My Wind is Tougher than Your Wind

I've found one common thread between all people who live down here in Lethbridge and South. They're all preoccupied with the wind. We expected the increase in wind, really but here's where they all make me chuckle.

There will be a day, like today, that is especially windy yet if you comment on it all of them will say the same thing, "Oh this is nothing, it gets much windier than this". Only it's really an especially windy day, it's okay to admit it. You don't have to impress me with the strength of you wind.

I'm not looking forward to the super cold winter wind but so far I've appreciated the wind on hot days.
L

Galt Gardens

Brad and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and we headed out for a picnic at Galt Gardens.

They have fountains there so we took the opportunity to get our feet wet and enjoy the spray from the wind..

We had a yummy lunch of croissonts, cheese, fruit and lemonade. It was the perfect way to spend the afternoon. Click below for a slide show of a few photos.

Lethbridge Picnic

L

Last Day

Remember the count down chain?

Turns out it was very successful and now this is all that's left. That's right, today is my last day. My very last blog posted from work. It's a strange thing, leaving a job you've been at for 4 years, even stranger still knowing I’m not going on to a new job.

Here are a few things I won't necessarily miss about office life but they are things I've become accustomed to. I'll no longer:

1. Carry a key card to gain entry to a professional building
2. Regularly ride an elevator (this includes being annoyed when we stop on every floor and being unimpressed by the person who just put out their cigarette)
3. Wear business casual attire
4. Be excited for casual Friday
5. Ride a city bus
6. Stop by Starbucks / Tim Hortons to buy a yummy treat to pass the time
7. Be accessible through Google talk 8 hours of every day
8. Share awkward Betty stories

I think part of me will miss the structure of a work day but it's a really small part, the majority of me is just ridiculously excited to be finished!

Our internet doesn't get hooked up for a week so you can expect some on-line silence for a little while, wish us luck in the final leg of the move, Lethbridge here we come!
L

Q&A's

Another question I'm often asked is, "So do you have the nursery all ready?"

This leads me to scoff and, laugh and say, "I wish" or "Not even a little".

We've had this really frustrating moving situation so for the next week and half we're sort of homeless. All of our stuff has been moved down to Lethbridge to a friends garage (thanks Michelle, it all fit perfectly). We were supposed to move into our new house that weekend but those plans fell through and our new, new house isn't available until August 17th. So until then we store our stuff and we've been living with Brad's parents.

The 17th will include a second U-Haul truck and hopefully some Elder's Quorum moving help since I'll be even more useless.

So do you we have a nursery ready yet? I'd sort of like to have a bed for myself first and then I can focus on the nursery, although we'll be in trouble if this little girl decides to come early.
L

Hoping to Settle

In our married life Brad and I have been pretty blessed, we really haven't had a lot of trials or difficulties (knock on wood). Our finances are well organized, we've both been well employed. We're healthy, have a great relationship and have been really happy except in one aspect… we seem to have difficulty with housing.

There was the first apartment where there was confusion about whether it was ours or not and then the whole heat debacle. We lucked out and found a lovely new place where we've been since January and we've enjoyed it a lot.

Then there was our Lethbridge house. We had everything lined up months in advance only to have it all fall apart a couple days ago. We were pretty stressed out about it as we have no time to go look at new places and we were supposed to move our things in a week.

One thing about me, I hate looking for apartments, I think it's a long, tedious and frustrating process and my previous landlord history has made me nervous to speak to them at all so I'm lucky I was blessed with a husband who takes care of that for us. I just make sure I'm real supportive and we're both happy. We were a little picky about this Lethbridge house. I really wanted 3 bedrooms, a dishwasher and I was not living on the West side, so when Brad sent me an email and photos of a house on the West I wasn't interested at all, until I looked at the first picture when I thought, "I'm in trouble". This house is beautiful, I'm not sure how you could turn it down. It's less than two years old, meets all our criteria (except the location) and is only slightly out of our price range (we can make it work). The move will not be as smooth as it will now involve a storage unit for a month but at least we know where we'll end up eventually.

Click on the photo below for more photos of our soon to be home.

Lethbridge House

Here's hoping the location sacrifice is worth it because I'm excited to have such a beautiful house.
L

Accepted

It's official, Brad's been accepted to the University of Lethbridge!

We were never worried, his grades are awesome but it feels so good to know for absolute sure.

Last year around this time we were nervously waiting to see if he'd get accepted into the UofC Engineering program. We waited, and waited, and waited so long we came up with a back-up plan. By the time he got accepted into the program (two weeks before the start of classes) our back-up plan had become our new preferred plan and he started getting ready for a Finance degree instead.

This has turned out to be such a wonderful decision. He loves his classes and managed to get pretty darn close to straight A's (that one B+ ruined everything). His GPA is high, and rather than struggling to make it through he's in the top of all his classes.

We're excited to see what Lethbridge, Finance and Catie bring to our life and I'm so proud of my super smart husband!
L

Home Sweet Home

We found a place to live! And somehow it ended up requiring nothing but patience, it sort of just fell in our lap.

Let me tell you about this house… First of all it's an actual house, not an apartment or a four-plex (which I would have been okay with, I love our current four-plex). It has three bedrooms which means Brad can have an office to study in. We'll have our own laundry, we won't even have to share with the basement. It has a dishwasher! and Air conditioning! You're probably thinking what we were, What houses have air conditioning in Lethbridge? Ours does! It's a reasonable price and in exactly the location we wanted to be in, it just couldn't be more perfect.

We have yet to sign a lease so we're sort of trying to keep our excitement down but by verbal agreement it's ours and we're thrilled.

Now we just need to organize the move…
L

Homeless

It's still a little early but it's getting to be time to find somewhere to live in Lethbridge. Today I did a preliminary search just to see what out there and I learned a few things:

• Online rental websites for Lethbridge are disappointing
• Rental prices are much higher than I would have anticipated
• Basement suites look just as crappy down there as they do up here, I refuse to live in one.

So if you know of any great places up for rent the middle of August let me know, here's what we're looking for.

• Must be located on the South Side, we'll consider the North if it's great
• We need at least two bedrooms, preferably 3
• There must be laundry on-site and not 4 floors down either. That resulted in a serious lack of laundry ever being done

We're excited to move and I wish it would come faster.
L

Changes

I really didn't mean that last post to be so cliff-hangery and it's not really a big deal, most of you know most of our plan anyway. I've been holding off blogging since I haven't told my work, but none of them read my blog and what do I care, I'm leaving anyway :)

So here's our big, life changing plan that most of you know already… and finally brings about Denise and my real life friendship.

In September Brad will be starting school at the University of Lethbridge.

Brad has loved going to Mount Royal, he likes the small classes and isn't interested in finishing his degree at the UofC. We're really excited to temporarily move to a smaller city and enjoy ourselves for a couple years. We've had this plan for almost a year now and it's exciting now that it's getting closer.

Recently we've added to these life decisions a little by deciding that if Brad does school full time, no working then he can finish in two years. He loves the idea of being finished so in August we both get to quit our jobs and neither of us needs a new one!

Big changes for us though, all within a month we get to move to a new city, start at a new school and have a baby. August/September should be pretty interesting.
L