregnant. I’m not sure if I have quite grasped the magnitude of the situation yet, but I imagine I will have some growing up to do over the coming months. It seems that Stan and Nicole may have even known the news before we did, as Nicole has a magical, pregnancy testing cactus. The cactus had previously only flowered twice; once when Nicole was pregnant with Cassidy, and 4 years later when she was pregnant with Carter. Amazingly the same cactus flowered a while ago, and sure enough, Lea is pregnant. The one downside to the pregnancy is that Lea seems to have developed Tourette’s at the same time, so anyone with kids should try and keep them away from her foul mouthed abuse!
Anyway, back to April, when it still seemed like the middle of winter, and we had just finished getting the vapour barrier in the house. The next step was to get the interior walls insulated, and the ceiling finished upstairs. Following that it was time to start the drywalling. Having heard from almost everyone who has ever done any drywalling that it is no fun at all, we decided to get someone in to do it for us. As a result drywall was hung, mudded and taped and sanded upstairs and in the master bedroom and ensuite far faster than we would ever have been able to do it ourselves.
Following the completion of the drywall we were able to start painting. Most of the house is going to be white, which made things quite simple, and meant that we could make some pretty rapid progress with a paint sprayer. This was a far better option, until it exploded on me, so Lea had to finish the painting off with a roller.
After the painting, I was able to make a start on the flooring. Having ordered the flooring about a year earlier we had kept it in the warehouse in Saskatoon to keep it out of our way. We encountered some drama, when the company we bought it from shut down their Saskatoon store, and decided to ship all the flooring back to Manitoba. For some reason they didn’t bother to call us to see if we wanted it to be delivered. Someone obviously thought it would be a far better option to truck it 800 km across the prairies. When we found out what had happened, we were a little concerned that the company may have gone bust and we wondered if we would see the wood which we had already paid for. We arranged for delivery and they trucked it 800 km back to Saskatoon, only to call us and tell us that they wouldn’t deliver outside the city. I’m still at a loss to explain why they then shipped it back to Manitoba, but that’s what they did. Surprisingly we did manage to get our flooring a week later, and then spent a day carrying 8000lbs of hardwood into the house and down into the basement to keep it out of our way. I now realise that the pregnancy means that Lea doesn’t have to carry the flooring upstairs when we need it.
After the painting, I was able to make a start on the flooring. Having ordered the flooring about a year earlier we had kept it in the warehouse in Saskatoon to keep it out of our way. We encountered some drama, when the company we bought it from shut down their Saskatoon store, and decided to ship all the flooring back to Manitoba. For some reason they didn’t bother to call us to see if we wanted it to be delivered. Someone obviously thought it would be a far better option to truck it 800 km across the prairies. When we found out what had happened, we were a little concerned that the company may have gone bust and we wondered if we would see the wood which we had already paid for. We arranged for delivery and they trucked it 800 km back to Saskatoon, only to call us and tell us that they wouldn’t deliver outside the city. I’m still at a loss to explain why they then shipped it back to Manitoba, but that’s what they did. Surprisingly we did manage to get our flooring a week later, and then spent a day carrying 8000lbs of hardwood into the house and down into the basement to keep it out of our way. I now realise that the pregnancy means that Lea doesn’t have to carry the flooring upstairs when we need it.
Once the flooring saga had been resolved we managed to get away from the house for a while, with a relaxing weekend in Las Vegas. Stan and Nicole were heading down there for a family wedding and asked us if we fancied joining them for a couple of days. Sadly I didn’t come back a millionaire, but I should have known that it wasn’t going to be a lucky trip for me when we checked in and were told we only had standby tickets. This got me a little bit riled at Saskatoon airport, but the best was yet to come! We arrived early at Denver, with over an hour and a half to catch our connection to Vegas, and proceeded to sit on the tarmac for about an hour because there was a plane parked at our gate. I clearly don’t understand the complexities of crappy American airports, because there were any number of empty gates that we could have used to get off the plane. Once we managed to taxi in to our ‘special’ gate, we spent another 20 minutes waiting for some highly qualified genius to work out how to get some steps to the plane door. By this point, the 11 of us who were expecting to get the connection to Vegas were assuming that the plane would be held for us, but clearing US immigration proved to be particularly tricky and we ran to our departure gate to see our plane backing off the stand without us. It seems that Americans are easily confused, and the sight of someone from England, who actually lived in a different country, was far too much for a tiny American brain to process. The only positive thing at this point was that I was keeping everyone else amused with my rants about the retardedness of anyone and anything American.
When we finally made it to Vegas, we spent a few days wandering the strip and losing small amounts of money in various casinos. We did take a trip out to see the Hoover Dam, and then had Stan take us off roading in the Arizona desert. We spent a while chasing lizards around before haeding back to Vegas for the main attraction: Monster Jam 2009. Never having been to a monster trucks event, I was almost as interested in the crowd as the trucks. 60,000 necks of a certain colour all in one place is quite the experience. The monster trucks itself was pretty entertaining, and I may be tempted into going again.
On our return from Vegas we managed to get our permanent residence cards. At first our immigration officer seemed to be a bit suspicious of us (apparently not many people choose Saskatoon as their new home), but eventually we realised she was one of our neighbours in Grandora, and things went a bit more smoothly after that.
When we finally made it to Vegas, we spent a few days wandering the strip and losing small amounts of money in various casinos. We did take a trip out to see the Hoover Dam, and then had Stan take us off roading in the Arizona desert. We spent a while chasing lizards around before haeding back to Vegas for the main attraction: Monster Jam 2009. Never having been to a monster trucks event, I was almost as interested in the crowd as the trucks. 60,000 necks of a certain colour all in one place is quite the experience. The monster trucks itself was pretty entertaining, and I may be tempted into going again.
On our return from Vegas we managed to get our permanent residence cards. At first our immigration officer seemed to be a bit suspicious of us (apparently not many people choose Saskatoon as their new home), but eventually we realised she was one of our neighbours in Grandora, and things went a bit more smoothly after that.
Not long after our return from Vegas was possibly the worst day of 2009 so far. I had to go back to work! Luckily, I was sent to Swift Current on some fieldwork. This turned out to be the biggest waste of time ever, as I spent two days leaning on a shovel, watching someone in a bobcat dig a hole. I did mange to spend an evening in the casino which almost made the trip worthwhile, but once again I didn’t win anything.
We had also had a visit from mum and dad for a few days. They had found some cheap flights so decided to come over for another visit. To give Simon and Arin a break we decided to invite them over to stay at Stan and Nicole’s. We figured we would put them to good use on the house, and had managed to get a small deck built by the front door, and some other stuff done before we had our first lost time incident of the build. Dad managed to tread on one, of the many, nails sticking out of our pile of scrap wood. Luckily this only resulted in a pool of blood in the mud room and an afternoon at the medical centre for a tetanus shot. Dad hasn’t mentioned it since he got home, so I assume he hasn’t developed gangrene or anything.
We had also had a visit from mum and dad for a few days. They had found some cheap flights so decided to come over for another visit. To give Simon and Arin a break we decided to invite them over to stay at Stan and Nicole’s. We figured we would put them to good use on the house, and had managed to get a small deck built by the front door, and some other stuff done before we had our first lost time incident of the build. Dad managed to tread on one, of the many, nails sticking out of our pile of scrap wood. Luckily this only resulted in a pool of blood in the mud room and an afternoon at the medical centre for a tetanus shot. Dad hasn’t mentioned it since he got home, so I assume he hasn’t developed gangrene or anything.
A couple of weeks ago we decided to take a day off from building, and instead had a nice relaxing day of building a deck with Stan and Nicole. Surprisingly this was pretty relaxing, and it was nice not to have to worry about our own projects for a day.
In the past few weeks we have spent the time finishing off the flooring upstairs, replacing the patio door (now that the weather has finally brightened up and we can spend some time outside) and started installing the kitchen. This afternoon we bought our water treatment system for the house, so now we can start thinking about plumbing it in and maybe even have some running water in the house!!!
We have also both celebrated our birthdays so are both now a little older and obviously a lot wiser and more mature. I’m finishing this blog entry sitting outside by the fire in Stan and Nicole’s yard, thinking of going inside and treating myself to a beer.
I will leave you all with the announcement of the interactive baby naming challenge. Lea and I will be accepting suggestions for names for the baby. Every suggestion we receive will go into the first round draw of the name knockout competition. The draw will be published on the blog, along with the results of each round as decisions are made. Obviously there will be a separate draw for boys and girls names, so make as many suggestions as you like and follow the progress of your suggestions over the coming months.
Until next time………
